By: Anshuman Dixit

As we are slowly absorbing the current reality where Lionel Messi no longer plays at Barcelona, and Cristiano Ronaldo is back with the Red Devils, transfers are more important now that ever! Let’s do a deeper analysis on the few big transfers and see how they affect the 2021-2022 Season.

As a result of an exciting transfer window involving many of the most important soccer players in the world, the article is divided into 3 categories: the good, the bad and the ugly. In this post, we will explore and analyze the good transfers which went through.

Manchester United Masterclass

Undoubtedly, Manchester United had the best transfer window in terms of the big and important signings. The Red Devils are trophy-less in the past 5 years since they won the Europa league in 2016/17 Season. They are not changing the manager, the mistake they have already done three times after the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, but they have analyzed the positions where they need to update the squad with the better player.

• Rafael Varane:

After the unusual signing of Harry Maguire from Leicester in 2019, which costed them £80m, the central defense of United always seemed quite weak compared to the other heavyweights in the league. In order to contend in the most competitive soccer league in the world, you can’t have Maguire and Lindelof in the starting XI with the likes of Phil Jones on the bench. Although United finished 2^nd last season, they conceded a lot of goals due to the weak central defense they had.

With the signing of Rafael Varane for £41m, they have filled the most vulnerable position in the squad. He had the highest successful tackle % in Real Madrid last season with 57.1%. He is a 4x Champions League Winner, 3x La Liga Winner, and a World Cup Winner with a lot of experience in high pressure games.

• Jadon Sacho:

The local boy is finally in Manchester, but with the wrong color. He started his career with the B-team at Manchester City before moving to Dortmund for 5 seasons. The rumor for this transfer was in the air for quite some time now. Finally, United was successful to sign the youngster for €85m.

 For a 21-year-old, having more than 10 assists per season consistently makes him one of the best winger prospects in the world. His 2019-20 season was arguably the season which made him worth the money he is now.

37.2% of the assists for Manchester United last season were provided by midfielders compared to just 19.6% by wings. United has many strikers such as Edinson Cavani, Marcus Rashford, Mason Greenwood, Anthony Martial and now Cristiano Ronaldo. United can now play a 4-3-3(Attack) if they play against teams who like to press higher like Manchester City.

• Cristiano Ronaldo:

“The Prodigal Son” returns to the club which made him one of the Greatest of all time (G.O.A.T). At 36 years of age, Ronaldo is entering his last phase in competitive soccer. After spending 6 years at United, Ronaldo made a shocking move to the Los Blancos in 2009 where he went on to win the Champions League(4x), La Liga(2x) and 4 Ballon D’ors.

After winning 3 consecutive Champions Leagues, in 2018, Ronaldo began a new challenge in Italy with the “old lady”, Juventus. This move looked good at first because he had won everything with Madrid, but during his 3 years at Juventus, it seemed like the tactical gameplay was more possession-based compared to the fast attacking one, which suited him more. Though he scored a lot of goals at Juventus, the team finally lost the title this year after winning it consecutively for 9 years.

Losing the scudetto made this window the perfect opportunity for Ronaldo to leave the club and play where he could get the proper appreciation. Let’s look at some of his stats at the clubs he has played until now.

There is an interesting observation here: the top 3 parameters decline when he made a move to Juventus, except the goals/shot-on-goal metric, which surprisingly increased. We can infer that his accuracy is getting better with time; if he is given more opportunities to score, he will score more. The shots on goal/90 minutes in Juventus are less than what he had in United or Real.

Achraf Hakimi:

One of the most promising Left Backs in the world, Hakimi is signed by PSG for €60m. He started his career at Real Madrid, spent 2 years on loan in Dortmund, and finally was sold to Inter Milan in 2020. He was a key player in the scudetto-winning side of Antonio Conte’s Inter Milan. At just 22 years of age, he has proven to be called one of the best full-backs in the world right now.

Providing more than 2.5 crosses per match in the last two years in leagues, which is better than Ligue 1 (according to the UEFA coefficient), shows he is developing at a very fast rate. His fast pace and accurate crosses will potentially allow him to provide the ball to big names this season like Neymar, Messi and Mbappe.

Romelu Lukaku:

The big man is back at Chelsea after 7 years. He has played in 6 different clubs from 3 different countries in his career. He has grown into a goal scoring machine over the past few years and won his 1^st domestic title after 9 years in the 2020-21 season with Inter Milan. He played 36 Serie A games last season, scoring 24 goals, and providing 11 assists to help the team win “the scudetto” after the 2009-10 season.

