Just as in poker, Campbell calls player recruitment “managing the economic risk of your bet with the available information” but stresses a further point which, upon meeting other members of his industry, is clearly crucial. Where attempted innovation in football has previously fallen, it has often stemmed from lapses in communication or clashes of personality.

Sir Clive Woodward had a better relationship with Harry Redknapp than commonly assumed but add in Rupert Lowe, Dave Bassett, Dennis Wise and Simon Clifford and you hardly need the detective powers of Hercule Poirot to deduce where it might have gone wrong. Where analytics is making a difference, the culture is usually aligned. “There will be some clubs steeped in the tradition that you need to have played but, fortunately the clubs I’ve been at, the mindset has been very open,” says Wilson.

Campbell adds: “Where I think the analytics world has struggled is building a bridge to the traditional football world to infiltrate the information better. It is actually quite presumptuous to give out loads of information, that makes perfect logical sense from a mathematical standpoint, and expect a sport that has developed for decades to accept it overnight. I would say this remains the biggest challenge. You have to understand the dynamics and the personalities of the people you are working with to be able to communicate the information. I think that is why analytics has not penetrated football like maybe other businesses would have expected.”