How Football Manager changed the game

The astonishing success of Football Manager is based on data so accurate it's used by clubs to rate players and tactics

In September this year the England winger Andros Townsend received a frantic text message from his girlfriend. "When did you get fined for not turning up for training," it read, followed by that iPhone emoji that resembles the troubled subject of Edvard Munch's The Scream: eyes locked open, mouth agape, hands clasped to cheeks.

"Huh?" he replied, in bewilderment. "I got fined?" Then, a demand: 'Show me." Townsend's girlfriend, Hazel O'Sullivan, obliged with a screengrab of a headline that read: "Andros Townsend accepts his fine." Townsend, the article could be seen to continue, had learned his lesson and "indicated a willingness to improve his behaviour in future".