I have been watching the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on iplayer. There is a section of the first one (28 to 38 minutes) where one of Liverpool's mathematicians is brought on to talk about his work (there area about 8 of them) analysing their own team and others in other major leagues. Apparently data is collected on every match, and player performance is judged aoong with probabilities. I assume this is where the goal likelihood percentages etc come from. My question is whether villa employ similar. And if so how effective are they. Is an element of Liverpool's success down to their mathematicians and their contribution to selecting the players?

My understanding is that Villa use a Magic-8 ball.

Rubbish, we have an orange dot.

I was lucky enough a few years ago to have a 'behind the scenes' tour of BMH when McLeish was in charge. It was definitely done then as there were player stats plastered all over one of the notice boards.