Evaluation - using a football analogy

Now, this won't be to everyone's taste! There's an interesting article here from the BBC that I thought might help some students with their understanding of the concept of evaluation. The article was prompted by the now Liverpool Football Club striker Daniel Sturridge who claimed that, not only were his new employers 'bigger' then his previous club (Chelsea) but they are, in fact the biggest club in the country. To many, the answer seems very simple - you can't claim that a club that hasn't won the Premier League in Sturrdge's conscious lifetime can be bigger than, say Manchester United or even Arsenal. Only those in a certain part of Merseyside would make such an audacious claim, surely? The BBC, in their wisdom, have decided to test Mr Sturridge's claim. Whilst this article might be of some interest to the average football follower, I did think that it was a fascinating way of breaking down the question and testing it against various criteria. The writer tests it against competitions won, size of fan base, win percentage and attendance and concludes that the different measures come up with slightly different answers. If I were introducing the concept of evaluation, I would start by asking Sturridge's question and ask students how they might test the theory (before presenting them with the aritcle).So, if a question says 'evaluate the view that only firms operating in a perfectly competitive market can be economically efficient' we would tell our students to give a 'yes but no' answer - just as the writer has done so in this article.By the way, anybody with any footballing common sense will know that the true test of the size and importance of a football club rests on how successful they are in the Johnstone Paint Trophy cup.