There's a great chapter on Charles Hughes's 'performance match analysis'

in Jonathan Wilson's 'Inverting the Pyramid: A History of Football Tactics'.

Basically, Hughes had a thesis that he wanted to prove - that direct football was more effective than slow, short passing - and set about doing so through years of apparently scientific statistical analysis of English league games. (As always with these things, the metholodogy was full of holes, which Wilson highlights.)

Hughes was close to Graham Taylor during Taylor's Watford days: there's a particularly good bit about Watford being 5-1 down to Southampton after the first leg of a League Cup tie, and Hughes going to Taylor and saying "According to my system, you should attack in the second leg."

Amazingly, Watford won the second leg 7-1 and even more amazingly, Hughes tried to take the credit for it. Hughes was eventually instrumental in getting Taylor appointed as England manager where he finally discovered that, at the highest level, direct football is generally not more effective than the ability to retain the ball.

Posted By: Ottosson Foxtrot, Oct 14, 10:36:22