ECHO Comment: "Fears of Witch-hunt Against Liverpool FC"

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On LFC TV today, Brendan talks about Top Four Chances for the team, and building towards title contention next season. #YNWA
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catcherintherye said:
Aye. With that lot if they win a few games until the end of the season he will have the fans back and it will be the usual hard luck story. Not having Sturridge bla bla.

There is an eerie silence from the yanks though, and Rodgers is beginning to sound a bit desperate and (even for his standards) delusional. He is beginning to sound like Dalglish used too when he started overplaying his mickey mouse cup win, almost trying to convince himself it was enough safe in the knowledge he was in serious trouble. It's what people do when they sense they are coming to the end.

I'll be honest I don't think the yanks will care too much about what the fans think. Liverpool fans greatly exaggerate their own importance. Particularly the loud mouth out of town knobheads. In simple numbers terms they are irrelevant. They could lose the season ticket money of every fan and it will probably barely cover the loss of expense caused by missing champions league football. That's without the potential hit on sponsorship deals. Not to mention the international support base greatly declining and their inability to grow in America as no-one knows who they are. In pure numerical terms, their ticket and pie money they cough up won't mean anything.

And yes De Boer would almost be the ideal replacement. Similar to Rodgers but a far better manager and a track record of improving young players and winning things. I'd be more concerned if they had him that's for sure.
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I reckon his recent words (like Dalglish before his exit) are about framing his period in charge for public consumption: try and get out there ahead of the game and lay down the conditions upon which he should be judged on his tenure if it is about to end.

It's intriguing. I could see this going either way now - though with his summer departure beginning to look a slight favourite at this stage.
 
Sky sports becoming more like RAWK every day and trying to make the RS seem relevant and help them to be top of a table. Cringey bstds.

http://m.skysports.com/article/football/yourclub/9817599?compid=263&teamid=229

"
The top club in England is...
Liverpool are English football’s top side, according to the Ultimate League table compiled by Sky Sports.

Positions have been calculated from teams’ average season-ending positions over the last 50 years.

Only teams that have appeared in the top four English leagues for at least 15 seasons since 1964/65 have been included – although any ventures into non-league are also reflected.

Liverpool emerged top of the 90-team pile after recording a remarkable average finishing position of 3.3 over the past half-century. Rivals Manchester United and Arsenal complete the top three.

However, the Ultimate League also highlights which clubs are currently overachieving compared with their historical average position.

Swansea are the biggest overachievers – their current position of eighth in the Premier League is 47 places above where they are ranked using the 50-year average.

Championship title-chasers Bournemouth are the second-biggest overachievers, currently sitting 40 places above their average, but Portsmouth (-50) and Stockport County (-49) are well below their typical level.

Scroll down to see where YOUR team ranks in the Ultimate League…

The top 20

Liverpool secured their status as champions of the 50-year Ultimate League by winning 12 league titles and finishing runner-up on 11 occasions since 1964/65. Top-spot regulars Manchester Unitedand Arsenal finish second and third respectively in the average table, while Everton secure fourth.

Meanwhile, Tottenham come in fifth, with current Premier League leaders Chelsea sixth.

Coventry City may be in League One but rank 15th in the Ultimate League. They enjoyed sustained top-flight status between 1967/68 to 2000/01 but are now the biggest underachievers among the top 20, sitting 17th in League One, 46 places below their Ultimate League ranking."
 
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Goals and Playing to Par
« on: Today at 02:34:16 PM »
A lot has been made of Rodgers comments about 5th being about par for us this season. I haven't seen the comments yet, but what I have seen is a number of RAWKites gnashing and wailing about "lack of ambition" and "Hodgsonification" etc. On the flip side, we have other posters who point out that there is a strong correlation between wages and league position, and that 5th - if we finish there - is about all we should be expecting and anything else is a bonus. However, there is a degree of subjectivity there in both arguments. Is there an objective way to look at our output to determine our table position, or is Rodgers talking a lot of poppycock? I would say that if we look at one true measure of performance, then we could say that he was not wrong in his assessment (however inadvisable it might have been to say it out loud).

