Premier League analytics
for a League Two club
Building a data-driven culture in the fourth tier
Challenge
Become one of the first League Two clubs to develop an analytics capability, to provide an edge in recruitment and performance analysis.
Solution
To kick off the project, we spent time with all key decision makers and first team staff to create alignment around the role of analytics within the club, creating clarity around what analytics can and couldn’t do, and how it could complement the skillset already at the club. Working hard to break down misconceptions around data, and turning TFG model outputs into intuitive, football-friendly insights, we worked with staff from the boardroom to the training ground on embedding data as part of their decision-making processes.
Impact
After premature promotion to League One due to Covid, the club involved data as part of all key recruitment and squad management decisions during the summer of 2020, and made a flying start to their League One campaign, reaching within range of the playoff places in the autumn. In particular Panutche Camara – a player who through the data was identified as a potential high-impact player – excelled for the Pilgrims.
Twenty First Group’s work gives superb insight into the difficulties of running a sports club. Those difficulties also provide opportunities, and, for Argyle, one of those has been to embed the use of objective data and analytics at the heart of our club. TFG helped us take the critical first steps towards making good decision making a key part of our strategy, and our culture.”
