An update and the future of Talking Tactics
I am still here to stay, and I won't be leaving anytime soon, but there will be a few changes.
Dear readers and subscribers,
It has been almost a year since I returned to blogging and writing articles, and I have been enjoying the journey so far. I will give a short summary of what I am about to write, but essentially, I have no intention of stopping anytime soon since I loved every article that I have put out so far. A part of that is thanked to you, reader/subscriber, and your support for what I am doing. But as we are close to enter the second half of 2025 (crazy, right?), there will be a few changes moving forward. And no, I am not going to monetised this blog as I intend to keep it free for everyone while also trying to have fun along the way.
I feel a sense of responsibility with my readers and subscribers, and that means I want to update you on what the future will look like for Talking Tactics. So…
What’s happening?
Not wanting to drag your mood down, but a lot has happened since I returned to blogging!
I have transitioned to a full-time job (not in football, though I can only wish, but semi-adjacent) and working two jobs have taken a decent chunk of my time lately. I was also working with [redacted] for the past 6-7 months or so on some football projects, and while I still cannot reveal who [redacted] is (to not jinx my future chances), I really enjoyed that period.
But that meant I was taking on three jobs at the time and it took up all of the free time that I had to work on projects for this blog and some public football work. Add that with the fact that all of that work was unpaid (though voluntary) and the realisation that I might not find my breakthrough in football analytics due to reasons beyond my control, and that tanked my motivation a lot. I have experienced burn out before, while being a part-time football writer about a few years ago and balancing my high school studies, and it was a scary place to be in.
So, I have decided to take a step back and focus on the things that I can control. But enough about my own stuff…
What about Talking Tactics?
As mentioned at the beginning, I am here to stay, and you can expect more articles from me! However, as I try to refill that motivation tank and keep the fire inside me burning, I won’t be posting articles as frequently as the past few months. Expect more quiet periods from me, but I will try my best to post at least once per month until I can sort everything out.
Firstly, I will remove the “Daryl’s Notebook” label from future articles since I have been treating my blog like a place where I write down all thoughts related to football anyway. It does not make sense for me to use that label in everything that I write anymore. Still, I will retain the casual vibes of most articles to give it something new instead of following the usual formal writing style that you might have seen in The Athletic or Opta Analyst. I am not saying here that such writing style is bad, I even enjoy articles from both publications every now and then. But as someone who has been hugely influenced by YouTube and Twitch, I want my writing style to mirror creators who have made contents that I really enjoyed watching over the past year or so.
Secondly, the “What I learned…” series will go into a long hiatus as I slowly realised watching many matches at a time could lead to fatigue. I will do more “Quick thoughts on…”, more so for single matches that I enjoyed watching, but I will stay true to its name and put a bit less effort into that series. The series is meant to be a place where I note down raw thoughts while watching the match, but the perfectionist in me keeps wanting to go all out and that ends up with me creating visualisations and annotated videos to go along with the article. That whole process takes me about a day or so to do it, like what it would take a normal analyst to cut the full matches into clips and then draw graphics to highlight their points, which defeats the purpose of the series itself.
Speaking of annotated videos, thirdly, I will also be doing less of that. While I can do it thanks to past experiences of working as a video analyst, I have not found a decent-enough process to help me cut clips and annotate them quickly for these articles, which then becomes a burden as it drags the whole process of completing an article out for much longer than I want it to be. Moving to Linux definitely has not helped either since all specialised applications, including the one that I am using (Metrica Playbase at the time of writing), only support MacOS and Windows. I will save that talk for another day since it is a whole ordeal to set up.
Fourthly, I will be focusing more on longer, slightly bigger projects now that there is more time between articles. I have a habit of starting projects, then never complete it cause I lost interest in it, or I realised that it would take a lot of effort and time to finish. There are a few articles that are currently stuck in the “Draft Dungeon” and might never see the light of day, or even past ideas that I have completely scrapped. So, this is more of a note for myself, but I will practice the habit of seeing out a project more from now on.
Lastly, there will be a slight change in what I will be writing about. After a long period of trying out both tactical/video analysis and data analysis, I found myself enjoyed working with data a lot more. The approach for me is still balancing between data and tactical, maybe use data to support my tactical observations like I have been doing for the past few months, but I just want to do more stuff with data in general. I will also be doing more tech talks as it is an excuse for me to learn and try out more tech-related things, like new applications, platforms, software, or even Linux stuff. It is a slight diversion from what I have been writing about, but I am always open to try new stuff, and I hope you will enjoy it too.
Wrapping up
Finally, thank you for your support once again! Coming back to blogging was a big decision for me, but with my own blog, I have control over what and when I want to write, and that gives me the platform to create something that I am truly proud of while testing out new ideas here and there. I also feel that I am responsible for your support as well, and that perfectionist in me will not allow me to publish something that is crappy and I do not feel good about, which you might not enjoy reading either.
One last time, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for supporting my blog, whether you have subscribed or not. As I have stated in the welcome page, you do not have to subscribe, but if you enjoy what I do, feel free to bookmark my blog and check back every now and then for new articles. I am not going anywhere, anytime soon, so expect new stuff coming out soon!