Director of Football Strategy, Sabermetrics and Liverpool Football Club – Why this can be a winning combination

Damien Comolli’s appointment as Director of Football Strategy at Liverpool Football Club has been a subject of debate amongst Journalists, Administrators and fans alike. The 38-year-old Comolli, who has been recruited from St Etienne has previously worked with Tottenham Hotspurs and has recruited players like Gareth Bale and Benoit Assou-Ekotto.

Director of football Strategy is a very unpopular job in English Football. It simply doesn’t work because of various reasons – Ego of the manager and the Owner being one of them – Jose Murinho at Chelsea (probably the start of his exit process from Chelsea). So why will it work at Liverpool Football Club?

The new owners of Liverpool Football Club (NESV) probably see this a good fit within their strategy for running Liverpool Football Club – is the answer. NESV is an American company with experience in running successful Sports franchises in USA (Boston Red Sox and Fenway Sports Group)

The American baseball team owners want to introduce the principles of Sabermetrics in Football. Yet again this was a talking point in England last week. How can the principles of Sabermetrics be applied to Football? Isn’t it appropriate for Sports like Baseball and Cricket? – was the question most of the journalists, administrators, scouts and fans.

So, what exactly is Sabermetrics? Wikipedia defines Sabermetrics as the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity rather than industry activity such as attendance. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research.

To keep it simple – it is a set of statistics used to determine the overall performance of a player/team. For example – Top player ratings also know as Batter-Fielder/Pitcher Wins is a metric for measuring the value of baseball players, and to enable players to be compared against each other even when they played for different teams, at different positions, and in different eras or Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) which is a statistic compares hitters contribution (offensive) and Pitchers contribution to a team in comparison to a fictitious average player – This determines a players Replacement level – basically a level of performance a team can expect when trying to replace a player at minimal costs. Sounds complicated doesn’t it?

NESV’s quantitative approach to the game of football may sound strange to a lot of you in UK . However, statistics have always been a part of Football off pitch and some extent on pitch. My personal opinion is that the introduction of Sabermetrics in football can elevate player performances and can be a good model on putting a price on a player – maybe the beginning of fair player pricing – something that can curtail the spiralling costs of players causing clubs to go into debts.

After doing some research into Sabermetrics and its application to Sports like Baseball and Cricket and on the role of a technical director of football (Bayer Leverkusen FC) example – I am convinced that Football is set to change in the future and moreover Liverpool Football Club will revert back to the management philosophy of the great Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan – That is replacing a player to fit a position and can do the job – The success mantra that made Liverpool Football Club the most successful club in the world during the 1970’ and 80’s.