I'm sure that any school kid given a bunch of videos and access to a FIFA game would be able to claim some successes if they were asked to predict which players would go on to have decent careers. The fact that the feral child is reduced to cherry picking individual cases, suggests to me that he's got nothing more going for him than any random fan. If you really want to demonstrate how good you are, Mowgli, try publishing a full list of all the players whose transfers you were involved with. Try coming clean on the true extent of your involvement with each one and let's do a full career comparison against the alternatives that were available time. Of course, if you were any good at this scouting lark, you wouldn't have time to waste on such an exercise because you'd be busy doing sterling work for an established club, not trying to wind people up who you've never met. Sad really.
Thomas has a protege, though no suggestion that he has sign off on Dundee players...
How a teenager from Bangalore became a performance analyst for Dundee United
Ashwin Raman, 17, has never been to Scotland, let alone Dundee — but he has become an unlikely cog in the Premiership side's wheel.
Like many football-obsessed teenagers, 17-year-old Ashwin Raman watches a lot of football on TV or online in between playing Football Manager. Only, while others do so for fun, Raman does so for work: he is a performance analyst for Dundee United.
Raman has never been to Scotland, let alone Dundee. But this does not prevent him from doing his job, which is a window into the sport’s new embrace of data-informed analysis and recruitment.
At home in Bangalore, where he now does all his work for the club, Raman learned about his job in a very modern way: through direct message on Twitter. Last October, when he was only 16, Dundee United’s head of analysis and opposition scouting Stevie Grieve was impressed with Raman’s blogs and observations on his Twitter feed and asked him to join the club.
“I just blogged for years and then one day Stevie sent me that message asking if I want to join,” Raman recalls. “I couldn't believe that.”
Raman works in the region of 10 hours a week for Dundee United on a retainer basis, although they are understanding employers: earlier this year, he had several months off to prepare for exams. About 30 per cent of Raman’s work for the club is devoted to analysing the team’s performances and providing data visualisations to assess how well they are doing, with 70 per cent spent on identifying potential new signings.
Inspired by Soccernomics, a book that he credits with changing his life, Raman’s aim is very simple: to find undervalued players.
“We’re not exactly Man Utd so using data and trying to find as many diamonds in the rough as possible is probably more important to us than a big club,” he explains. “It's about looking at efficiency, looking for as many marginal gains as possible. It's far more important to a club like us, rather than a club with lots of resources, who probably sign players who wouldn't be as under the radar."
To find such players, Raman’s main tool is Wyscout, the website that provides data and videos for leagues in over 80 different countries from around the world. Wyscout “forms the base of everything I do; both the video and the data I use for the gig is from Wyscout,” he says. “I spend a lot of time looking for players all over the world on Wyscout - usually, younger players who can fit in at the club. Wyscout's been a godsend.
“I generally go grab a lot of data from the advanced search tool, then look at the data and see which players seem great and look like realistic targets for us, and then spend a lot of time watching them.”
It could hardly be further removed from the caricature of the gnarled veteran scout racking up motorway miles to get to games on rainy Tuesday nights. Yet Raman rejects the notion that roles such as him represent the death of traditional scouting. Indeed, he still spends about two hours watching videos for every hour trawling through data. Whether online or in person, he believes that the human eye can see truths about footballers that numbers alone cannot.
“There’s an idea that analytics are going to replace the older forms of scouting. But that’s not the case. It’s much more the case that you need both,” he says. “Analytics is inherently an abstraction of the game, you can't depend on data alone. And at the same time, even with watching guys, there will be a bunch of cognitive biases.”
To avoid succumbing to these biases - like availability bias, as when clubs sign a player based on their performances only in a few games that a scout has seen, when the player may have happened to perform well above their normal level - “you need an understanding of larger league-wide trends. And it's a pure time thing - you can't watch every league in the world. But I have an Excel sheet over here with thousands of players. So you do need both. While analytics is reductive, it gives you a snapshot of everything that goes on.”
Grieve and Dundee United’s sporting director Tony Asghar have been “very receptive” to his work, Raman says. “Me being 16 years old might not have been taken seriously - I was quite worried about that. But it’s all been great… Generally the image people have of Scottish football is that it’s not as progressive. I’m not sure that’s true.”
Raman’s appointment has coincided with a resurgence in Dundee United’s fortunes: they were promoted from the Scottish Championship last year, and are now sixth in the top flight. Raman eagerly await the day when Dundee United recruit a player that he has first brought to their attention. When they do so, the player may well have traversed an unorthodox path to the Scottish Premiership.
For clubs trying to spend their cash efficiently, “number one is exploiting markets like Africa and Asia where players are still ridiculously undervalued,” he says. “Lots of leagues outside Western Europe tend to have lots of talent, but are rarely bought from. Even if league strength models place them pretty close to leagues like ours.” Raman cites the Red Bull network of clubs as one example of putting such thinking into action.