Currently, Lukaku is one of the best strikers in the world, and Chelsea paid $135 million to sign the star in a 4-year deal. Although Chelsea won the Champions league this year, their main goal was to get a good striker and a main team replacement for Timo Werner, who was promising at first but performed below average last season.

He is scoring at a rate of 1.03 goals per 90 minutes when he plays international and above 0.5 goals per 90 minutes in the club football since 2014. INSANE CONSISTENCY!

Eudardo Camavinga:

At just 18 years of age, Camavinga has completed a remarkable move to the Los Blancos at just €30m, plus bonuses. Real Madrid, who has not spent anything in the previous window, bagged the young prospect from Rennes where he was playing for the last 3 years.

With the exit of Odegaard to Arsenal, Real’s midfield still has big names like the 2018 Ballon D’or winner, Luka Modric, Toni Kroos, Casemiro, Valverde, Isco and Dani Ceballos.  Camavinga has good potential, as his medium pass completion rate over the years has been consistently over 90%. Under Ancelotti, the youngster can unlock his full potential, which is yet to be revealed.

Memphis Depay:

 Finally, Ronald Koeman (Barca’s Manager) got his wish fulfilled as he was trying to get Memphis from Lyon ever since Koeman was appointed at Barcelona. He wanted to reunite with his countryman and get Depay into his tactical plans. The connections between the club and the player started last year when Koeman was appointed as the new manager of Barcelona. Although they couldn’t sign him last year, they finally got him in a free transfer.

His last season at Lyon was incredible, and he proved to the world that he is still one of the best finishers in the game today. Let’s look at some stats from his 2020-21 season at Lyon.

After the exit of Messi from Barcelona, they need a good striker with good finishing abilities and with Depay in the side, Barcelona can try and finish better in the league this season.

By: Michael Black

Going step-by-step using Plotly Express, Python, and Pandas to plot the NBA’s All-Time Leading Playoff Scorers.

Loading our Excel file into a Pandas DataFrame:

I also want to add a fourth column — ‘Playoff PPG’ (Points Per Game):

Step 3: Time to Graph

Use Plotly to create a scatter plot:

• data_frame — set equal to my DataFrame: ‘playoff_data_DF’
• x — values for x-axis: ‘Playoff Games Played’. Column in DataFrame.
• y — value for the y-axis: ‘Playoff Points Scored’. Column in DataFrame.
• title — setting a title for the plot.

Not bad!

By hovering over any point on the graph, we can see the number of playoff points and games corresponding to the point. This is a useful feature — but would be much more useful if we could also see the NAME of the player when we hover over a point. *Hint, hint.*

We can also click and drag (creating a rectangle) on any point of the graph to zoom in. This is especially helpful on a graph such as this with so many points clustered together.

Adding Visual Features

Using Python and Pandas to look at the growth of annual club wage bills in England’s top-flight since 2000-’01

By: Michael Black

I am dropping a link here to my GitHub repository if you would like to view the code. It is commented out and explained step-by-step: github.com/wmblack23/Money-Spent-versus-Matches-Won.

Average Premier League Wage Bill (2000-’01 to 2019-’20)

Annual average wages have risen from £27 million in 2000-’01 to £160 million in 2019-’20.

Spending is increasing, fast. In 2019, Premier League clubs spent over 6x more on average on their rosters than they did in 2000.* (Adjustment for inflation at the end of the article.)

Is this true for all teams?

Difference in Spending Between ‘Top 4’ and ‘Bottom 3′ Clubs

In the 2000-’01 season, Top 4 (Champions League) teams spent roughly £28 million more than Bottom 3 (relegated) teams. In 2019-’20, that same figure has ballooned to £217 million.

There has been a mad spending spree in the English top-flight since the turn of the century, and teams at the bottom are being left in the dust. In the 2019-’20 season, Premier League teams who qualified for the Champions League spent £217 million more than those who were relegated.

One interesting note regarding 2015: the difference in spending that season was such an outlier in large part because the champions (Leicester City) spent just £80 million while 20th place and relegated Aston Villa spent nearly £95 million.

Cost of the Champions League

In order to qualify for the Champions League in 2019-’20, clubs need to spend nearly £300 million.

VS.

Cost of Relegation

The average cost of relegation in 2019-’20 is nearly £100 million.

Top 4 clubs spend ~7x more today than they spent 20 years ago, compared to ~5.5x more for relegated teams.

