The Expatriate Cup and what foreigners in the Premier League can teach us about Jack Wilshere

How will Belgium fare in the inaugral Expatriate Cup?

For a long time I've felt as though the cries of 'There are too many foreigners in the Premier League and they're stunting the development of English players' has had a strong whiff of xenophobic jingoism about it.

That's not to say that I don't agree with the concept, merely that it has been oversimplified and possibly overstated.

To simply lump all foreign players in the same basket labelled 'problem' lacks nuance, and similarly, to say their presence adversely affects all English players is unhelpfully reductive.

What exactly are we talking about when we say there are too many foreigners in the Premier League? Are all foreigners the same or are some better (more acceptable) than others? Does it matter what country the foreigners come from? Are all positions on the field affected equally? And if they're not, what does that tell us about the 'market' for players, both foreign and domestic? It is now commonly accepted that English players are 'overpriced' in the Premier League economy, but what does that tell us about the value of those English players that actually make it into their club side on a regular basis?

No doubt I could have (and probably should have) got Opta to provide me with a whole lot of advanced statistics and pretty graphics that would give definitive answers to most of these questions, but where's the fun in that?

Instead, I'm advocating that we scrap pre-season tours and instead replace it with a biennial (in non-World Cup or European Championship years) Expatriate Cup, in which the foreign players in the Premier League would band together by country and face off against one another for our entertainment.

(Just so we're clear at this point, I appreciate that this can never actually happen given the reluctance of clubs to release their players for even genuine internationals, the amount of money earned important training that goes on on pre-season tours of Asia and America and the general stuffiness of FIFA, UEFA, the FA and the Premier League, but it's my blog so you'll just have to suspend your disbelief and go with it. I promise it serves a purpose.)

So, what would be the point of this Expatriate League?

1. It would give us a snapshot of which country (or countries) were impacting the Premier League at any given time. In 1992/93 the country (outside of Britain and Ireland) providing the greatest number of footballers to the Premier League was Norway with eight. Spain and France gave us one player each, and Italy and Belgium provided none. The Expatriate Cup would not have worked in 1992/93.

By 1998/99 there were 26 French players (the most from a country outside of the UK and Ireland, a trend that has continued), 22 from Norway and 17 from Italy. Italian strikers and Norwegian everything was in vogue. This season there are 35 French players, 32 from Spain, 13 from Belgium, eight from Italy and four from Norway.

2. It would help us identify trends in the type of foreign player in the Premier League. Whilst there are a number of factors at play when clubs choose to buy foreign, don't discount the idea of certain countries simply being fashionable and the reliance on stereotypes. As alluded to above, for a time Italian strikers were all the rage. Now, it's Spanish midfielders. I'll go into this more shortly.

3. It would help us to identify where the FA (and whoever else we choose to hold responsible) were doing well and were they were doing poorly in providing English talent. The clubs argue that they buy foreign because they can get better quality for lower price. In this sense, it is a question of supply and demand. When domestic supply is low, then you are faced with a choice of paying a premium or shopping in a market where supply is higher.

England need to accept that, at least they way they currently develop talent, their players fall victim to stereotype. This country produces a disproportionately high number of physical centre-halves and good old-fashioned English centre forwards. Assuming that clubs still wish to employ such players (the demand side - and while this is debatable, the likes of Sam Allardyce continue to demonstrate that such demand does still exist) they will be relatively cheap because the supply is relatively high, hence less need to look overseas.

It would also help to demonstrate those English players who are truly world-class. If you are an English player that has managed to rise to the top despite the presence of a large number of cheaper high-quality foreign imports then you clearly have something that is not easily replicated. I'll revisit this idea at the end of this column.

4. Anything would be better than watching Chelsea take on the Indonesia All-Stars on a waterlogged pitch in Jakarta.

So what would it look like?

Without further ado, here's what the 2013 Expatriate Cup would look like:

The six teams able to field a full team plus subs would be France, Spain, Holland, Brazil, Belgium and a combined Scandinavian team.

The three other teams that came closest to being able to field a side were Argentina, Germany (who tried to rope in Poland before realising that all three Polish players in the Premier League are goalkeepers and didn't help them out much in any case), and a combined African team (who fell victim to the stereotyping that goes on with African players and could only call upon a series of defensive midfielders and physically-imposing centre forwards with not a goalkeeper or a wing-back anywhere in sight).

Each of the six teams involved selected a manager (who also had to be a foreigner at a Premier League club, although not necessarily from the country they are coaching), who then chose their squad.

France had the largest pool of players to draw upon and selected none-other-than Arsenal's Arsene Wenger to manage them (narrowly edging out Newcastle's Alain Pardieu for the role). Wenger selected a team comprising almost exclusively of Arsenal players, former Arsenal players and Arsenal targets. The biggest problems he encountered was the lack of a reserve goalkeeper for Tottenham's Hugo Lloris and who should start at left-back. Here's how the squad looked:

FRANCE: H. Lloris; B. Sagna, P. Evra (c), L. Koscielny, M. Sakho; Y. Cabaye, M. Sissoko, M. Flamini; H. Ben Arfa, S. Nasri, O. Giroud. Bench: S. Distin, G. Clichy, E. Capoue, M. Amalfitano, L. Remy.

Spain called upon the canny Roberto Martinez to manage them and as poor Roberto quickly found out the Spanish have a surplus of midfielders (tiki-taka innit) and (more surprising) left-backs but almost no centre-backs. Martinez also had to make the somewhat difficult call to omit Fernando Torres in favour of Roberto Soldado and Alvaro Negredo up top on the basis that the latter two can look themselves in the mirror in the morning without falling into a paralysing episode of self-doubt and rocking back and forward in the foetal position in the corner of the room.

SPAIN: D. De Gea; C. Azpilicueta, L. Enrique, Chico Flores, C. Cuellar; S. Cazorla, J. Mata, D. Silva; J. Navas, Michu, R. Soldado (c). Bench: Adrian, J. Amat, J. Garcia, M. Arteta, A. Negredo.

Holland turned to Martin Jol to run their side and the Fulham boss had to contend with a challenging lack of wide-men, which eventually resulted in him playing Manchester United's Alex Buttner as a left winger. Jol also had a surplus of goalkeepers (in a possible hangover from the thinking that went 'That Edwin van der Sar's quite good, perhaps we should get ourselves one of those) and carried both Tim Krul and Martin Stekelenburg on the bench.

HOLLAND: M. Vorm; D. Tiendalli, E. Pieters, J. Heitinga, R. Vlaaar; J. De Guzman, V. Anita, M. van Ginkel; R. van Wolfswinkel, A. Buttner, R. van Persie (c). Bench: T. Krul, M. Stekelenburg, L. Fer, L. Bacuna, J. Hooiveld.

Jose Mourinho campaigned to be coach of a strong looking Belgian side only for Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku to veto the move and Moussa Dembele and Jan Vertonghen to convince everyone that Andre Villas-Boas was a better option. The Spurs boss asked Vertonghen and Nacer Chadli to play slightly out of position at right and left-back, but otherwise had the luxury of a well-rounded squad that could afford to bring Lukaku off a admittedly somewhat short bench. AVB also put an end to the row over Adnan Januzaj's international eligibility by calling him up for Belgium here.

BELGIUM: S. Mignolet; J. Vertonghen, N. Chadli, T. Vermaelen, V. Kompany(c); M. Fellaini, K. De Bruyne, M. Dembele; K. Mirallas, E. Hazard, C. Benteke. Bench: R. Lamah, A. Januzaj, R. Lukaku.

Mourinho immediately sought revenge for Belgium's snub by offering his services to Brazil, who gladly accepted the offer of the Portugese-speaking boss. But the Brazil side was nowhere near as well-equipped as Belgium, facing an excess of midfielders, no strikers, few central defenders and poor goalkeeping options. Here's what the Special One cobbled together, relying heavily on his Chelsea squad:

BRAZIL: H. Gomes; Rafael, Fabio, D. Luiz(c), Sandro; Paulinho, Ramires, Fernandinho; P. Coutinho, Willian, Oscar. Bench: Lucas Leiva, Anderson, Guly Prado.

