Create a winning team through win rates?
Next on the recruitment models is the win rate criteria. Can we develop a team of winners from win rates with Man Utd. It makes sense to recruit high win rate players to create a winning team, right?
So the hypotheses with this idea is quite a straight forward one, and one that I wouldn’t necessarily opt for myself. So we buy players based on their win rate against a bench mark that we have created over the last few seasons. Obviously with a lack of in game data I will only be able to look at last season.
As we can see here Man City won the league with 26 wins out of the 38 games played. That means they won 68.4% of their games, and that means we need to look for players in the top 6 leagues that have won 69%+ of their games. Over the seasons we will use multiple season data to create success model, but for now what we have will work.
The new Man Utd team
My first thoughts on this recruitment criteria is that I would uncover some superstars from mid range teams among a load of players from the tope performing clubs. I was kind of right, but there were some real curve balls at all different types of levels. Our friend from the previous blog, Malick Thiaw appeared again, we already knew he is amazing. Any player which is regularly coming up on these different criteria bases is obviously quality.
Another good facet of this recruitment criteria is that there were not many changes. The team reached fourth last year and won the Europa league, so this is not necessarily a bad thing. A team in a lower position would not be to cope with the huge amount of changes or afford them.
A massive credit this year was that we kept hold of Casemiro. He is unhappy, but that will change over time and if not, we’ll sell him. With the changes in the team, it may take a while to gel, but at the January stopping point we will look at the ways to improve the team.
Man Utd Results
So far the experiment is not working as well as I would have hoped. There is plenty of time to turn it around, but from a quick observation defensively we are leaking goals. We are scoring as many as anyone else, barring Chelsea.
We have lost a lot of games, as many as a mid table team, so it no surprise that we are in the position that we are. Also our games are rather feast or famine, not many draws, time to convert losses to draws and draws to wins.
Conclusion
So the big problem with team is that we have lost far too many games. The idea is to turn the losses to draws and draws to wins and get back on track. We have to face it, we aren’t going to win the league from here, unless a miracle happens.
Solution 1, let’s take a look at where the opposition assists are coming from and starve the supply by reorganising our defence. As well as that we can look at the defence and see who the weak link is, forcing some personnel changes.
Solution 2, we need to look at the coaches and individual training, and encouraging players to hone their skills to a point of mastery. The backline needs to be familiar and gel, check that the new players have been on a extensive language course.
Solution 3, see what players are underperforming, is it the new arrivals of players or the old guard. Look at the players coming in and ask are we playing them to their strengths, their natural position and role. Look at the old guard and see why they are not performing like they did last year.
I will put these solutions into place, and as always do an end of season blog reporting back the findings and also how this recruitment method may have fared as well as what we could have done better.
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