{"id":300623,"date":"2025-12-05T15:18:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T15:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/300623\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T15:18:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T15:18:13","slug":"smart-clubs-and-following-the-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/300623\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart clubs and following the data"},"content":{"rendered":"

Success in football is determined by a number of matters: the ability of the manager, players performing at the right level, injuries and sheer luck, and in Scotland, a clubs determination to influence officials with an exaggerated sense of grievance.\u00a0 Apparently.<\/p>\n

But transfer business has an even greater impact than dodgy penalties.\u00a0 This is one area Celtic need to get right over the next two windows.\u00a0 Our performance, not just in the summer window, but across our last three transfer windows has been poor.\u00a0 There is often a lag in outcomes before the impact of a window is felt.\u00a0 The \u00a332m spent in the summer of 2024 failed to see many minutes on the pitch a year later, during Champions League qualification, for example.<\/p>\n

The CIES Football Observatory published their survey of the \u201cworld\u2019s smartest clubs<\/a> on the transfer market since January 2021\u201d.\u00a0 Tony Bloom has two clubs in the top 10: Brighton (2nd) and Union SG (8th); I\u2019m sure he didn\u2019t bet on that outcome (my Tony Bloom man-crush has faded a little this week).<\/p>\n

The top 20 has some lessons for us: Atalanta, Napoli, Bologna, Udinese and Lecce, demonstrate how well the medium-to-small Italian clubs have figured out how to progress.\u00a0 Is it surprising so many young Scottish players have bounced after moving there?<\/p>\n

Benfica are there, as are Feyenoord, but not Ajax.\u00a0 The Amsterdamers beat Celtic to the signing of \u20ac12m striker Kasper Dolberg in the summer, which traumatised many of us.\u00a0 Dolberg has returned one goal in all competitions since, a consolation in a defeat to Excelsior.\u00a0 Not that the lad\u2019s had much of a chance, his only appearances have been off the bench.<\/p>\n

The Ajax-Dolberg-Celtic tale says so much about where we were in the summer.\u00a0 Unable to attract a player who cannot get a game at a team woefully underperforming this season.\u00a0 There are so many reasons why we should not have wasted time on this exercise, it scarcely needs explaining.<\/p>\n

Celtic are 19th in the table, between Manchester City and Leipzig.\u00a0 How can that be?\u00a0 I hear you ask.\u00a0 The lag works both ways.\u00a0 Analysis of Celtic still benefits from earlier signings, up until that of Nicolas Kuhn in January 2024, who left the premises this summer.\u00a0 The full impact of the subsequent windows has not shown up yet.<\/p>\n

Being \u201csmartest\u201d in the transfer window does not guarantee success, but it\u2019ll outperform being thick, no matter how good your \u2018exaggerated sense of grievance\u2019 game is.<\/p>\n

Looking in from the outside, it\u2019s easy to say, \u2018be more like Bloom\u2019 (although not with that other stuff), but as many observers will note, getting this right is not easy.\u00a0 What is easy, is to stick to the data.\u00a0 Recognise what succeeds and what fails and always back your winning hand.\u00a0 A lack of observance of this principle in football is quite astonishing.<\/p>\n

Postscript: I looked down the list and eventually found Aberdeen, but after continuous scrolling I ran out of patience trying to find another Scottish club.\u00a0 Looks like Bloom\u2019s magic touch has yet to hit Hearts.<\/p>\n

Click Here for Comments ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Success in football is determined by a number of matters: the ability of the manager, players performing at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-300623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}