Bleacher Report on football gambling/Tony Bloom

[El Presidente]

Bloom as the owner of the club will be included in this - he is betting whether it be directly or indirectly if his company is placing a bet for itself or on behalf of someone on a football match.

He won't be covered any more than the Coates family will in respect of Stoke. He is a shareholder in BlueLizard Consulting, a company that seems to be much smaller than intimated by the article, if this income statement is anything to go by

 

[Vegas Seagull]

Here are your parameters:

New rules introduced from 1 August 2014

A worldwide ban on betting on football will come into force from 1 August 2014 for all those involved in the game at Premier League, Football League, Football Conference and Women's Super League levels, as well as those at clubs in the the Northern, Southern and Isthmian leagues and all other Participants who do not fall into the category below.
Participants covered by the ban will be prohibited from betting, either directly or indirectly, on any football match or competition that takes place anywhere in the world.
The changes to FA Rules from the start of the 2014/15 season will also effect a worldwide ban on betting on any other football-related matter. For example, the transfer of players, employment of managers or team selection. The passing of inside information to somebody that uses the information for betting remains prohibited.

Read more at http://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/betting/betting-rules#rW5rVe2Qgy7m36mC.99

Bloom as the owner of the club will be included in this - he is betting whether it be directly or indirectly if his company is placing a bet for itself or on behalf of someone on a football match.

People often tip 10% to a cabbie or restaurant. If you were a £500k a match punter maybe you would do the same from a winning tip in order to get the next tip ?

 

[dejavuatbtn]

The degree of care with which he seems to organise the people who work for him in order to keep operations secret from one another is, perhaps, an indicator of how careful he is with his income.

 

[Prince Monolulu]

Hope the firm didn't lose anything on today's result

 

[8ace]

Bill James and Billy Beane (sic) have both acknowledged that it is harder to find a winning formula in football. The stats indicate that a win in football is down to 50% skill and 50% luck, increasing skill in a team decreases the chance of a lose not increasing the chance of a win.

Also just for the hell of it I will point out there is zero correlation between the number of corners a team gets to the number of goals it scores.

The moneyball approach of identifying value players is used, the use of stats to determine the skill of one player vs another and all that stuff is used.

Brighton is used as an example of how to get results on a budget, we're a bit oakland a's but less high profile in a pool of teams doing the same.

It may be that he does not consider the Moneyball approach applies so well to football and that undervalued players are harder to find so that he'd have to spend more than he wants to pick the right players.

Moneyball as a concept works brilliantly in baseball where the batter - pitcher one-on-one conflict determines most of the game, whereas in football players need to blend into a good team and stats may not guarantee that they will pull together in the right way.

Why not play an active Moneyball game with The Albion? His data indicates (by player) the odds of success, so assemble a squad capable of promotion. He'll keep losing 3M-5M a year in The Championship, so that can't be his goal as a successful businessman. FFP is a barrier I suppose but wasn't for Leicester or QPR. He'll know the payoff (Prem money plus increased value of the club) vs. the investment necessary and the risks (he has the data apparently), so why aren't we involved in that game?

Billy Beane can’t get enough of soccer after revolutionising baseball | Sport | The Guardian

 

[Colonel Angus]

Billy Beane can’t get enough of soccer after revolutionising baseball | Sport | The Guardian

Thanks for that. I had not seen that article. Re-enforces the view that it is harder to apply, but could have a partial role in helping clubs prepared to sign players that do the right things critical for their position on the pitch. In Brighton's team that generally means we should play Calderon more than Bruno, because as a right back, Calderon defends better than Bruno (and actually it's questionable whether Bruno attacks any better than Calderon, so why do we play Bruno again??)

Over the years most clubs have relied on the managers to know which players could do the best job for the role (Bob Paisley, Peter Taylor (with Clough), Ferguson, etc... generally knew which players to sign who would do the right things. Most other managers are not so good at it and have limited success, which is where a back office team could help if they analysed players in the right way. From what I've seen of our back office team in the last 2 years, they really aren't applying any science at all and their formula seems to be a much more simplistic objective of signing players with a reasonable ratio of achievement to affordability, but without the critical consideration of whether the abilities they sign actually complement the other players we sign to make a good team.

Much as I would love Hyypia and our back office to find the winning approach I suspect that one or both elements will change in the next 2 years and if and when that happens I hope that we choose either a manager capable of choosing and signing a good team (Pulis please) or a decent manager with a more switched-on 'Head of Football' supporting him.