S.A.F.C. - the future

£10m and Simms seems a fair deal.

 

If there's any chance of promotion I'd rather have an established PL striker tbh. If we went up, this season for example, I'd prefer Mitrovic than Stewart.

I love Stewart but his first touch isn't always great, struggles to hit the ball hard and cleanly and is poor with one on one's imo ...

... he still has a lot to learn and, as Forest are finding out, the PL is a school with corporal punishment.

 

Definitely, might be an unpopular view but I would even sell in January if it's the right deal, I have total faith in our recruitment to spend the money wisely.

 

I understand teams will be keeping an eye on him in particular from our squad, but Bob made it sound in his two posts like there was more to it than looking.

Who was the last player we bought and then sold for a profit? Bent?

 

I have faith in both our recruitment team to replace him, and our ownership to appreciate what the right price needs to be.

I'd obviously rather keep him.

 

No transfer is ever done until it's done mate.

In the last window there were players switching from one destination to another in the last few hours.

 

£10m + Simms and Broadhead

In all seriousness I have no idea what the price should be if he was to go in January. Next summer he will be cheaper and the following January cheaper still.

 

Exactly this. Sunderland supporters are going to have to get used to the fact that our model is set up to sell the likes of Ross Stewart for 20 or 30 times what we paid for him. There is no "lack of ambition" if we sell him, it's simply the way all football clubs should work. If we got £10m for Stewart, that would be a ridiculous profit made in the 2 years he's been here. The same if Spurs came back in for Cirkin and paid the £6m release clause.

Like you say, every player in the squad is worth more than we paid for them - that is a sign that the club's strategy is working

What we fans have to get used to is that our better players are going to get sold to clubs higher up the food chain. In the case of Roscoe, I'd be gutted if we sold him but chuffed for him if he gets a PL move. Take the £9.65m profit and re-invest it in the team. That is KLD's model and it's one I'm fully behind

 

The sensible thing for the club to do would be to offer a new contract on vastly increased terms with a £20m release clause. Then it suits all parties

 

No I'm saying Everton head scout has approched his agent and they have shown an intrest

 

KLD and Juan are here tonight

 

I'm fully behind the model but I'd like a bit more than 10m. If they squeeze it up to 12m-15m with some sell ons and other appearance related stuff then I'd be OK with that.

I'd be buzzing to see who we get as a replacement tbh

 

Everton might want to do a player + cash involving either Simms or Broadhead....or both?

 

Quite possible, not sure if the Broadhead loan can be terminated early or not though.

 

10m plus Simms and Broadhead would be decent. We would still need to go out and buy a 1st choice striker as that isn't Simms, I have a feeling he would shrink if it was all on him to lead the line and he knew there wasn't a team mate on his way back to take that spot! I would rather Broadhead of the two and think he would be better as the one up top if we changed the way we played to accommodate, less reliance on tbe striker to hold the ball up with his back to goal etc..

Stewart going would mean we would need to change anyway imo, as his closing down and hassling of opposition is a wonderful thing to watch he never stops.

 

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/...mowbray-1892658?ito=twitter_share_article-top

Good read

 

Which says . . . .

Sunderland looked at 10,000 managers, and the data told them to pick Tony Mowbray
INTERVIEW
From picking managers, a play-off final star and creating the ‘real’ league table, meet the analysts inspiring a revolution on Wearside

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Mowbray has put Sunderland in contention for the Championship play-offs (Photo: Getty)

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By Mark Douglas
Northern Football Correspondent
October 4th, 2022 12:23 pm (updated 12:29 pm)

When Alex Neil walked out on Sunderland in August, Graeme Acheson’s WhatsApp lit up. Acheson is CEO and co-founder of whip-smart sports data start-up Sports4Cast, the Black Cats’ secret weapon in two crucial managerial appointments that they’ve made this year.

The firm started life as a beat-the-bookies site devoted to finding value in rugby odds. At the last count it’s some 3,000 per cent up on the bookmakers, but this was a development that he hadn’t predicted.

Acheson takes up the story: “Our model had worked really well in rugby and was spotted by James Young (Sunderland’s head of data and analysis).

