Problems With Football Manager And Moneyball

Over at Howard Hamiltons Soccermetrics blog there is a great blog post about Moneyball and Soccer. Howard describes a metric he believes would be awesome in regards to football. I would love to get to work on that metric, in my own amateurical(is that actually a word?) fashion. However, as far as I can tell that's goiing to be a bit difficult. He describes some factors it might be wise to take into account for each of goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and strikers.

Let's first relate those to what's available in FM. Italicized stats are those you can feasibly derive from other stats while bolded stats are those you can't easily figure out.

Goalkeepers
Suggested stats: saves, goals conceded, penalty kicks conceded, corner kicks conceded, passing/distribution %, balls won.

Defenders
Suggested stats: goal kicks forced, balls won/lost, corner kicks conceded, fouls conceded, penalty kicks conceded, passing %.

Midfielders
Suggested stats: passing %, balls won/lost, assists, fouls conceded, fouls won, corner kicks forced, shots, goals

Strikers
Suggested stats: shots, goals, passing %, balls won/lost, corner kicks forced, fouls won.

For the more defensively inclined positions that's a lot of metrics you simply either can't get or will have to work very hard to get. In my view this is a major shortcoming in the game. Another major shortcoming is that you can't see the players stats for previous seasons. Or at least I haven't figured out how to (if you have please be so kind as to tell me in a comment below!) do it.

In my view Howards startiing point is sound, and he definitely know a lot more about statistical analysis than I do (by a lot I mean much, much, much more than I do). Having said that, I can't stop thinking that the categories in his Moneyball and Soccer post are a bit too narrow. I mean would the same stats apply to a central defender and a fullback? What about the not so subtle differences between defensive midfielders, wide midfielders and attacking midfielders. These are things I believe would need to be adressend, but if it all got sorted out you would have an amazing metric to go by.

So, where does that leave us. Well, the game isn't totally useless. We can start to look at how the stats available to us influence the chance of winning matches. Obviously the average rating seems like a good indicator of the players quality, but any random player with a high average rating might not be the piece of the puzzle that makes your team come together.

I suppose it will be a matter of looking at your gameplan and trying to figure out what you're missing to make it complete. Just remember that you might not need a worldbeater to fill in the last piece of the puzzle.

Finally, I just want to plug Howards Moneyball and Soccer blog post one more time. It's really good!