Managing Madrid Podcast: Mailbag with Ryan O’Hanlan, on football analytics, measuring process over results, Raul as Castilla manager, and more

This mailbag edition of the Managing Madrid Podcast comes in two parts.

Part 1 (Kiyan Sobhani, Ryan O’Hanlan of NoGrassInTheClouds)

- Fernando Torres’s retirement

- Metrics to measure positional performance, and what space a player should be in on the pitch when his team has the ball

- How xP is calculated

- How Real Madrid underperformed their xP last season

- How much does Zinedine Zidane’s three-peat give him a pass?

- Is Paul Pogba’s attitude really a significant distraction?

- What does he bring to the table on the pitch?

- Jan Oblak’s freak stats that make him undeniably the best goalkeeper in the world

- The importance of a ball-playing GK

- Was this season peak-Messi?

- And more

Part 2 (Kiyan Sobhani, Matt Wiltse, Gabe Lezra)

- How far away are we from baseball analytics?

- How much would our La Liga form change over the past few years if we consistently had a second striker?

- More lingering Marcos Llorente questions

- Will other players follow Llorente’s path?

- Raul as Castilla manager

- Comparing the season to the 2015 / 2016 season

- And more

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Hosts this week:

Gabe Lezra (@ElEzrah)

Kiyan Sobhani (@KiyanSo)

Matt Wiltse (@MattWiltse4)

Ryan O’Hanlan (@rwohan)