As we're unlikely to see terraces again at football, this is the virtual equivalent where you can chat to your hearts content about all football matters and, obviously, Arsenal in particular. This forum encourages all Gooners to visit and contribute so please keep it respectful, clean and topical.
There's a new film out soon, called Moneyball. You may be familiar with the book. It's about a baseball team's use of sabermetrics - analyzing the sport through game statistics - and how they built a successful squad with a relatively disadvantage amount of resources.
Later on, several authors applied this model to football and wrote the book "Soccernomics", a fascinating look at the development of the game. The authors developed this list:
1. A new manager wastes money on transfers; don't let him.
2. Use the wisdom of crowds. (ie: use committee's to make decisions)
3. Stars of recent World Cups or European championships are overvalued; ignore them.
4. Certain nationalities are overvalued.
5. Older players are overvalued.
6. Center forwards are overvalued; goalkeepers are undervalued.
7. Gentlemen prefer blonds; identify and abandon "sight-based prejudices".
8. The best time to buy a player is when he is in his early twenties.
9. Sell any player when another club offers more than he is worth.
10. Replace your best players even before you sell them.
11. Buy players with personal problems, and then help them deal with their problems.
12. Help your players relocate.
Now, others have discussed how Liverpool has been largely following this model - a facet of their new owners, NESV, who built a very successful Red Sox team using the sabermetric method.
As I recall, Oakland's(?) revolutionary use of new techniques and ideas only worked until everybody else caught on to it, and those with more money gained even bigger advantages.
The main principal of moneyball was to take advantage of players with skills that other clubs didn't value highly. This was when poor defensive but good homerun hitters were highly valued.
Oakland did ok with this in the early 2000s did well in the league but poorly in postseason playoffs never winning the world series and only once getting out of the first round.
Since Oakland is such a small market this may have been as good as it could get for them. Like Sam Allardyce at Bolton when he got them into Europe.
