English Premier League Football Research Articles

Evaluating the ability of goalkeepers in English Premier League football

This paper examines the performance of goalkeepers in the English Premier League. A commonly used metric to assess goalkeeper ability is the saves-to-shots ratio. It is shown that goalkeepers playing in weak teams have to defend against on-target shots that have a relatively high probability of scoring as compared to their counterparts in higher-performing teams. This tends to produce a downwards bias in the save-to-shots ratio of goalkeepers in weak teams, an effect which may lead to their ability being underestimated. A logistic regression model is used to adjust goalkeepers’ saves-to-shots ratios for differences in save difficulty. The adjusted ratio is more stable across seasons, suggesting that it is a more reliable estimate of true goalkeeper ability than the unadjusted ratio.

Organizational Cultural Perpetuation: A Case Study of an English Premier League Football Club

Although the prevalence of studies of cultural change initiatives has encouraged some researchers to suggest that a greater understanding of the enduring nature of organizational culture is important, there is a dearth of illustration of this aspect of the cultural phenomenon in organizations. This paper provides an empirical description of the factors that are associated with the perpetuation of organizational culture, thereby making it resistant to forced change. We achieve this by presenting evidence of an attempt by executives in a top English Premier League football club (organization) to transform the culture of their organization. We elucidate the espoused rationale for change, the approach adopted and the outcomes of the change efforts. Thereafter, we highlight the impact of the strong forces perpetuating the culture of the organization and impeding the planned actions of managers.

A Dynamic Bivariate Poisson Model for Analysing and Forecasting Match Results in the English Premier League

SummaryWe develop a statistical model for the analysis and forecasting of football match results which assumes a bivariate Poisson distribution with intensity coefficients that change stochastically over time. The dynamic model is a novelty in the statistical time series analysis of match results in team sports. Our treatment is based on state space and importance sampling methods which are computationally efficient. The out-of-sample performance of our methodology is verified in a betting strategy that is applied to the match outcomes from the 2010–2011 and 2011–2012 seasons of the English football Premier League. We show that our statistical modelling framework can produce a significant positive return over the bookmaker's odds.

Sexism Re-Loaded … or Sexism Re-Presented?

If part of the project of a feminist media studies is to explore the various ways in which sexism operates through the media, then how might this be achieved? Any answer to this question will depend upon how the concept of “sexism” is understood. Much existing research has tended to approach sexism as an etic, analyst-driven phenomenon; that is, as something to be defined by the analyst during the study of media representations that may be sexist, but that are very rarely about sexism. In this article, however, attention is given to the hitherto largely unexplored idea of sexism as an emic, participant-driven phenomenon that gets defined within media representations that are, very directly, about incidents of sexism. Newspaper reports of an incident of sexist behaviour in the world of English Premier League football are analysed for the ways in which they re-presented complaints about that behaviour. Developing the concept of “irrelevant precision,” this article shows that and how those re-presentations worked to undermine the legitimacy of the complaints and, by implication, the idea that anything sexist had taken place. The article concludes with a discussion of how this concept contributes to the project of a feminist media studies.

Delivering men's health interventions in English Premier League football clubs: key design characteristics

ObjectivesTo investigate the key design characteristics of Premier League Health (PLH), a national programme of men's health improvement delivered in/by 16 English Premier League (EPL) football clubs. Study designHealth Trainers (HTs) were hired by EPL clubs to deliver PLH. HTs were the focus of investigations aimed at identifying the active design characteristics of male-specific health promotion interventions. MethodsSemi-structured interviews led by researchers were performed with 13/16 HTs and identified the key design characteristics influential in (I) reaching and (II) helping participants adopt health improvement interventions delivered in professional football club settings. ResultsHTs believed that combining the appeal of football alongside EPL clubs, offered a unique opportunity to reach adult males, including hard-to-engage-men (HTEM). Awareness raising events held on match days aimed to connect with men, but outreach activities were especially important for engaging participants. Following initial reach, familiar settings, such as the club stadia and community venues were also important for ensuring regular involvement in health improvement sessions. Interventions shaped around men's health needs and delivered at times when participants could more easily attend, were factors which helped to engage men. Supportive social environments and a range of exercise modes and delivery options were also seen by HTs as being similarly important. Both the informality and familiarity of EPL clubs were viewed by HTs as having substantial advantages over conventional NHS settings for reaching and engaging men. Importantly, HTs contributed substantial skills to the delivery of PLH. ConclusionAlthough, top flight professional football clubs can recruit men, including those regarded as hard-to-engage into health improvement programmes, considerable attention to delivery refinement is needed to support male participants adopting interventions aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles.

