Comolli: No massive transfer deals this summer

only hoillet is a realistic target.

You don't know that...

Don't underestimate the pull of this club and fans ( some fans)

Is he not a winger?
Do we not need a winger?
Is he not better than some of the players we have at our disposal?

If we were to bring in two wide players in the summer, I'd certainly have no problem with him being one of them.

Agree Racer, if we brought a couple in and he was one of them I'd be very happy.

He has pace which we need, he can finish which we need, and he is a raw talented kid who we could improve.

Why so negative.

Just holliet being a wide man means nothing. We need top class no more squad fillers.  Barring the wolves match holliet has being poor recently. I dont see him making a major difference just another gamble

Just holliet being a wide man means nothing. We need top class no more squad fillers.  Barring the wolves match holliet has being poor recently. I dont see him making a major difference just another gamble

21 years old, out of contract, full of potential.
Type of gamble I'd take.

If we are only making one or two adjustments have to be targeting better than Holliet

If we are only making one or two adjustments have to be targeting better than Holliet

Not the same as what I listed though was it?
If he's on a free and we get another winger F**k all wrong with that.

Elcentrocampista.com: Spanish star opens door to Reds switch

Liverpool target Javi Martinez could have thrown the door open to an Anfield switch after saying he would be ideally suited to football in the Premier League.

Kenny Dalglish has been linked with the midfielder for a number of months and is thought to have already sent Liverpool scouts to Spain to watch Martinez play for Athletic Club.

The 23-year-old is was quoted by TalkSport as saying football in England is 'more suitable' to that in Spain although the Spanish international added he was focusing on the season with Athletic Club: "I try not to pay any attention to all the things that I see or read.

"I am just concentrating now on the end part of the season and just focusing on giving 100 per cent of my thinking and energy to the club."

Liverpool boss Dalglish is keen to bring some new faces to the club during the summer, and has also been linked with players from a number of other Spanish clubs.

Source: Elcentrocampista.com

Here you go Corbally.

Thanks racer.  But in fairness we wont be back competing for titles till we are targeting players of that quality

Thanks racer.  But in fairness we wont be back competing for titles till we are targeting players of that quality

I have to disagree with you Corbs.  We definitely need to spend this summer, but we do not need to spend 20-30M on every player.  Some of our best performers this season have been players bought for less than 10M - Lucas, Enrique, Skrtel, Agger, and Bellamy.  We need to be smart with our money.  Spunking 30M at Javi Martinez isn't going to win us a title....  Nor will 35M on Eden Hazard....  Both are very talented young players, but both are insanely overpriced. 

Players like Ba, Podolski, or Huntelaar who have buyout clauses or only a year left on their current deals would represent good value for money.  Hoilett and Diame would be good free options, while players like Affelay, Perotti, Griezmann, etc would all be available for considerably less than 20M and would add much needed quality and creativity to our attack. 

I understand that you see players like Mata (22M) and Aguero (38M) that we possibly could have gone in for this last summer and think, "we missed the boat on these guys."  However, I look at players like Javier Hernandez (6M), Daniel Sturridge (5M),  Rafael VDV (7M), Miralem Pjanic (9M), etc and think, "we missed the boat on these guys."  There are plenty of high quality players out there that won't cost an arm and a leg to buy, and we need to be looking to sign a few of those players. 

Hoilett as a winger on a free would be sound so we could maybe spend money on different types of player.

Is playing with out and out wingers the be all and end all?

Is playing with out and out wingers the be all and end all?

No., but players who would play on the outside of a 3 man midfield will be tempted to go wide from time to time and they to be just as effective there as in they are in the middle.

For instance in my humble opinion Henderson is better in the middle I don't like him playing wide.

1 (2)   Man United--------28------21------4------3------68------27------41------67


7 (7)   Liverpool-----------27------10-------9------8------30------26------4------39


19 (19) Wolves---------28-------5-------7------16------30------58------(-)28------22

Highlighted Goals For and Goals Against.


