With an unsung hero in Glenn Whelan, the unrequited love interest of Stephen Ireland and the black sheep of Andy Reid, Ireland's journey towards World Cup qualification already has a better plot-line than 'Moneyball' to make a movie but, over the next two games, we will find out whether Giovanni Trapattoni's decision to ignore traditional football wisdom of seeing players in the flesh will prove to have a happy ending.įor Trapattoni (potentially played by Michael Douglas if the movie was ever made), such public displays of affliction are unnecessary. To those who might enjoy watching a movie based on statistics, 'Moneyball' starring Brad Pitt in the role of Oakland manager Billy Beane is due for release in 2011 and it would be cruel to ruin the ending by revealing just how well they did. The central theme is that traditional baseball statistics were a flawed way of analysing performance and, consequently, players whose abilities were less pronounced but more beneficial to a team ethic were overlooked.Īs a result of such a strategy and picking up these unsung heroes, the Oakland A's team enjoyed a successful 2002 season despite their relative lack of spending power. Like quoting Vince Lombardi or Al Pacino in 'Any Given Sunday', this 'nerdification' of the game comes from America where the book 'Moneyball' became required reading for anybody looking to maximise their squad's limited potential and then bore people to tears with an explanation of how they did it. It also assesses a team's system of coping with set-pieces which is why, against Liverpool for example, if a dead-ball is delivered into a certain area, their opponents know they have a chance of scoring because there might not be a red shirt in that zone. Such levels of commitment bordered on insane but with the advancement of technology, managers can spend time in the comforts of an office with computer and television screens rather than freezing alongside the die-hards at a Wednesday night reserve game.Ĭomputer systems such as Prozone are employed by most Premier League teams to track aspects of every player's performance, ranging from the distance they travelled in a game to the amount of passes they made. Would I have got married in the football season?" he asked.
"Of course I didn't take my wife to see Rochdale as an anniversary present. It's a story he subsequently denied, but not for the reason most people would expect. Of the many stories linked to Bill Shankly during his time as Liverpool manager, one had him bringing his wife to see Rochdale as an anniversary present. THERE was a time when managers couldn't get enough of going to football matches to scout the opposition or potential signings.
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