I don't really like the article, the problem is that time of possession is a decent proxy for better team, or actually a proxy for team A is better at retaining the ball than team B is at getting the ball. So their counter claim is roughly, be the better team. Thanks, we already knew that one.
Actually that ties into nicely with a general problem of the presentation of statistics, anything involving numbers is usually presented as incredible reliable, while actually it is just an additional argument. A statistic may be trivial, like the one above, it may be bullshit or it may be conclusive, but the use of numbers by itself is not some kind of magic that reveals a hidden truth. Statistics is just a powerful method to construct arguments.
I posted in a sibling comment to this one about how this argument reminds me of one that happened in hockey.
Specifically I claimed that one of the big reasons that possession became more prized is because of Hockey Canada changing their developmental programs after missing gold at the Winter Olympics three times in a row. Specifically they started to do serious analysis on teams that were winning, both in the NHL and international level teams.
I was lucky enough to have parents well off enough that I got to play organized travel team hockey through my entire childhood (age 5 - 18). I'm 27 and I caught the beginning of the shift in thinking near the middle of my developmental "career". You could tell the difference immediately (and it wasn't incredibly kind to a physcally large forward like myself). Even more so, if you went and watched some of the high level younger teams though, the ones that got coaches from away and got taught the latest theory you could see the way the game was re-shaping itself even if at the top current level the stats were just showing that "good teams are performing well".
So that's why I think that dismissing theory and statistics as just saying that the other team is "better" in a roundabout way is missing the point. Quantifying which team is better and why allows changes to the developmental programs that produce players. If you look at the kids that came out of the developmental shift you can see the results of the statistical analysis, the 90s and early 00s was not kind to North American international hockey but as the kids that were taught with the new statistically informed program started moving up to the professional level you can see the level of play increasing and now it's Canada and the US that are the dominant teams on the world stage and all of that happened because the people running the programs started to look at the statistics of what actually worked and implementing them into the training and development of the next generation of athletes.
> the problem is that time of possession is a decent proxy for better team
Decent, but by no means perfect. In Atletico's La Liga winning season of 2013-2014, they enjoyed exactly 50% possession. The following year they actually had 45%, despite finishing 3rd. Leicester City won the league with 46% possession.
The problem is not just the presentation of statistics, it's the assumption that if you do the same things title winning teams do, you will enjoy the same success. It may well have been that hoofing down the field worked for some teams (it did for Leicester), but that is no guarantee of success if you don't happen to have a fast center forward and a holding midfielder who runs like crazy. On the other hand, Spain won Euro 2012 without a proper center forward (Torres won the golden boot with only 3 goals, but don't let that fool you, Spain's goals were widely spread out and Torres scored one in the final long after the game was won) by playing possession football.
Going into a discussion related to statistics with a couple of anecdotes - tut.
Reep only seems to have followed one team - albeit playing against many others. If he'd got other like minded people to do the same for their teams (ideally all teams in all leagues!) as well then that would help to control one or two of the huge number of variables.
Then as the article alludes, if he'd looked at the sequences that lead to a score, rather than working back from a score to the sequence that lead to it, something really useful might have emerged.
One thing is certain however: whatever the English national (soccer) team decides is a good idea - it isn't. It's a bit embarrassing to be honest.
Actually that ties into nicely with a general problem of the presentation of statistics, anything involving numbers is usually presented as incredible reliable, while actually it is just an additional argument. A statistic may be trivial, like the one above, it may be bullshit or it may be conclusive, but the use of numbers by itself is not some kind of magic that reveals a hidden truth. Statistics is just a powerful method to construct arguments.