Assessing Efficiency and Ranking of English Premier League Strikers Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Assessing Efficiency and Ranking of English Premier League Strikers Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Performance evaluation and ranking of sports players have always been important objectives for decision-making in the sports industry. In this study, we introduce a powerful non-parametric methodology for the evaluation of performance and ranking based on the efficiency of players using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The goal of this work is to provide a methodology to improve efficiency of players to provide valuable benchmark information to the management of football clubs, their coaches, decision-makers, and football players. The study is based on the efficiency of strikers (forwards and midfielders) for the 2020-21 season of the English Premier League. The aggregate, technical, scale, and super efficiencies were estimated along with the nature of returns to scale and ranking in the case of forward and midfielder players separately by using the DEA approaches. Further, the study is extended to compare the mean efficiency of both types of strikers and the efficiency estimated by radial and non-radial approaches of DEA. Finally, based on our data analysis, we reported that the averages of radial and non-radial technical efficiency of forward strikers are ( .89) and ( .71), whereas the midfielder strikers are ( .83) and ( .66). It was also observed that the aggregate and scale efficiency of forward and midfielder strikers are statistically significant as competed to the technical and super efficiency.