Kline proves that soccer is still struggling with crunching the numbers
Several interesting stories came out of West London this week and for once it wasn’t Chelsea at the forefront, although concerns over Antonio Conte’s future, his dropping of David Luiz for the Manchester United win and the club getting rid of Technical Director Michael Emenalo were all talking points. Instead it was near neighbors Fulham and the fallout surrounding the sacking of Assistant Director of Football Operations Craig Kline that dominated the sports pages.
Kline’s crazy idea to prove to the press that his relationship with Fulham manager Slavisa Jokanovic was one such tale. The stats man planned to burst into a press conference dressed in a sumo suit and call out the Cottagers coach, before Jokanovic would rip off his own clothing to reveal his own sumo suit and that he was in the fun and they would “fight,” with the subsequent video going viral to prove that all was well in west London.
Well, it wasn’t. The relationship between Kline and club’s manager was clearly beyond repair but the oddest revelation is that this sumo stunt was not the zaniest of his ideas. Sadly for Fulham his other brainwaves had an impact on their soccer. Kline found his position had become untenable because of the disproportionate power that he wielded over the club’s transfer policy.
Since his appointment in 2014, Kline had essentially had a veto over transfers on account of the club’s adoption of a policy that meant players needed to be doubly approved – once by the scouting staff and once against his own statistical measures. The problem was that his data-based approval was built on a model that he refused to share even within the club.
As it happens, the evidence that his approach was a route to success was questionable. Players he refused to sign included Aaron Mooy (who was offered on loan from Manchester City before going to Huddersfield Town), Manchester United’s Andreas Pereira (who’s now on loan at Valencia) and recent England call-up Tammy Abraham, with the latter said to be refused on account of a lack of data.
Arguably these relatively unknown players were a judgment call, but Kline also decided against Glenn Murray, a player who is in the running for Premier League player of the month on his performances for Brighton and Hove Albion. Furthermore, the players that he insisted on bringing in have not impressed Jokanovic to the point where the Serb decided to play academy players in their recent draw with struggling Bolton.
There are more stories about Kline, many of which suggest a troubled man out of his depth in a role that he was illsuited to from the outset, but it presents a question about the place of stats in transfer recruitment. With even the likes of industry titan Opta, barely 15 years old, the parsing of data to improve transfer policy in soccer is still very nascent. It has become more prevalent in the UK with more US owners at clubs, but it’s a phenomenon that remains new. For all that traditional scouts get it wrong, and they do, it’s clear that something doesn’t add up with the numbers men in soccer.