Title winning defense.
Relegation goal rate.

We know what we need.

In the fans case the patience to wait until the summer for a signing we should have made in the January window,
because, and I hate to say it, we are suffering now for our lack of activity in January.

Interesting article, don't remember seeing it before on here and don't know if the validity or source is any measure of quality, this article was from last summer.




 

The Scouser Report: Soccernomics, Moneyball and Liverpool’s Transfer Policy

What do a British author, an economics professor and the Oakland Athletics baseball team have in common? All three of them are having a serious impact on Liverpool’s transfer policy under the current regime.

Michael Lewis’ book “Moneyball” blew open the transfer traditions of baseball, revealing how the Oakland Athletics managed to compete at the top of Major League Baseball despite a far smaller revenue stream than its rivals. By paying more attention to unconventional players, non-traditional statistics and older draft picks, Oakland stayed close to the top of MLB with a miniscule wage budget.

British author Simon Kuper and economics professor Stefan Szymanski teamed up to bring us “Soccernomics” or, as it’s better known as, “Why England Lose…”. Inspired by “Moneyball” this book attempts to put a football feel on the Oakland way of doing things. So here are the 10 simple rules of Soccernomics:

            New managers waste money, ergo, limit their say in transfers.
            Draw opinion from several people from different backgrounds.
            Avoid stars of recent international tournaments.
            Avoid certain nationalities (e.g. Brazilian, Dutch) as they are overpriced.
            Buy players in their early twenties; older players are overvalued and youngsters aren’t fully developed.
            Sell a player either before buyers see deterioration in his game or when a club offers more than he’s worth.
            Replace your best players before selling.
            Never buy strikers because they are overpriced; develop them instead.
            Buy players with personal problems , then help them deal with their issues.
            Help new players relocate.

Couple these ten with one key Moneyball rule: Overspend to fill gaps in the squad, as, the quicker they are filled, the quicker a team can start turning a profit. Now you can see some of the reasoning behind the club’s decisions. Let’s see how each of the rules are applied by Liverpool’s new ownership, Fenway Sports Group:

1. New managers waste money, limit their say in transfers.

In football, managers are short-term employees unless a club gets extremely lucky. According to the League Manager’s Association, a manager’s average tenure in the Premiership is under 18 months, compared to an average player’s average stint at a club of 3 years.  Player turnover and, therefore, player expenditure increase drastically when a new manager wants to “put his stamp” on the team. From what we’ve been told, FSG has a set procedure for LFC transfers:

            Kenny Dalglish tells Damien Comolli what he thinks the team needs.
            Comolli returns with a shortlist of players that fit the criteria set out by these very rules.
            Dalglish chooses a player off the shortlist.

Kuper and Szymanski’s book provides Lyon as a case study of the application of these rules. The Lyon head coach sits in on transfer meetings but ultimately has little to no say as transfers are decided by committee. I believe the Liverpool model is far more effective than the one Lyon apply. The manager should have the final say regarding incoming players because, at the end of the day, their collective performance is his responsibility. A team is most productive when the manager and players can work as a cohesive unit.

2. Draw opinion from several people from different backgrounds.

At Anfield, transfers are a collaborated effort between Dalglish (who has years of experience both coaching and playing for the club) and Comolli (Liverpool’s own proponent of sabermetrics and has a sharp eye for talent). This ensures that the entire package encompassing a player is scrutinised.  As Andrew Beasley hinted at earlier in the week; a player’s work ethic, attitude and mentality are given equal weight in comparison with their technical abilities.  Comolli and Dalglish ask whether a prospect can adapt to a club of Liverpool’s stature. How will he react to losing his first XI spot? Will he be happy in a rotation system? These as well as many more questions will have been asked. There’s no point in splashing £20 million on a phenomenally gifted winger, only to discover that he throws a wobbly at the first sniff of bench action.

