When Moneyball was published in 2003, Dr Henry Stott and I had been toiling for a year on the Fink Tank. I cannot tell you the joy with which we greeted it.

For here, between hardback covers, was confirmation that, not to put to fine a point on it, we were right.

You see, neither Henry nor I is what would traditionally be called a football expert. My entire on-field experience was being school substitute in the under15 B team for one cancelled match. Yet here we were with our computer programmes trying to tell the pundits and the professionals the truth about the game.

Then along came the story of Billy Beane and his backroom staff full of internet geeks and derivatives experts. They built a baseball phenomenon using data and computer modelling. They distrusted traditional thinking and questioned the game’s gurus.

Crucially, they understood that trusting your own eyes is dangerous. Instead, they looked at outcomes on the field, choosing odd players because they realised that their skills were better correlated to triumphant results.

And that emboldened us. From looking at probabilities and questioning the old wives’ tales of the game (the worst time to concede a goal is not just before half-time), we moved on to ranking players and even starting to value them. And this work is getting ever more sophisticated.

The resistance of some is fascinating. The number of people who reject the idea that Frank Lampard is a good player, for instance, suggests that the revolution in statistics still has a way to go.

Football is beginning to use statistics more creatively but the use of data is still in its infancy and nowhere near as advanced as in baseball. In the United States the fan community joins in the fun, doing its own data work, challenging the experts. The Fink Tank dream is that this will start to happen in Britain.

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