Right, we’re back with the 4th update of the Moneyball in Football Manager 2019 series with Glasgow Rangers, and we’re at the end of the Summer transfer window, and partway through the beginning of the league season. Once again I want to thank everyone for the support so far, and in case anyone has missed any of the updates so far, they are here, here and here. In the third update, we ended the first season with Rangers, winning the league title by eleven points from Celtic, and making the First Knockout Round of the Europa League. Of course, this time we would have the opportunity to qualify for the Champions League group stages. We also assessed the Moneyball transfers I’d made throughout the first season, and on the whole, they were a success. However, we now have a second season of data to analyse, and one of the key tenets of Moneyball is to trust long-term trends more than anything as a way to evaluate true performance, and therefore value.
As a reminder, the conditions or rules that I’ve applied to my save come largely from the concepts outlined in Moneyball, but also from the excellent football economy books Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, and The Numbers Game by Chris Anderson and David Sally. If you need a reminder, below are the rules I’m using.