Possession is no longer the law

Possession stats are one of modern football’s great obsessions — they appear on almost every post-match graphic, at the end of countless match reports and we spend endless hours studying them, even during the course of a game.

But there is growing evidence they are almost obsolete in terms of what they tell us about the performance of a team.

Last Saturday, out of eight games played in the Premier League six were won by the side with least possession and yet commentators and amateur statisticians still talked animatedly about what the figures meant.