Kane or Vardy? Pep or José? Pulis or ... anybody else? Football is a game of opinions. A world where received wisdom and the law of the hunch reign supreme. But football is becoming more intelligent. The history books may say that Leicester City winning the premier league ‘defied logic’, but if you looked more closely, they were always going to win . . . From distances run to pass success rate, shots on target to corners won, counter-attacks to tackles made, Opta, the world’s leading sports data company, records everything. But what does it all mean? And how can it add to our love of the game? From the author and statistician behind the popular OptaJoe Twitter account, what follows is a hugely entertaining and insightful guide to football in 2016, analysing data from the world's greatest teams, players, leagues and tournaments. Stats can never tell us everything, but combining cutting-edge analysis with wry humour, this book debunks countless myths peddled by pundits, managers, and even players. The ideas that follow are both surprising and satisfying, but may also leave you with the feeling that ‘yes, that’s what I was thinking all along’.

In football, numbers are everywhere. From touches in the opposition box to expected goals, clear-cut chances to win-loss ratios. In the modern game, these numbers help provide the narrative, the drama, and the conversation. They are scrutinised in order to justify results and to predict future outcomes. They even dictate transfer policy and drive clubs to achieve the impossible. But when did the numbers become so important and what do they mean? In Outside the Box, Duncan Alexander looks back at twenty-five years of the Premier League and beyond, uncovering the hidden truths and accepted myths that surround the game. Using the archives of OptaJoe and never-before-seen data, we discover why Liverpool have gone 27 years without winning a league title and why Lionel Messi is the best player in the game’s history. Or is he? Insightful, wry, and hugely entertaining, Outside the Box is an enlightening and accessible account of football across the decades, analysing data from the some of the greatest seasons, players, teams and managers.

First in-depth analysis of broadband developments in Europe, combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, with chapter contributions provided by in-country experts.

Academic attention has focused on America's influence on European stage works, and yet dozens of operettas from Austria and Germany were produced on Broadway and in the West End, and their impact on the musical life of the early twentieth century is undeniable. In this ground breaking book, Derek B. Scott examines the cultural transfer of operetta from the German stage to Britain and the USA and offers a historical and critical survey of these operettas and their music. In the period 1900-1940, over sixty operettas were produced in the West End, and over seventy on Broadway. A study of these stage works is important for the light they shine on a variety of social topics of the period - from modernity and gender relations to new technology and new media - and these are investigated in the individual chapters. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Sociologists and political scientists from Europe and the US explore how global issues are transforming local and national activism and the interactions between local, national, and supranational movement organizations. In addition to describing recent events, they adapt concepts and hypotheses developed in the social movement literature of the pas

Now in its second edition, Contemporary Tourism: an international approach presents a new and refreshing approach to the study of tourism, considering issues such as the changing world order, destination marketing, tourism ethics, pro-poor tourism and implications for the patterns and flow of tourism in the future.

'It's been the basis of my work since 1971. It's the internet between covers' John Motson 'The definitive chronicle of changing times for so many who love the sport' Ian Herbert, Daily Mail 'The Yearbook stands for authority and integrity' Martin Tyler 'The first reference book you should turn to' Daily Telegraph The Football Yearbook 2020-2021 is the market-leading book of football statistics, featuring 1,056 fact-filled pages with everything you need to know about domestic and international football. Since its first appearance in 1970, The Football Yearbook has heralded the start of each new season and served as the sport's book of record, faithfully chronicling more than a half-century of both tradition and evolution. Now in its 51st year of publication, the Yearbook continues to meticulously record the season just gone and look forward to the season about to start, all within more than a thousand pages of pure footballing facts and figures.

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

The Expected Goals method is football's best-kept secret. The metric gives unparalleled insight into which teams and players are performing at the highest level. Professional gamblers have used Expected Goals to make millions through football betting. Club scouts have used Expected Goals to identify hidden gems in the transfer market. And the media have recently started using Expected Goals to offer more profound insight in their broadcasts. Despite this, most ordinary fans still don't understand what the Expected Goals method is - or appreciate the significant impact that it is set to have on the sport in coming years. Expected Goals (otherwise known as xG) was originally conjured up by a small corner of the online football analytics community. It didn't take long for professional gamblers to begin using xG to predict match outcomes. These bettors utilised the Expected Goals method to turn over hundreds of millions of pounds from the bookmakers. Before long, football clubs had caught on to the ground-breaking insight given by xG. Brentford FC were leaders in this field, managing to assemble a Play-Off-reaching squad on a shoe-string budget. In the last five years, the small West London side have turned over more than £100m in transfer revenue from their use of the Expected Goals method in player recruitment. More recently, the Expected Goals method has been adopted by the media as a form of insight. Fans are finally catching on to the pioneering means of football analysis. Soon enough, anyone who doesn't understand the Expected Goals philosophy will be left behind. "This book will make you watch football differently" - Tobias Pedersen "Possibly the most ground-breaking football book ever written" - Football Impact "A brilliant account of the history and future of Expected Goals" - StatShot