Moneyball

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,219]

VW,

The access to sophisticated relevant and revealing data is an enormous leap forward and fundamental to all good coaches and Sporting Directors. Anybody who doesn''t fully embrace what it offers - and as Westie rightly says - what it will continue to offer as it develops ever more nuanced algorithms, is using an abacus and a pigeon while others use satellite communications and quantum processing.

What you can do with a bow and arrow is not what you can do with a machine gun, regardless how good an observer you may be.

The ability to observe your own conformational bias in action is alone worth the entry fee of such systems.

I have been studying neuroscience and neuroplasticity for some years now and the behavioural grooved pathways - and how and why they may be challenged and changed - will come to be applied as the next major development in football, alongside and beyond analytics.

Parma

[Chesney Hawkes 0]

Did someone really just suggest Neil Adams was a better manager than Alex Neil?

[Van wink 2,994]

I''m sure your right Palma, my point was westies'' apparent implication that historically professional observers were unable to understand and analyse the game. I accept that they were unable to undertake the sort of detailed analysis you describe and have described but there was still an understanding of patterns, tactics, shape, movement with and without the ball etc. The analysis you carry out is a function of time and what techniques are available.

Neuroscience and neuroplasticity, sounds facinating, I imagine in simple terms it''s about learning and recognising that players can change the way they think in certain situations, real time response so that they play a different way and reactions to a specific situation that presents itself on the field can be changed. Of course I may have got that completely wrong 😀

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,219]

Westie was only really pointing out that even the finest tactical minds could benefit from a car if they were racing with a horse...

...once all use the analytics, then the how, why and when to apply such information can be observed to differentiate.

As stated the ability to observe your own confirmational bias in action is hugely valuable, as is the critical friend function that offers alternative scenarios and forces you to justify your tactical approaches.

Modern FMRI scanners allow us to track individual neural response waves, which in turn allows us to follow repeating neural pathway routes in response to given stimuli.

What you find is that we don''t think for ourselves.

We develop brain motorways that funnel and force our actions onto repeated routes and patterns whilst we justify to ourselves that our responses are independent and based on free selection.

If you apply this to the Masterclasses you will note that we are looking for players in positions where their natural tendencies are precisely what is required for the role.

Naturally if one could form, create and refine these subconscious ''natural tendencies'' then one might well have a huge advantage....

....Parma

[Ray 111]

Parma,

One can form, create and refine these subconscious ''natural tendencies'', the key is knowing how to.

However, as your subconscious is pretty much empty on the day of your birth, anything put there is put there by you (your mother doesn''t stick her fingers in your ears and tie your brain cells together, only you can do that) and anything in your subconscious takes its initial journey through your conscious before finding its resting place. Therefore making Natural Tendencies, any interesting concept, yes I wholeheartedly agree, some are born with a greater aptitude toward one thing or another, than others, however are there people out there who could be better footballers than Messi/Ronaldo, etc? Bet your bottom dollar there are, but do they have the appropriate mindset (subconscious thinking) well that''s a different story.

IMO, football in general, falls short in understanding the part the mind plays in performance and if I understand correctly our current manager has publicly voiced his opinion that he has little truck with psychology, which given what I see, comes as no surprise.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

[norfolkbroadslim 223]

[quote user="Phil Collins"]Did someone really just suggest Neil Adams was a better manager than Alex Neil?[/quote]Yes!

[westcoastcanary 0]

@Parma"What you find is that we don''t think for ourselves."I stand in a relation of intellectual subservience to my brain? Hmm!

[Chesney Hawkes 0]

I will rephrase then.

Did someone who isn''t an angry mentalist just suggest Neil Adams was a better manager than Alex Neil?

[norfolkbroadslim 223]

[quote user="Phil Collins"]I will rephrase then.

Did someone who isn''t an angry mentalist just suggest Neil Adams was a better manager than Alex Neil?[/quote]Yes!

[JF 694]

On current form it''s hard to argue Neil''s case against anyone. How many managers could pull off 8 defeats out of 10 matches with the level of talent he has available.