3. Avoid stars of recent international tournaments.

What does a club show when it buys a player after a good World Cup performance…..let’s consult our copy of “Moneyball”:

“a tendency to be overly influenced by an athlete’s most recent performance: what he did last was not necessarily what he would do next.”

The Reds have been burnt with this one before, Ryan Babel helped the Netherlands to a semi-final spot in the U21 European Championships before moving to Merseyside for £11.5 million and bad boy El-Hadji Diouf, currently MIA for Blackburn, claimed a runners-up medal in the 2002 African Nations Cup before being deemed worthy of a £10 million investment. An international tournament is not a sufficiently large sampling of matches to fully investigate statistics, hence there tend to be frequent anomalies. Look at Milan Baros’ goal per game at Euro 2004 for the Czech Republic and his more typical tally once every three games at club level.

Luis Suarez signed for LFC just six months after an impressive display at the 2010 World Cup where he netted an average of a goal every two games and showcased his goalkeeping talents to the world. It could be argued that such a signing contradicts this rule but a quick look at his goal scoring feats before the World Cup shows that this wasn’t just a purple patch. Suarez managed, on average, to net a goal every hundred and twenty-two minutes in the five years leading up to the WC, scoring forty-nine in all competitions for Ajax in 09-10.

4. Avoid certain nationalities (e.g. Brazilian, Dutch) as they are overpriced.

What conjures more elegant images? A tricky Brazilian or a skillful Slovenian? Does a flashy mohawk come to mind?  Thought so.   If I were to say there was an attacking midfielder that has just enjoyed the best season of his young career but has never played outside his home country, how much would you say he’d go for and is he worth the gamble? What if the price was only a few million? Compare the €2.3m Palermo paid for Slovenian Josip Iličić last summer to the €40m Neymar is reportedly commanding and you can see another reason for the Reds focus on British talent.

5. Buy players in their early twenties; older players are overvalued and youngsters aren’t fully developed

This stems from the Oakland A’s concentration on draft picks from colleges. A teenager is not fully developed and there is too wide a margin between success and failure to place an accurate valuation. Have a look at the winners of the Golden Ball at the U17 World Cup to see what I mean. Players in their early twenties are more rounded than teenagers and it can be quite evident to see where their game is heading. Older players command a higher wage and transfer fee because they are seen as established. Joe Cole and Milan Jovanovic, both players approaching the twilight of their careers, were both free transfers yet cost the club upwards of €200k per week in wages.  Thus, there is also the added incentive of profiting from twenty-somethings sales once they hit their peak and paying lower wages in the interim.

6. Sell a player either before buyers see deterioration in his game or when a club offers more than he’s worth.

In training, a player will experience far more rigorous tests of all their attributes than in any match. So a deterioration in ability should be more readily recognised by the club’s own coaching staff well before it is evident in a match situation. Take Raul Meireles, for example.  The Portuguese was one of Liverpool’s best players in the second half of last season but finds himself the subject of strong rumours regarding a move away. We don’t know what happens in the day-to-day running of the team but maybe there have been indications of Meireles being on the downward slope.

Arsene Wenger is the best manager around when it comes to this.  Whether it’s Thierry Henry, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Toure, Alex Hleb, the list goes on, it’s very rare that a sold Gunner will go on to be as good for his new club as he was for Arsenal. Each of these players has a price tag and the key is not just to sell up, as soon as possible, once a player’s downward spiral is evident but to maximise the return. As far as potential suitors are concerned, match form indicates that the player in question is still in his prime, often meaning that they are willing to pay an optimum fee. The selling club should always have a price on every single one of these players, if a buyer’s offer greatly exceeds this asking price that means it’s time to sell.

Another prime advocate of this strategy is FC Porto, since the turn of the century they have made a staggering profit of €190m on player sales, while dominating the Portuguese League.  Why can’t Liverpool achieve similar results in the Premier League?

