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The pressure to attack
All clubs recognise that football is a results industry, but many would also say that providing entertainment is more important than it has ever been. Clubs and leagues’ competition is no longer just other teams or even sports, it’s often TV box sets and video games.
This shift has coincided with an era of coaches […]
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The overvalued market
Football, like any other industry, is subject to the laws of supply and demand. Just as Ibiza’s popularity as a holiday destination pushes up the price of a drink on the island, the transfer fees required to acquire footballers is related not just to the quality of players in that market, but how many clubs […]
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Overcoming our biggest recruitment mistakes
Just like the universe is governed by a set of rational laws that we can discover and understand, football’s transfer market is also determined by factors that we’re able to research and control.
Such research helps us understand what happened, why it happened and what might happen in the future. It can rinse our eyes and […]
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Was Arsène Wenger unlucky?
Arsène Wenger’s postmortem had already been written years before he actually announced his departure from Arsenal. As the conventional wisdom goes, he had an excellent first 8 seasons, winning 3 league titles, but then lost his way and was never again able to make Arsenal credible contenders for the league title.
However, here at 21st Club […]
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Changing the food chain
With unprecedented levels of inequality in football, a clear hierarchy of both clubs and leagues has been established. While between 1986 and 1988 clubs from Romania, Sweden, Scotland and Belgium were represented in European finals alongside clubs from the continent’s bigger countries, between 2016 and 2018 pretty much all spots have been reserved for teams […]
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Pass and move
In terms of on-field output, there are broadly two things a team can try and control: how they play, and how well they play. Unfortunately, as we all know, one is harder to influence than the other.
We often feel that making a strategic decision to change our team’s playing style can have a significant and […]
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When he leaves the building
One of the things that makes sport different to other industries is a sporting organisation’s dependency on a relatively small number of individuals. In the UK for example, a large ‘normal’ business generating £200m+ in turnover will employ over 1,500 people on average. A Premier League club with the same income might have a workforce […]
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The perils of day trading
Day to day, the market valuation of a stock can fluctuate up and down like a yo-yo. Take Bitcoin right now. Whether the cryptocurrency will be up or down tomorrow is anyone’s guess, such is the sentiment volatility towards the relatively new form of exchange.
For traders, it can be addictive. The emotional rollercoaster of something […]
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Apples to apples
The European Golden Boot is an annual award recognising the best goalscorer in club football in Europe. It was initially awarded every season to the player who scored the most goals in European first divisions.
The early awardees were a mix of household names, such as Marco van Basten, and relative unknowns, such as Cypriot […]
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A year in review
From Mo Salah’s expected impact to the dramatic turnaround in fortunes of Fortuna Sittard, and what Chile should learn from Germany. A few standout insights from 2017:
Of the most expensive Premier League signings, Mo Salah was projected to have a bigger impact than the likes of Morata and Lacazette – but less than Lukaku. After […]
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