United appoint Dominic Jordan as director of data science

Maybe he was waiting for notebooks and graph paper and coloured pencils and a new pencil case.

I'm sure we didn't employ a numpty so I assume he knows what he is doing so can't we assume he's making the right decions at the right time based on lots of different factors that may or may not have included the above?
 
Stig said:
How did you predict leadership potential ?

I would be interested to know what you can tell us without giving away your trade secrets

Thanks.
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Basically it's based on a users habits. Leaders are expected to complete a self assessment and get their team to assess them as a leader on a quarterly basis, depending on which areas they're weak in, the app will push training sessions on them to complete during the weeks.

It can spot toxic leaders, great leaders and all those in between. The idea is you use it to identify and keep your best, and improve the rest, especially the one's in the toxic zone.
 
crossy1686 said:
Basically it's based on a users habits. Leaders are expected to complete a self assessment and get their team to assess them as a leader on a quarterly basis, depending on which areas they're weak in, the app will push training sessions on them to complete during the weeks.

It can spot toxic leaders, great leaders and all those in between. The idea is you use it to identify and keep your best, and improve the rest, especially the one's in the toxic zone.
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So you rate people on whether they use the app or not ? More usage better leader ?
 
Stig said:
So you rate people on whether they use the app or not ? More usage better leader ?
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Not quite.

We first ask the user to complete a self assessment so they can rate how strong they think they are.
Then we ask them to invite 3-5 people who work with or under them to rate their leadership abilities.
Then we cross reference where they think they're at to where people who work under them think they're at.
From that we collate a trust index and a habit index which places the user on a scatter graph and in a zone considered toxic, below average, above average and exceptional.

That information is then available to the person undergoing development so they can see what areas they're weak in and we push them into tasks that will help improve those areas.

We try to push them to do as much tasks as possible but really it's up to the user how they chose to develop and where, we just actively encourage development, not that they use our app to develop.

All this information is available to the senior management also so they can see where their leaders are at and how active they are about improving themselves.
 
crossy1686 said:
Basically it's based on a users habits. Leaders are expected to complete a self assessment and get their team to assess them as a leader on a quarterly basis, depending on which areas they're weak in, the app will push training sessions on them to complete during the weeks.

It can spot toxic leaders, great leaders and all those in between. The idea is you use it to identify and keep your best, and improve the rest, especially the one's in the toxic zone.
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A small percentage of people will consider themselves out of contention, I am a good worker, perhaps best among all, but don't put me in the front.

Majority of people will think they are leader, if giving the opportunity, including Truss, Boris. It is only when shhit hit the fan, then you know who is shhiting. Maguire is obviously one, instead of reflecting on his mistakes and shortcoming, he turned on English fans to demonstrate how good he is. I see a better personalty in Rashford, as he never blame anyone but himself, on his shhity form last season.
 
Luffy said:
I expect him to have zero tolerance for slackers. He’ll probably use his Maths skills to divide and conquer. I might be wrong, but could be a mean guy.
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Post of the year quality.
 
golden_blunder said:
What makes them a data scientist? Good at excel, tableau, etc?
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Someone with excel/tableau plus some analytical skills will be classed as a data analyst, a data scientist leverages advanced statistical formulae and code to build (and train) predictive data models that analyse loads of past data to predict the future. The key difference being the predictive element.
 
I coach a data science team in my organisation (about 100 of them) and hiring data scientists is definitely not considered big news!

I can't imagine that this Director of Data Science fella has been working on his own since joining! For someone who is at director level, you wouldn't expect them to be hands on at all, so this could mean there's been no actual data science in operation at United prior to now
 
Glorio said:
I coach a data science team in my organisation (about 100 of them) and hiring data scientists is definitely not considered big news!

I can't imagine that this Director of Data Science fella has been working on his own since joining! For someone who is at director level, you wouldn't expect them to be hands on at all, so this could mean there's been no actual data science in operation at United prior to now
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You would think that, but a lot of companies have roles like this being very hands on. Especially in the beginning when there is no team.
 
Glorio said:
I coach a data science team in my organisation (about 100 of them) and hiring data scientists is definitely not considered big news!

I can't imagine that this Director of Data Science fella has been working on his own since joining! For someone who is at director level, you wouldn't expect them to be hands on at all, so this could mean there's been no actual data science in operation at United prior to now
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How is the market for the “private” sector, ie consultants, in this field in football?

It can probably divided into three sub-sectors. Deciding what to look for. Gathering data. Analyzing it. Right?

As I understand it, you today gather a lot of data with software processing game footage. Right? In this field, a club like United can of course want tailor made data, but adjusting the software that process game footage can of course be commissioned (probably would be).

If you have a library of “x” number of games, you probably need pretty solid hardware to process them when you are looking for something new. Surely done by a service provider too.Then I recon that there are a ton of database providers that sell exclusive data to teams.

What to look for, must however be pretty team oriented, right? But at the same time, there is some general applicable science in it. How do you spot the next “x” type of players? Some scouts will know it when they see it, but what are those guys’ “unique statistical footprint”?
 
Some information on Kleyn from two years ago via TGG.

TGG: "Kleyn, who has worked for the club since September 2017, revealed that the club use three ‘waves’ of metrics to measure team performance: traditional event data, XY data and tracking data."

"Each is "useful for different reasons" and has "a varying level of complexity”, meaning that “from a data point of view, what we were able to do very quickly was to apply our first team data model to our B team,” Kleyn explained."

“This was really powerful," he added, "because it provided use with a ready-made tool to check that transition tactically. It allows us to use internal comparisons, so we can compare the first team with key metrics to the B team and interpret the differences.”

