Insight into City's new data led approach from Sam Radford

City are one of few Championship clubs to have a fully-fledged data department designed to help recruit smartly and offer insights to coaches to help give the team an added edge on and off the pitch. 

Knapper’s history with data analytics at Arsenal, alongside a period at StatsDNA with Sarah Rudd, who City have used on a consultancy basis to help appoint a new head of football analytics after John Iga's exit, was a key part of why Mark Attanasio’s group opted to put his name to the board as Stuart Webber's successor after a thorough recruitment process. 

Webber devised the department at its inception, with Attanasio’s funding and expertise with data from baseball and Knapper's history in the game - the hope is that City can develop this department further to progress them with recruitment, in particular. 

Included in that department is data scientist Sam Radford, who joined City from Rotherham United in July 2023, having previous served at Sunderland.

"Our department currently is four of us along with a head of department and a data engineer, in total the department is six," Radford said, "two data scientists, two data analysts, a data engineer and a head of football analytics." 

Radford is a key part of City’s data team tasked with assisting the recruitment team with reports and offering insights to key figures at the club, including Knapper, which is seen as the way to help the Canaries progress to the Premier League again in the future. 

This policy has been used to strengthen their recruitment process, using industry-leading programmes like Skillcorner to give City an insight into physical data and characteristics. 

But Radford has explained how a lot of his job centres around using data to answer questions and problem solve. 

"To begin with, it comes from understanding the content that you're actually modelling. What is the outcome that you actually want? There needs to be an aspect of industry knowledge that you're able to translate," he said on the Chris Gill podcast. 

“One of the big things is understanding not only the pieces that you're piecing together but being able to present them to people in a way that's digestible.

“I could have the best model in the world, but if I'm unable to communicate that to someone, then it's worthless. The hard skill is taking a problem and dissecting it into chunks. The key thing is what is the outcome that you need, what data sources do you have available and how do you process that and get to the desired result?

"Throughout that process, how can you communicate the outputs but work through the problems that you have?

“When you can present that, you can drive impact but also influence decisions, not in a way where you're twisting someone's arm but to help give people the information to make the required decisions - whether that be a sporting director or the recruitment department."

Football is still catching up with American sports, like baseball, when it comes to utilising data. Attanasio and his group feel they can help City make progress in this area having used it to their advantage with the Milwaukee Brewers in the MLB. 

Radford's role is to understand how best to interpret the numbers and how to present them to key stakeholders effectively. 

"It's always important to realise how much or how little data someone can take in within a certain timeframe," he said. "There are also a lot of misconceptions about what data can and can't tell you.

Mark Attanasio is helping City utilise data to their advantage, having used it in baseball. (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

”Data can give you a lot of insight but it can also miss a lot of nuanced things that are very much subjective, and it's all about keeping buy-in as far as your communications are concerned, so it's about ensuring you're not going to someone with something incomplete that they can pick holes in. You have to present things message down.

“You present differently to a sporting director than you would an analyst. With an analyst, their role is to uncover insights in a match preparation sense so you can give them a lot more to churn through and interrogate, so they can align with video to then present to a manager.

“With a sporting director, it needs to be fast and hard-hitting quite soon. You can't go through the nitty gritty; that's a second piece, and you need to anticipate the follow-up questions. It's about understanding your audience." 

Naturally, part of Radford's role is working in conjunction with City's recruitment department to source fresh talent for their project. 

"I've spent most of my time over the last six to 12 months working on how can we, not only ID players, through their characteristics but how good are these players at certain other things as well," the ex-Rotherham man said. 

"With discussing ideas around players, there are two primary focuses - stylistic but also qualitative, so how good are they? That's something we've tried to do - is there a way to separate the two, or will there always be an alignment between them on some sort of level." 

Johannes Hoff Thorup's arrival has added to City's data team workload this summer, with the transition to a new game model altering how they use data and the metrics that make for a potential player within that system. 

It has seen the need for Radford and his colleagues to redesign their data models alongside working on extensive scout reports. 

"The off-season has been very busy for us," he said. "It's probably the most busy time of the year.

"This is when we spend the time either revisiting previous models and checking that they are still producing the outputs that we like and revisiting reports. Is there any additional pieces that we need to add, is there something the coach really wants to see or are we changing the game model and can we align our reports to provide insights in that sense?

"In the season, it's how we can converse with the recruitment guys to make sure they are looking for players in the right places - whether that's filling holes or a deep dive into the players that have been identified, and I'll then produce data soundbites that are assessments against what we have in the building, data projections, how they fit and their profile.

"It's pulling or curating that information together so we can give scouts the most time back to look at players, ID them, but also follow up on targets." 

As much as data is important, scouts still have a pivotal role in watching with the naked eye to fill in the areas that the numbers don't cover. 

They can help add definition or colour to a scout report, which adds much-needed clarity, depth, and context before the club decides whether or not to pursue a potential target. 

Jose Cordoba was one of Norwich City's eight summer signings - with data key to his arrival. (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

"The way that we put it together was to try to derive the nuanced positions that players play," Radford said. 

"You are going to have players who play high and wide as left-wing backs who look more like left-wingers at times; we need to give the scout free text to differentiate that person from someone playing as a natural full-back. 

"If you're looking at a teamsheet, they are going to be lined up the same way. We know that data cannot capture everything perfectly, and sometimes you are at the mercy of providers being able to capture that eyes on." 

With Norwich continuing on the development of their data journey under Knapper and Attanasio - people like Radford will become intrinsic to how the football operations exist and grow in the future.