Mladen Sormaz: How to avoid analysis paralysis
Sormaz was appointed as Leicester's first Head of Football Analytics in April
Written by Simon Austin — December 13, 2019
MLADEN SORMAZ, Leicester City's first Head of Data Analytics, has given three ways in which teams can avoid becoming overloaded with information.
Speaking at TGG's Big Data Conference in Manchester, Sormaz asked: "How do you avoid analysis paralysis? How you do you avoid becoming overloaded with information? There are three key things.
"The first is have a standard set of KPIs and filter down to the fewest useful things you can have week to week. Still do research, still look at other stuff from time to time, but when you’re delivering insight week-to-week, keep it as consistent as you can.
"Secondly, a consistent delivery schedule is key. Just because there’s an international break doesn’t mean your post-match report is five times as long as it usually is. Keep it to useful stuff and keep it on schedule.
"And finally, try to define thresholds with your modelling. Once you’ve had a set of KPIs for a while, it’s good to figure out what differences are actually meaningful. Knowing when the significant change is coming is important.
"The best way to do that is to define your thresholds."
Speaking at the Google Cloud Next Conference on November 20th, England manager Gareth Southgate agreed that filtering data was key.
"We are awash with data - our challenge is to find what is relevant for us," he said.
"What do we need to know as a coaching team and how much do we need to share with the players, because we can overload them with information. Where do we store all this?
"Data is great, but what is the bit that makes the difference? What are the pieces that can help his inform where we want to work on coaching, where we want to focus our coaching time.
"We are still trying to come to terms with that as a sport."