Finally, the charismatic Michael Laudrup got the Scandinavian nations to put aside the rivalries and band together for a shot at the Expatriate Cup. Possibly because they offer a cheaper version of the good old-fashioned English centre-forward, Scandinavia were quite top heavy although without any wide-players and they also lacked anyone to play at right back, despite an abundance of centre backs, forcing Martin Olsson to switch wings for the tournament.

SCANDINAVIA: A. Lindegaard; M. Olsson, J. Riise, B. Hangeland, D. Agger(c); S. Larsson, A Tettey, C. Eriksen, J. Guidetti, A. Kacaniklic, N. Bendtner. Bench: T. Sorensen, J. Olsson, J. Okore, N. Helenius, A. Cornelius.

How would it play out?

With Spain and France given a bye to the semi-finals Holland were drawn against Belgium and Scandinavia against Brazil.

In the first game Belgium ran riot as Robin van Persie grew increasingly frustrated with his lack of service. Goals from Kevin Mirallas, Christian Benteke and a penalty from Eden Hazard after Ron Vlaar had crudely taken out the winger were enough to see Belgium advance 3-0.

In the other match Brazil dominated but Scandinavia took a lead through Christian Eriksen following a long-ball knocked down by Nicklas Bendtner. However, Laudrup's team were overrun in midfield and eventually went down 2-1 courtesy of goals from Ramires and Oscar.

In the semi-finals Spain were drawn against Brazil while France faced Belguim.

Spain ended up beating Brazil comfortably with the midfields somewhat cancelling each other out but Brazil's lack of a cutting edge failing to cause Spain's weak defence any problems. At the other end Silva and Navas caused problems all day and laid on goals for Michu, Soldado and Negredo (off the bench late) to see Spain advance to the final with a 3-0 victory.

Belgium and France was a much closer affair with Arsene Wenger's side taking the lead through Olivier Giroud just before half-time thanks to a great through-ball from Yohan Cabaye. But with time running out in the second-half Vincent Kompany got away from Laurent Koscielny to head an equaliser from a corner and send the game to extra time. Andre Villas-Boas brought on Romelu Lukaku for Christian Benteke and it was Lukaku who grabbed the winner half-way through the added period as Belgium triumphed 2-1.

That saw Belgium take on Spain in the final where they ended up running out fairly comfortably winners on the day. Spain dominated possession and took the lead through Roberto Soldado, but Belgium went on the attack and the Spanish defenders had no answer for Hazard, Mirallas and Benteke. Benteke grabbed a brace and Hazard added the decisive goal late as Spain pushed for an equaliser as the game finished 3-1.

So there we have it, an Andre Villas-Boas-led Belgium take out the inaugural Expatriate Cup triumphing over Spain in the final much to the chagrin of Jose Mourinho, who brings Lukaku back to Chelsea after his loan to Everton but spitefully refuses to play him, temporarily turning him into this generation's Winston Bogarde before the Belgian left on a free-transfer for Barcelona where he went on to win back-to-back Champions Leagues.

So, what did we learn?

1. Belgium and Spain are currently the strongest foreign presences in the Premier League (although we probably knew that already).

2. France provide a large quantity of players to the Premier League and many are very good but presently few are of the absolute highest quality.

3. Dutch goalkeepers, Scandinavian centre-forwards and Brazilian and Spanish midfielders are in vogue. (Also Polish goalkeepers and African defensive-midfielders and strikers).

4. Spanish defenders, Dutch wingers and Brazilian strikers are not in fashion. The days of Italian strikers being a must-have are long gone.

5. Don't cross Jose Mourinho.

I find Spain the most fascinating example. The cult of tiki-taka (coupled with a tanking Spanish economy and a surplus of high-quality players in the position) means that everyone wants (and can probably afford) a Spanish midfielder. The Spanish style of play doesn't really mesh with the good old-fashioned English centre forward though, so since they're also relatively cheap we should probably also bring over some Spanish strikers who know how to play with Spanish midfielders and bang in the goals, or so the thinking appears to go.

The pattern clearly doesn't extend to Spanish centre-backs however. For the most part, a British centre-back (or their knock-off Scandinavian equivalent) will probably do just fine.

What does this mean for English players?

Jack Wilshere is a scarce commodity for England

I'm sure there's a much more economically refined way of making this argument, and no doubt someone is working on it as we speak, but this is what I think this means for English players in the Premier League:

You're best chance of making it in England at the moment remains as a centre-back or a good old-fashioned English centre-forward. With all due respect to John Terry, Phil Jagielka, Andy Carroll and Rickie Lambert, you played the odds right and came out on top. 

There's enough of these type of players around that it is not necessary to turn to foreign imports (although if we can find similar players cheaply in Scandinavia for example, then of course we will go after them).

However, some of these players are likely to be amongst the best in their position (at least for their style) world-wide because few other countries specialise in producing them. These are areas in which England's supply is high (although unlike other countries England fails to 'export' its surplus - think Spain with Xavi and Iniesta staying in Spain but David Silva, Juan Mata and Santi Cazorla exported to England).

The inverse also applies however. With high-quality Spanish midfielders flooding the Premier League market, it says all the more about British players who can hold their own playing a similar style. The player that comes to mind is Jack Wilshere. He may no surpass Silva, Mata and Cazorla but he can certainly hold his own with those players. And for an Englishman, that makes him very, very scarce and very, very valuable.

The FA are therefore faced with choice: Play to England's traditional strengths and bore everyone half to death with outdated but potentially successful long-ball tactics that allow the good old-fashioned English centre forward to thrive (Sam Allardyce for England with Tony Pulis as his assistant?) or work harder to create greater supply of domestic players in the areas where foreigners are currently dominating.

I accept that this is something that cannont be achieved overnight, and that the FA are almost certainly already aware of. The emergence of players like Wilshere and Ross Barkley offers hope.

But let's not resort to cries of 'foreigners are ruining our game' without taking a closer look at what their presence really means and what we can learn from it.

Is fantasy football in Britain actually holding back the real thing?

Liverpool and Boston Red Sox owner John W. Henry gained an insight into the benefits of sabermetrics by playing fantasy baseball

England and America: Two nations separated by a common love of fantasy sport

George Bernard Shaw once said that England and America are two countries separated by a common language. Strangely, the same thing can probably be said of the two nations' love of fantasy sports. And British football (i.e. the Premier League and Football Leagues) may be suffering as a result.

Living and working as an online sports journalist in the UK, I am highly aware not only of the British obsession with all things football, but also of the way that this passion is often understood through a prism of 'fantasy' football.

Whether at work, where we have a hotly-contested office 'mini-league', or playing social football with a diverse bunch of mates on the weekend, I am always slightly surprised by the extent to which news and results are evaluated and discussed solely on the impact they have on one's fantasy team.

Arsenal's Jack Wilshere goes down with another injury and the thoughts go immediately not to the impact on England's attempts to qualify for the next major tournament but rather to whether I have enough substitutions remaining to get him out of my line-up; Chelsea and Manchester City play out an incredibly tedious 0-0 draw, but I'm delighted because Joe Hart's clean-sheet helps keep me in contention; and most predictably of all, Manchester United's Robin van Persie bangs in a hat-trick against lowly Hull and everyone can celebrate because they all designated him to be their captain this week and therefore earned double points for each of his goals.

I do not live, and never have lived, in the United States but I do participate in fantasy sports leagues based on American sports, and I am very much under the impression that fantasy teams in the States are equally pervasive in the way sports are consumed in that country, if not more so.

Not only do almost all the major sports networks have their own fantasy leagues across all the major sports in the US (not unlike in Britain) but there are also websites (such as Rotoworld) dedicated soley to providing news and advice to fantasy sport participants.

Fantasy Sports have leaked into popular culture with television sitcoms such as 'The League', and sports journalists such as Grantland's Bill Simmons regularly referencing their involvement in fantasy sports leagues. 

But it doesn't stop there. In 1999 the Fantasy Sports Trade Association was established to represent the fantasy sports industry in the United States. Today, the Association claims to represent 140 member companies with a reach of over 33 million adult Americans.

In 2006, a study estimated that fantasy sports had a $3–$4 billion annual economic impact across the sports industry in the US. It is likely to be significantly greater than that now given the way fantasy sports has grown in the last 20 years, largely thanks to the internet.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of similar statistics for the United Kingdom although according to a 2008 study by Ipsos, the number of British fantasy sports players aged 16–64 is estimated to range between 5.5 and 7.5 million.

