An intro to me and analytics

First a little about me.

I’m a long suffering Cardiff City fan having started watching the team in the lower divisions of the English football pyramid more than 20 years ago.

I’m also developing a keen interest in the growing arena of statistical analysis in sport – otherwise known as #fancystats.

And in my day job I’m a financial journalist – so hopefully I can combine my skills with numbers and love of writing here.

The world of data and statistical analysis in sport has been growing rapidly over the last few years as so much more information has been made readily available.

North America has typically led the way with baseball and basketball being particularly well developed in this area.

Meanwhile ice hockey has been playing catch-up but is finally getting its act together.

Where the world’s game, football, is concerned the use of analytics has been a slower progression, at least in public, but many clubs are happy to admit they use all sorts of data to help monitor and improve performances.

It finally seemed to hit the mainstream last year with the publishing of The Numbers Game – an excellent read for anyone wanting to think differently about football.

My interest in sporting analytics was triggered by following the work of NHL bloggers across the Atlantic over the last few years.

There has been some truly remarkable work and this summer some have been rewarded with several high profile names being hired to work for teams not the least Tyler Dellow (@mc79hockey) and Eric Tulsky (@BSH_EricT).

These folks led me to work done analysing the Premier League by Ben Puglsey (@benjaminpugsley), Colin Trainor (@colinttrainor) and others at the Stats Bomb website.

And so inspired by these I thought it would be a good idea to put together a blog following the fourth most watched (i.e. bums on seats) football league in Europe, which also happens to be the feeder league into probably the most widely watched football league around the world.   

As far as I know this is the first blog statistically analysing the Championship so hopefully we’ll learn more about what it takes to make it out of this division.

Enjoy!