Rocky
Swears he's not a Tottenham fan
That's the annoying thing nobody is debating that point. If I run a paper printing firm and I invest 1000 in a new machine and my rival has only invested 100 then I would rightly expect my machine to print more pieces of paper.
However if my rival firm invests 900 and another 800 then other factors can influence overall paper printed. Do the other firms have better maintenance teams, have they modified the machine to increase capacity, are any of the firms using full capacity, are their workers more efficient at loading and unloading the machine? Have the firms actually got the technical expertise to run the machines?
Even then when comparing the 1000 and 100 those factors can still be important. A new start up firm may go buy the biggest shiniest machine it can find but lack the understanding and knowledge on how best to use said machine (see City signing Robinho).
Kind of like the idea of Tony Pulis managing Manchester United. Can he make the step up from small regional company to global enterprise and all which that entails?
Well, if you take a point out of context, that can change everything and the debate gets derailed. You've spent several paragraphs there making points that I acknowledged in the first sentence of my second paragraph, which was removed from your quote.
There are many factors and isolating variables requires either a randomised controlled trial (which won't happen), or slightly more advanced statistics and a great deal of understanding of them to reach an accurate interpretation.