There is one cast iron, no-money-back guarantee way of showing metrics over the course of a league programme. For better or worse, goals for and goals against tell a story that needs more depth, for sure, but which - on the surface - can say a lot about a team's performance in the league. There is a correlation between goals scored and points gained at the end of the season. Have a look at the tables for the last 10 years (or maybe even longer). You can see that the more goals you score, the more points you get (sounds obvious). What's more interesting is that often there is a near 1:1 correlation. It's not a strong correlation, by any means, but it does demonstrate that the best teams score the most goals, and the weakest teams score the least. There are occasional outliers to this, but mostly, it stands up to (minor) scrutiny. Similarly, 80% of the time, the league winners are also the top scorers, while the best defenders are sometimes as low as 4th. So goals make the game, generally, and the more you score, the more you win and the higher you place.

On top of that, scoring highly as a team usually means you have one good goalscorer who at least gets into double figures. Generally, a good standard for a goalscorer, over a 38-game league season, would be 15+ goals (a goal ever 2.5 games). So any time you have a player scoring 15+ goals, you should do well. If your defence is terrible though (and I mean relegation terrible, not how some people perceive Liverpool's defence under Rodgers), it won't matter. If your defence is in any way average or better, though, you should be at least mid-table or higher. But to finish higher, not only do you need a decent defensive record, but also a good scoring record. The more goals, the higher the finish, for all intents and purposes.

So it stands to reason that for a single team, the better their main goalscorer, the better the league performance (all other elements being accounted for as being reasonably efficient to very efficient). If a team has a goalscorer who has scored 15+ goals, they should finish relatively well, right? In Liverpool's case, that appears to be true for the most part.

If we look at the image below, we can see for the past 15 seasons (plus this season to date) how our league position and our top goalscorers total have some correlation:

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If we apply the "Par" analogy, we can see that most of the seasons where we've had a 15+ goals per season striker, we have finished in the top four, save for three seasons, where we didn't (02-03, 09-10, 12-13). That's 3 out of 16 seasons. So in those seasons, we can say we finished under-par for our goalscorers output. That's 18.75% of the time, where we have underperformed against our goalscorers output. Similarly, we can also see that 4 seasons out of 16 (to date), we have finished outside of the top four when we have not had a 15+ goals per season league scorer. On the other hand, there are 6 seasons where we had a 15+ league goalscorer, and finished in the top four. So it can be said that for those 10 seasons in total, we "played to par" according to the number of goals our top goalscorer. So that means that we play to par 62.5% of the time - our top scorer scores 15+ goals, we finish in the top four. If our top scorer scores less than 15 goals, we don't finish in the top four. 62.5% of the time, this is the case.

For the times that we have had a league top scorer who has scored LESS than 15 goals, and we've STILL finished in the top four, we can see that this has only happened 18.75% of the time. That's a low number of times for that to occur. And yet it is the standard to which Rodgers is being held this season. He is expected to do better than we have done in the last 16 years, with a 20 year old goalscorer who is only on 7 goals with 6 games to go. To expect more from this team, with those numbers, is to say you expect Rodgers and the players to better than we have done in only 18-19% of the time in the last 16 seasons. That's a heavy burden to carry. If we look at the ages of the top goalscorers, with the exception of the naturally gifted and outstanding talent that was a young Michael Owen, the average age of our top goalscorer is 26 years old. We know, for sure, that Sterling is not a natural finisher. If he was, he would have a good few more goals by now (and we might very well be higher in the table for them). So we can't hold him to the goalscoring standard of Owen. So the question is - why are we expecting a young, 20-year old non-natural goalscorer, supplied by a 21-22 year old creator who is also not a natural scorer, to prop up our attack and score the number of goals needed to push us into the top four? And we do have to rely on him to spearhead the attack, because our marquee forward signing of the summer just isn't efficient, and the other alternatives are either old and slow or fast and hard working but also not a natural scorer (or a good one in open play, in any case). So why are we applying a tough standard to a manager, a player, and an attack that is actually playing to par, if not above par? We don't have (most likely) a 15+ goalscorer this season. So are we really expecting Rodgers to buck a 16 year trend and finish in the top four with a 20 year old attacker who will probably finish on about 10-12 goals (unless he hits a really hot streak), supplied by a 22 year old playmaker? If we look at where we are, goalscoring-wise, I think it's quite clear to see exactly why Rodgers said we are "about where we expect to be", given the lack of firepower up front. It is also reason enough to give him at least one more season, with proper goalscorers to see if he follows the trend and does what has happened nearly 70% of the time in the last 16 seasons - finish fourth or higher, with goalscorers capable of putting 15 goals or more into the back of the net. Until we have that, it's really not a simple thing to judge where we should be in the table, and it is to Rodgers and the team's credit that we are even in with a shout of top four this late-on, under the circumstances.
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What is it with these lads and par?
 