In short, this is big business on both sides of the Atlantic.

But in very important ways the British and American approaches to fantasy sports couldn't be more different and it just might be holding back football in the UK.

The differences between US and UK fantasy sports

In the UK, fantasy football almost universally consists of starting out with a 'budget' and then assembling a squad whereby players are attributed values. Whilst there may occasionally be limits imposed as to the number of players you can have from one real team, there are generally very few parameters aside from making sure the accumulated values of people in your squad do not exceed your budget.

How crafty a manager needs to be relates solely to the relationship between the value of the players in that league and the generosity of the allowed budget (i.e. it is a lot harder to justify selecting Robin van Persie as one of your eleven squad members when valued at £15m if your total budget is £60m than if your total budget is £100m).

To a certain extent, this approach is designed to reflect the way British football operates, with managers being handed a budget to spend on acquisitions and then, with the exception of Arsene Wenger at Arsenal (sorry, Gunners fans), actually spending that money to bring in the best players available in each position.

Likewise, American fantasy sports reflects the way sports work in the States with a draft system (like that used to distribute athletes graduating from college sports to the professional franchises) being a much more common means of assembling a team.

This means that a 'mini-league' is established in advance and then the managers in that league take turns at picking players to make up their squad, with each player only being able to be picked once.

This eliminates a common phenomena in many British fantasy football leagues (at least in my experience) where many teams, even in a mini-league, will have several of the same players.

As I alluded to earlier, a player like Robin van Persie who is a frequent goalscorer for Manchester United (last year's Premier League champions), currently gets selected by a large proportion of fantasy teams in the UK.

While this no doubt adds to the collective sense of success whenever Van Persie does well, he provides essentially no competitive advantage to any one team because he is owned by so many. Any points he accumulates for your team are cancelled out by the fact that most other teams in your league also benefited from his goalscoring exploits.

Under a draft system only one player per mini-league could own Van Persie and the rest of the league would have to try an assemble a squad without him. On the flip side, whichever team ended up with Van Persie would likely be denied other elite fantasy players (say, Sergio Aguero or Eden Hazard) as they would be chosen by other members of the league.

In my fantasy NBA (Basketball) league this means that only one member is privileged to have LeBron James as part of their squad in any given season, but if you don't get James you could still get Kevin Durant, Chris Paul or some other almost equally good player to build your squad around.

As a brief aside, I should note that many fantasy sports leagues in the States also use an 'auction' system as an alternative to a draft whereby league members have a budget and bid against each other to acquire a certain player for their team. Whilst I don't have much experience of using this system myself, the basic premise - that each real-life player can only be selected for one fantasy team in a mini-league at any given time - still applies.

Head-to-head competition based on statistical categories

There is however one further important difference between American and UK fantasy sports that is truly holding back an analytical revolution in British football.

Interestingly, fantasy sports in Australia is caught somewhere in between the American and the British model.

This past season I took part in a fantasy NRL (Australian rugby league) mini-league where we employed a draft and whilst I think everyone recognised the benefit of having a unique squad, the competition still lacked some of the lustre of the American fantasy leagues with which I am involved.

Part of the reason for this is that many fantasy league members lose interest in actually managing their team after the initial thrill of selecting a squad and are content to just watch their total points accumulate largely irrespective of how they are doing relative to anyone else in their 'mini-league'.

American fantasy sports circumvent this problem by eliminating total points and pitting league members against each other across a range of statistical categories on a weekly basis.

In my NBA fantasy league for example, every week I compete against a different member of the league across nine statistical categories. In basketball, these are things like points, rebounds, three-pointers made, free-throw percentage etc.

I do not accumulate total points for each of these things. Instead, they only matter relative to how the fantasy team I am competing against is doing that week. I am trying to outdo my opponent in as many of those statistical categories as possible. A 'win' is when I beat my opponent in five or more out of the nine categories.

This opens up a whole new world of complexity and tactics that (in my experience) keeps league members engaged, often obsessively, throughout the season.

Hypothetically, I'm up against Player X this week and I know his team (made up of a completely different set of players than my own) are particularly strong in categories 1, 2, and 3. Therefore if I want to win this week I need to tinker with my squad to ensure that I can compete in statistical categories 4, 5, and 6 and, for example, hope for some luck in categories 7, 8 and 9.

In fantasy football goals remain paramount, with lesser points usually available for assists, clean sheets and negative points for yellow and red cards.

However, given the wealth of statistical data now available it would be easy to come up with a number of categories, in which fantasy teams could compete against each other each week.

In addition to goals, assists, clean-sheets and cards you could add shots on target, pass completion rates, tackles and even things like crosses, successful 'take-ons' and playing time (all available via Opta).

Moneyball and the rise of statistical data

There was a time in the not too distant past that many British football fans were of the view that the only "statistic" (said with derision) that mattered was the score.

They sneered (sometimes rightly so) at some of the terminology employed by American "soccer" commentators, including the idea that someone could "assist" on a goal.

However, perhaps in a sign of the influence of fantasy football in the UK, the idea of an assist has become much more commonplace in the sport. It is still unlikely to be referred to in live commentary in this country, but with many fantasy leagues incorporating points for an assist, the term has filtered into the popular consciousness and gained some esteem.

Indeed, the rise of companies like Opta and ProZone means there is now a wealth of statistical data available for football stretching far beyond the basic things like goalscorers, bookings and corner kicks.

Several attempts to explain the success of the Spanish national football team (relative to other nations like England) has lead journalists and fans alike to look into statistics about percentage of possession and pass completion statistics.

Much as Arsene Wenger has been credited with revolutionising player diets after banning the traditional pre-match meal of baked beans and Coca-Cola after arriving at Arsenal in 1996, Sam Allardyce has been credited with leading the statistical revolution in British football, using ProZone to analyse player and team data to refine his managerial craft at Bolton, Newcastle, Blackburn and most recently West Ham.

As Tottenham boss Andre Villas-Boas has pointed out, Allardyce's statistical interpretations haven't always lead to the most attractive brand of football and have often failed to endear him to club owners and fans, but they have resulted in largely impressive results.

Meanwhile, Liverpool (with a little help from Brad Pitt) are the club that has brought the concept of 'Moneyball' to the attention of many British football followers after being purchased by the Fenway Sports Group (FSG) in 2010.

Moneyball, for the uninitiated, is a book by the exceptional financial journalist Michael Lewis that follows Major League Baseball team the Oakland Athletics in their pursuit to remain competitive through the use of 'sabermetrics' (essentially advanced in-game statistics).

As well as being a highly entertaining read, and now a film (starring the aforementioned Pitt), the book helped popularised A's (as the Athletics are often called) manager Billy Beane's approach and documented the reduction in competitive advantage as bigger teams like the FSG-owned Boston Red Sox also adopted a more statistically-based approach.

Since 2010 there has therefore been a lot of media speculation about the extent to which FSG would try to implement a similar approach in British football at Liverpool, particularly given the competitive advantage that may exist in the short term in an environment where other teams were not paying as much attention to statistics.

Earlier this year Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre clarified the club's transfer policy, stating that they were relying on statistical information a lot more, but denied the term Moneyball had ever been used internally at the club in an interview with American publication Sports Illustrated.

The origins of Moneyball

Something that is often overlooked in all of this are the origins of sabermetrics in the first place. 

Bill James is credited with being one of the pioneers of the statistical revolution in professional sports and coined the term sabermetrics after SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research. 

James, who is now a Senior Advisor on Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox, started out self-publishing an annual journal entitled The Bill James Baseball Abstracts after becoming frustrated with his attempts to get newspaper editors to publish his unconventional articles before gaining greater popularity.

James defined sabermetrics as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball" as he sought to answer questions like  "which player on the Red Sox contributed the most to the team's offense last season?".  

Indeed, James is credited with creating a number of new statistical categories in baseball as part of his attempts to comprehensively answer such questions.

But according to Lewis in Moneyball, it was Bill James' desire to beat his friends in fantasy baseball that was his "chief motive for his original rethinking of the game".

