Sarah Rudd is one of the early pioneers of sports analytics applied to soccer. [1] In 2011, Rudd developed a method, based on Markov chains, for evaluating the performance of players. [2] This method was later adopted by several other companies, academics and bloggers to evaluate actions from soccer event data. [3]
Soon after presenting her work, Rudd worked for startup StatsDNA which was acquired by Arsenal FC in 2013. [4] She is currently head of Analytics and Software Development at the Arsenal FC Data Analytics group. Her work is reported to have been highly influential within the club. [5]
The Arsenal Football Club, commonly known as simply Arsenal, is a professional football club based in Holloway, North London, England. They compete in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. In domestic football, Arsenal have won 13 league titles, a record 14 FA Cups, two League Cups, 17 FA Community Shields, and a Football League Centenary Trophy. In European football, they have one European Cup Winners' Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.
A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a Markov model in which the observations are dependent on a latent Markov process. An HMM requires that there be an observable process whose outcomes depend on the outcomes of in a known way. Since cannot be observed directly, the goal is to learn about state of by observing . By definition of being a Markov model, an HMM has an additional requirement that the outcome of at time must be "influenced" exclusively by the outcome of at and that the outcomes of and at must be conditionally independent of at given at time . Estimation of the parameters in an HMM can be performed using maximum likelihood estimation. For linear chain HMMs, the Baum–Welch algorithm can be used to estimate parameters.
In statistics, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a class of algorithms used to draw samples from a probability distribution. Given a probability distribution, one can construct a Markov chain whose elements' distribution approximates it – that is, the Markov chain's equilibrium distribution matches the target distribution. The more steps that are included, the more closely the distribution of the sample matches the actual desired distribution.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a book by Michael Lewis, published in 2003, about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its general manager Billy Beane. It describes the team's sabermetric approach to assembling a competitive baseball team on a small budget. It was adapted into the 2011 film Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.
Mikel Arteta Amatriain is a Spanish professional football manager and former player who is the manager of Premier League club Arsenal.
Alexandra Virina Scott is an English sports presenter, pundit, and former professional footballer who mostly played as a right-back for Arsenal in the FA WSL. She made 140 appearances for the England national team and represented Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Emma Anne Byrne is a former Irish footballer who played as a goalkeeper. She played for the Republic of Ireland on a record 134 occasions and served as captain of the team. She spent almost 17 years with Arsenal before joining Brighton & Hove Albion in January 2017.
Siobhan Rebecca Chamberlain is an English sports pundit, commentator, and former professional footballer who last played as a goalkeeper for Manchester United.
London based Arsenal Football Club has developed a strong following since its founding in 1886. Since the 1980s, Arsenal's fans have often been referred to as Gooners, a derivation from the team's nickname, the "Gunners".
Tobin Powell Heath is an American professional soccer player, entrepreneur, and artist. Playing primarily as a forward and midfielder for the United States national team, she won gold at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, 2012 London Summer Olympics, 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup as well as silver at the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup and bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. She was described as "perhaps the USA's most skillful player" by the United States Soccer Federation, and was named U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year in 2016 and U.S. Soccer Young Female Athlete of the Year in 2009.
Emma Carol Hayes is an English professional football manager who is the head coach of the United States women's national team. She is best known for her twelve-year stint with Chelsea Women, winning the FA Women's Super League on seven occasions, including five in a row from the 2019–20 season to the 2023–24 season. On 10 August 2024, she steered the U.S. women’s national team to a gold medal in the Paris Olympics.
Caitlin Jade Foord is an Australian professional soccer player who plays as a forward for FA Women's Super League club Arsenal and the Australia national team. She became the youngest Australian to play at a World Cup in 2011 at the age of 16.
Brianna Iris Davey is an Australian footballer in both the Association football (soccer) and Australian rules football codes. In soccer, she was a goalkeeper for the national women's team the Matildas and played in the W-League for Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City. In 2016, she transitioned from soccer to Australian rules football, and was one of two initial marquee recruits for the Carlton Football Club in the AFL Women's (AFLW). She won the inaugural Carlton best and fairest award and was named in the 2017 AFL Women's All-Australian team. Davey served as Carlton captain from 2018 to 2019 before being traded to the Collingwood Football Club. She was appointed Collingwood co-captain alongside Steph Chiocci in 2021, and won the league best and fairest award for the 2021 season.
Laura Kate Harvey is an English football manager and former player who currently manages Seattle Reign FC of the American National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). She holds USSF "A" and UEFA "A" coaching licenses.
JASP is a free and open-source program for statistical analysis supported by the University of Amsterdam. It is designed to be easy to use, and familiar to users of SPSS. It offers standard analysis procedures in both their classical and Bayesian form. JASP generally produces APA style results tables and plots to ease publication. It promotes open science via integration with the Open Science Framework and reproducibility by integrating the analysis settings into the results. The development of JASP is financially supported by several universities and research funds. As the JASP GUI is developed in C++ using Qt framework, some of the team left to make a notable fork which is Jamovi which has its GUI developed in JavaScript and HTML5.
Oleg Markov is a professional Australian rules footballer who plays for the Collingwood Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He previously played 23 matches over five years with Richmond, after being drafted to the club in the third round of the 2015 AFL National Draft. He made his AFL debut in round 16 of the 2016 season and in 2019 was a VFL premiership player while playing with Richmond's reserves side. Markov was traded to Gold Coast in the 2020 trade period in exchange for a future third round draft selection, and played 25 games for the club over 2 seasons before being signed by the Collingwood Football Club in the Supplemental Selection Period (SSP).
Sports analytics are collections of relevant historical statistics that can provide a competitive advantage to a team or individual by helping to inform players, coaches and other staff and help facilitate decision-making both during and prior to sporting events. The term "sports analytics" was popularized in mainstream sports culture following the release of the 2011 film Moneyball. In this film, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane relies heavily on the use of baseball analytics to build a competitive team on a minimal budget, building upon and extending the established practice of Sabermetrics.
In association football, expected goals (xG) is a performance metric used to evaluate team and player performances. It can be used to represent the probability of a scoring opportunity that may result in a goal. It is also used in ice hockey.