Which one, Ward or Bamber?!
May as well do both 
The player ID and analytics stuff will, I think, continue without missing a beat - thatâs very much a team effort and not down to Edwards alone. Where I wonder is around negotiations and contracts.
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Ward I havenât met or spoken with but his track record within the club is patchy. Aspas, Moreno, Ilori, Markovic, he pushed very hard for these guys. He was then moved from Iberia scout to player pathways.
Seemingly he has impressed there although again, Iâm struggling to see much evidence of improvement. Heâs got himself and the club in bother on a couple of occasions as well. Maybe we can put these down to learning experiences?
As for Bamber, heâs part of the in-house legal team. I met him about 5 years ago now. He was neither bright nor knowledgeable about player contracts or football governance and regulation. I think he came from having worked in house at Nike so maybe heâs good on commercial sponsorships?
Of course, he could have gained a lot more knowhow in the last 5 years but donât see how he could have grown some more brains. Which he needs.
Sorry, pretty catty of me. Itâs probably just jealousy that heâs doing my dream job and I know that Iâd do it a whole lot better.
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Haha, nah itâs all good mate. Cheers for the insight.
Hopefully Ward doesnât get us in bother in his new role!
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I have hired Edwards as my new sporting director to teach me how to fucking sign 18 year olds in Football Manager without paying the ridiculous sum quoted by the clubs
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The challenge with big data is that even when it shows something the signals tend to be difficult to pick out from the noise. The result is it very easy for different people with different preexisting biases to use the same model and same data to make drastically different practical conclusions.
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Sad to hear about Edwards. Been expected for a while though. As far as these things go, the transition is being handled as well as possible, with good wishes and lots of respect all round. Still, we are losing a top member of the team, so the sense of loss is understandable.
Good luck to Ward. Big shoes to fill. Beyond that it sounds like the rest of the team is staying intact, so arguably the transition will not be as big a deal as we might think.
Next step for Edwards? Good shout on going to one of the governing bodies and sorting them out. If it is to another club, Iâm hoping it is elsewhere in Europe.
Man City, Man Utd, Chelsea or Newcastle would all hurt, so hopefully he doesnât do that, even if he is fully entitled to do what he wants as a free agent.
Heâll still have post termination restrictive covenants though. Should stop him from immediately going anywhere that would be painful.
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Hope so!
What ifâŚhe is going to join Villa together as Gerrardâs backroom team?
Massive âshe wasnât that pretty anywayâ energy here, but people need to be realistic about the prospects for repeating that success elsewhere. For as good as he has been there are so many things that could have happened at this club that would have prevented us ever seeing it. I think the most obvious is if a different manager would have come in after BR.
I think conditions required for roles like this to be overtly successful require such a precarious balance that replicating the success elsewhere requires him to not just maintain his standards, but hope the other people are in place to allow his work to be realized. That suggests that maybe the best approach is to not just go somewhere else and try it again, but to do something altogether different where those strengths can be utilized.
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He has said he isnt going to Newcastle (I think) and Melissa Reddy has confirmed that on TAW
Shame he is going as I think this squad needs a shake up and couldve done with his skills of swapping Origi for Mbappe!
A source in the Athletic article this morning described the idea of Edwards going to Newcastle as âlaughableâ.
He may even decide to take a bit of a break from the game while he considers his next move, I really do think he doesnât have anything lined up currently.
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Listening to TAW podcast now Reddy has said he has no interest in going Newcastle - so updated my original post.
Yes, but also no. In any case, he wasnât the one handling the data. The models were all built by Graham.
Werid one with Aspas, evidently he wasnât much here but he has shown in Spain that he isnât actually all that bad.
Markovic was lazy and probably wouldnât have arrived under Klopp. I think thatâs generally the issue it was each area seemed to buy one each. Rodgers wasnât interested in those who were bought for him, he froze Firmino out.
Not saying any of the four you mention would have gone on to better things but as assistant he will have been involved in some of Edwards stuff. If you are working solely off the data then it doesnât really surprise me that youâd buy someone like Aspas.
Sid Lowe who covers Spain for the Guardian (or did?) was pretty excited to see Liverpool sign Aspas. He has shown since he went back to Spain that he is talented.
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That is my point. We will have the same data but different human intelligence making decisions based on it. The prospect for radically different outcomes is very real.
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What I meant is that Iâd imagine all the data analytics side of things wonât change, nor will the recommendations that come out of it. Maybe the importance being placed on the outputs might change, but the outputs themselves and what they show wonât.