Written by Simon Austin — June 27, 2024
Derby County have played a major role in appointing Ed Smith and Mo Bobat as new joint heads of sports intelligence – perhaps fitting for a club with a manager named Warne.
The duo have never worked full-time in football before, having made their names with England Cricket, where Smith was national selector and Bobat performance director.
“The club was keen not to make the mistakes that Derby – and other clubs – have made in the past,” Bobat says, with an understatement.
That’s where he and Smith come in. Bobat worked for England Cricket for over 12 years in total, becoming their director of performance in November 2019 and helping to win two World Cups (the 50-over version in 2019 and the Twenty20 in 2022). ).
It was during his time at the ECB that he worked alongside Smith, the former Kent, Middlesex and England batsman who was national coach from 2018 to 2021. The pair went on to set up a performance consultancy called Acuitas and have an “aligned vision and values”, yet their skills are complementary, Bobat explains.
“With England, Ed was responsible for player selection at team level. My job was to operate the machine behind the scenes, ensuring that our analyses, scouting, and journeys all contributed to the overall vision. Our wish is to try and apply what we have learned and experienced in other sports, mainly cricket, to football. »
Working closely with Derby CEO Stephen Pearce, they began with “a review of some of the club’s processes” and “provided some recommendations”, before committing to a formal partnership.
The Sporting Intelligence department will directly supervise four areas: sports science and medicine (“the doctor, physiotherapists, fitness trainer, nutritionist, psychology, soft tissue therapists”), data analysis, identification of talent (research) and talent acquisition (recruitment). .
“Our job will be to organize and align thinking in these areas and improve it through very good analysis,” Bobat says.
In addition, Sporting Intelligence will “support and inform both football environments”, namely Paul Warne’s first team and Matt Hale’s academy.
Bobat and Smith will spend 200 days together at the East Midlands club. Bobat has another important role, that of director of cricket for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL, which he has held since last September, but he says this will still provide him with the opportunity to do other important tasks.
“I love the role I play in the IPL with RCB, but the nature of the season is that it is quite short, as the competition is over pretty much in three months,” he explains. “There’s obviously still work to do outside of that, but it’s given me the space to try my luck in football.”
“We have partnered with Palantir, an organization with world-leading analytics, AI and machine learning capabilities,” he explains. “They have done a lot of work with the Ministry of Defense and the NHS, among others, and we are applying this software in sport. They work with organizations, pitch their software, and provide engineering, helping organizations solve problems they wouldn’t be able to solve otherwise.
“I think this partnership gives us a real opportunity. Palantir has a number of different software platforms, including its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), which is quite sophisticated. It can help us evolve to solutions much faster than standard analytics would allow.
“We are working with them on a few projects over time and hope to be able to get some very useful information and make some interesting predictions. We want them to work with myself and Ed to make Derby a best-in-class analytics company. »
There has already been one major appointment within the Sporting Intelligence unit: new head of sports science and medicine Rob Price, who previously worked at Leeds United for six years.
“We are really excited about his appointment,” admits Bobat. “Rob has a strong pedigree and calibre and will bring real value to Sporting Intelligence and the club as a whole.”
Palantir will be a big part of that.
“Their approach is to consult and leave people prepared and able to do the process, but we don’t want to depend on them forever. We want to benefit from their software and systems and initially from their expertise.
Once again, Bobat emphasizes that data alone will not be enough and that a new culture must mean “making sure that we ask really good questions, that we get really good answers, and that we iterate on the answers.” »
In general, Smith will focus more on bottom-up management and providing insights into Sporting Intelligence to the CEO and board, while Bobat will have more hands-on involvement within the department.
The duo strongly believes in “a hybrid between data and human elements,” which is the main theme of Smith’s book. Make decisions.
This is why it has been so important to build a relationship with manager Warne and his coaching staff and utilize their footballing knowledge and expertise.
“Ed and I have been very impressed with the quality of people who are already at the club,” Bobat said. “Paul and his coaching staff did an outstanding job building the team last season and we enjoyed getting to know them after their arrival in November.
“It is important to have football expertise that always brings context. We will not arrive at intelligent answers if we do not have the commitment of football experts in addition to our data analyses. This is where we can really make a difference, by connecting the human to the data.”
“I have known Paul quite well since November. He is very welcoming, open-minded, curious and extremely humble. I have been really impressed by his approach. He always says: ‘I am open to anything that can help us.’”
“It is important that Ed and I position Palantir alongside Paul Warne and his coaching team. We won’t arrive at intelligent answers if we don’t get engagement from football experts alongside our data analyses. It’s good to have such an open-minded and confident manager. It’s the same with the rest of his coaching staff and you just want to return the favor.”
Football has traditionally had a reputation for being wary of outsiders, but Bobat insists certain themes are transferable between different sports and beyond. One of them is the lineout, and that’s what he insists exists at Derby.
“I was fortunate to work with England Cricket for a number of years and we were able to win two World Cups,” he said. “One of the reasons we have achieved great things in white-ball cricket is the strong sense of alignment between the chief executive, coach, captain and players.
“That influenced the types of players we looked for and how we approached tactics and player development. If there’s a common thread, then you’ve got a good chance of making sure everyone is pulling in the same direction.
