A really common trope in sci-fi and comics is where a huge alium/evil computer is befuddled by a random element the heroes have introduced, i.e. the Sentinels are fighting the X-Men, and Wolverine et al. have been nobbled by amazingly planned counter-attacks, and then a mutant who they don’t recognise does them in.

Obviously the TURNIP SWEDE SVEN (tm DJ Martian) squad shock furore reminded me of this a lot: the evil Sentinels with their pre-loaded Darren Bent files will be entirely hornswoggled by Theo Walcott and Aaron Lennon. And then I thought, the problem is though that plucky England aren’t fighting evil robots, they’re dealing with other football teams. And THEN I thought – given the prevalence of high level ProZone-style computer analysis on the abilities of individual players, maybe they ARE fighting robots! Is there a sense in which picking a random quantity like Walcott actually will upset opponents’ scientific/statistical preparations, or does “defenses won’t know how to deal with them” just mean “let’s hope the defenses haven’t heard of YouTube”?