If you've been watching Sky Sports News of late, you may have noticed that they are using ratings from the Football Manager video games to profile footballers' attributes.

That has led to some ridicule on social media, but that is ignoring the type of data that Football Manager provides.

Dr. Tom Markham, the Head of Strategic Business Development at Sports Illustrated Games, which makes the FM game series joined us on Off The Ball and he revealed the scale of the operation: they have a whopping "1,300 scouts worldwide and over 600 players and coaching staff" to help build their database. 

"Clubs use our data to find players and it's also used by the League Managers' Association for training of managers," he said.

"We see ourselves as more of a football product now rather than just a computer game, so we think it's only fair that the likes of Sky are using this if real clubs are."

Listen to the full interview via the Football Show podcast.