Wisdom of crowds in football

The wisdom of crowds has come to English football. Myfootballclub's takeover of Ebbsfleet means 20,000 people will vote on its team selection;  Hapoel Kiryat Shalom in Israel do a similar thing.
Can this possibly work? Brian and Gary are sceptical. So am I.
The problem is that there are two big conditions necessary for the wisdom of crowds to work, and only one is present.
The one that's present is that each individual's opinion must be independent, and not influenced by others or the media. This independence ensures that one man's erroneous under-estimate of a player's ability is likely to be offset by another's wrong over-estimate, leading on average to a correct opinion.
Now, Ebbsfleet don't get so much press coverage that opinion is likely to be overly moulded by a handful of idiot journalists. Nor are their fans likely to be so numerous and passionate as to cause information cascades or herding.
However, the other condition - that knowledge be fragmented and dispersed - probably doesn't exist.
Even if the crowd know tactics and the opposition better than the coach, there are some things the coach should know better: how fit particular players are;  how well they're doing in training; who's available on a cheap loan or transfer; and so on.  In this respect, the coach has an edge, and should have the autonomy to use it.
For this reason, I doubt this experiment will work. Which means that if it does, there's a threat to managers in all businesses; if crowds really can supplant football coaches, why should any boss in any business be superior to democratic control?
This is not to say, though, that democracy has no place in football. Quite the opposite. Myfootballcub are just going the wrong way. Rather than replace the coach, there's a case for the crowd electing club chairmen - Barcelona seem to cope with such a system - or perhaps even the coach himself; as I've said, chairmen are terrible at appointing coaches, so seem to have no skill that a crowd couldn't have.    

Comments

[dearieme]

Woiuld the Arse nal crowd have appointed Wenger?

[reason]

Appointing the coach is difficult because you have too many variables involved (not to mention often secret negotiations). As regards picking the team, my guess it would work OK as long as the tactics are constant. Otherwise you run into the paradox of voting problems. Internally consistant preferences about players would clash with consistant preferences about formations resulting in an inconsistant combination of the two.

[reason]

To explain above - if you are like the German national team and ALLWAYS (including in the juniors) play 4-4-2 then picking a team is straightforward. Form is well known from the Bundesliga.

[mulberry alexa]

I just sent this post to a bunch of my friends as I agree with most of what you’re saying here and the way you’ve presented it is awesome.