As Lewis describes it, fantasy baseball lead the fans to become more keenly interested in the information they needed to make intelligent baseball decisions.

Lewis writes: "They needed [good information], or they thought they needed it, to win their fantasy games."

Fascinatingly, Lewis goes on to detail how John W. Henry, the principle owner of both the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool Football Club (as part of FSG), was not only a keen reader of James and his Abstracts but also continued to take part in a sophisticated fantasy baseball league even after taking control of the Red Sox.

According to Lewis, Henry employed "Jamesean tools" (i.e. sabermetrics) and "cleaned up"in his fantasy league every year but initially failed to employ the same thinking in his running of the actual baseball club he ran before seeing the error of his ways.

The crux

Importantly, this is where English football is missing a beat. American sports essentially crowd-sourced a statistical revolution by harnessing the true potential of fantasy sports.

Seemingly ordinary people across America with otherwise no interest in maths were and are spending hours every week pouring over statistical data about athletes in a bid to beat their friends in a fantasy league.

The particularly obsessive or mathematically inclined may go on to develop that interest in the same way that James did, to the point where he now holds an esteemed position one of the biggest sporting franchises in the world (and has been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame).

In the NBA in particular there has been a recent swathe of fresh, young General Managers and coaches being appointed to teams on the back of their reputation in statistical analytics, and whilst this is not to say that these individuals are not unusually talented and intelligent, I suspect that many of them first developed their passion for sports-based statistics in much the same way as James did - the desire to get the upper hand over a group of friends in a fantasy league.

In recent times there has been a bit of a pushback against the statistical revolution, with many suggesting that even advanced statistics can never compare to good old-fashioned scouting and 'the eye-test'.

But as new Philadelphia 76ers boss Sam Hinkie points out, and as Ian Ayres mentions in the interview with Sports Illustrated, in the hugely competitive world of professional sports, statistics may not be everything but you would be foolish to ignore them in your search for even the slightest advantage over your rivals.

It may be that British football has simply skipped the fantasy step having learnt from their American counterparts and now employ all of the same statistics anyway.

But it seems that the game in this country does itself a disservice by overlooking an opportunity to get literally millions of minds thinking in a more in-depth way about the sport they already love.

This is not to say that every fantasy football manager would become a Bill James or a Billy Beane were we only to change the format, but I wonder how many brilliant minds have been lost to football clubs in this country through the lack of something to really engage with.

Although I am far from a brilliant mind, we are only three weeks into the current Premier League season and already I have lost interest in my fantasy team, largely because it is irrelevant how many goals van Persie scores because my team is nearly identical to everyone elses and I'll keep on accumulating points irrespective of how much attention I pay it.

Some might say that now I can go back to focussing on what really matters - the actual results of the actual games.

But for a Liverpool, and to an even greater extent a Norwich, a Crystal Palace or other smaller clubs throughout the league system, wouldn't it be of even greater benefit if I (and thousands of others) was spending my time trying to find a less coveted player at another club who offers me essentially the same thing as van Persie?

The Economist recently published some very interesting statistical data that looked at over 190 different types of tackle, pass and shot for more than 500 players and were able to show, for example, that Gareth Bale could be suitably replaced at Tottenham by either Manchester United's Danny Welbeck (somewhat unexpected) or Southampton's Gaston Ramirez (a much cheaper alternative).

This is a very interesting development but I imagine this information would have been known much sooner and more widely had fantasy football managers been genuinely required to look for an alternative to Bale rather than just blindly slotting him into their line-ups much like everyone else.

So what?

There are any number of fantasy football leagues currently running in the UK (and some based in the States) but none currently offer the American model of fantasy sports as outlined above.

I accept that a lot of fantasy football fans are comfortable with the format they currently use and the mere thought of a draft and statistical categories is both overwhelming and abhorrent, but surely there is not a lot to lose by one of the big operators at least offering an alternative, as well as if not instead of what they currently offer.

The model is there and if it doesn't take off it could quickly be scrapped.

If nothing else, I'm surprised that John W. Henry has not pushed for this more himself. Not only does he have the media connections to make it work (he also owns the Boston Globe), he knows first hand both the joy and the potential benefits to sporting franchises of a more advanced fantasy sports game.

Liverpool may be trying to downplay the Moneyball tag, but in doing so maybe they should think about whether they are in fact holding back both the future of the club and football in general in Britain.

Sports fan-dom doesn't need to be a dick-swinging competition

Just because I don't have my team's emblem tattooed on my
face doesn't mean I'm not a sports fan                

I love sports. Unashamedly and unequivocally. There's something about the sporting contest that captivates me, and has from about as early as I can remember.

But I have a friend, a (former) sports fan, who has given up watching sport on philosophical grounds. He argues that there's something abnormal about thousands of people gathering to simply watch sports. To watch a few people run around on a patch of grass with a ball.

His argument is that he doesn't want to spend his life watching other people do things. He wants to actually do things himself. If it's sports, then he wants to play sports. And if it's not playing sport, then he feels his time can be used more meaningfully actually doing something else, as opposed to watching someone else do something.

And, I have to say, I find his argument compelling. If I'm completely objective about things, I have to admit he's got a point. But I can't subscribe to his point of view. And I can't give up watching sport.

I've played any number of sports over the last 25 years or so. I still play football every winter. And I admit that the experience of playing sport gives me something that I could never get by merely watching it.

At the same time, playing sport can be immensely frustrating. Bound by our own limitations, and those of our team-mates (which we often prefer to focus upon), we seldom, if ever, reach the heights that we aspire to. Whilst we may all have moments of glory, most of us will never be Lionel Messi.

And that is the hole that watching sport fills. It is our aspirations realised. It is what we know to be possible played out. It is someone doing the things that we can only imagine doing ourselves. And it is beautiful.

Sure, it's voyeuristic as hell. Sure, there's an element of us that is living vicariously through the professional athletes that we admire. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy it.

At the other end of the spectrum though, I have another friend who takes sports fan-dom to another level. It defines him. It is his identity. It is all that matters. Watching football with him is a painful experience because he celebrates each goal for his team as if his life depended on it, which to a certain extent, I guess it does.

The sad thing is, this friend is not alone. I know plenty of people like this. This attitude is not uncommon in today's society, especially among males. In fact, many people would consider it part of what makes someone 'a real man'. And I can't abide it.

I am not a 'casual sports fan' because I haven't watched every live televised game in the English Premier League this season. In truth, I haven't watched any live football thus far in 2013. But that doesn't mean I don't care, don't have any idea what's going on, or that my opinion is invalid. And it certainly doesn't make me less of a sports fan (or a man).

I rate my knowledge of sports highly and am confident having an informed discussion about the merits of SC Heerenveen as the real nursery of Dutch football, of whether the Golden State Warriors are a legitimate threat in the NBA's Western Conference this season, and whether the Cronulla Sharks can build on last season to be a Premiership force in this year's NRL.

I admit that part of the thrill for me of watching sport is testing my opinions and allegiances against reality. For games which don't feature a team of which I consider myself a fan, I will still have a preferred winner, and I experience heightened emotions based on how my preferred team performs. And I confess, even when watching sports on my own, I still get slightly anxious about the outcome, based on whether the team I'm backing will ultimately prove victorious.

Southampton vs Manchester City? Come on the Saints! Pakistan vs the West Indies in an ODI? Get up the Windies! Australia vs anyone at anything? Just don't let the Aussies win!

But whilst I enjoy the spectacle, care about what happens, and revise my opinions based on the outcome, at the same time I recognise that, at some level, none of it really matters. Not in the greater scheme of things.

And I'm sick of feeling like I'm competing with people for who it all seems to matter just a little too much. If anything, I wonder if such people really enjoy watching sport at all, or do so out of some perverse sense of obligation where failing to do so would discredit them not only as a sports fan, but also as a human being.

No, I didn't watch the Australian Open tennis final. No, I didn't watch the Super Bowl. And no, I didn't watch all of the football on Super Sunday.

But you know what? The fact that you did is starting to come across as a little forced and I don't really want any part in this weird dick-swinging competition that's going on in your head.

I love sports. But I'm not going to prove it to you.