7. Replace best players before selling.

This should be common practice but oft-times it’s not. When LFC were selling Fernando Torres they ensured that the fee they got was sufficient to cover Andy Carroll’s transfer and net a profit of £15m from the over all deal. The Stewart Downing deal, allegedly, was so drawn out because Aston Villa wanted to ensure their replacement, Charles N’Zogbia, was a done deal before selling. When you look at the Reds current central midfield options, one counts nine players. For two or even three available first team places, that’s some heavy overstocking. That begs the question, who is whom’s replacement?

8. Never buy strikers because they are overpriced, develop them instead.

By combining a report from accounting firm KPMG and the Annual Review of European Football, we can estimate that strikers cost an average of £3.8m per season compared to goalkeepers (£1.2m), defenders (£2.1m) and midfielders (£2.9m). So strikers cost more and spend less time at their clubs on average, go figure.

“Oh but Liverpool spent £35m on that lanky Geordie bloke, he’s a striker. They don’t follow the strategy, oh the shame….” Relax, I’ll get to you lot soon enough.

9. Buy players with personal problems and help them deal with their problems

Alcoholic? Gambler? Penchant for prostitutes? It doesn’t matter; you’re just undervalued. Players with personal problems are typically available on the cheap. Violent and enjoys the odd drink?   Yes, it’s him again: Andy Carroll. Night club bust ups, training ground fracas, Range Rover torched?  Carroll’s been there done that.  The former Magpie seemed to curb his drinking when he moved to Merseyside, evident in this little quip from Kenny Dalglish:

“Well he’s never bought me a drink. I’ve been with him at Boyzone concerts and he’s still never bought me a drink!”

Players with personal problems usually attract very little interest and their market value tends to be lower than usual.

“How is Carroll undervalued at £35m, they still don’t follow the strategy…” Didn’t I tell you to wait?

10. Help new players relocate.

Seems like common sense, right? Help a player get settled quickly so they can concentrate on their game, but those of you who have read “Why England Lose…” will know how few clubs actually do so. Players are human;  just because their weekly wage packet may equal (or exceed) your yearly salary doesn’t change this.  In fact, it exacerbates it.  What type of wild fantasies do you have about what you’d do if you won the lottery?  Well, they’re living them, without a safety net.   So, it’s best to help the new player settle in quickly and get him focused on the business at hand.  If that means going to a Boyzone concert with your newest investment, so be it.  It will only make him productive sooner rather than later.

For all those people that are questioning Liverpool’s dedication to the Moneyball strategy with regards to Carroll, remember the one final rule that trumps everything:  Overspend to fill gaps in the squad, as, the quicker they are filled, the quicker a team can start turning a profit.

A club doesn’t start making money until it is competitive and, to be competitive, a strong squad is needed. When Torres started sounding out a move away from Anfield, that left the club with only David N’gog, Dirk Kuyt, Daniel Pacheco and Jovanovic to play up front. True, they had already been negotiating for Suarez but were not happy with Ajax’ high valuation of their captain.  None of those in house were adjudged to be capable of assuming the Spaniard’s mantle,  so FSG, caught in the crossfire, bit the bullet and signed Carroll and Suarez for £58 million.

The depth in midfield was appalling. After Meireles, Steven Gerrard and Lucas Leiva, there was only Jay Spearing and Christian Poulsen. FSG sanctioned bids totalling £23.5m for Blackpool’s Charlie Adam and Sunderland’s Jordan Henderson.

There hasn’t been a top winger at the club since Steve McManaman. Last season the Red’s faithful were subject to Kuyt, Maxi Rodriguez, Cole and even Meireles on the wings. None of which are natural wingers, so to fix that FSG threw over £20m at Aston Villa for the services of Stewart Downing.

