11 Questions with Kevin Elphick

The pursuit of wisdom in any walk of life quickly reveals that what you think you know is not nearly enough to get you to where you want to go. As I'm starting out in my football scouting journey I challenged myself to reach out to those already working in various roles in football to answer a short list of questions. My goal wasn't to get answers but relevant perspectives on the game within the game.

Here is Kevin Elphick, cofounder of @insightMrkt

How did your first opportunity in football come about?

My first opportunity in football came about thanks to posting regular analysis and data viz on Twitter. Tim Keech (@SBunching) got in touch with me after seeing my work about helping to put a case study together on player recruitment for Swansea City. Ram Srinivas @rramesss and Matt Lawrence @pannasandnutmegs were also involved in putting the report together and from there it managed to get out there and to the right people. Swansea City then became our first clients and MRKT Insights was found.

What attracted you to scouting/analytics? What’s more intriguing now names or numbers?

My day job is all about data viz and analytics and I thought it would be a lot more interesting and enjoyable to keep improving my skills by working with football and Swansea City data. It was always the numbers that interested me the most but then again there’s so much that the data misses. The tactical analysis side of the game also interests me a lot too. The work at MRKT Insights as well also makes me move more centrally between data and video and checking whether the video backs up what the data suggests.

Who/what is the first player/concept you "found"? What caught your eye?

I’d have to say the PassScore model. It was an attempt to add more context and value to passes as well as trying to understand which players are playing more passes into more dangerous areas of the pitch. It can also be used to understand which players are making unsuccessful passes in their own half and conceding possession in dangerous areas.

Who/what is the player/concept you "missed" on? What did you learn from it?

As an analyst, I probably wasn’t fully into the expected goals model from the very start as some might expect an analyst to be. I focused on other aspects of football data analysis and later looked at xG. What I learnt from it was to never write anything off too quickly. Something might not be interesting to begin with but sometimes it’s worth coming back to it and giving it another look/chance!

If you could start over what skill would you build on first?

It’s all happened quite quickly really but if I did start over I’d have wanted to commit more time to learn Python. Having said that though, not doing so gave me more time to develop data viz in Tableau, Swansea match analysis on Total Football Analysis and a few data models that have helped me get me my first opportunity in football.

Do you see player development as more of an art or a science? Is development on the club or the player? Why?

I can’t say it’s definitely one or the other in terms of an art or science. In many cases, players and sports men and women become the very best because they’re prepared to put in the hard work and have the right attitude. Some have natural talent from a very young age while others develop later in their careers.

What is your favorite sports moment? Why?

As a Swans fan it has to be the play-off final win over Reading at Wembley in 2011! It was quite a rise up the football league from almost going out of it 8 years earlier so promotion to the Premier League was quite special and nothing really beats it! Our Europa League spell under Michael Laudrup would come second.

What coach/player/team inspires you? Why?

Growing up, I always admired Sir Alex Ferguson’s dominating success and his ability to develop such an incredible winning mentality. Later it was Pep Guardiola and Arsene Wenger for developing a different style of football. Wenger doesn’t always get the credit he deserves for being an innovator and bringing in a new style of football to the Premier League. Johan Cruyff also has to be mentioned for his “total football” that inspired Pep.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into media/analytics?

I would say to work hard and try to commit as much time into it as you can. Try to be different and develop something new and interesting. There’s also a lot of work out there to get inspiration from, reading books and articles always helps as well as watching videos to develop your skills - whether it’s a particular software tool or a programming language. 

What is your favorite app/tool to use (for work or fun)?

Tableau has probably helped me the most and the majority of my data vis work is using Tableau. Microsoft Excel can do a job but Tableau helps take your work to another level.

What other sport/hobby/discipline do you feel improves your work as an analyst? Why?

As I haven’t mentioned it so far, I would have to say being able to work with data in SQL helped me massively to store data and analyse/manage it, allowing me to build models such as xP, PassScore and xG. That’s something else I’d advise a budding analyst to learn about.