Put Leadership To The Test
By James Dailey
I have no doubt that intangible qualities of players exist, and that they can be difficult to measure directly. I’ve been a baseball fan since I was five and have been dabbling in related analytics for over 30 years. Baseball has been on the vanguard of the data and analytics evolution within global sport, and various intangibles have been a source of great debate for many years. For example, does a “clutch hitter” exist?
For those readers who are not baseball fans, and I am confident that is most of you, the idea of a clutch hitter is someone who performs better than usual late in games when the score is close- particularly when there are runners on base and in what is known as “scoring position.” Some people, including me, believe players respond differently to pressure. It can be a source of focus and clarity for some, while others wilt a bit or try too hard. Various statistical measurements have been developed within the baseball analytics community in order to try and quantify this characteristic.
So why am I boring you with this baseball stuff? I am not a person who believes that statistics, and particularly those in football currently, capture all variables which drive performance. I do believe there is value in intangibles, including leadership and “big game” players, and that currently available data and stats do not directly measure them.
With all of that said, there are ways to logically approach existing data and analytical metrics, with all these limitations in mind, in order to try and better understand the game and Club we love. Can I directly measure Scott Brown’s leadership? No – but I can do a pretty good job at analyzing whether the team has performed better with or without him in the lineup.
Even if Brown is an elite player when it comes to intangible skills, they are obviously not the only things a footballer must do on the pitch in order to make their team better. To continue with my baseball analogy, an elite clutch hitter who is poor defensively, with baserunning, and at hitting in non-clutch situations, is not worth playing overall. They would be best deployed as a “pinch hitter” to substitute for other players late in games when the situation calls for their specific skills.
I am not “anti-Brown” and have never questioned Brown’s legacy as a great player and captain, and believe he deserves his heroic stature at Celtic. As I’ve argued in other pieces, I believe(d) that the Celtic team was of enough quality to compete for, and possibly win, this season’s Europa League, and that Brown’s skillset could have been deployed to make a significant contribution in doing so. For example, instead of him going off injured in Copenhagen, imagine if he’d come on in the 70th minute to drive the team and help lockdown a 2-1 lead? Thirty-four-year-old legs can still look quite spry in intense 20-minute bursts! Regretfully, as a beer bellied 44-year-old, and much to my wife’s chagrin, my “bursts” are dramatically shorter. Age catches up to us all!
With or Without You
The following data compares the 16 games in the Europa League group stage and against Scottish Premiere Leagues sides over the past two seasons in which Scott Brown was not a starting defensive midfielder, with the average for the first 38 (excluding the Livingston game) combined games this season in the Europa League and SPFL. Of those 38, Brown started all but the February 23rd game versus Kilmarnock and the December 12th game at Cluj.
The 16 games in this sample include 2 games each against RB Leipzig and Salzburg and 1 versus Rosenborg, or 31% of games. The 2019-2020 sample includes 10 Europa League games and 28 SPFL games, with Europa League comprising 24% of the 38-game total. I believe this balance makes the strength of opponents in each sample relatively comparable, if not tilted a little stronger to the 16-game sample. I would also argue that the overall quality of the team was lower in the “Without Brown” sample, which is dominated by last season’s squad.
There seems to be a consensus amongst our support that the team’s performance levels have been excellent this season, and I agree. Whether it is goals scored, goal differential, the potential at 100+ league points, finishing top of the Europa League group, and reaching the Europa League final 32, this season has been a significant improvement over last. Given this high hurdle, the table above is noteworthy. Over the 16-game sample without Brown, the team has performed at levels comparable, if not slightly better, than the high levels this season.
This next comparison shows the 11 of 16 games in the sample without Brown where Celtic faced SPFL teams and compares with the average for the first 28 SPFL league games this season, in which Brown played 27. Both the comparison above and this one includes xG for and against, the differential, and then the two statistics probably most associated with Brown – Recoveries and Interceptions. I specifically included those two team statistics, as they are the two areas of Brown’s performance statistics which have held up extremely well as his overall levels have declined the past few years.
Conclusion
I have no way of assessing the direct value of any players’ intangible value to Celtic, including Scott Brown. The data I’ve shared is of a large enough sample size to offer some analytical insight, in my opinion. Given the volume of other analytical metrics I track regarding Brown’s specific individual performance levels versus his peers in the SPFL, Europa League, and most importantly fellow Celtic players, I am confident in stating the following. Whatever intangibles he brings to the team are no longer significant enough to offset his physical decline. I think most supporters probably get more enjoyment watching Brown play in the team over other players, and we all follow Celtic partly as an entertainment “product.” However, I believe that entertainment value comes at a cost – a team which is not as good as it could be.