BOROCHAT

Re: Banfield Gone

By borostag (Todge)Today 18:19Today at 18:19:44In response to Re: Banfield Gone

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I think the "keeping the backroom staff light" opinion is one that increasingly annoys me. Surely the backroom staff is one of the more feasible changes we could make as a club of our size and budget.

I know the argument has always been that whatever money we spend on an analyst or two could be spent on a player, but the average salary of an analyst would barely make a dent in our budget, surely? You've got clubs out there paying graduates barely above minimum wage for it (which is appalling, but they do).

It's always been fascinating to me in recent seasons (most strikingly in the last one) that we start incredibly well, then we sort of peter out as the season goes along. I've had tons of chats with other fans about why it could be - from a smaller squad size, to fitness, to injuries, to teams "figuring us out"... But one contributing reason could genuinely be that at the start of the season when we're playing Saturday-Saturday, our analyst has time to both analyse the previous game AND give pointers to prepare for the next game.

When the games start coming faster (Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday), if we only have one analyst, then they would have to immediately start analysing the game we've just played on the Saturday evening, maybe finalise their thinking on Sunday. They've then only got a day and a bit before we play on Tuesday to dig into our next opponents previous games, tactics, etc. Same goes for the Saturday game after a Tuesday night. They've got Wednesday to analyse the Tuesday night game, then Thursday/Friday to analyse our next opponents.

Let's say that they can even get the report done in that time, I can't imagine the depth or quality is amazing (this may lead to some of Revs' opinions about the usefulness of data being questionable!). On a human level (as someone working in data myself), I also feel for the poor analyst working flat out 7 days a week! Knowing that salaries in that space in football are not exactly stellar either.

I also think that one of the main reasons that teams can "figure us out" at this level is because they have bigger analytics capabilities. Even having just one dedicated member of staff to look into your next opponent frees up so much time for another analyst to reflect on your teams' failings in recent games and how to improve. I also think that as the season goes on, teams in the league with these bigger backroom teams have more footage and data of us to dig into (hence they are more prepared to play against us as the season wears on, whereas we aren't at all). Teams around us are changing their approach as the season goes on based on data, whereas we seemingly decide on a way of playing in the summer, then just keep trying that.

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