Ranking players: Percentile ranks, Z-Scores and Similarities

There has been a huge shift in the use of data in football in the last few years. It would be foolish for me to claim otherwise. I’m very pro using data in your performance workflow as well as in the recruitment aspect of running a club, but as a consequence, we also have seen an influx of public analysis with data.

I truly love seeing data analysis on blogs, websites and youtube — and also the data visuals on Twitter for example. But often the analysis isolates data as the only thing being done, while in reality you always need the eye test at some stage. Don’t get me wrong, I really have posted so many visuals without context, but I think I want to inform rather than analyse. Which was always a bit ignorant of me, because no one sees that distinction without explanation.

Going more into it, data is used to analyse “who are the best” in a certain position or role, but purely looking at data — is always going to be tricky. The data profiles belonging to a second striker or goalscoring attacker are not set in stone and therefore are subject to bias. That bias will be reflected in your outcome. Because some have this notion that data is always right, people can come to a certain point of view.

There are different ways of showing performance via data in relation to others/peers and I will show…