About Us

The Football Review brings you brand new and innovative statistics in an attempt to bring objective analysis to football and advance football related research. We aim to drill down deeper into the game than any other football analysis has done before. We hope to review and analyse everything in detail to inform you better what to expect from the team you support and the players you follow. We have new methods for analysing players, teams and coaches and bring these to you via articles on this site and in print in our annual publication 'The Football Review'.

We are not intent on just bringing you a plethora of new statistics, but more to use them to inform you about trends, answer questions, help pick your fantasy football teams, help you beat the bookies, and challenge long held beliefs about the game. During the season we aim to bring you regular articles such as:
  • Weekend Review: a review of the previous weeks action, along with trends and observations throughout the season.
  • Player Profile: a look at new signings, improving players and surprising performances.
  • Features: research into big topics that arise during the season e.g. zonal marking, rotation, squad building, formations etc
  • Myth Busting: analysis into long held beliefs about the game and whether they are actually valid.
  • Hot Topics: snapshot analysis into hot topics that might arise throughout the season.
Our annual publication and this site has been developed out of a passion and interest for the game that goes way beyond the simple result of a game between two teams. For many years we have thought that football in this country is covered, by television and the vast majority of the press, in a very simplistic way. It has been very rare to find articles with detailed analyses of such things as team selections and formations, substitution patterns and tactics. There are some writers and TV pundits trying to do so, but they have been few and far between. Generally, all we ever get is hype, scandal, gossip and celebrity. We believed that the majority of fans would love to be more informed, more knowledgeable, and more connected with their favourite team in terms of the football they play. The hype, gossip, celebrity, etc, merely seduces them into believing that they are closer to their team than they really are.

For us, one of the biggest annoyances has been in the way players are rated and discussed among so called ‘football specialists’. So often, all we get is repeat glib opinions, which often start from no specific analysis based on fact. For instance, the simple judgement on forwards seems to be that if they don’t score goals they are no good and that defenders rarely get noticed unless they are contributing goals at the other end of the pitch.

That leads us back to exactly what The Football Review aims to bring to you the reader. It isn’t really about facts and figures, it is about rationally analysing the game to get a better understanding as to how teams win and lose and how players play their part in that process. We hope that or research and analysis will give you a better understanding of your team and its players and bring about a change in how players and teams are evaluated in the future. More than that, we hope it will support your thoughts and conclusions on players and teams, change a few opinions too, and above all, give you a better insight and understanding of football in general.


Sports Statistical Reviews Ltd Sports Statistical Reviews Ltd is an innovator in the collection, analysis and interpretation or progressive sport statistics

Oliver Anderson founded Sports Statistical Reviews in February 2007 and is a statistician by profession, and also a qualified football coach. He has been recording information on football for a number of years and inventing new ways to evaluate players, teams and managers in a more informative manner.