"Kleyn, who worked for Norwich for three years before joining the Saints, used pressing metrics in his presentation to illustrate how the B team, who play in Premier League 2, has become more closely aligned tactically to Hasenhuttl's first team than the U23s were previously."

The high press is fundamental to Hasenhuttl’s style of play, as enshrined in the Southampton Playbook.

"The diagram below compares the pressing of the first team and U23s last season, with red indicating a high amount of defensive pressure and blue a low amount of defensive pressure. As you can see, there were major differences in what is a fundamental of Southampton's senior style of play."

"What we’re seeing here is that the U23s became the B team who were immediately able to show that they were capable of more aggressive pressing style of play this season."

https://trainingground.guru/articles/how-southampton-use-data-to-align-their-first-team-and-b-team
 
His job at Southampton was to align the first team and B team tactically via advanced data metrics. So basically his job was to align Hassenhüttl's high pressing play style with how the B team played.

For anyone interested, below is a short YouTube video of Kleyn explaining his work.

 
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We are making really good appointments now. Football is obviously the good old game, but every stage is evolving and we need to use technology and new knowledge to be at the top.
 
Adnan said:
His job at Southampton was to align the first team and B team tactically via advanced data metrics. So basically his job was to align Hassenhüttl's high pressing play style with how the B team played.

For anyone interested, below is a short YouTube video of Kleyn explaining his work.

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I just love professional presentations that give an insight into the day-to-day work of the clubs.
The actual matches are just 2-4 hours in a normal week, which is 8% or less of the total time they spent working and improving.
 
i have it on good authority that he was only brought in to the club to help arnold count cards at the casino.
 
Southampton are also the first team in the EPL that I personally noticed that had out of the box thinking when it came to having a football structure. From having Les Reed as the DoF and him hiring Pochettino as the head coach who had a defined approach to playing the game, to then signing players like Van Dijk and Mane which would later help Liverpool. They just didn't have the money, because if they did, I think their ideas would've resulted in trophies.

It's about laying the bricks for the club to thrive by creating a strong foundation for success on the pitch.
 
Acquire Me said:
We are making really good appointments now. Football is obviously the good old game, but every stage is evolving and we need to use technology and new knowledge to be at the top.
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For sure. After the 7-0 defeat we could use somebody from Southampton, who has a lot of experience analyzing thrashings :D

#itsCalledSarcasmGetOverIt
 
First that admin guy from Everton, now scientist from Southampton, why do we keep hiring relegation zone staff? Is it cos we're skint? Our best option for centre forward was a Burnley striker after all.
 
LInkash said:
First that admin guy from Everton, now scientist from Southampton, why do we keep hiring relegation zone staff? Is it cos we're skint? Our best option for centre forward was a Burnley striker after all.
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I think you'd be surprised how far something of the smaller clubs are ahead of bigger clubs in terms of data and sports science. Southampton have always been ahead of the game
 
LInkash said:
First that admin guy from Everton, now scientist from Southampton, why do we keep hiring relegation zone staff? Is it cos we're skint? Our best option for centre forward was a Burnley striker after all.
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We're one step away from somebody getting annoyed we hired a groundskeeper from a relegation side.
 
These appointments are finally here. It really wouldn’t surprise me that these past 10 years or so under Woodward that our scouting and analysis stuff was dated back to the early 2000s. Wasn’t it reported that one of our top scouts (now gone) was still using pen & paper and barely acknowledged analyst data?

Just seems like incompetence and stupid arrogance that we’ve only recently caught up with everyone.
 
Alex Kleyn was brought to Southampton by Les Reed who was the DoF. Reed also brought Paul Mitchell and Pochettino to Southampton as head of scouting and head of coaching. So it's easy to understand why Alex Kleyn is rated highly by his peers and TGG describe the move as being 'significant' towards creating a dominant data science department.

Les Reed is a well known name in England for creating football structures that were ahead of the game.
 
Chairman Steve said:
These appointments are finally here. It really wouldn’t surprise me that these past 10 years or so under Woodward that our scouting and analysis stuff was dated back to the early 2000s. Wasn’t it reported that one of our top scouts (now gone) was still using pen & paper and barely acknowledged analyst data?

Just seems like incompetence and stupid arrogance that we’ve only recently caught up with everyone.
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That would be Derek Langley, who was said to be a pen and paper guy. He was released in 2016.
 
LInkash said:
First that admin guy from Everton, now scientist from Southampton, why do we keep hiring relegation zone staff? Is it cos we're skint? Our best option for centre forward was a Burnley striker after all.
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Because some of them have proven that they can do the job while being constrained by the budget and the hope is that they’ll be able to flourish with more budget.

Look at Brighton’s setup, they’re probably the best in the country with their analytics and the ways they keep finding talents who’re ready to make the step up.
 
SAF is the GOAT said:
So why not bring him also ?
Maybe even as an experienced advisor to Murtough
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He's 70 now and his advice was ahead of the game about 15 years ago and it's pretty much the norm now. The same applies to any DoF around Europe.

There's a way of doing things on the structural side of a football club and if you have someone with the experience of structuring and staffing on the football side, then people like Erik ten Hag, Dominic Jordan, Alex Kleyn, Jose Mayorga etc are put into positions where they can make a difference.
 
We’ve been moving at a pretty slow pace with these appointments and now there’s a good chance it will all be changed significantly or even dismantled once new ownership comes in.

I don’t see any issue that this guy is coming from Southampton, they’ve recruited pretty well on their budget and have few players they’ll make big profit on shortly.
 
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