Next week, when you’re pulling your hair out wondering why Liverpool have just gone over the moon to beat Arsenal to Scott Dann, just remember there is a method to the madness.


http://worldfootballcolumns.com/2011/07/15/the-scouser-report-soccernomics-moneyball-and-liverpools-transfer-policy/

I think it's a decent article and some of it makes sense but some points just seem forced to fit the argument.

This bit, for example:

The depth in midfield was appalling. After Meireles, Steven Gerrard and Lucas Leiva, there was only Jay Spearing and Christian Poulsen. FSG sanctioned bids totalling £23.5m for Blackpool’s Charlie Adam and Sunderland’s Jordan Henderson.

So the depth in midfield was appalling, because we had 'only' 5 options. So we bring 2, and let 2 go... how has anything changed, in terms of depth? Was it overspending to fill the gaps?

And even Andy Carroll, it implies that we overspent on him because we needed someone to immediately fill a gap. But then again, wasn't he in a long term injury? If he was brought for immediate impact, wouldn't a fit player make a hell lot more of sense?

Andy Carroll just doesn't fit in any of the categories, no matter how much you try to force the argument. Mentioning him in the bit about 'buying players with personal problems' is quite absurd, since the point about signing problematic players is exactly that they usually come cheap - nobody sign problematic players just for the sake of it, after all it's harder to deal with them. A club paying £35M for a problematic player is precisely what Billy Beane would laugh at. Brian Clough was a master at getting 'problem makers' on the cheap and reviving their careers, which partially explains why he did so well at smaller clubs such as Derby and Forest.

It also mentions how recent performance isn't a precise indication of future performance. Well, that again falls short in logic regarding Carroll - he was precisely what we should avoid then. He hadn't played in any international competition, but had just earned his 1st England cap which is massive in English football and in the best form of his life (let's not forget Charlie Adam scored more than him in the Championship, so Andy had basically just 4 months or so in the top).

It also mentions Downing as a 'top winger'. Oh well, I prefer not to say anything about it.

For me, as much as he does make a bit of sense, the guy who wrote his article just sounds like someone who recently read Soccernomics and Moneyball is a bit too excited about it.

Well I've read both and am a big fan too. It's also well known that Comolli is a fan of using stats and, having NESV successfully applied Moneyball strategies at the Red Sox, I think it's to be expected that we'll look to work towards that direction as well. However, one of the main reasons of why the Oakland A's did so well with so little wasn't just the fact that they used stats to evaluate players. Stats have been a part of baseball for decades before 'sabermetrics' ever came up, but most of them were pointless.

What the sabermetricians did, and the A's were the first to use that knowledge inside the game, was to search for the really significant stats. That's how they found out that on base percentage was such a massive part of winning baseball games, despite very little attention being given to it in the 'convention wisdom' of the game, for example. And I'm not sure the current statistics we use for football really are the best to evaluate football players. Whether clubs privately have their own studies and sets of meaningful stats, I really don't know. But I once saw Comolli being quoted as having said that 'Downing is more than just a winger, and the stats prove it' (or words to that effect) - and that really makes me wonder what kind of stats he's talking about.

The stat of the moment seems to be 'chances created'. I'm no statistician myself and I don't have the data to calculate it, but how much the number of chances created influence the outcome of a club troughout the season? Last year West Ham created more than Man City, for example. Is it just a one off example, a weird exception, or is the stat ridiculously flawed? I honestly don't know. But I have my reasons to disbelief any kind of 'sabermetrics' in football, even though it does interest me so much.

After all, the game of football is much harder to compute in simple statistics. What statisticians call an 'event' is easier defined in a game of baseball (where defending and attacking are two separated moments of the game) than in a game of football, that's for sure. And even in baseball, the fact positioning plays such a big part in an outfielder player's stats makes it a lot harder to define meaningful statistics for them. So the fact the whole game of football is very much influenced by the positioning and movement of players certainly doesn't make it any easier.

