The way football is covered has changed so much in the last two decades that it is almost unrecognisable. If you go back even further, then you’d eventually reach an era where fans had to buy the local sports paper in order to find out the results of games elsewhere across the country.
It seems mad when you think about how fans follow the sport today. Mobile technology and social media have allowed supporters to get minute by minute coverage of their club no matter what level they ply their trade.
Football’s in-depth coverage
The bottom two divisions of English Football, often neglected by the mainstream press, are becoming the focus of fan coverage like never before. Podcasts, blogs, vlogs and even analytics can be carried out by the everyday fan and shared instantly with thousands of people online.
For analytics in particular, though, there can be a blocker that prevents fans from giving their side in-depth coverage and that is data.
Data, or more specifically, performance data, has always been hard to get hold of online, especially when looking further down the league ladder. Traditional companies such as Opta charge large sums to share data useful to analysts, and until this season, they didn’t even collect performance data in League One or Two of the EFL.
That, however, has changed, and this is exciting news for all would-be analysts and fans. Football statistics website WhoScored, announced earlier this season that they now have full coverage of the third and fourth-tiers of English football and would be providing the same statistical coverage of those divisions as they do for the top European leagues.
Premier League ✅
Championship ✅League One ✅ — https://t.co/JUZS5BUriN
League Two ✅ — https://t.co/soEJYEUAdcWe are delighted to announce that we now have full statistical coverage of EFL League One and League Two ? pic.twitter.com/uqWSPrTgyr
— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) September 4, 2019
There are already some excellent sites around who give football at all levels tactical coverage that helps fans understand the intricacies of how the game is played out at a deeper level, adding data that is free to supporters should be welcomed by the masses.
This is really exciting news for a number of fans, industries and professionals as it makes understanding who is performing well in the lower leagues far more accessible to everyone.
Who stands to take advantage?
The easy answer is everyone, but let’s be more specific. The big winners are journalists who cover clubs in League One and Two. They can now offer their readers or the fans who follow their content a real insight into how the players are performing against their peers in the division.
This is great as it will drive up the quality of writing, analysis and previews of matches. There is some great tactical analysis of games in League Two available, but often this covers specific games on an infrequent basis. The ability for a local journalist, who is often paid to cover one specific team, to give stats-based coverage is an exciting prospect.
The betting industry also stands to benefit from a deeper, stats-based look at the lower leagues. Fans can place bets on any game you can imagine thanks to the variety of options on offer from betting firms. For example, every game in League One will be available for fans to place wagers upon and with even more data available, both fans and bookmakers alike can make more informed selections when it comes to placing a bet or setting the odds.
The clubs themselves will be able to take advantage as the media teams can big up those players performing well on their team without having to pay for expensive data subscriptions. This will give them even more content options which will be welcomed by all involved.
The biggest winners are the fans, however. Now supporters can delve into the numbers behind the game they watch week in week out and get a better grasp of who is doing what, where improvements can be made and therefore make more informed opinions when passing comment.
Football is embracing the new technology
It has taken a while to see video replays introduced into football, but VAR looks as though it is here to stay, and football analytics has also been embraced. For years, people suggested that football couldn’t be tracked using stats in the same way as other sports due to its fluidity, but that has long ago been rebuffed.
Now clubs in the fourth division have their own analysis departments, and this helps them both prepare for matches as well as recruit players with the right attributes to suit their style and tactical makeup.
WhoScored’s data may not be the complete package, but it is a huge improvement for fans and journalists alike and a welcome addition to the market.
