Leeds United beginning to redress the balance behind the scenes - Hay
YEP 2/11/13
by Phil Hay
Arsenal’s backroom staff from Arsene Wenger down is made up of 20 people. Twenty. And that’s without counting a scouting team which, under the orders of Steve Rowley, is as vast and in-tune as any in Europe.
Among their cast of thousands is a football analyst who runs the club’s Prozone operation. He came from Prozone originally by way of Scunthorpe United. They might be painfully short of trophies but Arsenal are a no-stone-unturned operation. You need to be to have a chance at their level these days.
Arsenal pay for Prozone3 each and every season. Of course they do. It’s an advanced means of analysing player performance and an expensive one at that but few elite sides exist without it. Wenger has had the software at his disposal for more than 10 years, an advocate of microscopic detail.
As we speak, Prozone has been Leeds United’s ally for precisely seven days. It monitored their derby at Huddersfield last Saturday, detailing the movement, the positioning and the yards covered by the 12 players used. The last time Prozone gave an overview of one of United’s fixtures, Leeds were a Premier League side. Huddersfield found a way to fund it while they were in League One.
A big deal or not? It matters when you think that clubs who Leeds aspire to share a pitch with regularly – and some who they don’t – refuse to work without Prozone cameras or seriously consider cutting the cost from their budget. It is not that United did no analysis of their games – the club have a performance analyst – but they have navigated season after season without the help of the market leader, blind to the small margins which top-level football decided long ago to explore and exploit.
Analysis matters more to managers than players, as two interviews in United’s city-centre concept shop on Thursday demonstrated. Matt Smith, their university-graduate-turned-footballer, said the sport was “filled with data for analysts to mull over but players don’t really focus on it.” Brian McDermott gave the opposing view from the dug-out, calling Prozone an “important tool.”
“We haven’t had it at Leeds since the Premier League days,” McDermott said. “It’s a way of measuring how far your players travel, measuring that against the opposition, and we’ve had no form of doing that.
“I know what happened at Huddersfield from my experience but we’ve got the facts now. We can show the players what they’re doing.”
Prozone went out with the bathwater at Elland Road, one of multiple cuts inflicted on the club in the past 10 years. It has never been a cheap product and the precise cost of Prozone3, the latest format, is nowhere to be found. The company did not respond to questions from the YEP yesterday but clubs embracing it fully can expect to pay over £100,000 a season for the service. Prozone is a six-figure hole in the budget and clubs who can suck it up.
The accounts at Leeds began to suffocate from 2004 onwards and Prozone appears to have been categorised as a needless and expendable cost. It was not alone there.
Investment in United’s resilient academy constricted over time and Leeds were in no position to compete for Category 1 status when the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) kicked in last year. That recognition requires 18 full-time academy staff and an annual budget of £2.5m. And as McDermott explained at the start of this week, United have no chief scout. The network for recruiting players as he understands it is virtually non-existent.
Prozone, scouts, academy funding – these are long games played by clubs who have more about them than a plan for today. They are the tools of clubs who believe in the full package and the value of fractions. Appointing Luke Dowling as chief scout, as Leeds intend to do, will not influence the 10 games between now and January and might not impact greatly on this season, even if he gave McDermott the heads-up about Dexter Blackstock’s availability last week. But Rowley does not serve Arsenal by rectifying losses at Huddersfield. He serves them by digging out gems as fine as a 16-year-old Cesc Fabregases.
Players and managers come and go from Leeds and when they come, they tell you the same thing – that everything here is in place for the Premier League. Actually, it isn’t. No Prozone (until last Saturday) and no chief scout (though Dowling cometh); a stadium and training ground owned by other people. They amount to basic deficiencies at the level where clubs count their backroom staff in tens. But maybe, just maybe, the corner, is being turned.
by Phil Hay
Arsenal’s backroom staff from Arsene Wenger down is made up of 20 people. Twenty. And that’s without counting a scouting team which, under the orders of Steve Rowley, is as vast and in-tune as any in Europe.
Among their cast of thousands is a football analyst who runs the club’s Prozone operation. He came from Prozone originally by way of Scunthorpe United. They might be painfully short of trophies but Arsenal are a no-stone-unturned operation. You need to be to have a chance at their level these days.
Arsenal pay for Prozone3 each and every season. Of course they do. It’s an advanced means of analysing player performance and an expensive one at that but few elite sides exist without it. Wenger has had the software at his disposal for more than 10 years, an advocate of microscopic detail.
As we speak, Prozone has been Leeds United’s ally for precisely seven days. It monitored their derby at Huddersfield last Saturday, detailing the movement, the positioning and the yards covered by the 12 players used. The last time Prozone gave an overview of one of United’s fixtures, Leeds were a Premier League side. Huddersfield found a way to fund it while they were in League One.
A big deal or not? It matters when you think that clubs who Leeds aspire to share a pitch with regularly – and some who they don’t – refuse to work without Prozone cameras or seriously consider cutting the cost from their budget. It is not that United did no analysis of their games – the club have a performance analyst – but they have navigated season after season without the help of the market leader, blind to the small margins which top-level football decided long ago to explore and exploit.
Analysis matters more to managers than players, as two interviews in United’s city-centre concept shop on Thursday demonstrated. Matt Smith, their university-graduate-turned-footballer, said the sport was “filled with data for analysts to mull over but players don’t really focus on it.” Brian McDermott gave the opposing view from the dug-out, calling Prozone an “important tool.”
“We haven’t had it at Leeds since the Premier League days,” McDermott said. “It’s a way of measuring how far your players travel, measuring that against the opposition, and we’ve had no form of doing that.
“I know what happened at Huddersfield from my experience but we’ve got the facts now. We can show the players what they’re doing.”
Prozone went out with the bathwater at Elland Road, one of multiple cuts inflicted on the club in the past 10 years. It has never been a cheap product and the precise cost of Prozone3, the latest format, is nowhere to be found. The company did not respond to questions from the YEP yesterday but clubs embracing it fully can expect to pay over £100,000 a season for the service. Prozone is a six-figure hole in the budget and clubs who can suck it up.
The accounts at Leeds began to suffocate from 2004 onwards and Prozone appears to have been categorised as a needless and expendable cost. It was not alone there.
Investment in United’s resilient academy constricted over time and Leeds were in no position to compete for Category 1 status when the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) kicked in last year. That recognition requires 18 full-time academy staff and an annual budget of £2.5m. And as McDermott explained at the start of this week, United have no chief scout. The network for recruiting players as he understands it is virtually non-existent.
Prozone, scouts, academy funding – these are long games played by clubs who have more about them than a plan for today. They are the tools of clubs who believe in the full package and the value of fractions. Appointing Luke Dowling as chief scout, as Leeds intend to do, will not influence the 10 games between now and January and might not impact greatly on this season, even if he gave McDermott the heads-up about Dexter Blackstock’s availability last week. But Rowley does not serve Arsenal by rectifying losses at Huddersfield. He serves them by digging out gems as fine as a 16-year-old Cesc Fabregases.
Players and managers come and go from Leeds and when they come, they tell you the same thing – that everything here is in place for the Premier League. Actually, it isn’t. No Prozone (until last Saturday) and no chief scout (though Dowling cometh); a stadium and training ground owned by other people. They amount to basic deficiencies at the level where clubs count their backroom staff in tens. But maybe, just maybe, the corner, is being turned.