The Great Squad Cost Thread

[BBF]

Yawn. This is getting boring now.

That CIES study values transfer fees based on their own algorithms, not what the club paid for. Even then, the fee's are all wrong, the data is all wrong, and the graph if of course... all wrong. A 30 second google search will tell you that.

http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2016/159/en/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38635387

 

[Makingtrax]

STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS!!!!!

Nearly all your posts are about trolls. There's no rule that says you can't post something intelligent.

 

[Makingtrax]

Yawn. This is getting boring now.

That CIES study values transfer fees based on their own algorithms, not what the club paid for. Even then, the fee's are all wrong, the data is all wrong, and the graph if of course... all wrong. A 30 second google search will tell you that.

http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2016/159/en/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38635387

Is that the best you can do? You can only now rubbish the source. Give me your figures and I'll run the graph again.

 

[DanDare]

What's the point of this though? Our squad didn't cost the most and so it's unreasonable to expect us to perform better?

It's a pretty poor theory because if we bought Bellerin from another team our squad would cost 45m more. Holding now would cost 20m easily. Iwobi again would cost a decent sum. Doesn't really take teams that develop players into account.

 

[Makingtrax]

What's the point of this though? Our squad didn't cost the most and so it's unreasonable to expect us to perform better?

It's a pretty poor theory because if we bought Bellerin from another team our squad would cost 45m more. Holding now would cost 20m easily. Iwobi again would cost a decent sum. Doesn't really take teams that develop players into account.

There is no point, it's just a statistical truth that richer teams do better. An intellectual exercise. Better than saying Wenger's f***, oh no he isn't, oh yes he is ad nauseim.

I only did the analysis because many posters on here deny it's true. The correlation works well as you can see.

 

[DanDare]

There is no point, it's just a statistical truth that richer teams do better. An intellectual exercise. Better than saying Wenger's f***, oh no he isn't, oh yes he is ad nauseim.

I only did the analysis because many posters on here deny it's true. The correlation works well as you can see.

Ok well not really sure it's thread worthy. Water is wet

 

[Makingtrax]

Yawn. This is getting boring now.

That CIES study values transfer fees based on their own algorithms, not what the club paid for. Even then, the fee's are all wrong, the data is all wrong, and the graph if of course... all wrong. A 30 second google search will tell you that.

http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2016/159/en/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38635387

Have checked with CIES site, these are squad cost figures, not estimate current values. But happy to do the analysis with your figures.

 

[Makingtrax]

Ok well not really sure it's thread worthy. Water is wet

Water is only wet due to its high moisture content

 

[DanDare]

The argument to me seems to be a dispute between people saying squad cost is not the causation of position and maxigtrax making sufficiently vague replies (despite knowing it's only a correlation) to keep the argument going.

 

[Makingtrax]

The argument to me seems to be a dispute between people saying squad cost is not the causation of position and maxigtrax making sufficiently vague replies (despite knowing it's only a correlation) to keep the argument going.

A clear graph with explanation is not vague. You're reaching now. There's no dispute, it's now a proven fact.

 

[DanDare]

A clear graph with explanation is not vague. You're reaching now.

Not in this thread, I mean the general disagreement in the past. Just the impression I got.

Anyway it means nothing, it achieves nothing.

 

[Makingtrax]

Not in this thread, I mean the general disagreement in the past. Just the impression I got.

Anyway it means nothing, it achieves nothing.

Money largely determining where you finish doesn't mean 'nothing.' It may not be very relevant because we all knew it intuitively. This just proves it, that's all.

 

[RoadrunnerReloaded]

Thanks for all PMs

Here's the finished chart. The money spent on each squad plotted against finishing position. According to Excel the correlation is 74%. That means that three quarters of the teams in the EPL finished within 1 standard deviation of their squad cost position. Only one quarter of teams finished away from their determined position.

Where is the link to the article and what exactly is a standard deviation defined as?

Going by your chart it looks like a standard deviation is 3-4 positions in the table?

Just one problem from the get-go is using squad cost as just a ranking. That only works if the difference in squad cost is equal between every single rank (IE 1st is 500M, 2nd is 490M, 3rd is 480M, etc). When you have big gaps (IE 1st is 700M, 2nd is 550M, 3rd is 490M, 4th is 475M, 5th is 460M, 6th is 300M) the ranking system loses accuracy in reflecting the actual state of affairs.

Even ignoring all the problems, its neither a very strong nor very useful statement you are making.
You are basically saying, "PL teams in 2016-17 had a 74% chance of finishing within 3-4 positions of where their squad cost would predict".

Pretty irrelevant assertion even if it is true at face value. Its not useful at all and again case studies like Leicester the last 3 years show why

 

[Makingtrax]

Proving that money largely determines where you finnish is very relevant.

It explains why the richest three teams have won the league every year bar one since 2004 when financial doping came in.

It also explains why Leicester winning is a once in a lifetime event.

You may not find it interesting, but that's another matter.

 

[Godwin1]

How much squad does a good squad cost if a good squad could cost squad?

 

[RoadrunnerReloaded]

Proving that money largely determines where you finnish is very relevant.

It explains why the richest three teams have won the league every year bar one since 2004 when financial doping came in.

It also explains why Leicester winning is a once in a lifetime event.

It does no such thing.

Leicester did not win the league last season because they flipped a coin 38 times and it came up heads every time.

Correlation is not causation mate

 

[Makingtrax]

Of course correlation isn't causation. This is a study of probility.

Teams with less money, have lower quality players and therefore a lower chance of winning the league. It doesn't mean they have no chance. It means they will win less often. That explains perfectly why teams like Leicester win so infrequently.

 

[Makingtrax]

How much squad does a good squad cost if a good squad could cost squad?

Easy for you to say

 

[Dokaka]

All of this is kind of irrelevant when football clubs don't have the same transparency as most American sports do. All of the figures are based off estimates and/or "leaks". Seems a bit pointless to then make a massive study on made up numbers.

Even worse, wages are kept private and thenumbers cited in papers etc. are often completely off. I'd argue what a club can offer on a weekly basis means a lot more to the quality of the squad than the amount they can pay here and now to bring a player in.

High wages means you get to keep your stars.

 

[Makingtrax]

All of this is kind of irrelevant when football clubs don't have the same transparency as most American sports do. All of the figures are based off estimates and/or "leaks". Seems a bit pointless to then make a massive study on made up numbers.

Even worse, wages are kept private and thenumbers cited in papers etc. are often completely off. I'd argue what a club can offer on a weekly basis means a lot more to the quality of the squad than the amount they can pay here and now to bring a player in.

High wages means you get to keep your stars.

The cost of players have never been more public than they are today. You could do this analysis with almost any source and it works just as well. It's a simple analysis that we all know is true, instinctively, even without mathematical proof.

Your assertion that what a club can offer is more important than the cost of players is blatantly not true. If it were the lesser teams like West Brom would be winning the league more often and the richest three teams wouldn't have such dominance over the last 13 years since financial doping arrived.