Jokes, pranks, blondes and banter: recontextualising sexism in the British print press

This article examines how media texts that take sexism as their topic can be analysed for the ways in which they present what does (or does not) constitute sexism in the particular event being reported upon. To do so, it treats any such text as a ‘recontextualisation’. This concept, drawn from the field of critical discourse analysis, suggests that for an incident of sexism to be reported in any media text is also for that incident to be recontextualised in and through the linguistic, visual and graphological choices of that text's author. To catch this process of recontextualisation in-flight, the article studies video footage of an incident from the world of English Premier League football in which the actions of two television presenters precipitated various complaints of sexism. A discursive analysis of newspaper reports about that incident reveals the textual practices through which the presenters' actions were recontextualised such that their status precisely as ‘sexist actions’ was readably downgraded, mitigated or even deleted. The article ends with a discussion of how an analysis of the media's practices for recontextualising incidents of sexism contributes to the project of a specifically feminist media studies.

The performance of football club managers: skill or luck?

This paper develops a performance management tool and considers its application to the football industry. Specifically, the resulting model evaluates the extent to which the performance of English Premier League football club managers can be attributed to skill or luck when measured separately from the characteristics of the team. We first use a specification that models managerial skill as a fixed effect and we then implement a bootstrapping approach to generate a simulated distribution of average points that could have taken place after the impact of the manager has been removed. The findings suggest that there are a considerable number of highly skilled managers but also several who perform below expectations. The paper proceeds to illustrate how the approach adopted could be used to determine the optimal time for a club to part company with its manager.

Effect of a national programme of men's health delivered in English Premier League football clubs

To investigate the impact of a national programme of men's health delivered in/by English Premier League (EPL) football clubs on health profiles. Health promotion interventions were delivered to male supporters with heightened health risks, and hard-to-engage men who were not using primary care and health information services. Interventions included educational activities on match days and weekly lifestyle classes at the football stadia/training venues. Activities were led by the health trainers in 16 EPL football clubs. Pre- and post-intervention, men completed validated self-report measures for demographics and health behaviours. Intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis was performed alongside a standard per-protocol (PP) analysis based on pre- vs post-intervention differences over 3 months. Descriptive statistics were used to show demographics pre-intervention and changes in the health profiles of participants. Predominantly, recruits were White British men aged 18-44 years. Most men (78%, 909/1159) did not see themselves as having health problems. Around 35% (364/1044) never consulted a general practitioner (GP), while 57% (591/1040) reported that they never used health advice services. In men providing pre-intervention responses, the proportions who failed to meet the recommendations for healthy behaviours were as follows: physical activity, 85% (1106/1301); sitting time, 68% (623/907); consumption of fruit/vegetables, 88% (948/1072); smoking, 33% (422/1262); alcohol consumption, 30% (203/679); and body mass index (BMI), 63.8% (570/893). ITT and PP analyses demonstrated the significant increases in weekly physical activity (P<0.001) and daily consumption of fruit and vegetables (P<0.001), and significant decreases in daily sitting time (P<0.001), weekly alcohol consumption (P<0.001) and BMI (P<0.05). A national programme of men's health delivered in EPL football clubs reached men failing to meet health guidelines. Interventions engaged men who neither consulted a GP nor used health information services. Positive changes were found for an array of activity-related and other health behaviours on PP analysis and the more stringent evaluation condition of ITT analysis.

Measuring the efficiency of English Premier League football

PurposeThe purpose of this research paper is to prove the superiority of a two‐stage data envelopment analysis compared to a one‐stage approach in measuring a football club's efficiency. Moreover it provides best practice benchmarks for the research sample which supports football officials to orient themselves to the right clubs.Design/methodology/approachA non‐parametric two‐stage data envelopment analysis for the seasons 2006/07 to 2008/09 is introduced to measure the efficiency of English Premier League football clubs from an off‐field and an on‐field perspective. The results are compared with those of the traditional one‐stage data envelopment analysis approach to identify insufficiencies of the latter.FindingsThe results show evidence that different conclusions derive from either the one‐ or the two‐stage approach with the threat of potential misinterpretations in the case of the former. Furthermore, this study provides football clubs with information to focus on specific efficiency‐enhancing strategies at the individual stages of the production process and therefore acts as a supportive tool for the football club officials for setting corrective actions if inefficiencies are identified.Research limitations/implicationsThe present article provides a foundation for future studies in other football leagues as well as for an intertemporal analysis which evaluates the efficiency of a club on a yearly basis.Originality/valueThis is the first paper that introduces a two‐stage data envelopment analysis approach in football research. It has proven that it can identify sources of inefficiencies more accurately than a one‐stage data envelopment analysis and provides football officials with valuable information about their club.

