Liverpool legend and Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher recently made a special appearance on Laptop Gurus, Twenty3’s podcast dedicated to data and analysis. On the episode, Carragher revealed that he’d recently finished reading the xG Philosophy book. So we figured what better time than now to sit down and speak to its author, James Tippett,…
Borussia Mönchengladbach ended a seven-game winless streak with a victory over bottom of the table Schalke on Saturday, 20 March. Following on from the announcement that manager Marco Rose would be leaving at the end of the season to take over as Borussia Dortmund head coach, Die Fohlen lost four successive Bundesliga matches. This slump…
Barring a disaster of pretty sizable proportions, the Italian Serie A crown will change hands for the first time in a decade come May. Long have Juventus ruled the division, stringing together nine consecutive league-winning campaigns, and 2020-21 was supposed to make it 10—Cristiano Ronaldo’s second, albeit slightly different, La Decima, if you will. But…
Football matches are sometimes described like boxing bouts, as two fighters punching and counter-punching, slugging it out in an attempt to fell their opponent. It’s a dramatic comparison, sure, but it hits at a fundamental truth. As in boxing, in football you attack by taking action and you largely defend in ways which don’t make…
Football content is biased. There’s no other way to dress it up. All fans of football have preconceived beliefs when it comes to clubs, managers and players. No matter how much you try to leave all of that at the door when putting together what you believe to be an objective piece of content, opinion…
Marseille’s decision to hire Jorge Sampaoli was a bold one. It’s only the second time that the Argentine tactician has taken a job in Europe and the first, a single season with Sevilla, wasn’t deemed a success. They finished fourth in LaLiga and were knocked out of the Champions League by Leicester City. The Andalusian…
Resistance to change is normal. There’s often a fear of the unknown and moving away from what you’re used to is something very few are comfortable with. This is perhaps why there’s a refusal from some to accept a number of modern-day metrics used for analysis. Over the last decade, football data has become more…
Since retiring from football in 2013, Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher has made a name for himself as one of the leading analysts on TV as part of the Sky Sports team. The 38-cap England international is the poster boy for statistics and analysis within media, having trialled VR and adopted expected goals into his vocabulary.…
“A draw is a disaster. A draw is a defeat in many ways. It’s not acceptable to draw a football match.” Steven Gerrard’s interview on Robbie Fowler’s podcast is 45 minutes long, but those three seconds were arguably the best insight into his mindset as a manager. It also goes some way to explaining why,…
Part of the beauty of football is its capacity to surprise. Every season throws up unexpected storylines—both good and bad—that shock those even with the tightest grip and fullest extent of knowledge on certain situations. Those surprises come in many forms, from clubs to managers to players to almost anything else. Here, we have picked…