My best laid plan for monthly blog on a book I've read hasn't exactly gone to plan. Still, better late than never I've come to the end of Why England Lose & Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski.
I'd borrowed this from a friend - who clearly bagged a bargain looking at the sticker - so it had come highly recommended. The book is essentially an attempt by Kuper and Szymanski to look at football with an economist's hat on.
The beauty of it is the balance struck by the authors. Economic theories and methodologies are explained in a pretty simple way, helping you to keep up with how and why the pair come to their conclusions. It's clever without being dry and insightful without being patronising.
The answer to the title question is, in short, that England win about as many games as they should given the size of the country, experience of international football and strength of the economy (the three key factors they use to gauge whether a nation meets its expectations). It'll be well worth bearing that in mind during the hype, hope and heat of the Euros this summer.
From a Forest fan's point of view, it's interesting to see Brian Clough and Peter Taylor held up for their mastery of the transfer market.
Quoting Peter Taylor's book 'With Clough By Taylor' it looks at three lessons that clubs can learn from Forest's dynamic duo. Those being:
*be as eager to sell good players as to buy them - spotting deterioration early
*older players are overrated
*buy players with personal problems at a discount and then help them deal with those problems
Plenty of clubs could do with a read of that section before blowing billions in this summer's transfer window.
Other issues range from looking at which footballing nation performs best (spoiler alert: Iraq does pretty well), an explanation of the winners of the European Cup and a look at how economists look at penalty shootouts.
Not every bit completely works and some of the information is understandably dated now, seven years on from publication, yet this was a fun read. It plays with some of football's conventional wisdom and offers a genuinely interesting sense of perspective. It's well worth a read, especially if you can find it at that place.