In a sport fundamentally changing the way how it evaluates players, Raman counts as a quiet revolutionary. He is also a self-deprecating one. Asked about he feels as perhaps the youngest scout in the professional game in the UK, Raman laughs.
“Number one, I guess all the other kids my age are actually having a life, and probably not spending the hours in front of a laptop looking for a bunch of players kicking a ball around in smaller leagues,” he says. “I still can't quite believe it.”
the bloke is a complete fucking wet wipe. Show Schwartz this before the game on Saturday. that will get the old Dane going. well, it better...otherwise Thomas might be right..
Tommy boy is really dismissive of Schwartz tonight.
I know he triggers people but I genuinely find the whole thing with him quite funny
It is an unpopular opinion, but I quite like him. I've never seen or heard him say anything bad about Gallen or Bows. The kid had a dream job, what is wrong with that? He's just an entitled as everyone else to have an opinion on players. I'd be interested to see the full list of signings that he recommended. Its unquestionable that a lot of garbage came through the gates of Sparrows Lane -Rojo, Polish Pete, Nego, Thuram, Ba etc- but we also saw the emergence of some decent players. -Gudmunsson, Teixeira, Ajdarevic, Buyens, Vetokele, Bulot, Bauer, Naby, Holmes etc-.
Tommy boy is really dismissive of Schwartz tonight.
I know he triggers people but I genuinely find the whole thing with him quite funny
It is an unpopular opinion, but I quite like him. I've never seen or heard him say anything bad about Gallen or Bows. The kid had a dream job, what is wrong with that? He's just an entitled as everyone else to have an opinion on players. I'd be interested to see the full list of signings that he recommended. Its unquestionable that a lot of garbage came through the gates of Sparrows Lane -Rojo, Polish Pete, Nego, Thuram, Ba etc- but we also saw the emergence of some decent players. -Gudmunsson, Teixeira, Ajdarevic, Buyens, Vetokele, Bulot, Bauer, Naby, Holmes etc-.
All arrows should be aimed at Roland.
Tweeted something about "rejecting [LB & SG's] shit players." Sarcastic tweets, written as if they were coming from LB & SG, thanking Driesen himself for turning a player down. You might want to read the thread. The whole argument has been done to death. Matt Wright's expose is also excellent, revealing how Driesen would tell the manager what tactics to play through RD, among other revelations. Also the brilliant Getting To Know The Network series, which has first-hand interviews with most of the managers about Driesen. All of which paint a clear picture.
Can you play for your country at every single youth level and finish as top scorer in it's top division if you are not so good at football?
I mean just a basic understanding of football tells you there must be some talent there?
You can tell by the weight on his passes and the quality of his finish against Rochdale that he is a quality footballer, if anything. Don't ask QPR fans what they think of Bonnie's footballing ability.
It beggars belief that this amateur data hobbyist was at the very top of our scouting hierarchy.
The thing with Tommy is that he is quick to shout from the rooftops about successful players but goes missing when you mention the duds, of which were many!
Tommy boy was part of a very bad chapter in our history. He helped pile on the misery. But he was offered a job most of us could only dream of, you cant blame him for taking it. We, (those that have been in work for 30 years at least), will have witnessed this type of appointment many, many times. People who slide into a position they have never held before and display little to justify their appointment. They then become experts on all and everything. I will never forget Thuram although I would think football will. I was lucky enough to witness his debut, I was left thinking, although I'm too old to short and too fat there must be a chance of me making a living between the sticks.
Would be good if we could somehow charge him £1000 a game via ValleyPass to watch us. He is clearly in his bedroom with his pants in his head for every fixture during lockdown.
I think we should get TD back. Every player he bought to us was a great success and all the poor players who came in during his run were others choices. He has a 100% hit rate, there is no one else in football this good. At a time we were generally rubbish and the footballers at the club were rubbish he was excellent, absolutely undoubted.
I'd completely forgotten about little Tommy until I saw these updates. Oh how I've missed his very punchable face on my screen. Fortunately he blocked me ages ago so I haven't been reminded about him. Is he actually working at the moment?
Comments
Next Summer we should ask him to tell us which of our transfers in will be crap.
He’s like a creepy ex who appears every now and then to try and point out you were wrong to bin him but has no idea he makes your skin crawl.
How a teenager from Bangalore became a performance analyst for Dundee United
Ashwin Raman, 17, has never been to Scotland, let alone Dundee — but he has become an unlikely cog in the Premiership side's wheel.
