I am not happy with the quality of the research we are producing and the topics we are reporting on. It is close but not what I envisioned our research would be. I am going to take some time to try to fix the system that produces the reports.

Tactics Journal Research is supposed to find something so obscure, in any language, no one would find it, and then write a detailed report on it. Something a coach could apply to their team tomorrow and have an edge on their opponent.

It was finding things but I didn’t feel like it was handling certain types of sources correctly, like press conferences for example. These managers drop so many little nuggets of information in press conferences and interviews. It wasn’t detecting them well enough.

I take pride in the fact that I do not take credit for writing the reports. We use artificial intelligence to write the reports. I take pride in the fact that I heavily manually edit what it outputs, but I did not write it. And I really have to manually edit it most times because it’s brilliant but incredibly difficult to work with.

If you are not utilizing the new technology to get an edge on everyone else, you are doing yourself a massive disservice. It is a tool. Use artificial intelligence to grow what you know rather than how others use it to make themselves more lazy and dumb.

We use it to learn, teams like Real Madrid use it to make horrendous transfer announcement videos.

My plan has changed. I was going to, for the sake of funding to implement more data (expensive data) into the reports, I was going to paywall the reports. I’ve changed my mind.

Public research will remain free forever. Round of applause to me. The crowd goes wild. People are shirtless, waving their shirts in the air. I don’t like paywalls.

I plan on creating tailored research for smaller clubs, who don’t have the big budget, where you could input your team, all your players, and we tailor the reports to your team. We suggest training regimens for your players, point out weaknesses in your opponents, and more. I’m very excited to explore that and talk with staff at those clubs.

The one big decision I have to make is this. Should the reports focus more on “original research” or simply reporting on and explaining the trends we detect?

When I say “original,” I mean something like this. We detect that a team has started defending their goal kicks with a front two that splits rather than presses as a pair. Instead of describing it, we pull every goal kick that team has faced this season, chart where the first pass went, and measure how often the split actually forced the ball wide compared to the games where they pressed as a pair. Now the trend has a number attached to it, and that number either supports the read or kills it. That takes a lot of time to craft each report, even if it is done by a machine, because you have to do quality assurance. It’s expensive time wise and money wise.

You can make a lot of crap easily now, the hard part is making something worth remarking about.

If we go with original research, then I wouldn’t be able to post every day and most of the trends we detect will not get reported on. Not ideal.

If we continue to simply report on emerging tactics, then I could post one time, two times, three times, four times a day, easily. And that would help with tailored research because you’d have more opportunities to learn something new every day.

But I want to produce quality over quantity. It is capable of producing that but I will only allow it to produce that if it is helpful.

The problem is no longer if we are able to do it because it doesn’t sleep. The problem is if we should do it.

I’m leaning more towards reporting on trends. Making you aware of the trend. Posting daily.

This is what feels like the 30th version of our system, but this period of change and tinkering shouldn’t take that long, I hope, but I feel like it will be worth it in the long run.

I want you to become as addicted to deep research as I did last year. That is the goal.