The gap between the groups continues to widen, making the Champions League aspirations of a smaller club less and less realistic with each passing season.

The cost to compete is rising, while only a select few teams are able to rise with it.

Having said all of this, I am, like everyone else, a shameless fan of a large club. I love watching the best teams and the best players compete, and as much as I frown upon the direction this league is heading, I am a willing participant in its capitalistic spiral.

Let’s take a look at the spending habits of the ‘Big 6’ since 2000-’01:

You can see the exact point, around 2008, when Manchester City acquired new ownership and began their torrid spending spree.

Manchester City, a long-time languisher in England’s lower divisions, is a great case study in the role that spending money plays in club success. They have become a domestic juggernaut simply because they’re able and willing to spend more than everybody else.

Looking at the chart below, pay attention to the same x-value: ‘2008’. There is a similarly incredible jump in City’s points-per-season at the exact same time that they began their insane run of spending:

Manchester City’s points-per-season has exploded since new ownership took over in 2008.

We should love the story of a relegated-club-turned-dynasty. The way it happened for City, born not out of commitment or hard work, but rather the influx of unlimited oil money, is antithetical to the very idea of competition.

If being the best team is simply a matter of having the most resources, then we have lost much of what makes this sport so great.

Now that we have a solid understanding of the increase in league-wide spending, the gap between the Top 4 and Bottom 3, and the idea that money can buy success, we need to answer the final question: is there a level playing field in the English Premier League?

The very basic understanding of competition is that all participants should have a fair and equal shot of winning.

Is this the case in England’s top-flight?

Big 6 clubs have accounted for 75/80 (94%) of the Top 4 finishes since 2000-’01!

In the 20 years of data we studied, 40 clubs (not counting the Big 6) played a total of 281 campaigns, and only 5 times did one of those clubs finish within the top 4.

A non-Big 6 club playing in the Premier League from 2000–2020 only had a 1.8% likelihood to finish within the Top 4.

Pay-to-Play

Big 6 teams have spent £1.1 billion more than the other 40 Premier League participants combined in 162 fewer campaigns.

Since 2000, the Big 6 represents just 30% (119/400) of all Premier League campaigns. Despite this, they account for:

• 94% of the top 4 finishes
• 52% of ALL money spent

There is NOT a level playing field in the English Premier League.

Maybe this is just the way many fans like it, and it’s never easy to disrupt the status quo, but a league that offers just a 2% chance of real success (finishing in the top 4 and qualify for the Champions League) to 70% of its participants does not feel like a sustainable model. It certainly doesn’t feel like the best we can do.

Thanks for reading!

Michael Black

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Inflation Adjustment

The British Pound £ has an annual inflation rate of about 1.85% since the year 2000:

Factoring annual inflation into the Average Premier League Wage Bills chart.

When factoring this into our Average Premier League Wage Bill (2000-’01 to 2019-’20) chart from the top of the article, we see that average spending has increased ~4.5x since 2000, not the 6x that we originally stated.

While each of our graphs would show a bit less growth if we factored them all for inflation, the general pattern of a rapid and disproportionate increase in spending power favoring the top 5–7 clubs would still be reflected.

Written By: Jack Gray

At some point this season, we overlooked a wild stat: Blake Griffin had not dunked the basketball since December 12th of 2019, a drought spanning nearly 15 months.

This year’s NBA postseason has been full of many entertaining, important storylines that will determine and guide legacies for teams and players for years to come, but I would like to instead spotlight something interesting happening that mustn’t go unnoticed—Blake Griffin has relearned the ability to dunk the basketball.

For the past few years, the 32-year-old superstar has not been in headlines because of his steady decrease in production on the floor. He also had been playing for the Detroit Pistons since 2017, one of the worst teams in the league who never finished above .500 during his tenure there. The combination of his receding stats and the lack of team success pretty much kept him off SportsCenter entirely for the past few years. In the back of our minds, however, he remained revered as one of the most prolific and fiery dunkers to ever play the sport.

At some point this season though, we overlooked a wild stat: Blake Griffin had not dunked the basketball since December 12th of 2019, a drought spanning nearly 15 months. During his last two seasons with Detroit, his Minutes Played had hardly dropped at all; he was clocking roughly 30 minutes per game on the floor just as he had done his entire career, and his Usage Percentage did drop from a career 29% to 19.3% in 2020, but that USG% is still a high mark compared to a league average player. During his last eleven games in Detroit, he had 31 shots inside the 2-foot mark (at the rim)—yet he did not dunk a single time. Perhaps we had accepted the idea that Blake Griffin was no longer an agile superstar in the NBA and was aging into something of a less explosive role player. Nobody seemed to notice that he was not dunking the basketball. Did he himself even know he was in an unusual dunk drought? Maybe there was simply no inspiration to dunk when the team you’re playing for has a 43% Win Percentage.

