The impact of foreign players in the English premier league: a mathematical analysis

Abdul, A., Chattopadhyay, Amit K. and Jain, S. (2025) The impact of foreign players in the English premier league: a mathematical analysis. OPSEARCH. ISSN 0975-0320

Preview

PDF Download (6MB) | Preview

Abstract

We undertake extensive analysis of English Premier League data over the period 2009/10 to 2017/18 to identify and rank key factors affecting the economic and footballing performances of the teams. Alternative end-of-season league tables are generated by re-ranking the teams based on five different descriptors—total expenditure, total funds spent on players, total funds spent on foreign players, the ratio of foreign to British players and the overall profit. The unequal distribution of resources and expenditure between the clubs is analyzed through Lorenz curves. A comparative analysis of the differences between the alternative tables and the conventional end-of-season league table establishes the most likely factors to influence the performances of the teams that we also rank using Principal Component Analysis. We find that the top teams in the league are also those that tend to have the highest expenditure overall, for all players, including foreign players; they also have the highest ratios of foreign to British players. Our statistical and machine learning study also indicates that successful performance on the field may not guarantee healthy profits at the end of the season.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	English premier league; Correlation coefficients; Lorenz curve; PDF
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HA Statistics Q Science > QA Mathematics G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure > Sports > Soccer
Divisions:	School of Business > Staff Research and Publications
Depositing User:	Tamara Malone
Date Deposited:	03 Jul 2025 10:51
Last Modified:	03 Jul 2025 10:51
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/8018

Actions (login required)

View Item