A template for a successful London rugby league franchise

Martin Offiah remains the most iconic Broncos player despite only playing 16 games for the club           Pic: Getty Images

There's some debate as to the exact definition of a 'sports book'. For many David Storey's This Sporting Life is one of the great sports books but as far as I'm concerned it does not qualify. This Sporting Life is a novel, a work of fiction, and whilst I'm not suggesting it is impossible for a work of fiction to qualify as a sports book, this one, in my opinion, does not. Yes, it is a very good book and well worth a read and yes, it is about rugby league. But much more it is about the life and relationships of a young man in northern England in the 1960s. That Arthur Machin plays rugby league, and that this affords him celebrity status, is merely part of that tapestry. In many ways the story would not be radically different were Machin to be a celebrated cricketer, or footballer, or pop star. Except of course that, in the industrial north at the time, it was as a rugby league player that one's status as 'gladiator hero' (as the book's cover describes Machin) was most credibly realised.

And in some ways not a lot has changed. Wigan Athletic may now grace football's Premier League (and share a ground with the towns rugby league team, the Wigan Warriors) but for town's like St Helens, Hull, Bradford, Widnes, Warrington and, to a lesser extent, Leeds the true sporting heroes are rugby league players. Football remains prominent in the north but it is a place where it is equally legitimate to grow up dreaming of being a barnstorming second rower for the Huddersfield Giants as it is of scoring goals for Manchester United.

Which is what makes the London Broncos such an oddity. Despite some speculative attempts in the 1930s rugby league has never had a history London. Whilst a professional club has been a fixture in the area since Fulham Football Club branched out in 1980, the Broncos have gone through a number of manifestations (and bases) since that time, the most recent as the ill-fated Harlequins Rugby League. 2012 saw the return of the London Broncos name and the Broncos 'brand' was relaunched amid some fanfare in November 2011. However, as yet the bright future that was talked about is yet to materialise with the Broncos finishing the season in twelfth place in the table only two points ahead of joint last-placed Castleford and Widnes (and nine points behind the Bradford Bulls, who went into administration half-way through the season and famously made all their staff, including their coach, redundant).

As a self-professed rugby league fan I ashamedly admit that I only attended two of the clubs 2012 fixtures - against St. Helens and Leeds (on both occasions largely due to an interest in watching the visitors). Maybe it's just that I've been spoiled by watching to much of Australia's NRL competition but quite honestly the prospect of watching the listless Broncos get absolutely trounced by teams who, despite their superiority, rarely played high-paced enterprising entertaining rugby league wasn't sufficiently appealing to get me to show up more regularly than I did. I live five miles and an easy half-hour bus ride from the Broncos home ground.

When I mentioned this to my dad his response was: "They need to give it away. Rugby League's a northern game. Put another team in Leeds where it actually matters." But I refuse to accept that Rugby League cannot be a success in London. Whilst 32 years of failure (the club has never won a major trophy, with losing finalists in the 1999 Challenge Cup being their crowning glory to date) are hardly encouraging, the fact that the club lives on provides hope. What they need is a template, a successful team upon which to model themselves, a team that faced and overcame the same sort of challenges a rugby team in London is currently enduring.

Of course, the clubs current name harks back nostalgically to probably the best period in the clubs history when in 1994 they were bought by the Broncos of Brisbane. At the time an Allan Langer-led Brisbane team had just won back-to-back Winfield Cups and it would have been difficult to find a more successful template in Rugby League on which to base oneself. 18 years on though the differences between a rugby league franchise in Brisbane, where rugby league rules, and London could not be more stark. Instead, a much better model for the 2012 London team exists in the form of the Melbourne Storm.

The Storm have established themselves as a championship pedigree team in Australian Rules heartland, and whilst they have had some significant (and at times dubious) advantages along the way, they are the organisation which the London Broncos must seek to replicate. Here, in no particular order, are just some of the ways how:

1. Exploit uncertainty at other clubs
The inaugural Melbourne Storm benefited from the demise of the Perth Reds and Hunter Mariners enabling them to sign foundational players of the calibre of Glenn Lazaridis, Robbie Ross, Scott Hill and Brett Kimmorley. In recent years both the Crusaders club and the Bradford Bulls have struggled enormously financially (with the Crusaders being effectively disbanded at the end of 2011) with financial difficulties plaguing a number of other Super League teams. So far the most noteworthy addition London have been able to recruit from either the Crusaders or Bradford is Michael Witt, hardly the sort of signing to set pulses racing or build a team around. With Bradford players so disenfranchised with the last season that many of them are choosing to retire London must be able to offer them an attractive alternative.

2. Find a committed owner
It's pretty difficult to offer a viable alternative to players at clubs suffering financial hardship if you're not financially secure yourself. While I don't claim to have any knowledge of the London Broncos current financial situation I think it's safe to assume there's not a enormous amount of coin floating about. Melbourne of course have benefited enormously by being owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International. London, who Murdoch "fast-tracked" into the Super League when it was launched in 1996 on "commercial grounds", could do with hitting up the media mogul for the same sort of support. And let's face it, the bloke could do with some positive publicity in this country right at the moment. But even assuming Murdoch has enough on his plate at present and can't foresee Londoners signing up to Sky in their droves to watch a rugby league team (surely a large part of his motivation for his initial support), one mustn't forget that the London Broncos have attracted hefty financial support in the past. In the late '90s Richard Branson's Virgin Group were briefly majority shareholders only for the club to be sold to supporter David Hughes in 2002. Such support, if it can ever be replicated, can not be allowed to slip through the Bronco's fingers again.

3. Build partnerships
One of the keys to Melbourne's success has been their relationship with Brisbane-based feeder club Norths Devils. Such a relationship has played an important role in the club securing the likes of Queensland and Australian representative players Cameron Smith, Billy Slater, Cooper Cronk and Greg Inglis (amongst others). Rugby league may not be established in London but that doesn't mean the club can't benefit from where it is established. By building partnerships with clubs in Britain's next tier down, the Championship, London can exploit some of the emerging talent from the north and encourage it to make it's home in the nations capital. Similarly there are plenty of players knocking about Australia's reserve grade who are just shy of making the breakthrough into the NRL but could have a massive impact in the UK Super League. Even better, given the Storm's occasional necessity to offload players who they are no can't keep under the cap but wish to retain (Ryan Hoffman for example) why not sign up to some sort of (legal) agreement that sees them come to London as a first port of call rather than Wigan.

4. Find a niche and invest in the grassroots
Partnerships are important in getting established but it should be complemented with grassroots investment to make a career in rugby league a realistic ambition for London-based kids. There's nothing like a homegrown hero to galvanize a club (see point 5). An essential part of that is finding a niche. Basing yourself in middle class south west London - sharing a ground with Harlequins no less - puts you in direct competition with rugby. Rugby league has always been a working class game, and a sports' alignment with a certain class is even more entrenched in Britain than in the relatively egalitarian Australasia. For the Broncos to thrive they need to find themselves a working class community, on the outskirts of London (preferably in the north of the city), with a relatively uninspiring football club and invest in that community. Afford me a slight departure from my Melbourne model here: the Auckland-based Warriors are the template for this. By basing themselves in south Auckland the Warriors ensured they were not in direct competition with rugby and offered a relatively deprived community (in a sporting sense, as well as in other areas) something to get excited about. The Broncos needs to establish good training facilities, do lots of community work, and provide encouragement and support to schools to the point where they develop a reputation like the Gold Coast's Keebra Park Secondary School so end up attracting aspiring rugby league players not just for the local community but from all over the south of England and beyond.

5. Continue to cater to away fans
If either of the games I attended this season are any indication (and I have no reason to believe they were in any way exceptional), away fans continue to make up a significant proportion (if not the majority) of the attendance at London Bronco's games. But they bring so much more than ticket revenue. They bring atmosphere, loyalty, dedication and passion which is a spectacle in itself. London needs to do all it can to encourage away fans to keep attending and make the away trip the highlight of their season. There are a number of ways this can be achieved but the obvious one that springs to mind is to cut down travelling time and expense by basing the club somewhere north of the Thames.

