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

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To early to judge klopp, dortmand was much more then running and pressing. Can't believe klopp signed for the rs. He already proved he an idiot
 
The Cowboy said:
Is Moneyball about trying to make profits on players by signing potential and selling for a profit when potential is realised? Or is it about making money by winning stuff? I can really understand how it's supposed to benefit anyone but the owners.
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It was originally about maximizing the efficiency of dollars spent on player salaries by creating a team around low-market value players whose statistics were better than the average of players of similarly-valued players on the market and were statistically suited to a particular playing strategy. This enabled the team in question to become more than the sum of it's parts. My Canadian mates are into their baseball and from what I've seen there is a lot of strategy involved in picking the line-ups for the pitchers(What type of pitches do they throw? How do they do against batters who favour one side vs the other?) and the order of the batting line-up(Who do you want to set up to get on base? When do you want your big hitter to go to the plate? Which side do they bat on? Which pitches do they have a higher hit ratio for?). Baseball can come down to a lot of small one-on-one battles between pitchers and batters and so it lends itself to more accurate statistical analysis and predictions. Statistics don't accurately describe football in the same way they describe baseball and so the whole strategy falls on its face when applied here.
 
Efcjake said:
Statistics don't accurately describe football in the same way they describe baseball and so the whole strategy falls on its face when applied here.
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X 10000. I reckon the only time that you can apply that sort of logic to footballers is probably goalkeepers, in that you can sort of think how many points they will stop you dropping.

And that was how Clough persuaded the Forest board, (or chairman back in those days I guess), to fork out a few bob for Shilton.

And even attempting to use it on foreign players in leagues miles different that ours makes it even more pointless.
 


catcherintherye said:
Well there is that, but slowly the model of Director of Football is changing in this country. Southampton are a good example of this as in many ways are West Brom. You've got the obvious question of "who watches the watcher" though and ensures the person taking the decisions is up to scratch. I do take your point though, and you see with Chelsea now the stupidity of what sacking managers does. Even their best ever manager and title winner is being pushed out of a job after a bad first 8 games.

I think Liverpool's problem is two fold. 1 they are neither a DOF model club nor are they a traditional club that hands the manager power. They are caught between two schools which causes all sorts of problems with accountability. Secondly the model they are pursuing (analytics) is not suited to the complexities of a game like football. You get proper football people, your Howard Kendalls, or Alex Fergusons (or Shankly's) they didn't need to see graphs on % pass rates, or shots on target. You get a feel for a player by watching them. The best had the most nuanced feel for the game.

Baseball (or say cricket) are very simple games. You can apply simple measurement techniques. The "How many not how" question stands out. How many home runs do you hit? However the "how" question in football is imperative. If a defender wins 100% header but just heads it out for a throw every time is he a world class defender? Is a 90% pass rate but passing backwards better than a 70% pass rate in the opposition half. In truth statistics are very limited in football.

They have built their whole system on a model where the statistics are irrelevant. I do a lot of work with statistics but also understand their limitations.

As for Klopp I just think his approach is as you say more of the same in England. In many ways the exact problem of English teams (national and club) is their obsession with running and pressure. The old adage that a centre forward who mis controls a ball, chases the centre half to the corner and tackles him into the stand gets a roaring ovation, the lad who controls the ball as it's knocked up to him is considered lazy is the essence of British football. Klopp has given it a trendy name Gegenpressing but essentially he falls into all the worst excesses of English football. The fact he arbitrarily quotes 120km a match appears to give it a sheet that the self appointed experts on the Kop fall for hook line and sinker (they still think quoting a few numbers makes them sound clever and can undo a flawed approach).

He is certainly a cut above Moyes and Allardyce in terms of his presentation and arrogance. He is quite slick and almost sociopathic in his demeanour. Unfortunately when you are dealing with your average footballer that confidence goes a long way and was probably what held Moyes back at United. He wasn't a big enough bellend to pipe Ferdinand down.