Well, I started saying my thoughts about a football article and ended up on some random thoughts about statistics. Sorry for going off topic, but it took too much time to write and I won't delete it!

I thought the most amazing thing in that whole article is steer clear of dutch and Brazilian players as they are over priced why we are targeting British players. Um okay just an example Lucas 6million Henderson 20million.  The most over priced players are English players and we have targeted them. I think it is a weak enough article written with someone with a certain view.  No way is it factual

Junior Hoilett


Yann M'Vila


Lucas Moura


Edinson Cavani
Ezequiel Lavezzi


Klaas-Jan Huntelaar


Iker Muniain
Javi Martinez



Roll a dice and pick three or four.

Id agree with that Racer.








What would Shankly have said about MoneyBall ?

I thought the most amazing thing in that whole article is steer clear of dutch and Brazilian players as they are over priced why we are targeting British players. Um okay just an example Lucas 6million Henderson 20million.  The most over priced players are English players and we have targeted them. I think it is a weak enough article written with someone with a certain view.  No way is it factual

Very true mate, forgot to mention that point as well. Lucas is a great counter-example, and the same can be said about Hernanes (Lazio). Actualy most Brazilian clubs don't have too much money, so it takes far less to get talent from them than from a established EPL club, for example. Soccernomics does make a point about 'unfashionable' nationalities being cheaper, but to try to put that into a theory where buying British players is cheaper than Brazilians or Dutch is just stretching as much as possible to try to prove something. Obviously a Brazilian who has just been nominated World Player of the Year will be expensive, but so would a Chinese if he won it.

I wouldn't even think twice before going in for Hoilett this summer, he will be pure class and won't put a dent into our budget.

We've got a distinct lack of pace up top and not many good wide men, so I don't think 1 will do there.

Hoilett, and three top class players - a central midfielder, winger and striker and that would be a fantastic summer. That's assuming not many want to leave though.

Ya agree neymar is being quoted at 40million as he is one of the best young talents on the planet what was the excuse for Carroll being worth so much. That article gives me the idea the writer knows more about moneyball than football.

I thought the most amazing thing in that whole article is steer clear of dutch and Brazilian players as they are over priced why we are targeting British players. Um okay just an example Lucas 6million Henderson 20million.  The most over priced players are English players and we have targeted them. I think it is a weak enough article written with someone with a certain view.  No way is it factual

I think the author is making some pretty broad statements, I would think spanish players would cost more than dutch, perhaps its an overall generalization.

Thought the article was OK to an extent but Bellers was a case completely against the entire concept which also shows the need for flexibility.

Absolutely terrible article, virtually none of what he said makes remote sense when applied to our transfer policy or the players he tried to asign to each bullet point.

Paying £35m for a player without proven long term form, with personality problems and a long term injury, no matter how you attempt to paint the picture was not a "moneyball" signing and I believe we'll live to regret it.

Downing was massively overpriced as was Henderson, these are unfortunately facts based upon what we've seen this season and what many of us said upon signing these players. If Comolli is using "chances created" as his golden ticket then I'm afraid we're only likely to buy more of these type of players. Adam also appears to be a poor signing and I hope that this summer we abandon the terrible strategy of last season and go for more proven, established players who we can push on with because another summer of failed signings would be hard to take.

Could Comolli's comment have caused the complacency that we have noticed at Sunderland?

Just putting that out there. I hope not, especially with Everton next. Even then, our boys should be putting 100% each time they play knowing that theyre playing for Liverpool.

Could Comolli's comment have caused the complacency that we have noticed at Sunderland?

Just putting that out there. I hope not, especially with Everton next. Even then, our boys should be putting 100% each time they play knowing that theyre playing for Liverpool.

I wouldn't think so, the majority of the players probably wouldn't even be aware of it, I'd doubt they look into anything like this in the same way we do.
And any that have heard would probably take it for what it is, Camolli deflecting questions about how much money we actually have or haven't got to spend this summer.