Relative age effect amongst footballers in the English Premier League and English Football League, 2010-2011

Many studies have shown that a relative age effect exists in different sports – that is to say, birth dates of participants in particular sports are skewed towards the start of the competitive season. This study examines the relative age effect for the 2828 professional footballers in the English Premier League, the Championship, League One and League Two during the 2009-2010 season. Using dates of birth for all players from the Sky Sports Football Yearbook 2010-2011, the Chi squared goodness of fit test was used to determine relative age effect within the four leagues. A comparison was also made with birth dates for the general population from the Census and population projection data. The relative age effect was then examined for each of the leagues, and then for differences between the leagues. The results showed that: (i) there was a difference between professional footballers and the general population (p < 0.001); (ii) there was a relative age effect in the Premier League (p = 0.03), and a stronger age effect in the other three leagues (p < 0.001); and (iii) there was a difference between the Premier League and League Two (p = 0.002).

Measuring competitive balance in sports using generalized entropy with an application to English premier league football

A central issue in the economics of sport is the degree of competitive balance in sporting contests. The importance attached to competitive balance is predicated on the belief that it is uncertainty about the outcomes of sporting contests that attracts spectators and sponsors. In a perfectly balanced competition, each team would have an equal chance of winning each match and, therefore, of winning the championship or the league. By contrast, the absence of competitive balance would mean that the results of sporting contests would become predictable and attendance at sporting contests would suffer. The general theme that underpins the issue of competitive balance is that of inequality. This article proposes a general measure of competitive balance based on the Generalized Entropy (GE) approach to measuring inequality and shows how this might be interpreted in terms of the league's welfare. The measures are applied to results from 2006 to 2007 season of the English Premier League (EPL).

Variables Associated with Revenues' Growth for English Premier League Football Clubs as an Indicator for Planning Commercial Activities at Egyptian Football League Clubs (Case Study)

Over the past century, we have seen that the role of England in developing football as a game and as a field for management and business was very obvious and notable, especially in its transition from professionalism era to commercialization era. That made English Premier League clubs' capable on achieving the highest revenues ever in football world, in which it reached (2.5) billion euros in 2009/2010 season, with an increase of (800) million euros from their nearest rivals, Bundesliga clubs. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the impact of variables' inter-relationships (demand size on live viewership - number of championships- ranking in local competitions) in enabling Premier League clubs to continue in their revenues' growth despite successive economic crisis. This research has employed analytical studies method (case studies), where the results showed that variables (demand size on live viewership - number of championships - ranking in local competitions) explains (95.1%) of the changes that occur in English clubs' total revenues. Moreover, within the following sections we are going to discuss research's results and conclusions, and explore the impacts of : demand size on live viewership - number of championships- ranking in local competitions, on clubs' revenues and their different streams (match day revenues- broadcasting revenues - commercial revenues) and also research ideas for the future.

Envisioning and visualizing English football in East Africa: the case of a Kenyan radio football commentator

This paper examines Mohammed Juma Njuguna’s radio commentary on English Premier League football to a Kenyan audience. It observes that this commentator’s performance uniquely deviates from the play-by-play style of radio football commentary which we have known in Kenya. His focus is not limited to the football match event, and to comprehend it one has to consult other frames of interpretation beyond the football match event. These narratives not only invoke a socio-cultural context but are also constructed and performed in a way that closely relates them to aspects of the oral traditional performance. I investigate this phenomenon in the light of the concept of radio football commentary as an envisioning process, and argue that such envisioning goes beyond the football match event to the wider perceptions and social myths of both the community of fans and the wider society and culture.

Copyright Licensing Revisited

On 29 September 2008, the United Kingdom High Court of Justice referred to the European Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling inKaren Murphy v. Media Protection Services Limited. This referral concerned the use of foreign decoder cards in the United Kingdom in order to gain access to encrypted satellite transmissions of live English Premier League football matches. Karen Murphy, a pub owner in Southsea, had allegedly been using the much cheaper Greek satellite decoder card to receive and screen live Premier League matches in public.

