This summer marked the end of England fans’ recent apathy with international football after the national team’s surprise run to the World Cup semi-finals. After years of being the primary focus of fans’ attentions, suddenly the Premier League has something to live up to.
Omar Chaudhuri, head of football intelligence at the performance analysis firm, tells us what to expect from the world's richest football league.
Confident City
For a competition that markets itself on unpredictability, by historical standards there is a surprising lack of debate about who will win the Premier League this season. According to bookmakers Ladbrokes, Manchester City are the second-shortest pre-season favourites in the league’s history, while at the BBC twenty-one out of twenty-four pundits picked Pep Guardiola’s team to win the league.
Our intelligence team at 21st Club gives Man City a 58 per cent chance of winning the league, and based on the strength of their team alone – in other words assuming no significant good or bad luck over the course of the season – are expected to win 86 points.
The one caveat being held against City is that they are fighting against history. No team has successfully defended the Premier League since Manchester United did it in 2009. The most common reason provided for this trend is that top teams get ‘worked out’ by opponents, and while this holds some truth in some cases, the more significant but mundane reason is that title-winning teams tend to enjoy an unexpected but unsustainable amount of good luck. That can range from beneficial refereeing decisions to hot streaks in front of goal; the point is that this luck is unlikely to last, and that title winners will naturally fall back towards the pack.
Fortunately for Man City, they have an enormous buffer. They won the league by 19 points last season - an all-time record – and it would take a sizeable swing in both performance and fortune on both sides to bridge this gap. The curse of defending champions seems likely to end.
English talents to emerge?
England’s success in the summer has created some confusion as to how well the country is developing players. Last season, just 33 per cent of playing time in the Premier League belonged to English players. The average for local players in the other big five European leagues - Spain, Germany, Italy and France - was 50 per cent. Perhaps of greater concern, just five per cent of total playing time in the Premier League was by local players under the age of 23, compared to ten per cent in rival leagues. The theory, at least before the World Cup, was that less playing time meant less players to select, which meant less chance of building a successful team.
An alternative theory has emerged since: that only the best English players will make it to Premier League first teams, and they will benefit from the additional competition for places from foreign players. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but at the very least England’s run might encourage some clubs to take a chance on young players.
The last time English under-23s made up at least ten per cent of the league’s playing time was in 2006-07, the season after the last time they reached a World Cup quarter final. The successes at youth level – England are under-17 and under-20 world champions – gives credence to the view that it is not a lack of talent that is hindering playing time, but a lack of opportunity.
Looking abroad for value
However, these young English players will be facing more competition from overseas signings than ever before. According to Deloitte, 72 per cent of money spent by Premier League clubs has been on players from foreign clubs, significantly above last year's 54 per cent, or the three-year average of 60 per cent. A key driver behind this trend is likely to be cost; our analysis suggests that players from England tend to cost 20 per cent more than otherwise similar players. Germany and Spain meanwhile have been historically undervalued, and the proportion of signings from these countries is up compared to historical averages too.
Some of the more intriguing signings are from outside the major markets, though. Brighton have signed Alireza Jahanbakhsh from AZ Alkmaar in the Netherlands, and Southampton signed Mohamed Elyounoussi from Basel in Switzerland.
One of the challenges clubs have is understanding how strong performance in these weaker leagues transfers to the rigours of the Premier League. We’ve developed a ‘football exchange rate’ to estimate how goal and assist numbers are expected to translate to England. This model uses results from UEFA and domestic competitions to gauge the relative strength of leagues, and therefore the relative strength of opponents scored against. Jahanbakhsh provided 0.92 goals and assists per 90 minutes for AZ last season, which corresponds to 0.49 in the same period of time in the Premier League. Elyounoussi’s equivalent output in the slightly stronger Swiss league was 0.54 per game, or 0.32 per game in the Premier League. If realised, these would be healthy returns for the money invested.
Sarri and Emery bring evolution, not revolution
The most interesting tactical developments are likely to come from abroad, too. Maurizio Sarri and Unai Emery have taken over as manager at Chelsea and Arsenal respectively, and both come with a reputation for valuing ball retention. Sarri’s Napoli averaged 63 per cent possession, Emery’s PSG 66 per cent; Guardiola’s City are the only Premier League club to average more. Neither are likely to match Guardiola, Klopp or Pochettino’s pressing game – opponents complete just 72 per cent of passes against these teams compared to 78 per cent against Sarri and Emery’s sides – but they are fundamentally attacking coaches.
As such, both are more likely to deliver evolution, rather than revolution at their respective clubs. They have however more than earned their positions; our index for assessing manager impact ranks Sarri’s career as comparable to Jürgen Klopp’s and Antonio Conte’s while Emery’s impact has been comparable to Carlo Ancelotti’s. This model looks at the rate of improvement (or decline) of a team under a coach’s tenure, and in particular regards Sarri’s historical impact among the very best.
A waiting game on VAR
Premier League clubs last April voted against implementing the video assisting referee (VAR) system in place for the 2018-19 season. At the time, it appeared to be a prudent decision; testing in FA Cup matches had shown the system to be slow and cumbersome, and at worst even producing incorrect decisions.
However, a largely successful running of VAR during the World Cup has mostly changed the public mood. Major mistakes were reviewed and corrected, and the mantra of ‘minimum interference, maximum impact’ was usually adhered too. From this season, all the other major European leagues will be using VAR. The trend is clear, and it would be a surprise if the Premier League hasn’t adopted the technology by this time next year.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