“After Lee Johnson left, they asked us to do the due diligence on a long list of managerial candidates, so we built this huge database of 10,000 managers across Europe, with results and club performances stretching back to 1980.

“With that information we can tell how teams’ rankings have moved under different managers over time and our tool averages all of that then gives a score. It’s a simple idea . . . . if a manager consistently leaves clubs in better shape, he’s a good manager, right?

“It was a major piece of work and a lot of hours went into it, but we were starting to look at other areas that we could investigate, so we said to Sunderland on the Wednesday ‘You’re not expecting a new manager any time soon are you?’ We were told 'no.' Then the next day we got the call.”

Much of the work had already been done in January. From a data perspective, all roads led to one man. “Tony Mowbray had come out on top with the model last time, but he wasn’t available,” Acheson says of their snap analysis. Mowbray was announced at the start of the following week.


Sports4Cast isn’t appointing the club’s manager, of course. Sunderland’s football board made that call. It's work just provided an “impartial, data-driven opinion” to help to inform whatever conversations were taking place.

“When Lee Johnson left we were helping them to sort the wheat from the chaff, basically,” Acheson says of it's role. “They had a huge shortlist of managers that they were looking at and we prepared a document with all of their profiles. Then they wanted a deeper dive into some of the candidates.

“We looked at what happened at a club six months before they joined and then six months after they joined, so you got a picture of the true difference that they made to see whether it was just a case of inheriting a good squad or they had influenced things.

When Lee Johnson left we were helping them to sort the wheat from the chaff. Then they wanted a deeper dive,’ says Acheson (Photo: Sports4Cast)
“They got down to a final shortlist and I don’t think Alex Neil was the original choice. They were going for Roy Keane but he was not the data choice, put it that way!

“It was interesting to be a part of it and see how decisions are made. Our part is very data-driven, but obviously there are a lot of human biases involved as well. Personally, I don’t think Roy Keane would have been a good fit for the club, but he was obviously very popular with the fans, and in fairness to the board you want to make a decision that’s popular.

“Alex Neil was the data pick. He’s got a very good play-off record, which the data was suggesting would be useful because that was where the club was heading.”

No one claims that data is going to be a magic bullet for Sunderland as they attempt to return to the Premier League for the first time since 2018, but it seems to be helping.


In 2021 the Black Cats commissioned a full pre-season data analysis of their prospects . . . . a rolling document that gives a real-time percentage chance of automatic promotion, getting into the play-offs, finishing mid-table, or going down.

It’s based on an algorithm devised from running millions of simulations of the season, and the numbers allow them to build a “true” Championship table, which takes into account difficulty of opponents played and games coming up. On Saturday, for example, Sunderland were fifth in the real league table but eighth in this alternative version of it.

“The league table can lie,” Acheson asserts. “You can be sitting in third position but fourth- or fifth- place teams have games in hand or easier games coming up.

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Picking Embleton (right) in May’s play-off final proved an inspired move (Photo: Getty)
“We see it as a tool for people sitting further back, looking at long-term performance.” Their pre-season prediction of Sunderland’s points tally was just a point shy of what they ended up with.

So far this season, Sunderland are performing well above their pre-season mid-table aim.

“They are five places better off than where you’d have expected them to be at this stage,” Acheson says. The analysis suggests a strong percentage chance of the play-offs.

Becoming pioneers of innovation was one of the ideas behind appointing Young, who arrived at the Stadium of Light from Deloitte a couple of years ago. There have been noteworthy under-the-radar successes since . . . not least when the department recommended starting Elliot Embleton in May’s Wembley play-off final after plotting all of his and Jack Clarke’s attacking actions during the season.

 

Somebody at Sunderland knows what they're doing. I'll put the Keen thing down to a moment of madness. Shows supporters should not always be given what they want.

 

No I didn't Bob, thank you for the information. My comment was supposed to be a light hearted comment that once he had seen the lads at Watford then he was more than happy to help us out.
However, to answer your reply to another message, no he isn't there anymore and his successor has also recently left. Looks like they go through Sporting Directors as quick as managers

 

"Hi Kristian. We've looked at the data and the top 3 managers are Simon Grayson, Jack Ross and Phil Parkinson. That'll be £500,000 please"