6. Sign a marquee player
In the short term it's important to give the fans something to get excited about, a reason to turn up on a Saturday. The Storm are fortunate enough to be stacked with marquee players and it was arguably this more than anything else that led them down the track of their salary cap indiscretions. The temptation to add the freakish talent of someone like Israel Folau to an already stellar core was too much. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world it says a lot that many people still associate the glory days of the London Broncos with Martin Offiah. London-born winger Offiah was 30 by the time he returned home to play for the Broncos and his best years (for Widnes and more famously Wigan) were almost certainly behind him. He only actually played 16 games in three seasons at the club but the combination of a hugely charismatic local boy with the capacity to still occasionally turn it on ignited something in supporters and opposition fans alike. The London Broncos need that again, preferably over a slightly longer period of time, but a 34-year-old Craig Gower, who would have been quite a card about eight or nine years ago, isn't going to provide it.

7. Sign a decent coach
Your chances of attracting a marquee player (and the rest of a decent team) expand exponentially if you can attract a coach that players want to play for. Attracting future Australia coach Chris Anderson as the Storm's first coach was a bit of a coup only really surpassed by tying up Craig Bellamy five years later. I remain perplexed that Australian rugby league players continue to choose to semi-retire (let's face it, for most of them that is all that Super League is) to Wigan or Huddersfield or Widnes rather than the bright lights of London. Sure your chances of winning the title aren't as great and you're not going to be noticed in the High Street but I would of thought that this might act as a positive given some of the scrutiny players in Australia face from both the public and the media. For whatever reason, I feel like this argument should apply several times over for coaches. What's more, high quality Australian coaches seem to be in even greater supply than players. Nathan Brown's success at Huddersfield was not deemed sufficiently impressive for him to attract an NRL coaching job and he has now signed with St Helens. Heck, Chris Anderson himself is currently available and with a decent track record in both Australia and the UK. It would be interesting to see if Bluey McLennan could replicate his Leeds success in London and Brian Smith could potentially be coerced into a London-based sabbatical having coached Hull and Bradford earlier in his career. These are all established NRL coaches and completely overlooked the up and coming coaches who are struggling to get a look in at the top level due to lack of opportunity. They could do a lot worse than spend a couple of years in London and they need to be reminded of that and remunerated in such a way that it makes it worth their while.

8. Win something
Melbourne's credibility increased out of sight when they made the finals in their first season and went one better to win the grand final in just their second year in existence. A lot of factors contributed to that result but London must target winning something, anything, to boost their credibility. The old cliche is that success breeds success but the Broncos should be entering every competition they can - local raffles and all - in the hope of building a winning mentality.

9. Overhaul their image
If, in the unlikely event that even some of the steps outlined above are followed, this may become more or less unnecessary. At one level supporters don't care what badge the players wear on their chest as long as the team is winning. On the other hand the most recent rebranding seems like an enormous missed opportunity. Perhaps it was done on the cheap - it certainly looks like it - but I have no emotional attachment to the new Broncos logo, shirts, brand etc. As a West Ham fan I'm happy to be seen proudly sporting merchandise for a team that loses more often than it wins but not if it looks crap. Give the supporters something they can feel some sense of pride in wearing in public. If I'm honest, the whole Broncos thing feels a bit old hat and whilst I'm reluctant to advocate further identity overhauls for one of sports most weathered franchises I think one final one could be in order. If the Storm do indeed end up acting as the model for the London franchises success why not go the whole hog and adopt their moniker too? Anyone who has spent any time in London would realise that in many ways a weather-based name couldn't be more appropriate. After all, I've been in London a year and am yet to encounter my first Bronco.

'A Life Too Short' is about so much more than Robert Enke's battle with depression

Will Robert Green be the latest victim of misplaced sporting conventional wisdom?                 Pic: AP/Bernat Armangue

I spent much of my 2500-word post last week defending Andre Villas-Boas (check it out below – it’s worth a read) but, only a week later I find myself resenting him for his role in scuppering one of the funniest transfer sagas of recent times.

American midfielder-cum-striker Clint Dempsey had excelled for Fulham for five years since joining from New England Revolution in 2007, so few could begrudge him his ambition of moving to a top English club, preferably competing in the Champions League, this summer. At 29, it was probably Dempsey’s last opportunity to make such a move.

However, showing up to the first day of Fulham’s pre-season training proudly announcing you are on your way to Liverpool was not the way to go about it. Particularly when Liverpool hadn’t even made a bid. In Dempsey’s defence, one can only imagine he’d received a tip-off from his agent that the move was already in train, but it didn’t stop him from looking any less of a big-time Charlie when a bid subsequently failed to materialise.

As the transfer window drew to a close with Dempsey training with Fulham’s reserves, and the West London club reporting Liverpool to the FA for unsettling a player who remained contracted to them, no offer was forthcoming.

If the newspapers are to be believed Liverpool did make a late bid on the final day of the transfer window of around £3m - a figure that could only be considered derisory for a player of Dempsey’s quality - but it was Tottenham and Villas-Boas who eventually came to Dempsey’s rescue by meeting Fulham’s £6m valuation.

Dempsey had, by the narrowest of margins, avoided becoming the latest transfer windows biggest loser (at least on an individual level - Liverpool's failure to sign Dempsey left them with only two strikers and a manager whose preferred formation features three up front - when it comes to which club "lost" the transfer window, it's a no contest). Instead, the individual title went to another player who, unlike Dempsey, was a relatively innocent victim in a situation not entirely of his own making.

As recently as May this year Robert Green was playing in goal for England (keeping a clean-sheet in a pre-Euro 2012 friendly against Norway). Now it looks as though he may spend the rest of this season plying his trade in the Championship on loan from Queens Park Rangers, who he only joined in June.

Green only played three matches for his new club (who he joined after his contract expired at West Ham United) before Rangers signed another keeper, Brazilian international Julio Cesar from Inter Milan, who now looks set to cement a place as the club’s number one goalkeeper.

QPR manager Mark Hughes described the situation like this:

"It is a challenge for everybody. What we're trying to do here is improve the quality of the group and that includes the goalkeeping position as well.

"I said I wanted to have two quality keepers this window if at all possible. Sometimes when opportunities present itself you want to pursue them.

"When you get an opportunity to possibly bring a player of Julio Cesar's quality, with his playing record and his mentality, then I think you have to pursue it.

"I think when we started the process we probably never thought there was an opportunity or chance he would be able to come here. If we are able to conclude it, we'll be delighted."

Hughes uses the word ‘opportunity’ three times in as many paragraphs, but what really sticks out is the ruthless way the club has pursued what is essentially only an incremental improvement.

Since Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes bought the club in August 2011, QPR have sought to improve their squad at every opportunity. Whilst this is not an uncommon strategy for clubs recently promoted to the Premier League (who often find the players that got them there are not of sufficient quality to keep them there), it is the complete absence of any semblance of planning that leaves QPR looking desperate (they signed 12 news players in the last window – more than an entire starting line up) and caused Football365’s Nick Miller to declare on Twitter that he hoped the club would be relegated this season.

If QPR appear desperate, it’s probably because they are. Staying in the Premier League has well-documented financial benefits and one only needs to look at the likes of Portsmouth to see how fragile many clubs business model’s become once the riches of the Premier League are denied them. However, their treatment of Robert Green seems counter-productive. It feels to me like going out and buying a new TV, only to upgrade to a slightly better, slightly more expensive one a week later. Although, given that Green was signed on a free, it is possibly more like being given an old TV by a friend, only to buy a brand new TV a week later when you see it on sale.

Nevertheless, the point is that the most stable and successful clubs in the Premier League rarely dispose of valuable assets quite so freely. I think of Everton, who have performed admirably for a number of years despite being subject to testing financial constraints. Everton’s keeper Tim Howard may not be the best keeper in the league and Everton could possible replace him with someone better if they were determined to do so, but he is more than serviceable (at least for another couple of years) and he has repaid the faith the club have shown in him with loyal service and a key role in establishing Everton as a challenger for the European places.

Reports linking Everton with a bid for 19-year-old Birmingham (and now England) keeper Jack Butland in the last transfer window seemed fanciful because of the fee involved (£6m was talked about - a lot of money for a club of Everton’s miniscule financial resources) but had a degree of credibility because it seemed logical for a club like Everton to look to replace Howard with a promising young keeper at some point. It didn’t happen this transfer window but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Butland join Everton at some point in the future if they’re not outbid by one of the big clubs.

