Bloom leading the way for AI in Scottish football at Hearts

When the new Hearts investor, Tony Bloom, told the Tynecastle supporters that he would be disappointed if the club didn't win the title in the next decade, those in the room punched the air in delight.

When his comments filtered out beyond the capital, others either sighed or snickered.

Scottish football has heard these promises before. Wealthy backers vowing to topple Celtic and Rangers, only for the dream to collapse under the weight of reality.

But the world as we know it, football included, is moving into a world where the narrative of the impossible is being rewritten almost daily.

This is the world of artificial intelligence and when it comes to football, nobody does it better than Bloom.

"It's a very secretive organisation," said Lee Mooney, who spent six years as head of data insights at Manchester City before starting his own firm MUD Analytics.

"You pick up bits in the industry over time.

"if you look at the betting business that he has, how it makes its money is by understanding the outcomes or probabilities of games better than everybody else.

"I think once you've got that kind of capability, and there's only a very small number of people with that level of capability, anywhere in the world, and you start deploying it into a club, you start to see a lot of value-add versus everybody else."

Mooney doesn't see any reason to view Bloom's claims about Hearts as anything other than credible, purely because of what he has at his disposal.

"if you look at some of the other teams he's been part of, if you look at Union-Saint Gilliose in Belgium, if you look at Brighton in England, their kind of pound-for-pound impact has been very, very high," he said.

"So if you think they've been able to get a £200 million outcome for £100m spend, that kind of impact.

"You take that to Scotland then, and do you have enough intellectual firepower to overcome the gap between the giant clubs and everybody else?

"It's hard to say for sure, but I think if there's anybody who's got a chance and has got the means to try and do that, I think possibly he does."

AI is the new battlefield in football and as well as a race for trophies, there's currently an arms race for the very latest tech.

The new technology is transforming areas such as analysis, player fitness and most importantly scouting.

"It initially started with the man doing the match report and player analysis but it's changing and the stuff we're seeing now is scary," said John Park, St Mirren's head of recruitment.

"Only last week we had students in from the engineering department of the University of Strathclyde, profiling players with us.

"We're right at the start of it and I think we may bring the students in to do their final thesis - who knows where it might go."

Park spent many years at Celtic and was responsible for the arrival of players like Virgil Van Dijk and Moussa Dembele - he's a man who knows a player.

He says the days of people resisting the new technology in football are over and points to player simulation as the next big breakthrough.

If club X is looking at player Y as a potential left-back, the technology now exists for AI to look at every single game player Y has ever played and put him into a simulated match alongside his potential new team-mates.

Analysts no longer have to predict how he might play in the team - they can watch his simulation perform in front of their eyes.

"It means we could essentially take the data to the manager and say 'look, he does fit us'," said Park.

Some of the biggest clubs in the world including Liverpool and Barcelona have led the way in the use of AI but as the price comes down, smaller leagues, including Scotland, are getting involved.

Under the proviso they would remain anonymous, we asked all 12 SPFL Premiership clubs if they currently use AI technology as part of analysis or scouting and half said yes.

Experts said they suspect the other half mostly likely do too, but just don't know that they do.

Can artificial intelligence really spot talent that a manager might otherwise miss?

Livingston manager David Martindale doesn't think so.

"AI can't get a feel," he said.

"AI is using data and numbers - I've grown up playing football all my days.

"Someone coming in from a business that's just turned over £100m with a profit of £40m doesn't neccessarily make them a football person.

"So I think people making footballing decisions within a footballing environment, I would trust a lot more than AI.

"I just wish it was around when I was doing my university degree - I would have graduated with distinction!"

The technology comes at a price, but according to those who know the business, it could be the ultimate example of speculate to accumulate.

"Scotland is a tough place to get these things to happen," said Mooney.

"There is a minimum cost of entry for a lot of this technology that is possibly beyond the reach of some of the smaller clubs in Scotland, but I think with the kind of growth of a what's available, clubs can spread those costs out and it becomes more accessible.

"I think as soon as the big clubs start to really embrace it then the other clubs will have to move in some form.

"With Scotland in particular, I think Celtic and Rangers have enough capacity to really pull away and never be caught if they manage themselves in the right way, so if they make any kind of move that's really evident the other clubs will have to do something drastic to stay near them or they'll just be left behind.

"Which I don't think is a good thing for Scottish football to be honest."

Tony Bloom, for one, would agree.