In March of this year when he was traded to the Brooklyn Nets, the NBA’s most star-studded electric cast of offensive talent, many viewers thought okay..? Is he going to even help them? And sure—a big reason he was signed by the Nets was to improve their defensive depth, as Blake Griffin provides a brick-like defensive frame and experience that would help the Nets throughout the playoffs. He was no longer expected to play in the superstar role, and perhaps that made the transition to a new team easier for him.

Fast forward to his first game in a Brooklyn Nets jersey. Anybody want to guess what he did in the very first game? Yeah, a dunk. The dunks continued too. In a sense, he has gone on a dunk rampage with the Nets. In 26 games, he has totaled 23 dunks. With Brooklyn, 31.9% of his shots from within 2 feet have been dunks; this compares to a 5.9% Dunk Rate from close range with Detroit since November of 2019. This is not to say the Nets have been giving him more opportunities at the rim. In his last 30 games with the Detroit Pistons, he averaged 2.27 Rim Opportunities per Game, and this compares to 2.77 Rim Opportunities per Game in his 26 games with Brooklyn.

His lack of dunks at the end of his tenure with Detroit appears inexplicable on the surface, but we must remember he was Detroit’s #1 guy on the floor most of the time, so he was naturally guarded mostly by an opposing team’s best defender. In his new city of Brooklyn, he is a role player, often sharing the court with guys like Kevin Durant who draw the whole attention of defenses and guys like Kyrie Irving and James Harden who are elite ball handlers and passes who can better supply Griffin with open looks in the paint. Zero dunks in 11 games with Detroit is hard to justify. 23 dunks in 26 games with Brooklyn might be even more difficult to justify given Griffin’s apparent decline from stardom. Alas, it is nice to see an acclaimed dunker rediscover his bounce. His dunks may not have any effect on playoff results at all, but I’m sure Blake Griffin finds joy in seeing himself on the SportsCenter Top Ten nightly again.

Written By: Jack Gray

In the last 11 games, the White Sox Catcher has posted an inadequate .130 Batting Average while simultaneously having the highest On-Base-Percentage in baseball. How?

Nearly 35 games into the season, Major League Baseball has already presented some obscure and unlikely trends such as batting averages plummeting, the Dodgers looking lackluster, and the sudden spike of pitchers throwing no-hitters. There is, however, a phenomenon happening with Chicago White Sox catcher Yasmani Grandal that might just be the weirdest—and perhaps the most exciting.

The 32-year-old veteran from Cuba has had an efficient career with teams like the Dodgers, Padres, and Brewers, but in his second season with the White Sox, he is showing signs of dramatic regression at the plate. . .or is he? Although Grandal has posted a Batting Average of .130, which is the worst in the league for a minimum of 100 plate appearances, he is appearing in headlines today for another reason: his plate discipline and ability to draw walks. Currently, he carries a Base on Balls Rate of 29%, the highest in the league by nearly 5.2% (the next highest is Max Muncy with 23.8%). For reference, the highest Walk Rate last season was Juan Soto of the Washington Nationals at 20.9% and the league average was 9.0%.

If you are curious why this is so strange, consider this—in the past 11 games, Yasmani Grandal has maintained a .130 Batting Average (the 6^th worst Batting Average in the league during this time span), but during this stretch, he has an On-Base-Percentage of .512 (the highest in the league during this time span). The catcher has been walked an astounding 19 times in the past 43 At-Bats yet only recorded 3 hits.

There is plenty of speculation as to why this is happening—Grandal is a well-known slugger who also is not much of a threat on the base paths, so there is always an incentive to not throw him a meatball down the center of the plate and instead let him take first base, and his Hard-Hit Rate is actually the highest it has ever been in his career at 53.1%. Not only that–he is averaging his highest Exit Velocity this season as well (93.5 mph). Considering these metrics and the fact that his Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) is only .114, there is a lot of evidence to support that he is getting very unlucky.  Luckily for Grandal, he has relied on his stellar veteran-like plate discipline to still find ways on base and to provide his team with scoring opportunities. Certainly his averages will regress to the mean eventually, but his BA/OBP split is the most exciting thing to watch in baseball currently solely because of its absurdity.