However while his demeanour is more polished and he isn't riddled with self doubt his message and philosophy is basically Moyes/Allardyce/Sherwood. It was interesting to see the distance covered stats on MNF for a new manager come in. The biggest 3 jumpers were his, Sherwoods and Mike Carvers at Newcastle. That's the general standard of manager that tell their players to run about more.

Neville tried to raise these points but Carragher (who I actually normally rate) wasn't having it, the heresy of denouncing a 0-0 draw was not going to be allowed any hearing. He didn't grasp what Neville was saying. No team has ever won the league by making pressing the central focus of the team. And in a league where you play more games with no winter break players would struggle to cope with the demands. Klopp is going to have to have a lot more than just gegenpressing to succeed.

In the end just asking players to run gives them an excuse. You can get any group of players to run 120km in a game and the results will improve a bit. Will you win trophies by having that as the central focus? I doubt it.

I think with Klopp I see the 3 things coming together to hold him back. The continued confusion over the transfers. Klopps tactical deficiencies and trying to use a baseball inspired numbers based in a more complex game that doesn't lend itself to it.

Fortunately for us it will lead to some amusing times ahead as the realisation slowly starts to sink in for Kopites. The emperor will slowly lose his clothes and we can sit back and laugh as it sinks in. Pass me the popcorn.
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I'm willing to keep an open mind on Klopp and I'm trying not to dismiss him straight away. I and many others dismissed Rodgers almost immediately simply on the basis of his cv and the early weeks of his tenure at Liverpool which was marked by bluster and dour football. It was obvious he could be discounted as the utter no mark he confirmed himself to be. Klopp is a different pan of Bratwurst altogether. He has the silverware to back him up. And yet...

As said the other day, I think he might be a manager that's bringing coals to Newcastle. His success in the Bundelsiga was by his own admission a result of bringing to it an alien 'fighting (English) football' which caught out German teams at the time but it wont be any great shock to the system here. Obviously he's going to have at his disposal funds that will get him the type of players that can make a system work (they're not going to be as limited as mark Hughes' Stoke squad, for example), but I doubt that who they get, and regardless of all the talk about 'quick transitions' etc, they'll be catching too many PL defences out of position. The Bundesliga really isn't a great quality league defence wise (GKs the exception) and Klopp will find this league a tougher nut to crack than back home.

As an aside: Klopp must want to track down Rodgers now after the evidence of the past two games and demand wtf he's done wasting £300M on that pile of horse manure. He's left Klopp with a massive rebuilding job and it's one he'll realistically get two seasons to get off the ground and show substantial improvements.
 
Efcjake said:
It was originally about maximizing the efficiency of dollars spent on player salaries by creating a team around low-market value players whose statistics were better than the average of players of similarly-valued players on the market and were statistically suited to a particular playing strategy. This enabled the team in question to become more than the sum of it's parts. My Canadian mates are into their baseball and from what I've seen there is a lot of strategy involved in picking the line-ups for the pitchers(What type of pitches do they throw? How do they do against batters who favour one side vs the other?) and the order of the batting line-up(Who do you want to set up to get on base? When do you want your big hitter to go to the plate? Which side do they bat on? Which pitches do they have a higher hit ratio for?). Baseball can come down to a lot of small one-on-one battles between pitchers and batters and so it lends itself to more accurate statistical analysis and predictions. Statistics don't accurately describe football in the same way they describe baseball and so the whole strategy falls on its face when applied here.
Click to expand...

Is this the moneyball approach? It's worked brilliantly for Brentford and I imagine it would to other clubs in the lower league. I would not use Liverpool as a common variable they r too weird
 
Moneyball hahaha
I'd forgotten about that one. That was the season they'd bought Sturridge and Coutinho and thought they had re-invented the whole transfer system. Buy cheap and get value for money. Started going a bit Pete Tong when the next 200 million they spent was on utter garbage.
 

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