To bring it back to QPR, I couldn’t help but feel for Green. In truth, Green left a very comfortable situation at West Ham despite the offer of a new contract, looking to benefit from the ambition shown by QPR, the same ambition of which he has now become a victim. However, it seems incredibly unfair that the best Green can now hope for is sitting on the bench or chasing promotion with a Championship contender.

What sort of a psychological impact will that have on Green? To a certain extent goalkeepers, by their very nature, have to be adept at bouncing back from setbacks, and Green has showed in the past that high-profile errors on international duty (with one of his greatest gaffes coming against Dempsey during the 2010 World Cup) haven’t massively impacted his form at club level. But the conventional wisdom about such things is not always accurate.

I have just finished reading Ronald Reng’s biography of another goalkeeper, German international Robert Enke (called ‘A Life Too Short’ and winner of last year’s William Hill Sports Book of the Year). Reng’s stirring account of an interesting, compassionate, talented professional who also happened to suffer from depression is one of the better sporting biographies I have read in recent times. It doesn’t throw up too many surprises – Reng doesn’t depart much from the formula followed by sporting biographers the world over – but its delicate treatment of the subject of depression is both timely and fascinating.

Enke’s story provides plenty of food for thought, but one thing that sticks with me is the over-reliance of conventional wisdom in sport. Enke was, I suspect, far from conventional even without taking into account his depression. What Reng makes clear is that depression as an illness makes life’s challenges seem insurmountable, sometimes irrespective of how great they appear to others. I therefore do not wish to suggest that Enke simply could not “hack” the competition and pressure of being Germany’s number one keeper and this is what “caused” his depression. It may have contributed to certain episodes but that is almost beside the point.

The way Enke was able to establish himself as Germany’s best goalkeeper at a mid-table club like Hannover 96 where he was the undisputed number one, following setbacks at Barcelona and Fenerbache, goes against the conventional wisdom that goalkeepers require competition to produce their best. Enke was the consummate professional and his own harshest critic. I suspect that many professionals are the same. Enke’s triumph over the conventional wisdom is remarkable (even before taking his illness into account). At the same time, such defiance was probably the secret of his success.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Robert Green is at risk of throwing himself in front of a train as Enke did. Green is his own man and may be more comfortable with the conventional sporting wisdom. He may relish the opportunity of dropping down to the Championship and enjoying playing football out of the spotlight. He may be able to turn this setback into motivation to become a better player and eventually displace Cesar as QPR’s number one. But I can’t help but feel that QPR may have benefitted just as much from letting Green know they had the opportunity to sign Cesar but declined due to their confidence in their recently signed England international. As a West Ham fan I wish Green all the best. I just hope that his career is not the latest victim of misplaced sporting conventional wisdom.

As for ‘A Life Too Short’, one hopes that its impact will be the most obvious one: deepening people’s understanding of the illness of depression, as it did my own. But I am also hopeful that stories of players such as Enke will help demonstrate that there can be success for those who defy the conventional wisdom.  Whilst Enke’s illness and untimely demise give Reng’s work a greater gravity, his story is compelling even without it’s ending. Amongst the saddest sub-plots in the book was the way Enke felt unable to share his experiences more widely during his life. Both Green and Dempsey could learn something from a fellow professional whose tragic death denied football an inspiring role model. And not just because he suffered from depression.

The growing likeability of Chelsea

End of the old guard: Drogba's departure has restored Torres' confidence... and made Chelsea likable again    Pic: Reuters

As the summer transfer draws to a close with the outcome of Chelsea’s pursuit of young German striker Andre Schurrle still unknown, one thing is sure. The overhaul of the Chelsea squad is not only underway, but may almost be complete. And, perhaps even more surprisingly, the turnover of players has not only got Chelsea looking like a more formidable challenger than they have for many years, but, against all odds, verging on likable for the first time since the Roman Abramovich takeover in 2003.

Despite their triumph in both last years Champions League and the FA Cup, the west London club could only manage a sixth-place finish in the English Premier League. When the promising Andre Villas-Boas was sacked as Chelsea manager in March last year following a 1-0 league defeat against West Bromwich Albion, a large part of the criticism leveled against the Portuguese was that he had failed to impose his preferred style of play on Chelsea’s influential old guard and had quickly lost the confidence of his players. But this overlooked the fact that in a perfect world Villas-Boas would have brought in players better suited to his system rather than having to rely on those who were already there. Indeed, many people felt that Villas-Boas had been handed a poisoned-chalice by Abramovich, who demanded the manager rebuild without compromising results. In the end, Villas-Boas was given neither the time nor the support to see his project through and was shown the door. But today the signs are there that Villas-Boas may have been more successful than he was given credit for, only for Roberto di Matteo (and whoever replaces him in a year's time – probably Pep Guardiola) to reap the benefits.

In truth, until recently the shadow of another Portuguese manager, Jose Mourinho (for whom Villas-Boas worked as Opposition Scout) remained cast across everything that went on at Stamford Bridge. Mourinho was Abramovich’s first managerial appointment as Chelsea owner and the self-proclaimed ‘Special One’ led the club to unprecedented success between 2004 and 2007, albeit without being able to deliver the Champions League trophy so coveted by the new Russian-owner.

When Mourinho left the club by “mutual consent” in September 2007 following a well-documented power struggle between himself and Abramovich, it started a procession of managers (currently six in five years) who have promised much, but until last year, largely failed to deliver (with the exception of a League and Cup double under Carlo Ancelotti in 2009/10).

Throughout the years that followed Mourinho’s departure, the core of his Chelsea team remained more or less in tact. Under Mourinho, the team's effectiveness and the manager's own charisma and ability to draw the attention of the media to himself instead of his team, disguised, to a certain extent, how the team he had assembled was almost completely devoid of any charm of its own.

None of this is to detract from the quality of the players in question. Rather more, it is to highlight the genuine difficulty anyone other than Chelsea fans had in feeling any warmth towards the likes of Peter Cech, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba. This problem was exacerbated by their close association in the eyes of many with an owner, the origin of whose fortune was unknown and who seemed intent on buying the Premier League, literally at any cost. It was the sense of inevitability, almost of entitlement, particularly after they won their first league title in Mourinho’s first season, that made Chelsea the target of most neutrals’ intense dislike (with me first among them).

But this aura wasn’t helped by the uninspiring nature and/or dubious character of some of Chelsea's key players: Petr Cech, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba, all relatively devoid of any sense of glamour, were all vital parts of the side that won the league title in 2004/05 and were later joined by similarly obnoxious Ashley Cole, Michael Ballack, Nicolas Anelka and Branislav Ivanovic. All the while, players demonstrating flair or the potential to become fan favourites were stockpiled by the wealthy club, but either failed to properly assimilate or were left to rot on the bench before being shipped out again (Joe Cole, Arjen Robben, Hernan Crespo and Scott Parker all spring to mind as the most obvious examples).

Undoubtedly one of the worst culprits of this is John Terry who, while undoubtedly a fine defender initially much appreciated by England fans for his heart-on-sleeve approach, could only disguise his loathsome personality for so long. I’m not from the school of thought that believes that it doesn’t matter what a footballer does off the pitch as long as he performs on it and Terry's conduct both on and off the pitch contribute to the detestable figure he has become. Terry has rightly attracted a lot of negative publicity for cheating on his wife (and mother of his twins) with the former partner of then-teammate Wayne Bridge, model Vanessa Perroncel, and his alleged racial abuse of QPR defender Anton Ferdinand, the brother of England teammate Rio. Most recently his attempts to crash the party at the end of last years Champions League final, a game in which he was not involved through his own stupidity/thuggery in the semi-final, were laughable but also entirely predictable. Sadly, such incidents are just the latest of a string of incidents (beginning with his abuse of American tourists at a Heathrow airport bar in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks – an incident in which Frank Lampard was also implicated) that have plagued Terry’s career and mean that “Big JT” is worthy of complete derision and all the bile that comes his way. Even Chelsea fans now have trouble defending the antics of their “heroic” captain.

