St Johnstone will link-up with “people who are the best” at an American university as they seek to broaden their analytics horizons, new owner Adam Webb has revealed.
The majority shareholder hopes to strike a perfect balance between a head coach’s contacts’ book and the most valuable data they can get their hands on as a revamped McDiarmid Park recruitment operation takes shape.
Not only will analytics help inform which signings Saints make – it will also aid the development of the players over the course of a season.
“It (recruitment) is an obvious thing to add resources to,” said Webb.
“Through various levels of paid resources you can see every player in the world if you want to – where they played, how they played, all their statistics.
“You can put money in that and have this incredible amount of information.
“There’s more opportunity there obviously.
“There are people coming in with knowledge of analytics and all that side of things can do for sport.
“How you can play your current players and, of course, recruiting the best players for what you’re looking for.
“We are tied with – and will be co-ordinating with – one of the foremost sports analytics programs.
“That’s out of a university in the United States.
“We will announce that in short order and they will be sending us interns and other resources that will help us with the business side of the club and the analytics and sports performance side.
“They are a very advanced program and a very enthusiastic partner going forward with us.
“We will have people stationed here working for the development of the club.
“We have a little boost and an advantage as we’re tied up with people who are the best.
“We will have one of the foremost experts in this field helping us.”
The value of ‘old-school’ methods
Webb is fully aware that there always needs to be scope to put faith in the trained eye of a man steeped in football, such as the manager he has at McDiarmid Park, Craig Levein.
“I will take a step back and say this – you cannot do much better than the signings we’ve had,” said the American lawyer.
“Can this (analytics) help us in the future? Absolutely.
“Have we done a great job without it? Yes.
“The Aaron (Essel), Adama (Sidibeh), Benji (Kimpioka) signings, these are incredible.
“Craig’s network may be old-school but it has certainly worked so far and I do not want to question that while making provision for additional opportunities.
“Craig will tell you: ‘I will take any resource you give me and make good use of it’.
“That’s the goal. We will be doing that. It’s underway to some extent.
“You could spend unlimited resources on analytics now.
“You can get all the programs, hire folks who have a speciality on that.
“But we’re finding the happy medium.”
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