IT'S A NUMBERS GAME

 When Oxford educated and life long Brentford fan Matthew Benham took over the majority share at the West London club, he very quickly saw success, but not quite enough success to lift the unfashionable club into the top flight. He is convinced that this will be possible, so he sacked the seemingly successful Head Coach, Mark Warburton, and modelled his club on the “continental structure” with a Head Coach and a Sporting Director, both working towards maximising the efficiency of their players.

There is a mathematical approach to the way the club is run, ideas formulated by Benham in his career as a hedge fund operator and professional gambler. The numbers do not lie.

He has also invested £6.2 million in 2014 in the Danish club FC Midtjylland, from West Jutland, who play in the Danish Supaliga and are presently qualifying for the Champions League. They recently dispatched the Gibraltan champions the Lincoln Red Imps (see previous blog) and are playing this week in the 3^rd round against Apoel, the champions of Cyprus.

Mittjylland was founded in 1999 by the merger of two older and rival clubs, Irkast and Herning Fremad, who had achieved little in Danish Football. Once joined and with investment and a new stadium, the club quickly rose to become Danish Champions and are now heading for greater things.

The club now has an excellent academy and a partnership with Nigerian club, FC Ebedei. It has also become the first Danish club to sell the naming rites of the stadium, the MCH Arena, to a national company.

Both Brentford and Mittjylland now answer to mathematical models which accurately account for the success and a failure of players and team movements. Key Performance Indicators, long used in business, are monitored for every player and team plays. Dangerous Situations are recorded, for example, the success rate in the danger zone, that area between the six yard box and the D on the penalty area. 77% of goals in the Premier league come from there. The FA might call this Zone 14. Analysis allows players to understand where and how they will gain most success.

Set pieces for the Danes have a scoring rate of 0.88, second in Europe, whereas Arsenal can only manage 0.57 success rate. Texts and key messages are sent to players, keeping them all informed of what needs to be achieved. There is a successful Youth academy which supplies the club with a number of home grown players, all of whom rely on statistical models that exploit inefficiencies and errors of home players and opposition, of course!