Prevenger17 said:
What is it with these lads and par?
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This is a classic example of kopite spivery when it comes to spinning defence. So much so it will be read by hundreds of people then parade around the internet and pubs, Chinese whispers style as Gospel. "When you look at the dem stats and moneyball you see we are better than Man united lad".

I will try and give some clarity to what he is saying. As above all else it is unclear as well as illogical. The main gist of hi argument is, when your leading scorer gets 15+ goals you tend to finish I the top 4. The problem is that on 7 of the 16 seasons he samples disprove this. That I nearly 45%! His own hypothesis is blow away by the evidence he presents! Only an absolute cretin would try argue for a cause affect on those numbers. Forget causation or correlation, there is no correlation! I work loosely in statistics and can assure one and all this is utter nonsense.

The second thing he does is say about the age of the players, to divert the blame from Rodgers. The stats again disprove this (the evidence being Owen). So what does he do when faced with this dilemma? Does he re-evaluate? Or change the criteria? No he just removes the data he doesn't like, or doesn't back up his hypothesis. Any shred of objectivity goes with it as does the reliability. When I say they invent evidence to back up flawed arguments, there an be no clearer example than that.

Even if it stacked up (that their strike force was too young to succeed) how does it square with having 3 strikers older than Michael Owen (Balotelli, Sturridge, Borini) and 4th who is 34?

The thing is, despite his obsession with par and numbers, all he's saying is "if we'd have had a top striker we'd be higher". This is very obvious. Why doesn't get Rodgers off the hook. Why didn't he buy a better striker, or get more from the 55 million pounds worth of strikers at his disposal? Saying your strikers are rubbish so you can't blame the manager just belies the logic of what a manager is meant to do.

In all honesty this is what makes me laugh about FSG. They have turned know nothing idiot kopites think they are re-inventing football. His post could be summed up as "buying good strikers makes you more likely to finish higher". That is too simple for them though. So they try to quasi scientific-mathematical explanation and fall well short. The problem is, as I said above, for the rest of we have to deal with the drivel passed down like gospel from the goons who aren't critical enough to see behind the fallacy.
 
davek said:
I reckon his recent words (like Dalglish before his exit) are about framing his period in charge for public consumption: try and get out there ahead of the game and lay down the conditions upon which he should be judged on his tenure if it is about to end.

It's intriguing. I could see this going either way now - though with his summer departure beginning to look a slight favourite at this stage.
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Yes he is. I thought he would be loyal, defend the FSG plan. Talk of talented young players being better next season, no endless pots of money, doing things the right way under FSG, "owners who understand football and player development", no quick fixes like other clubs, fans need to be patient with FSG's investment type of mantra. Basically "I will be loyal if the cult turn on you and be your flabby shield".

He seems to have gone the other way though. Trying to get the fans to frame his failure as due to lack of investment. Silly move really.
 
catcherintherye said:
Yes he is. I thought he would be loyal, defend the FSG plan. Talk of talented young players being better next season, no endless pots of money, doing things the right way under FSG, "owners who understand football and player development", no quick fixes like other clubs, fans need to be patient with FSG's investment type of mantra. Basically "I will be loyal if the cult turn on you and be your flabby shield".

He seems to have gone the other way though. Trying to get the fans to frame his failure as due to lack of investment. Silly move really.
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Apparently, he's tweaked their tails in the past by briefing friendly journos info that obscures who's making decisions on transfers and distancing himself from poor signings. Of course, he was doing that from a position of power when the team was doing well. Now it's a very dangerous game to start commenting about needing the 'right tools' to compete. It reads like he knows his fate is decided and he's just positioning himself for the aftermath.

When you look at it soberly, they (FSG) plucked him from Swansea and gave him a fortune to make his name in football. Now he's acting like they've let him down!

That has to end in tears, I'd say.
 
mikeh72 said:
Not being funny but I will cry my eyes out if they sack him in the summer
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It's not like previous years. They've got no top players left now and no Gerrard to attract a Suarez or Torres. It's no longer a case of 'the missing piece of the jigsaw', the whole jigsaw needs replacing! It is a bloated mid table squad with a lot of rubbish in it and one maybe two class players (Coutinho and Sturridge). There's no champions league either and the owners won't bankroll what is required for top players. In some respects Rodgers actually coaches decent performances out of those players, his weakness is the transfer market and big games. What top manager would take that squad on? No money and no top class players but sky high expectations. They could easily sink to our position next season under a different manager as that squad is likely to only go one way and it's not up.
 
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