There will be successful clubs that continue to push "total football" developments onto more positions on the pitch, but equally there will be successful teams that execute the old more rigid positional "rules" effectively. There's no one best way to play.

DelonteWestSideStory (love the name): Rating keepers shows the limits of the statistics we have in the sport currently and possibly for the future as well. If you look at most player rating systems, for example the Castrol Player Index, the crappier the club, the more likely it is that the keeper is rated as the…

Great question. If you read The Numbers Game, we spend a lot of time on possession and whether it means anything. A great example of a club that shunned the ball successfully was Stoke for the last several seasons. (Of course, that didn't help Tony Pulis' long term future there!) One of the themes that we press…

We have to be patient with soccer statistics in general. Look at baseball, the number of years that the sport has had to refine its numbers, and the controversy they're still having over "wins" and the Cy Young (thanks Brian Kenny). There will be many more mis-steps and, more importantly, refinements by soccer clubs…

Far enough for an academic, I suppose.