Aston Villa co-owner Wes Edens ready to embrace data

Co-owner Wes Edens believes numbers and data will play an increasing role in Villa’s future transfer activity.

The billionaire also co-owns US basketball side Milwaukee Bucks where he has enjoyed huge success by identifying players through analytics. And he believes football will see a shift where numbers take on a more significant role to traditional scouting techniques.

“I always tell people in our businesses great judgment, overrated, great information, underrated,” Edens said.

“If you have great information most of the decisions are pretty simple, so I feel in soccer they’ve got a long way to go in terms of analytics data.

“I feel there’s a lot to be caught up to, honestly, and I believe in the end when you look there’s a number of NBA owners and US sports owners that have done tremendously well (in football).

“You have Stan Kroenke at Arsenal, John Henry at Liverpool. They’ve got tremendous teams and I’ve talked to them and others about their experiences. “I think that there are a lot more similarities than differences but there are some big differences for sure.”