Billy Beane's use of stats at Oakland enabled him to build a winning team on the cheap, but only because a) baseball is broken up into very distinct periods of play, which allows a kind of statistical analysis not possible in, say, football (which the action may not stop for long periods), and because b) Bill James was able to show that the traditional statistics owners relied on when buying new players didn't mean much, and that there were other, much more reliable factors.

Soccernomics attempted to apply the same thing to football, but it's far less thorough in its analysis than either James' annual stats or Michael Lewis's Moneyball book. It's an entertaining read, but it's far more a socio-econonic study than a truly statistical one, and it prompts as many questions as it attempts to answer.

More people like Comolli will come into the game, and this will mean transfers that are more closely tied to actual player contribution rather than tabloid hysteria, but I think we're a while away from sabermetrics being a truly reliable measure of ability in football. Pro Zone will help.

...I have to agree with Fraser. The problem with football is that it has a spatial element to it which is very difficult to quantify because the position of the other players on the pitch matter so much. For example if a player has the ball 30 yards from goal, the chances of scoring are obviously different if there is no opposition player bar the keeper in front of him rather than all 10 of the other team's outfield players. Which statistics now collected take this into account?

Interestingly there has been research done using all the stats that are collected and all were found to be statistically insignificant for predicting how well a team would perform. Even shots (on target).

and where can we find out more about this research? I found the Moneyball book very interesting, and would like to know how and why it can/cannnot be applied to footie. Especially as a Liverpool supporter.

Sad, aren't I?

The results for music might be quite disappointing. I suspect ambition and workrate count a lot more than we might expect. Musical ability and singing for less than we would hope.

Any analytical tool based on statistics will have some inherent limitations:

1. It can only include quantitative 'metrics' (e.g. how many passes made, how many are forward, how many are successful, average distance, etc), and not qualitative information (e.g. how difficult was the pass, did the player select the 'right' option, etc).

2. There are many variables that are outside of the scope of the analysis, and the number and influence of these may serve to render misleading results (e.g. weather / pitch conditions, ability / form of team mates, game conditions - e.g. risky long balls into penalty area if losing 1-0 with 2 mins to go, safe short passes if leading 1 - 0 with 2 mins to go, etc). The most obvious of these will be tactics. This goes beyond formation and will reflect the wishes of the coach - it's probably fair to say that Arsene Wenger will send his left back out with rather different instructions to Sam Allardyce.

3. Where responsibilities are divided between one person for recruitment (i.e. squad) and another for coaching (i.e. team and tactics), then it is difficult to measure the success of the person in each role. Is Gareth Bale such a good player because Comolli's scouts spotted him (although he was hardly an unknown at Southampton), or because of the work of the Tottenham coaches in training him, or because of Harry Redknapp's tactics? I'm sure all 3 parties will claim the credit. What about Gomes, who looked poor at the start of his Spurs career, but then 'came good'? What about Darren Bent, not really a success but now flourishing at Sunderland? What about Gilberto, a flop? Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan. Although it is good for a club to have a strategy, unless they work as a team, the division of roles allows for finger pointing.