Bloomsbury Soccermatics: Mathematical Adventures in the Beautiful Game Pro-Edition

Soccer and stats is something that I've taken an interest in personally and have spent some time working with data from both Prozone and Opta. I was interested to read this book and understand other approaches used with similar data sets that I had been working and read it with an open mind. One of the main flaws for me was in David Sumpter's use of behaviours in the natural world amongst organisms and then players on a football field. For example, how animals or insects might congregate together and how this could be read across to the soccer pitch. Absolute nonsense! Far too simplistic, spurious and irrelevant. It was then explained that Paul Power at Prozone had tried applying some techniques along similar lines to soccer data that had resulted in abject failure - surprise, surprise!!The chapter on player recruitment was perhaps more relevant to the direction that data analysis is taking at present to support football clubs and there was also quite an interesting section on betting and the outcome of various techniques used to predict outcomes of games. I did trial the prediction technique suggested in the book for probabilities of overwhelming favourites winning and below a certain probability level, drawing, using SkySports Super 6 for the 2017/ 18 season so there was no actual stake involved. Just as well! For the most part, the overwhelming favourites won (surprise, surprise again!) although the games suggested as a draw were almost always wrong.Sumpter also includes mention in a later chapter that he had questioned some of those analysing data in the industry for their views on approach and findings. The response was that people would rather that there was more peer reviewing and critical analysis of what was being produced to ensure robust use of the findings. This is something that the author could have done with when producing the book.The book itself was quite well written and had the odd interesting example but overall would have benefited greatly from some oversight and editing to make for a more concise and compelling read.We are still a way off having the definitive book written on the subject of data analysis in soccer as its an evolving area. This particular effort doesn't add a great deal of illumination to the topic.

Really interesting read and Sumpter manages to strike the balance between explaining his reasoning and not going into too much detail for people who haven't studied maths at a higher level. And if the maths does interest you there are further explanations and links in the appendix.Would recommend to any fan of the game, not just "football nerds".

Each section essentially takes a mathematical approach to looking at different aspects of football, from formations to betting. A really interesting take and very fun to read

Bought it more for the gambling aspect of football and has given me some good ideas. Most of it very interesting.

Nice book, although I expected more numbers and stats, but still a good book !