Like all sports, football is full of surprises and lucky breaks. If it were easy to predict the winner of a match, there wouldn’t be much reason to watch it. Yet some people believe the game can be understood purely in statistical terms. This has led them to consider the possibility that mathematics can inform losing teams when it’s time to make radical changes.
As The National reported yesterday, a technique known as a sequential probability ratio test has long been used to monitor the occurrence of production-line failures and indicate when there is a serious error that needs rectifying. The suggestion now is that it can be used to determine when a poorly performing football team has reached the stage where its manager should be sacked.
While it’s hard to argue against applying science to improve sporting performance, it would be a great shame if all decisions in the beautiful game were governed by mathematics.
