Decoding and demystifying football

Mark Thompson

James Milner, Hugh Grant, and versatility

Welcome to Get Goalside! The first rule of Get Goalside! is that you’re always welcome to a second biscuit. This week’s charity is Refugee Action, who support refugees and people seeking asylum in the UK. At the weekend, I asked a question on Twitter. Who — outside of James

The return of the 'carry the team' centre-forward

Hey, welcome to Get Goalside!. Sit down, I’ll fetch a drink. This week’s charity is the Trussell Trust, a UK food bank charity. If you can spare it, please give the amount you’d spend on a meal out, or just a Big Mac. All stats in this

Could Tim Sherwood have got 'Moneyball' to work at Aston Villa?

Welcome to Get Goalside! I was hoping you’d be able to make it. This week’s charity is, well. Usually I’ve come across charities that I then point to here. Wiley’s antisemitic tweets have made me realise I don’t actually know any anti anti-semitism charities. The

The real meaning of Moneyball

“The first thing they did was run you.” That’s how Michael Lewis opens his seminal book Moneyball, which charts the story of the Oakland A’s 2002 season and the wider movement of data in baseball. It’s a good first line; it grabs you. But it has nothing

A smarter approach to squad-building

Scenario: You arrive at a club as a director of football. The squad needs an overhaul. How do you plan? As a starting off point, it’s worth checking out this visualisation from the Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch, showing transfers from three big clubs since 2015/16 and the minutes

How would you play against the Invincibles?

As a person who plays with data, it’s always a treat when someone releases a free dataset. StatsBomb did that recently with their open data project: Arsenal’s 2003/04 Invincibles season. Due to the difficulty of getting match footage, it only includes 32 of the 38 league matches

3 fun looks at home advantage

Welcome to Get Goalside!, it’s good to see you. Nice face covering. This week’s charity is FND Action. FND stands for Functional Neurological Disorder, which FND Action raises awareness for. The first few matches post-lockdown created an excitement about the lack of home victories. It had all started