Unlike Terry, Lampard’s involvement in the September 11 debacle can probably be put down to immaturity, but his subsequent performances have hardly helped endear him to the footballing public. Whilst I’m willing to admit that my perspective of Lampard may have been unfairly tainted by the acrimonious circumstances under which he left West Ham (the club I support) and the way he refused to defer to the superior Steven Gerrard in an England midfield that could only accommodate one of them, it says something that, despite being the highest scoring midfielder in Premier League history, he is thought of less fondly than midfield contemporaries such as Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Patrick Viera, Roy Keane and even Ryan Giggs (who has not been without off-field indescretions of his own in recent times). Goals may be one thing, but they alone can’t buy you the affection of Premier League audiences, and his finger-pointing-to-the-sky celebration is touching, but hardly inspires passion.

The greedy, chavvy, cheating Ashley Cole, the self-important Ballack, the headgear wearing Cech (who in fairness only does so following a “challenge” by one of the few footballers to rival Terry for shear unpleasantness, Stephen Hunt), the moody Anelka, and the so-thuggish-that-the-only-surprise-is-that-he-hasn’t-joined-Mourinho-at-Madrid-yet Ivanovic were all also complicit in contributing to making Chelsea the most difficult team to feel anything but negativity towards.

However, perhaps it is Didier Drogba that was the greatest contributor to the dour view many people took of the Chelsea of the last five years. Bought from Marseille in July 2004 for £24 million right at the start of the Mourinho era (unlike Lampard and Terry who were already at Stamford Bridge by the time Mourinho arrived), Drogba is perhaps the personification of Mourinho’s Chelsea. At his best Drogba was unstoppable meaning he regularly scored hatfuls of goals for the Blues, but much like Mourinho's Chelsea never played in a way that encouraged the adoration of the neutral. There’s no escaping that many of the goals he scored were incredibly impressive and, as demonstrated in the 2012 Champions League final, Drogba always seemed capable of producing at crucial times and in the most important matches. But there is also no getting away from the idea that Drogba was more reliant on power and force than skill, that he bullied defenders, and that his desire to win and make himself look good mattered more to him than anything else. And while none of those things are bad qualities to have for a Premier League striker, one can’t help but feel that the Stamford Bridge crowd (not to mention the rest of the football watching world) would have liked to see a bit more of the artistry exhibited by the likes of Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp at cross-town rivals Arsenal from time to time, even if they could never admit it.

Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the same things that made Drogba a winner also acted as a detriment to teammates, that his mentality and personality may have been so dominant that other players failed to flourish in his presence, that the potential of a Chelsea team was sometimes sacrificed on an alter of Drogba’s perhaps subconscious insistence that he personally was the star.

The following quotes from double-winning former Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti are, in my opinion, some of the most interesting insights offered into the inner workings of a team by any sports figure in recent times and are particularly enlightening with regard to the impact Drogba had on Chelsea:

"What I would say is training Chelsea, when the club is in the middle of a major generational change, is complicated.

"Take Torres and the crisis he has lived through there. I now know if you decide to invest strongly in him, you have to sell Drogba.

"Didier is like Filippo Inzaghi was at AC Milan. He simply devours any competition.

"It's not that he's evil - nor was Inzaghi - it's just the way they are."

Drogba may not be evil, but “the way he is” is not necessarily terribly likable either. It comes as absolutely no surprise to me, or it would seem to Ancelotti, that Torres has begun to find form again this season and I fully expect him to score 20 plus goals this season and be in contention for the Golden Boot.

And that is where the revolution of likability at Chelsea begins. I’ve followed the career of Fernando Torres since he was a fluffy haired teenager debuting for Atletico Madrid and have always liked him. When he moved to Liverpool in July 2007 I thought it was the perfect move for all concerned. One of the brightest young talents in Europe moving to a high-profile team where he would immediately be not just a first-team player, but a star. Most importantly he hadn’t chased the money and gone to Chelsea. And for the first couple of seasons Torres really did look the complete striker, a rare case of a prospect who lived up to the hype. Needless to say I was devastated when one of my favourite players moved to one of my least favourite clubs for £50 millon in January 2011. The fee was astronomical (the sixth highest paid for any player ever) which only served to prove, in my mind at least, that Torres wasn’t the player I thought he was, and instead just another Chelsea mercenary. But then what was an initially embarrassing lack of goals turned into a complete humiliation for Torres. After a year and a half of taking the piss out the Spaniard, I actually began to feel sorry for him and started making excuses in his defence. The Ancelotti quote was all the encouragement I needed to change my perspective of him once again. Torres hadn’t turned into a terrible player overnight as a form of devine retribution for joining a club like Chelsea. Instead, it was that Drogba and the environment he created that wouldn’t allow Torres to perform and with Drogba gone, Torres could not only redeem himself, but could possibly also contribute to the redemption of Chelsea.

Then, this summer Chelsea won the race to sign another of Europe’s most exciting talents, Eden Hazard, beating out no less a club than Manchester City. Manchester City, of course, had just won the Premier League on the back on a massive influx of money from the Abu Dhabi United Group Investment and Development Limited, much as Chelsea had done seven years earlier. The only difference was that City had assembled an even more impressive (although somehow more likable) squad who played more attractive football. But City’s newfound wealth meant the Manchester club also surpassed Chelsea as the club players moved to if they were only interested in money. All of a sudden, Hazard’s £32 million move to Chelsea (as opposed to City) became more acceptable.

Seemingly overnight, Chelsea could field an exciting front three of Torres, Hazard and Juan Mata without an overbearing Ivorian or moody Frenchman in sight, and with youngsters Daniel Sturridge and new boy Victor Moses as back-up. 

In midfield, Frank Lampard will (unfortunately) probably continue to be something of a fixture (at least for another couple of years albeit in a deeper lying role), but will most likely be accompanied by the sneaky-good Ramires (who showed he was so much more than just a workhorse box-to-box midfielder with this strike against Barcelona in last year’s Champions League semi-final), the bad-boy with a heart of gold Raul Meireles, and the promising Oscar and Marko Marin. Only perma-crock Michael Essien and the money-grabbing John Obi Mikel (who never really reached his potential after forcing his way out of Manchester United after realizing there was more money on offer at Chelsea) remain as midfield relics of the Mourinho era.

In defence Ashley Cole (at least until he inevitably chases one last payday) looks likely to come under increasing pressure from young Champions League finalist Ryan Bertrand, who came through the Chelsea Academy (making it difficult to begrudge him his success at the club). Meanwhile, as captain, John Terry will continue to feature prominently but for how much longer is unclear, particularly if he continues to be dogged by scandals of his own making. In his place are the enormously entertaining “Playstation footballer” David Luiz, and the affable and competent England international, Gary Cahill, who toiled valiantly for a number of years with Bolton before making a deserved switch to a Champions League contender. The final piece in the puzzle was added last week when Chelsea signed Cesar Azpilicueta, a young Spanish defender who I've been following since he made the unconventional and brave move to Marseille at the age of 20, to contest the right-back spot with the brutish Ivanovic (if he survives his first training session against the Serbian).

I’m even almost ready to forgive Cech, who despite demonstrating increasing frailty last season, was an excellent and exciting keeper before he was tarred with the Mourinho-era brush (and suffered his head injury). I’m hopeful that Cech can reinvent himself as part of a bright, new, inspiring Chelsea team and provide the sort of leadership that will be needed by this young squad (particularly once Lampard and Terry shuffle off).

I’m not saying that this will be the team to line up against Atletico Madrid in this evening’s European Super Cup, or even necessarily feature all together in any game this season, but this season Chelsea could field a team of Cech – Azpilicueta, Cahill, Luiz, Bertrand – Ramires, Meireles, Oscar – Mata, Hazard and Torres and that’s just about one I can get behind, or at least watch without actively hoping bad things happen to them.

Speaking as a West Ham fan, I have to say it’s the kind of overhaul that other teams in the Premier League should be envious of and whilst the finishing touches have undoubtedly been put on it this summer, with Roberto di Matteo at the helm, the foundations were there under Andre Villas-Boas last season. With a bit more time and support there’s no telling how successful Villas-Boas might have been but Chelsea fans should perhaps now look back on his time at the helm a little more fondly. They are now reaping the benefits of Villas-Boas cleaning house. Now it’s over to Tottenham fans to see if he can repeat the feat – maybe this time with a bit more support.