Using Data to profile Burnley's squad and recruitment priorities

[CharlieinNewMexico]

The one area of intrigue for me is how to capitalize on the college system in the US. The trick is getting around the stringent rules of receiving professional considerations, be that payment or even interest from a professional club, because of the potential impact on their college status and any academic financing they receive as students.

If anyone would know how to work this, it would be our new management

Nearly all the better players in the US college system are from overseas (like Harrison who has taken about 7 years to become a quality EPL player and was originally on our doorstep anyway) or are a million miles away from being VISA eligible if they are domestic. You could set up a pathway via bought subsidiary clubs for various players to eventually become eligible but it would be such a long, tortuous journey I don’t see player or our club lasting it out.

[superdimitri]

Nearly all the better players in the US college system are from overseas (like Harrison who has taken about 7 years to become a quality EPL player and was originally on our doorstep anyway) or are a million miles away from being VISA eligible if they are domestic. You could set up a pathway via bought subsidiary clubs for various players to eventually become eligible but it would be such a long, tortuous journey I don’t see player or our club lasting it out.

With the UK leaving the EU I'd imagine sighing American youngsters just as hard as anyone else outside the UK. Of course the rules can change but I don't think there's anything in place stopping a team from buying youngsters here. In fact, player ownership is quite common still so it should be relatively easy from a financial point of view.

With the visa thing the club would need an affiliate a bit like Manchester City. You then take first option on any player who's attracted interest elsewhere. There's also youth affiliates setup exclusively to sign players and loan them back . For instance, no work permit is required to actually buy the player, so the club could buy an entire squad out here and 'loan' them to a local team. Idea being as soon as they are old enough they can apply for a work permit if good enough, and if it's rejected the club can still retain the player for appeal, a later application or even a sale.

I think it's a good idea but as you say it wouldn't be very likely to find good quality players because the league standard is too low. I think a better strategy is through scouting. German teams seem to find good American and Canadian players so with the right setup so should we.

[Mattster]

Were you considering registering your interest in data/analytics positions at the club? Did you do it in the end? Did you get any helpful feedback?

Think that's way beyond me yet, I'm only just starting out and this stuff is surface level, I'd imagine (and hope) that analysts at the club are operating on much more in depth stuff than this and they'll have access to a lot more data than I can get for free/cheap. Think I'd love to work in this kind of area but not under any illusions that I'll get there.

[Duffer_]

Think that's way beyond me yet, I'm only just starting out and this stuff is surface level, I'd imagine (and hope) that analysts at the club are operating on much more in depth stuff than this and they'll have access to a lot more data than I can get for free/cheap. Think I'd love to work in this kind of area but not under any illusions that I'll get there.

Ahh ok. I remember one poster was considering it and I thought it might have been you. All the best with your journey anyway and thanks for the read.

[Mattster]

In terms of meeting the new GBE requirements, American College footballers would need to spend at least one season at a feeder club before they'd be eligible for one and to play for us - that feeder club would ideally be from one of other Big 5 leagues or the Portuguese Primeira Liga, Eredivisie, Belgian First Division A or the Turkish Super Lig and then the player would need to feature in most games for that season.

Or turn a club from the second tier of those leagues into a top tier team like Brighton have done with Union Saint-Gilloise. Clubs at second tier in France will be going very cheap right now with the financial unrest in French football but it would drain Burnley's funding in the short term (or add further debt).

[aggi]

You can get FBRef site to show the data in csv format which I paste into notepad then save as a .csv and use an online convertor to turn it into .xcl format which can then be uploaded to Tableau Public (free) to create the graphs.

Cheers. Looks like the web pages are actually very nicely formatted to just allow you to import in directly so that you can easily refresh rather than copy/pasting. I'm not sure how that works in Tableau but it's easy enough in PowerBI which is the equivalent MS software so I assume it should be straightforward enough. This let me knock up this somewhat pointless chart.

[Chester Perry]

In terms of meeting the new GBE requirements, American College footballers would need to spend at least one season at a feeder club before they'd be eligible for one and to play for us - that feeder club would ideally be from one of other Big 5 leagues or the Portuguese Primeira Liga, Eredivisie, Belgian First Division A or the Turkish Super Lig and then the player would need to feature in most games for that season.

Or turn a club from the second tier of those leagues into a top tier team like Brighton have done with Union Saint-Gilloise. Clubs at second tier in France will be going very cheap right now with the financial unrest in French football but it would drain Burnley's funding in the short term (or add further debt).

Don't forget the Irish clause, it is still much easier to recruit form Ireland, hence the investment from some over there, though the football may not be at the level you would want

[aggi]

Had a bit of a play with FBRef. You can link the different tables to draw together totally unrelated stuff like age, nutmegs and 2nd yellow cards ...