Arsenal's bottle isn’t all about optics

Business opportunity. Even as football’s stats and analytics industries grow apace, there is nobody yet adequately measuring what we now know to be the most persuasive indicator of performance; seemingly insignificant gestures and habits.

Let’s call this strangely uncommercialised discipline ‘symbolmetrics’.

For now, we must rely on anecdotal evidence from expert interpreters; a throwback to the days when we had to take a pundit’s word that the “boy covered every blade of grass”, rather than check how many kilometers Opta has logged.