Thread by @AnalyticsQpr

1/ Moving to more equitable Championship:

Squad market values (as measured by @TMuk_news) are a useful proxy to measure the value of football squads, in the absence of reliable current wage bill data.

Looking at this data can provide insight into how ‘equal’ the division is…

2/ …is at any given point in time. Putting this data, for the past 8 @SkyBetChamp seasons, into a box & whisker plot (below) shows the distribution of ‘wealth’. This type of chart shows how wide that distribution has been (esp. 20/21) but that it’s slightly calmed down since…

3/ …the highs of 20/21. This data can also be used to show the ‘skew’ of squad values across the division, for each season.

Again, this has decreased (slightly) since the high point of the pandemic, which helped create a ridiculously inequitable league…

#SkyBetChampionship

4/ Squad market values (as they are at close of each summer transfer window) are reasonably correlated with the amount of points ultimately won in a season.

This is expressed on the below chart as points per game (with points deductions not applied).

So we’d expect to see…

5/ …highly skewed division to be fairly well-correlated with being easier to predict.

This is largely true if we look at the last 8 @SkyBetChamp seasons, although the 22/23 season was a slight outlier; it was still fairly skewed but less easy to predict based on squad values.

6/ Finally, returning to the earlier chart, it’s clear that the huge inequity brought on by Covid, and the gumming up of the transfer market, has subsided somewhat.

Consequently the division has become slightly more equitable in terms of squad values…

#SkyBetChampionship

7/ Given the strength of the teams coming down from the Premier League in 23/24, I’ll be fascinated to see how this looks as of the end of the summer transfer window this year.

I’ll be even more interested to see where #QPR fit in terms of our own squad value vs others

@threadreaderapp unroll