How Data Won the Premier League: Liverpool and the Rise of Modern Metrics | Part One
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to It Was What It Was, the football history podcast. This week co-hosts Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper are joined by journalist, broadcaster and author of 'Expected Goals: The story of how data conquered football and changed the game' Rory Smith. In today’s episode we explore the fascinating journey of data analytics in football. From the early days of Charles Reep and Valeriy Lobanovskyi's basic data collection to the revolutionary 1990s that saw a surge in clubs like Liverpool using a data-driven approach under Ian Graham and Michael Edwards to lead to Premier League success. We also look at how clubs like Bolton Wanderers under Sam Allardyce leveraged data to gain a competitive edge and and the cultural shift towards data in football management. Tune in to understand how data played a crucial role in some of the greatest footballing successes of the modern era.
00:00 Introduction and Welcoming Rory Smith
00:42 The Evolution of Data in Football
01:29 The Role of Data Collectors
05:04 Prozone and Early Data Pioneers
11:17 The Culture War: Nerds vs. Scouts
12:17 Sam Allardyce: The Unlikely Data Advocate
23:32 Moneyball and Its Impact on Football
27:24 Decision Technology and Early Predictions
28:06 The Role of Data in Football Predictions
28:48 The Fink Tank Column and Its Impact
31:09 Spurs' Missed Opportunity with Data
32:56 Tottenham's Early Adoption of Data Analytics
41:11 Liverpool's Data-Driven Transformation
47:10 The Cultural Shift Towards Data in Football
58:44 The Importance of Communication in Data Utilisation
59:45 Conclusion
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to It Was What It Was, the Football History Podcast. I'm Jonathan Wilson and with Rob Draper. |
| 0:11.5 | And today we're delighted to be joined by my Libro colleague, the author of many fine books, Rory Smith. |
| 0:20.6 | But the one we're talking about today is expected goals. Rory, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. I'm delighted to be here. Yeah, we were saying before, Jonathan, it's about 24 hours since we lasted a podcast together. I've been missing you. When you said yes, it was punching the air. these two are on a constant podcast loop it seems to |
| 0:38.6 | me in the in the metaverse but rory it's fantastic to have you here we're talking about expected |
| 0:43.9 | goals because we wanted to do some episodes on the history of data in football um it's something |
| 0:50.1 | you can argue and i think jonathan will argue that it goes back to people like Charles Reap in the 60s and 70s. |
| 0:56.1 | Even Lobanovsky, Valerie Lobanovsky, the famous Ukrainian coach, used some kinds of data. |
| 1:02.0 | But really what we're talking about is the huge rise in data since the 1990s, kind of the data that's fueled the rise of Brentford and Brighton and arguably |
| 1:12.8 | helped Liverpool to win the Premier League. And it was a real pleasure preparing for this |
| 1:17.3 | to reread your fantastic book, expected goals, because you really do tell that journey. |
| 1:23.0 | And one of the things, there's lots of beautiful individual stories in there. And obviously, |
| 1:26.5 | we would recommend everyone to go and read it and buy it. But I love the way you start with this guy |
| 1:32.9 | Ashley Flores who's literally, I think it's in Indonesia, someone in Afari's input in data. I think |
| 1:39.3 | people forget you kind of think AI is doing one thing. There is someone at the end of the chain |
| 1:43.9 | actually recording a match movement or a sprint or a you kind of think AI is doing one thing. There is someone at the end of the chain actually |
| 1:44.8 | recording a match movement or a sprint or a trackback and you're having to put that |
| 1:50.3 | onto computer. And then you go into all the big characters that are involved in this like |
| 1:53.9 | Sam Allerdice and Jim Smith, some big unexpected characters, I think. So tell us a little |
| 1:59.8 | about how you came to write the book |
| 2:01.8 | and why those characters like Ashley are just as important as the Jim Smiths. |
| 2:06.5 | Yeah, well, to be honest, and you'll both know this from whether it's book writing or |
| 2:10.7 | newspaper, print journalism in whatever form. There are some moments when you just think, |
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