[Van wink 2,994]

Agree JF

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,219]

Westie,

''...the revolution in neuroplasticity has shown that the brain can change [physical form and function] as a result of two distinct inputs. ...as a result of experiences we have in the world - how we move and behave and what sensory signals arrive in our cortex. The brain can also change in response to purely mental activity, ranging from meditation [try/test ''Vissipana''] to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, with the result that activity in specific circuits can increase or decrease'' - Davidson

Combine such principles with autosuggestion, NLP, positive reinforcement, mis(re)-direction and elements of hypnotherapy, combined with good old-fashioned psychological insight (oh and our tactical understanding, analytics, technique-based coaching and high level nutritional and conditioning) and we might have something useful....

To the sceptics: We are not advanced employing such techniques, we are just avoiding falling further behind..

Whilst we wait for a Rooney or Gascoigne to be born, Germany builds a hundred Thomas Mullers....

Parma

[westcoastcanary 0]

@ParmaI''m completely onboard with this, just questioning your "it shows we don''t think for ourselves", which strikes me as like saying (as indeed was said at the time) that Newton''s discoveries about optics and light proved that the world is colourless. What neurological research reveals to us is surely not e.g. that we don''t think for ourselves, but rather what thinking for ourselves etc. consist in neurologically-speaking.

[westcoastcanary 0]

@Phil CollinsGrumbling about a common misrepresentation of physicalism doesn''t make a physicalist a mentalist [:P]

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,219]

Westie,

I would delighted to buy you a beer or three and go through all this with you....👍

The grooved motorways I speak of act as magnets, hoovers or false comfort friends...they draw in information that doesn''t truly belong there and colour it like the information that does.

This is where relying on experience is a very dangerous strategy and analytics can help successful challenge received certainties.

Unless people consciously choose to challenge these motorways and patterns, their thoughts will be hoovered into these limiting grooved channels and filed and categorised mindlessly along with the other traffic.

Parma

[westcoastcanary 0]

[Y] A rain check for the next time you''re within beer drinking distance of North Hollywood. (Ray already has one)

[westcoastcanary 0]

Vanwink wrote: Westcoast " Where professional observers used to (and many fans still do) "see" little more that a ball being kicked around, they now "see" differing utilisations of space" I find this a strange remark, the idea that historically professional observers of the game, didn''t really understand the patterns and were unable to critically analyse a game is absurd. Maybe I''ve misunderstood what you are saying………………………..""……. my point was westies'' apparent implication that historically professional observers were unable to understand and analyse the game. I accept that they were unable to undertake the sort of detailed analysis you describe and have described but there was still an understanding of patterns, tactics, shape, movement with and without the ball etc. The analysis you carry out is a function of time and what techniques are available."Two points, one about the evolution of our understanding of the game, one about the power of analytic systems. Firstly, you say that "the analysis you carry out is a function of time and what techniques are available", but exactly the same holds of people''s understanding of the game (including professional observers, managers, coaches and players); there is constant evolution, as any decent history of football testifies. Histories of ideas and science are replete with appropriate analogies. Secondly, there is a tendency to equate analytics with descriptive data gathering of the kind undertaken by Opta and others. The two are quite different, though crucially related, enterprises. Working with, among other things, the data provided by the latter, the aim is to apply to football the kind of mathematical modelling which has been key to vastly improving our understanding of complex phenomena from economic activity to weather and climate. This kind of modelling is capable of far more than simply ex post facto analysis, offering explanation rather than just description and with it improved capabilities to intervene and affect outcomes.

[Iwans Big Toe 312]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38517716Swansea get it.

[Bill 1,788]

"This kind of modelling is capable of far more than simply ex post facto

analysis, offering explanation rather than just description and with it

improved capabilities to intervene and affect outcomes."And we used to simply refer to a player who skyed the ball into row z as a useless tw**But hey, away with all that nowaway with your results as well - they are outcomes now.. so dig that hip new jive, daddio

[Iwans Big Toe 312]

Following how City have gone about gaining promotion, just thought I'd bump this OP.