'Arsenal are a great example of the best way to run a football club'

Beane is famous for his statistical analysis method, known as 'sabermetrics', which allowed him to beat the system and turn a ragtag bunch of flops into MLB stars as he led the Oakland Athletics to unprecedented successes in the naughties.

His methods are now common across almost all sports and you would be hard tasked to find a top-level club that didn't use some variation of his work.

In quotes picked up by the 'Daily Mail', Beane has revealed that he has a lot of admiration for Arsenal and for the way the club is run.

‘There are some decisions in sport that cost a lot of money, that are good decisions, he explained. 'Having a lot of money gives you access to very good decisions. 

'Michael Jordan was worth a lot more money than he was paid by Chicago Bulls even though he earned a lot of money. It’s the same thing in football — there are a lot of great footballers who are worth three times their earnings despite the fact people think they are making a lot of money. 

'Having the resources, we always said, the challenge is you want enough money to make good decisions, there’s a lot of public pressure when you do have a big club and a big business. Sometimes you have enough money to make bad decisions. 

‘I won’t go deep into it but I’m a huge fan of the Arsenal football club, because I think it’s a really [good example], from the football field to the way it’s been run, the stadium and everything, to me it’s an admirable football club. It’s a football entity when all’s said and done.’ 

The impact that Beane's methods have had on sport has already been incredible and the American believes that data and statistics are only going to become more and more important as time goes on.

‘I think it’s more a reflection that we’re a data hungry world,’ Beane explained. ‘We have to access to data. 

‘Data is a part of every business. It’s not going away.’