The game of baseball was altered a few years ago by a book. That book was Moneyball and it opened up the wider baseballing world to a way of thinking that, pre-publication, had been known only to an enlightened few.

Michael Lewis's bestseller (which is a lot more enthralling than I am about to make it sound) explained how for years, baseball followers and coaches had been concentrating on the wrong data. Certain plays were shown to be far more important than people thought (the walk) and some much less important (the steal). Relief pitchers were found to be overhyped. Decades of orthodoxy were thrown out of the window.

The game itself was not turned on its head. A top slugger was still a top slugger, a pitcher with a 100mph fastball was still going to throw a lot of strikeouts. But Moneyball demonstrated how applying objective analysis rather than relying on scouting judgments could make a team far more efficient. In focusing on the overachievement of Oakland Athletics, and Billy Beane, their far-sighted general manager, the book spawned copycats across America.

And the relevance to English sport is what, exactly? A couple of weeks ago, this column picked up an interview given by Arsène Wenger in which he revealed his reliance on - and obsession with - data. He uses the numbers in various ways, but specifically to judge the speed with which his players receive the ball and lay it off. We always knew that Wenger choreographed Arsenal's mesmerising one-touch passing, but never before had we realised that he has been doing it to the decimal point. The Frenchman will go to his computer the day after a game to check whether his hunches are supported by the statistics.

The column sparked a flurry of interest (there is a first time for everything) and a grateful e-mail from Total Youth Football magazine, a coaching resource, saying that its Wenger edition had sold faster than a Harry Potter novel. None of this puts the piece alongside Moneyball for influence or sales, but there were clearly a lot of people out there eager to see how Wenger's methods might be duplicated.

With the subject out there for debate, it raised the question of whether we have explored the limits of statistics in football. After all, the game has been developing for decades but it is only in the past ten years that the detail provided by a company such as ProZone has been available.

“Technical superiority can be measured,” Wenger said. His readouts tell him as much. But has even the professor of the Emirates Stadium taken the statistics as far as they can go? Is he reading the right numbers? Is something being missed?

The thought recurred talking to Sam Allardyce last week when he discussed his frustration at the reluctance of the Newcastle United players to embrace science. Allardyce explained how, during his time at Bolton Wanderers, he had worked out exactly the output he needed from, say, his left midfield player, including the number of forward runs and the quota of crosses. He knew the physical characteristics required from any player he signed in that position.

The science has become such an important part of his methodology that Allardyce is seeking a greater understanding. And he is not alone. Adrian Boothroyd, a devotee of Moneyball, has staff at Watford working to see how a more objective approach could be applied to football. It might be as simplistic as dividing how a striker scores his 20 goals a season. How many were self-created, how many were tap-ins? Is there a system that can mark him differently? Can we start to rank players scientifically rather than arguing the toss about it?

Of course, you cannot mention Boothroyd and Allardyce in the same sentence without someone saying that all statistics produce is robotic football. Both are familiar with the accusation and the news that Steve McClaren is a big fan of the statistical approach may not do much to recommend it in this country. As England head coach, he used to send a file of data to each player after an international. Yet no one would accuse Wenger's Arsenal of playing formulaic football.

There is also the old-school argument that Bill Shankly, Brian Clough and Sir Alf Ramsey did not need computer statistics to tell them who was a decent footballer. They knew just by watching. Which is true but, equally, we can never know whether, had ProZone been available in 1966, Ramsey might have used it to back up his judgment of going with Geoff Hurst ahead of Jimmy Greaves. The best managers are innovators or at the very least are able to move with the times.

Perhaps Ramsey would have understood that the data can be empowering. As Allardyce said: “You might tell a player, ‘You aren't making the runs.' And they'll say, 'Yes I am.'

“These days, a manager can come back and say, 'No you're not. And here's the evidence.'” Whether the analysis can be advanced in football is complicated by a number of factors, not least that, unlike baseball, ours is not a game of set-pieces. You can measure a batter's output with great accuracy but if you are truly to judge the success of Cesc Fàbregas's passing, you have to measure what the other ten players are doing around him.

For many clubs, there is a natural limit to what can be gained from ProZone. The numbers might be able to tell Sir Alex Ferguson how far his players have run and how well they retained the ball, but no one at Old Trafford pretends that, when it comes to winning matches, the science has a comparable influence to the manager's powers of motivation.

Interestingly, Ferguson was one of the top-flight managers in the audience last year when Beane came to London to talk about Moneyball and about how he took on the prevailing wisdom in baseball. A few took notes, but most were unpersuaded. As one Premier League manager said: “If there was anything in it, do you not think we'd have thought of it already?” He might have been right. Perhaps there is not a holy grail hidden in the statistics, waiting to be discovered. Maybe we already know everything there is to know. But imagine that there is something, an advantage to be gained simply by applying the brain. You would want your manager to be the one out there looking for it.

Lone star

A school of thought says that a one-man domination of a sport kills the interest. In the case of Michael Schumacher in Formula One, that might have been the case. With Tiger Woods, there is a high-wire thrill of seeing just how far he can take it.

On Sunday, Woods won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, his seventh straight victory and ninth in ten starts. A birdie putt on the last to steal the trophy from Bart Bryant saw Woods explode in unusually wild celebrations. His triumph provoked plenty of chatter about a first calendar grand slam as well as Byron Nelson’s 63-year-old record of 11 PGA Tour victories.

“I don’t think people really understand,” Bryant said. “I think the guys on tour understand. I think the real avid golf fans understand it. Good golfers around the world understand it.

“But people in general, the average golf fan, cannot appreciate exactly what Tiger is doing. I just don’t think they understand the magnitude of what he’s accomplishing right now.”

Next up, before the Masters, is the CA Championship in Florida. Woods has won there for the past three years and he should do so again. But what is marvellous about golf is that no one will dare to call it a formality.

Flame resistant?

In a couple of weeks, the Olympic flame will pass through London in the run-up to the Games in Beijing in August. If the situation in Tibet continues to be so inflamed, what odds on the torch being blown out by protesters?