LONDON • About a decade ago, The Wall Street Journal writer Sam Walker had the idea of trying to identify the most objectively great teams in sporting history, and seeing if he could discern any common traits.
He found they all shared a single characteristic - for every team, the duration of their success coincided with the lifespan of a captain, who could elevate a team to perform beyond the level of their natural ability, from Hungary's Ferenc Puskas to Carles Puyol of Barcelona.
In short, he theorised the one thing the greatest teams have in common is great player leadership.
Walker's findings provide an interesting counterpoint to an inconspicuous but intriguing trend of this Premier League season.
At many teams, the club captain has been an impermanent or peripheral figure.
Gary Cahill has barely played for Chelsea, likewise, Everton's Phil Jagielka, and Southampton's Steven Davis, now on loan to Rangers.
LEAD BY EXAMPLE
You don't always need vocal captains... You can lead by example as a creative player. If the likes of Hazard or Silva are picked as captains, for me, that's a sign that those guys should be able to inspire the team.
NIGEL WINTERBURN, former Arsenal defender, on how individualistic attacking players can break the archetype of the vocal and defensive captain.
Manchester United's Antonio Valencia and Manchester City's Vincent Kompany have started five and six league games respectively.
Seven clubs (Arsenal, the Toffees, Fulham, City, United, Newcastle and the Saints) have had four or more captains this term.
All of which begs a question: Is the ever-present, totemic captain an endangered species? And does it matter?
The first thing to point out is that there does not appear to be an obvious correlation between consistency of captain and success based on the small sample of this league season.
City do not appear to have suffered for rotating the armband.
In fact, it is easy to disparage the importance attached to captaincy as old-fashioned - a peculiarly English hang-up.
When pundits - usually from the generations of retired former players - bemoan the lack of leaders in modern football, it feels like they are often harking back to that monolithic figure of English folklore.
The blood-soaked Terry Butcher, or Captain Marvel Bryan Robson, or John Terry or Tony Adams shouting and pointing fingers.
But Nigel Winterburn, who played under Adams at Arsenal, says that the presence of an old-school skipper in the ranks was not something he or his teammates considered a particularly important factor in their success.
"It didn't give us anything extra," the former England defender says.
"I never really worried who was captain, it didn't interest me."
When Winterburn moved to West Ham, the captaincy was less consistent unlike at Highbury, yet he "didn't personally notice the difference".
Is the lionisation of a single captain out of step with the reality of modern football then, a prehistoric obsession in an era of advanced analytics and player rotation?
As Michael Cox pointed out in an article for ESPN on Arsenal's perceived lack of leaders in 2016, every generation thinks it had better leaders.
As early as 1938, then Gunners boss Herbert Chapman was lamenting: "Football today lacks the personalities of 20 or 30 years ago."
A lack of leadership is often a retrofitted criticism applied to underperforming teams, while teams that succeed, despite lacking archetypal leaders, escape censure.
However, it would be wrong to say the idea of captaincy is something that is incompatible with the analytical side of modern football.
It is possible that the cult of the captain has seemingly declined in parallel with the rise of the cult of the coach.
The advent of meticulous micromanagers such as City's Pep Guardiola and Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp, whose coaching depends in large part on intensively rehearsing movements and systems, ensures their teams are never unsure of what to do in any phase of the game.
It seems there has also been a change in the type of player considered for the captaincy.
In the past, that office was usually the preserve of vocal, charismatic, defensive players.
But a new breed of captain has begun to emerge. This season, Arsenal's Mesut Ozil, David Silva at City and Fulham's Tom Cairney have worn the armband in the league.
These are all attacking players, most of the individualistic variety, none especially loud.
But Winterburn, who was captained by Joe Cole in his final season at West Ham, believes they can do the job.
"You don't always need vocal captains," he says. "You can lead by example as a creative player. If the likes of (Chelsea's Eden) Hazard or Silva are picked as captains, for me, that's a sign that those guys should be able to inspire the team."
While Winterburn still prefers the single-captain model, he adds, "There should be 11 captains out there."
It seems that is the way we are heading but by rotating the captaincy, are you multiplying leadership or spreading it more thinly?
Therein lies the paradox - with 59 players and counting having skippered a league team this season, is captaincy in decline? Or is it in fashion?
THE TIMES, LONDON
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