Like many football-obsessed teenagers, 17-year-old Ashwin Raman watches a lot of football on TV or online in between playing Football Manager. Only, while others do so for fun, Raman does so for work: he is a performance analyst for Dundee United.
Raman has never been to Scotland, let alone Dundee. But this does not prevent him from doing his job, which is a window into the sport’s new embrace of data-informed analysis and recruitment.
At home in Bangalore, where he now does all his work for the club, Raman learned about his job in a very modern way: through direct message on Twitter. Last October, when he was only 16, Dundee United’s head of analysis and opposition scouting Stevie Grieve was impressed with Raman’s blogs and observations on his Twitter feed and asked him to join the club.
“I just blogged for years and then one day Stevie sent me that message asking if I want to join,” Raman recalls. “I couldn't believe that.”
Inspired by Soccernomics, a book that he credits with changing his life, Raman’s aim is very simple: to find undervalued players.
“We’re not exactly Man Utd so using data and trying to find as many diamonds in the rough as possible is probably more important to us than a big club,” he explains. “It's about looking at efficiency, looking for as many marginal gains as possible. It's far more important to a club like us, rather than a club with lots of resources, who probably sign players who wouldn't be as under the radar."
To find such players, Raman’s main tool is Wyscout, the website that provides data and videos for leagues in over 80 different countries from around the world. Wyscout “forms the base of everything I do; both the video and the data I use for the gig is from Wyscout,” he says. “I spend a lot of time looking for players all over the world on Wyscout - usually, younger players who can fit in at the club. Wyscout's been a godsend.
“I generally go grab a lot of data from the advanced search tool, then look at the data and see which players seem great and look like realistic targets for us, and then spend a lot of time watching them.”
It could hardly be further removed from the caricature of the gnarled veteran scout racking up motorway miles to get to games on rainy Tuesday nights. Yet Raman rejects the notion that roles such as him represent the death of traditional scouting. Indeed, he still spends about two hours watching videos for every hour trawling through data. Whether online or in person, he believes that the human eye can see truths about footballers that numbers alone cannot.
“There’s an idea that analytics are going to replace the older forms of scouting. But that’s not the case. It’s much more the case that you need both,” he says. “Analytics is inherently an abstraction of the game, you can't depend on data alone. And at the same time, even with watching guys, there will be a bunch of cognitive biases.”
To avoid succumbing to these biases - like availability bias, as when clubs sign a player based on their performances only in a few games that a scout has seen, when the player may have happened to perform well above their normal level - “you need an understanding of larger league-wide trends. And it's a pure time thing - you can't watch every league in the world. But I have an Excel sheet over here with thousands of players. So you do need both. While analytics is reductive, it gives you a snapshot of everything that goes on.”
Grieve and Dundee United’s sporting director Tony Asghar have been “very receptive” to his work, Raman says. “Me being 16 years old might not have been taken seriously - I was quite worried about that. But it’s all been great… Generally the image people have of Scottish football is that it’s not as progressive. I’m not sure that’s true.”
Raman’s appointment has coincided with a resurgence in Dundee United’s fortunes: they were promoted from the Scottish Championship last year, and are now sixth in the top flight. Raman eagerly await the day when Dundee United recruit a player that he has first brought to their attention. When they do so, the player may well have traversed an unorthodox path to the Scottish Premiership.
For clubs trying to spend their cash efficiently, “number one is exploiting markets like Africa and Asia where players are still ridiculously undervalued,” he says. “Lots of leagues outside Western Europe tend to have lots of talent, but are rarely bought from. Even if league strength models place them pretty close to leagues like ours.” Raman cites the Red Bull network of clubs as one example of putting such thinking into action.
In a sport fundamentally changing the way how it evaluates players, Raman counts as a quiet revolutionary. He is also a self-deprecating one. Asked about he feels as perhaps the youngest scout in the professional game in the UK, Raman laughs.
“Number one, I guess all the other kids my age are actually having a life, and probably not spending the hours in front of a laptop looking for a bunch of players kicking a ball around in smaller leagues,” he says. “I still can't quite believe it.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-55816277?fbclid=IwAR0Kyzw2fiozCe3g-udpjrhyGbj7v3I7Vd3pg5uFpTda59XNja6BBGml3HI
@SporadicAddick
I know he triggers people but I genuinely find the whole thing with him quite funny
Same as they have always been Thomas.......that you’re an insignificant, attention seeking twat.😏
All arrows should be aimed at Roland.
I mean just a basic understanding of football tells you there must be some talent there?
It beggars belief that this amateur data hobbyist was at the very top of our scouting hierarchy.
I will never forget Thuram although I would think football will. I was lucky enough to witness his debut, I was left thinking, although I'm too old to short and too fat there must be a chance of me making a living between the sticks.
my source: Thomas Driesden Tweets.