How to Win the Premier League

'The best book on football I have ever read' Daniel Finkelstein'Deserves a place among the great modern books on football' Sam Wallace, chief football writer, TelegraphThe insider account of the data revolution that has swept through the modern football world written by one of its key architects, Ian Graham.Between 2012 and 2023, Ian Graham worked as Liverpool FC's Director of Research. His tenure coincided with the club’s greatest period of success since the 1980s, including winning the Premier League in 2020 – Liverpool’s first league title after an agonising 30 years.Here for the first time, Graham reveals the fascinating data that informed some of the club’s most pivotal moments of the past decade, from the appointment of Jurgen Klopp as manager in 2015 to the signing of Mohamed Salah in 2017. Along the way, he shares groundbreaking insight into the modern game, including how a season largely played behind closed doors transformed our understanding of a home-side advantage, or why the GOAT (greatest of all time) might not be who you think. And, in a game that is increasingly dominated by an elite few, Graham charts a path for the future where a data-savvy competitor will always find the edge.

This is the best book on football I have ever read. Ian Graham is totally brilliant. Make sure not to miss out upon learning from him, A book to usher in football’s 21st century data revolution – one of the most significant changes in the history of the game. All of it told by a man at the centre of Liverpool FC’s attempt to get to grips with the challenge of using data analytics to develop a model that delivered a Champions League and Premier League winning team at less than the cost of many of their rivals. “How To Win The Premier League” deserves a place among the great modern books on football. Ian Graham tells us that many of the answers to successful recruitment, and indeed playing style itself, are there in the numbers – one just has to find a way of deciphering them. Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool era delivered a strong body of evidence that those theories were right. For new students of concepts such as Expected Goals or Possession Value, there are explanations comprehensible for those without a PhD in statistics. For those who simply want to hear some great tales about how Liverpool came to sign Mo Salah, or why Brendan Rodgers was so committed to acquiring Christian Benteke, there is plenty more as well. Written with clarity and a sense of fun, Ian Graham explains some of the strategies behind one of the most successful eras in Liverpool FC’s history., Never before has the data revolution in football been described so much from the inside. And not from a marginalised figure, but from someone at the forefront of the revolution who has helped two of the biggest clubs in the world to look at football in a completely new way and work radically differently. It says a lot of things I've always wanted to know, and it makes it clear that data analysis is not a magic trick, but hard work and an ongoing process of distilling practical information from the data.

Ian Graham is the founder of sports advisory business Ludonautics, where he develops statistical tools for the prediction of football matches and the performance analysis of players. He is one of the original architects of the data revolution that has swept through football.Between 2012 and 2023, Ian worked for Liverpool FC as Director of Research and built the first in-house analytics department in the Premier League. He was previously head of football research at Decision Technology. He holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge.