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Former Norwich City Sporting Director Stuart Webber delivered a very insightful Masterclass for our Analytics Members yday on future of analytics. Told this really interesting story about how club came to sign Emi Buendia & Teemu Pukki -2 of great signings of recent seasons 🧵
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Buendia was playing on loan at Cultural Leonesa, who were bottom of Spanish 2nd Division at the time His goals/ assists weren't impressive at all and he didn't seem to have physical profile for Championship. But his expected assists were off the scale

His stats had piqued the interest of scouts Chris Badlan & @MarielaNisotaki Then, by watching videos and doing human scouting, club saw he was creating great chances but Leonesa simply didn't have the calibre/ profile of striker to capitalise on them.

Neither did Norwich, so they scoured market for a forward who was expert at running in behind/ could capitalise on chances Buendia created. That led them to Teemu Pukki. Just released by Brondby/ available on a free. Allied to Buendia, who was signed for under £1m

Duo became 2 of the best signings in the Championship in recent seasons. Pukki was Championship player of the year/ scored 30 goals in 2018/19 to take Norwich back to Premier League. Buendia scored 15 goals and got 16 assists in 2020/21 and was named Champ player of season.

Perhaps even more importantly for a self-financing club like Norwich, they sold Buendia to Aston Villa for £33m rising to £38m in June 2021. Not a bad deal for someone who had cost less than £1m three years earlier.

It was "a very very good example of the 2 worlds (of data and human scouting) colliding," admits Webber. "If you just looked at his stats of goals and assists (Buendia), you wouldn't have signed him."

We do a couple of Masterclasses a month for TGG x @twelve_football Analytics Members There's also the chance to pitch your work to experts/ create a personal profile/ watch library of tutorials and get involved in our invite-only Slack Channel 👇👇

@Soccermatics @non_linear_b @David_laslo93
