11 Questions with Ashwin Raman

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 Ashwin Raman:

How did your first opportunity in football come about?

I’ve been writing (mainly bad, looking back on it) football pieces for nearly three years now, but my real opportunity came a few months ago when the head of analysis of this European football club I can’t name DMed me on Twitter to ask if I could help out part-time for them. I’m really enjoying the work.

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

I really started liking the idea of analytics after I read Soccernomics, The Numbers Game, and Soccermatics, and then started reading articles on the old StatsBomb and Analytics FC, and I decided to dive in myself. For me, honestly, it’s easily still names that I find more fun. Scrolling up through spreadsheets, finding a couple of players, and then watching hours of footage of those players.

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

To be honest, I’ve never really ‘found” a player. Sure, I wrote that piece about potential new Liverpool keepers and mentioned Alisson and Thomas Strakosha, later signed by Liverpool and linked to Liverpool respectively, but I can’t possibly ever claim to have “found” them, considering that they were both considered two of the best keepers in Serie A that season. And I’ve never really come up with anything half-innovative.

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

Just like I haven’t “found” anyone, I don’t think I’ve “missed out’ on anyone either, haha.

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

Definitely learning R or Python. Right now, I desperately need to learn either, and I wish I did it far earlier. If I don’t learn it very soon, I’m *in Mourinho voice* in big trouble. In big trouble. And I don’t want to be in big trouble.

Do you see player development as more of an art or a science?

Just like everything that isn’t in the realm of the natural sciences, and especially like everything in sports, I think player development is an art. Fundamentally, I guess the idea of “progress” in a player is highly subjective to start with, and there are many factors that shape a player in many different ways. I don’t think you can identify clear cause-and-effect relationships for changes in player performance; you really can’t isolate different factors and many different things can work. This is just my limited view though, I’ve never coached, and I have no real clue. I might have the opposite view if I ever try coaching.

What is your favorite sports moment? Why?

I’m a Chelsea fan, but my favourite sports moment is definitely Leicester City winning the title in 2016. My favourite season ever. I remember going absolutely crazy late in the night the moment Hazard scored that goal against Tottenham to give Leicester the title, I almost certainly ended up waking up many neighbours that night.

What coach/player/team inspires you? Why?

I just love Hector Bellerin as a person for many reasons. From his unrivalled drip to him being opinionated despite the flak he’d receive from hashtag ‘proper football men.’

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

This is probably a weird one, but in general, I’d say one rule that’s important to keep in mind is to try not to be definitive and certain about the insight that you think you get from data, or even video, analysis. This is the tip that two excellent people, James Yorke and Nathan Clark, have given me in the past, and it’s helped make my blogging and my general work better I guess. Even if that means I have to spend hours watching more footage, trying to look up what other people think of a player or a team, and then, uh, worrying even more about confirmation bias.

And then I’d suggest focusing on making your work as applicable and easy-to-understand for real football scenarios as possible. In analytics, there’s some absolutely brilliant work going on if you look at the blogs and presentations at conferences, but not all of it can be communicated to people in football easily, especially the work that uses a lot of statistical concepts that go beyond typical high school statistics. Personally, I haven’t had this issue to a large extent, because I, err, don’t have the skills to do complex, innovative work, but actionability is a pretty big issue in analytics right now. I think StatsBomb for one have communicated difficult concepts to large audiences very well through the ages, and I think we can all try and learn from them.

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

Wyscout, easily. My account is paid for by the club I work for and I generally get the slight “ah shit, this is work, this ain’t fun” feeling each time I open it, but it’s just brilliant as a video and data tool. I spend hours looking for players for my club, and in my free time, I spend hours watching Adama Traore’s and Thiago’s “Best Actions” compilations and games from all around Europe, from Pep’s Barcelona to Atalanta matches from this season. I’m gonna spend a lot of time watching old games on Wyscout during the isolation.  

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

I was very, very young when I started blogging, and I don’t think I can think of any hobbies or disciplines that help my football side of things, but on the other hand, I think my analytics stuff and blogging has helped me with everything else. I write much better, I interpret material at hand and data much better, I build out my arguments better, I’ve improved my research skills, and I, uh, like to think I’m a little more thick-skinned after spending excessive time on Twitter. And I’ve found a bunch of people on Twitter I’ll probably never meet in real life who make the general experience of shit posting on Twitter fun.