Kate Mason gets a feel for the technical area at Brentford

It is 20 years since the book Moneyball was published, all about how a baseball team took a counter-cultural approach to recruiting players and what happened next.

After the undervalued players of the Oakland A?s produced a league-record 20-game win streak on a slender budget and their story become a film with Brad Pitt, anyone with a passing interest in sport knew all about the theory.

The point for their manager Billy Beane was to identify areas of skill other teams didn?t value ? especially if the naked eye might persuade you to discount them. Because if people don?t want to buy, you get a deal as well as a high-quality player. And they?ll almost certainly be committed to the project.
We?ve talked in this column about Moneyball?s descendants in the Premier League ? Brighton and Brentford ? who are trying to outwit the competition on a fraction of the budget. Assuming the teams around them aren?t too arrogant to pick up on ?small club? strategies, they will have to be incredibly agile to stick ahead of the competition in the next few years.

What we?re talking about is creative thinking ? working with those who are underestimated. We?re told sports teams are constantly on the hunt for marginal gains. And yet there?s one obvious area where the gains just don?t seem worth the hunting.

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