The Performance of Football Club Managers: Skill or Luck?

This paper evaluates the extent to which the performance of English Premier League football club managers can be attributed to skill or luck when measured separately from the characteristics of the team. We first use a specification that models managerial skill as a fixed effect and we examine the relationship between the number of points earned in league matches and the club’s wage bill, transfer spending, and the extent to which they were hit by absent players through injuries, suspensions or unavailability. We next implement a bootstrapping approach to generate a simulated distribution of average points that could have taken place after the impact of the manager has been removed. The findings suggest that there are a considerable number of highly skilled managers but also several who perform below expectations. The paper proceeds to illustrate how the approach adopted could be used to determine the optimal time for a club to part company with its manager. We are able to identify in advance several managers who the analysis suggests could have been fired earlier and others whose sackings were hard to justify based on their performances.

The pre-adoption demographic and health profiles of men participating in a programme of men’s health delivered in English Premier League football clubs

To investigate the pre-adoption demographic and health profiles of men participating in a programme of men's health delivered in English Premier League (EPL) football clubs. A series of match day and programmed health promotion interventions held in EPL clubs (n=16), including awareness-raising activity days for supporters, weekly healthy lifestyle classes, and outreach activities targeted in local communities. Interventions were delivered at football stadia, club training venues and community facilities. Interventions were run by health trainers who received specific training in men's health and behavioural change activities. Participants completed self-report measures for demographics and lifestyle behaviours, including physical activity, consumption of fruit and vegetables, smoking, height, weight, consumption of alcohol and perception of health. Measurement occurred before the interventions. Data were independently analysed and used to assess adoption of the interventions and pre-intervention health profiles of participants. Nine hundred and forty-six men adopted the interventions, but the mode of engagement led to variations in the sample size. Demographics showed that 89% (n=783/875) were aged 18-44 years and 78% (n=685/878) were White British. In a subsample, the percentages of men failing to meet health guidelines were as follows: physical activity, 79%(n=351/440); consumption of fruit and vegetables, 82% (n=315/380); smoking, 28% (n=103/373); high body weight, 67% (n=245/358); and high alcohol consumption, 40% (n=112/279). Sixty-nine percent of men (n=242/348) considered that they had no health problems, but 67% (n=208/310) presented with three or more risk factors for coronary heart disease. Over 40% (n=125/307) reported never going to see their general practitioner. A national programme of men's health promotion interventions delivered in EPL football clubs was effective in reaching target audiences. Interventions were predominantly adopted by men not meeting health guidelines.

‘Reproduction’ And ‘Communication to the Public’ Rights in EU Copyright Law: FAPL v QC Leisure

In Football Association Premier League v QC Leisure, a dispute arose regarding the supply of (genuine) Greek satellite decoder cards to pubs and bars in the UK. The Football Association Premier League grants exclusive territorial licenses to broadcasters in different Member States. In the UK, the exclusive licensee is Sky and in Greece it is Nova, and the subscription fees charged by these broadcasters vary by thousands of pounds. In this case, Greek satellite decoder cards, which cost considerably less, were used by the operators of UK premises to receive live broadcasts of English Premier League football matches from satellite channels outside the UK (ie from Greece).

‘Over here’: ‘Americanization’ and the new politics of football club ownership – the case of Liverpool FC

This paper focuses on arguments concerning sport and Americanization, especially in relation to English Premier League football clubs. The central case study here is of Liverpool football club in the north-west of England. The recent economic trajectory of football in England is analysed, as is the current attractiveness of the English game to foreign investors. The specific history and traditions of the Liverpool club and the city of Liverpool is offered as a means of contextualizing the initial response locally to the leveraged buyout by Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr early in 2007. The paper considers the almost complete breakdown of relations between the new owners and Liverpool fans between autumn 2007 and spring 2008. It concludes that in attempting to maintain core aspects of the Liverpool club's organic traditions the Liverpool board, paradoxically, paved the way to the excessive commodification of the club and the alienation of many of its own supporters.

I just want to watch the match! A reflective account of men's health themed match day events at an English Premier League Football Club

I just want to watch the match! A reflective account of men's health themed match day events at an English Premier League Football Club

Arsenal in Bugamba: The rise of English Premier League football in Uganda (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article documents the recent upsurge of interest in English Premier League (EPL) football in one village in rural South‐western Uganda. It argues that this new fandom stems from the media reforms that were introduced in Uganda after 1986, and that the craze has already produced a range of unexpected, and in some ways profound, social effects.