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Rasmus Ankersen

Nordic Saint

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notnowcato

notnowcato

Posted
Posted

Posted this on the takeover thread....

Rasmus Ankersen is a very interesting character, features heavily in Christoph Biermann's Football Hackers book, worth a read if you get the chance and are open to the  significant role data plays in todays professional game.  If you're not a fan of backing decisions or thoughts with data then prepare yourself to be pissed off - suspect that could impact a few on here.  I'm not certain if he was the first to publicly back a manager using xG (expected goals) but he was doing that 4 years ago whilst at FC Midtjylland.  He was also part of Brentford ditching their youth development teams, a financial decision and arguably the correct one, allow the Bees to pick up players from top teams who's pathway was blocked.

As I said an interesting character but from what I've seen so far the decisions he's a part of are for the betterment of the club.

Buckle up... 

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egg

egg

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Although the jury is out on the new owner (purely as he's an unknown quantity) this guy is a class act. He has worked wanders at Midtjylland and Brentford, speaks well, is a passionate "proper" football man, and seems very tuned in to us fans.

Interesting times ahead. 

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derry

derry

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That is one smart cookie. He extracted this philosophy from his experience with a gamblers analytical program. This could be an interesting experience depending how much influence he exerts over time. I suspect a lot in due course behind the scenes organisation.

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Disco Stu

Disco Stu

Posted
Posted (edited)

Feeling positive.

Quote

There’s a big jump from being a club employee to club owner and it’s not one many can pull off. Were I a Saints fan it’d be a takeover I would be excited about as Ras is very much the sort of owner they’ve not had since Liebherr died but with much more football knowledge.

 

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Holmes_and_Watson

Holmes_and_Watson

Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, notnowcato said:

Posted this on the takeover thread....

Rasmus Ankersen is a very interesting character, features heavily in Christoph Biermann's Football Hackers book, worth a read if you get the chance and are open to the  significant role data plays in todays professional game.  If you're not a fan of backing decisions or thoughts with data then prepare yourself to be pissed off - suspect that could impact a few on here.  I'm not certain if he was the first to publicly back a manager using xG (expected goals) but he was doing that 4 years ago whilst at FC Midtjylland.  He was also part of Brentford ditching their youth development teams, a financial decision and arguably the correct one, allow the Bees to pick up players from top teams who's pathway was blocked.

As I said an interesting character but from what I've seen so far the decisions he's a part of are for the betterment of the club.

Buckle up... 

I read the Hackers book last year, and it's going to be fascinating seeing more of his approach impact us.

How this interacted with Ralph's playbook will be interesting as well, and hopefully both can develop well together.

Although Ankersen might only be here, so he can get his mitts on our Black Box. 😊

Edited by Holmes_and_Watson
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Turkish

Turkish

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1 hour ago, Verbal said:

You're pure evil, MLG.  You know perfectly well that if Turkish watches this he'll self-immolate. 

You going on about me again Verbal, seems like you lot talk about me all the time.  Another one who on a big day for the club has posted twice, both time about me and "liked" lots of posts against me, nice to know i've got a proper little following on here and the amount of so called Saints fans who on such an important day are only interested in slagging off a fellow fan is quite hilarious.

Actually i watch a lot of Ted talks and will watch this one with interest.

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CanadaSaint

CanadaSaint

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Not just for our sake but for football’s sake, I really like what seems to be going on here. It’s always good to see the rich, arrogant, self-entitled behemoth get its ass kicked by the little guy whose success comes from prudence and ingenuity. Brentford have been such a breath of fresh air, and I found a lot to admire in Midtjylland even if it was our ass that was getting kicked. We can really start punching above our weight as well with Ankersen involved. It’s about time the rest of us found an answer to the Marie Antoinettes of the Premier League.

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UpweySaint

UpweySaint

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34 minutes ago, CanadaSaint said:

Not just for our sake but for football’s sake, I really like what seems to be going on here. It’s always good to see the rich, arrogant, self-entitled behemoth get its ass kicked by the little guy whose success comes from prudence and ingenuity. Brentford have been such a breath of fresh air, and I found a lot to admire in Midtjylland even if it was our ass that was getting kicked. We can really start punching above our weight as well with Ankersen involved. It’s about time the rest of us found an answer to the Marie Antoinettes of the Premier League.

