Neel Shelat assesses how a small team from France is exemplifying the European trend of overachievement this season 2023/24 seems to be the season of the overachievers in Europe’s top five leagues. Teams such as Bayer Leverkusen, Girona, Bologna, and Aston Villa are the talk of town thanks in part to their eye-catching styles of play, but more importantly their very impressive league records. Arguably one of the biggest overachievements, though, appears to be one that is barely being talked about. At the time of writing, Brest are all the way up in second place in Ligue 1 having finished just ..read more

Dharnish Iqbal takes a look at how what teams can and cannot do in the middle of the pitch is a strong indicator of the effectiveness of an overall tactical approach and the ability to solve problems The next time you watch a football match, pay attention to the players in the middle of the pitch and their actions. There’s normally something interesting going on. Whether a player positioned centrally can find space, receive the ball and turn, is a good indication of how an attacking move is likely to pan out, in terms of both how one team is faring in possession and another out of possession ..read more

Jason McKenna analyses how a strange end-of-season phenomenon affects the output of teams with ‘nothing to play for’ At the end of Premier League seasons, we see highly anomalous games with plenty of goals. While this is highly entertaining for the neutral, this phenomenon does not seem to be down to chance. Instead, it is a provable trend that happens when “Teams Have Nothing To Play For”. Overall, this is a situation when a team has reached a point in the season where it does not have a chance of improving its season’s outcome in terms of accessing continental competition, needing to avoid r ..read more

Brazil’s oldest football competitions, the State Championships, are newly available on TransferLab, as our cutting-edge scouting platform continues to grow its coverage and add new features. In addition to the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, B and C (all of which were already on the system), teams and players from the major State competitions the Campeonato Paulista (Brazil’s oldest organised football competition, started in 1902), the Campeonato Carioca, the Campeonato Catarinense, the Campeonato Gaúcho, the Campeonato Mineiro, and the Campeonato Pernambucano are now searchable on TransferLab ..read more

Neel Shelat analyses Danish team FC København and how their aggressive positioning has helped them balance domestic and continental demands The position of being a dominant team in a league that is far from the strongest in the confederation is quite an interesting one. While most teams can commit to playing styles and game models they plan to stick with throughout a season across various competitions, such teams have to be a bit more flexible. Even if we think through their cases at an incredibly simplistic level, the dichotomy they are faced with becomes clear. At some level, these teams hav ..read more

Sammy Lander has worked as a substitution coach for Wimbledon and consulted for Brighton and Hove Albion and the US Men’s National Team; here he shares a method for measuring the impact of players coming off the bench Finding a singular numerical value to assess how successful any performance has been is always challenging, let alone when this performance is off the bench! My role (as football’s first Substitution Coach) has led to me having conversations with many managers and players across various leagues, and one theme is a consistent: being and choosing a substitution is hard! The amount ..read more

Who is Dan Ashworth? With the Newcastle Sporting Director currently being heavily linked with a move to Manchester United, football magazine and website FourFourTwo did a deep dive on the highly-rated transfer guru, who also has a strong track record of overhauling sporting departments and improving performance across clubs. In doing so, FourFourTwo lent heavily on research published on Analytic FC’s site in a long article by Josh Hobbs. As part of a series, Josh examined a number of talented sporting directors or directors of football, looking at their transfer records, how they conduct busin ..read more

Premier Injuries Head of Content Jason McKenna is back with another piece on how understanding injury data can help us understand team tactics Arsenal’s Secret Load Management? When we consider football tactics we often see them through the lens of targeting immediate sporting success. A tweak in personnel or formation is due to wanting to win the upcoming match. But this season we may be seeing in-game tactics being used for longer term goals: so that players can “peak” at the right time of the season. This is not a new approach, but it is fairly new to the Premier League, and Arsenal’s rampa ..read more

Neel Shelat uses TransferLab to look at how an expansion team goes about building its squad The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) finds itself in a unique position right now. It is unquestionably among the best women’s soccer leagues in the world, not just because of its status as the top division in the most successful nation historically, but also due to the quality of its players, coaches, and clubs. At the same time, it is still a growing league. Two new teams joined the party in 2022, two more will join in 2024, and a further two spots remain open as the league is targeting a 16-team ..read more

We are delighted to announce that Stal Rzeszów has partnered with Analytics FC, joining our ever growing stable of European clubs. Stal Rzeszów, under leadership of club owner Rafal Kalisz and sporting director Jaroslaw Fojut, has embarked on an exciting journey, blending a commitment to homegrown talent with cutting-edge data and technology. Stal Rzeszów has signed up for our market-leading data services, including access to the TransferLab data-scouting platform, developed in collaboration with LCP. This partnership underscores Stal Rzeszów’s dedication to leveraging innovative solutions to ..read more