This. Seeing Brentford play us off the park in the cup (last year?) and having our asses handed to us by Sisto and co (do we relaunch the sign Sisto bandwagon now?) really showed how clubs could box clever to punch above their weight. We're never going to be one of the big, moneyed clubs and it's good to have some hope we can still punch above our weight now and then otherwise plodding along in the 'just good enough not to go down' club can get a little tiresome.

There is a lot to like about Brentford as a club/fanbase and hopefully we can both sneak into the top half of the table with dreams of another European tour feeling like less of a pipedream - I only managed some of the home fixtures and would love to see Saints away in Europe in my lifetime! :)

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badgerx16

badgerx16

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Posted
3 hours ago, Verbal said:

You're pure evil, MLG.  You know perfectly well that if Turkish watches this he'll self-immolate. 

 

2 hours ago, Turkish said:

 

Actually i watch a lot of Ted talks and will watch this one with interest.

Keep a fire extinguisher handy 😉

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tajjuk

tajjuk

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Posted

Puel was like a budget Rafa or Budget Mourinho, good at setting up teams to be solid and difficult to beat but boring AF to watch and lacking idea on how to create and score goals. Plus without Mourinho's charisma to fire players up. 

We were droll that season, average in so many ways and just boring to watch.  We played like Newcastle have the last few years for a safe ish 14th/15th place but got lucky with the table and finished top 10, but in reality we had a squad that should have have achieved top 10 with top 10 performances and decent football, and he got them playing considerably below that. 

Sacking him was the right decision as others have said the replacements were then even worse. 

Ankersen seems a switched on bloke with a good understanding of the game, seems to learn well from others and takes other views on board, which reflects in Semmens comments that it's not just about them coming in and doing it their way but them melding with our approach. 

I see the Brentford fans are playing down his role but they are bound to do that, he had a big role in shaping that club and it's success. Also seems that they have evolved and tested their approach they have now reached the point where they want to do it on their own, like first Mitjiland and then Brentford were like the test beds and now they are expanding the approach with the multi club model. 

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Sarisbury Saint

Sarisbury Saint

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Posted (edited)
16 hours ago, TWar said:

Excellent video.

I think the outcome bias thing applies really well to Claude Puel. He had a good league position but underlying numbers weren't good. We were overperforming a number of metrics, as well as finishing high but with a low points total. Like in the newcastle case our goal difference told a very bleak story. While we only dropped a place or two from the Koeman years our goal difference went from +21 and +18 under Koeman to -7 under Puel. That is huge.

Puel gets fired and you get a bunch of fans saying "but he got 8th, that's good right? Why sack him?" some say this to this day, but like here it is outcome bias. Unsustainable results which would have dropped as soon as our luck turned. You didn't even need to know the stats, there was a reason he was so unpopular at the time despite getting good results, the fans could see we were playing like shit having looked good for years. This is why sacking Puel was a good decision. Our subsequent hires on the other hand...

I think both your post and the video is stating the obvious.

Most fans could see Puel was taking us in a downward spiral and likewise most Newcastle fans new they were lucky that season:

Many fans felt the same about Saints when we were doing well under Pochetinno and Koeman . We needed to kick on and add to the team, but we didn’t and never will.

Example would be Leicester, each year Vardy will become less effective and each year Leicester will decline unless they start changing things now.

You don’t need to be a data analyst to see that.

But the good news is that this guy does see it, where as some clubs don’t .

Edited by Sarisbury Saint
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HarvSFC

HarvSFC

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The problem with Les Reed was that he did of course have some success here, but then it felt like he believed he had “cracked” football and tried to replicate the same moves, but failed big time, ending in us completely breaking our philosophy, hitting the panic button and turning to a dinosaur in Mark Hughes. 

Ankersen seems a lot more planned and certainly has a better CV than when we appointed Reed, although I understand we did bring him in as a League One club, so couldn’t be too choosy.

I remember when we were drawn against Midtjylland when we were at our best. In my ignorance I didn’t know who they were, other than having Tim Sparv and thought we would walk them, but they made light work of us. I see they have also won their league three times since Ankersen got involved, having never won it before.

As for Brentford, they’re another Cinderella story. They have a new stadium, but even that capacity is only 17,250, such is the size of the club. They hadn’t played in the top flight since 1947, but here they are, 12th at the midway point and not really in danger of relegation in their first season. 

I guess there would have been question marks previously of whether Ankersen’s methods could work at the very highest level and while there still are having only been half a season for Brentford, this group now feels confident and I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do with us and if Ankersen and co. can push us up to the higher level, which is the Europa League, like he has done at his previous two clubs. 

And of course, Semmens and Crocker have ran us well for the past couple of years on a shoestring budget.

I’m not sure why Gao didn’t sell us down the river to the first bidder/chancer, pocket the Ings, Vestergaard and JWP money alongside the PL income and run off into the sunset, but credits due, there aren’t any glaring alarm bells about this group.

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The Left Back

The Left Back

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18 hours ago, mcbendy said:

https://talksport.com/football/fa-cup/659667/brentford-data-revolution-england-smartest-club-championship-leicester-fa-cup/

I've just started reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis.  My son bought it for me for Christmas - little did he know he was tapping into the 2022 Southampton story.  Picking up on the debate we often end up having on here about the value of data analytics in sport, which I guess will run and run anyway but more so given our new owners, I'm interested in the foundations for all this.  Early on in the book the Harvard guy brought in with his laptop to shake up the establishment offers three insights into the conventional wisdom of the scouts running Pro-Baseball in 2002.

1.  The tendency of everyone who actually played the game to generalise wildly from his own experience. People always thought their own experience was typical when it wasn't
2. The tendency to to be overtly influenced by someone's most recent performance; what he did last was not necessarily what he would do next
3. A bias towards what people saw with their own eyes, or what they thought they had seen

Seem familiar?

His point is that this thinking creates opportunities because it means money is wasted and value missed elsewhere.  I'm not yet an advocate of this stuff   (and I'm only just getting go with the book) but I'm tending that way.  Which is just as well if Rasmus is going to be running the show.

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hypochondriac

hypochondriac

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Posted
Just now, Dellman said:

Is it luck? perhaps the Board, Semmens and co. have had a part in it.

Fortunate then. He didn't have to choose us but the fact that he has is why I'm most excited. He's a smart man and if he was convinced to leave Brentford then he's sold on the project. 

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Vancouver Saint

Vancouver Saint

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Yes. I'm excited for us. Not just about the big data analysis though...because that is already becoming a 'hygiene factor' (i.e. a necessary cost of doing business that everybody gets up to speed with pretty quickly)...more because he appears to be brand literate. That is he understands fans are irrational and support off a team is driven my emotional reasons. They have got the basic equation right and we shouldn't forget this is a two-way relationship - they are lucky to get Southampton FC as well. 

When Cortese advised Markus, he correctly identified that we had (then) the 15th largest brand franchise in English football...and that we were languishing somewhere in the third tier. We have a large and loyal fanbase with the opportunity to increase it globally if it's well managed. We have a relatively stable, well-run club. We have a culture of investment in youth and development of young talent (a double-edged curse as we have until now been trapped in the 'feeder-club' trap of not being able to keep our talent long enough to win anything...but that might change). And most importantly, we have a pretty solid seat at the best table in world football in the EPL, with all the profile and financial rewards that brings.

Now we need to go one further and become that rarest type of elite club - where the fanbase that make it what it is have a meaningful say in the decision-making - and ownership of the success (or disappointment) that brings.

 

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TWar

TWar

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13 minutes ago, aintforever said:

We’re going to have to cut down on the 0-9 defeats from now on or this guy is going to look a bit silly.

I'm sure this guy would tell you a 9-0 performance is a freak result and you should be more bothered by nine 1-0 losses than one 9-0 loss. Especially when you have 9 players out and are having to play players who are barely professional footballers.

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Dman

Dman

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2 minutes ago, TWar said:

I'm sure this guy would tell you a 9-0 performance is a freak result and you should be more bothered by nine 1-0 losses than one 9-0 loss. Especially when you have 9 players out and are having to play players who are barely professional footballers.

1 time you could argue is a ‘freak results’, 2 times, not so much. 

Also the trouble is, we had a more than 9 1-0 (or narrow defeats) that followed the second 9-0… so it’s something he would be very, very bothered about I expect. 

Rather than ‘freak’, It is (or at least was) a mentality issue. Our squad was weak as piss mentally and a manager who was unable and/or unwilling to adapt his tactics to play more defensively when we went down to 10 men.

Thankfully, I think we’ve now got rid of a few players who simply gave up and couldn’t be arsed when the going got tough and Ralph seems to have learned from his mistakes. 

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