Sunday, April 12, 2015

学中文 001

http://jalong.blogspot.com/2014/12/blog-post_20.html

胸口摸得着的尺寸叫-胸围,
胸口摸不到的尺寸叫-胸襟

眼睛看得到的地方叫-视线,
眼睛看不到的地方叫-视野

嘴里说得出来的话叫-内容,
嘴里说不出来的话叫-内涵

手上比划出来的动作叫-手势,
手上比划不出来的动作叫-手段

脑子里测得出东西叫-智商,
脑子里测不出的东西叫-智慧

耳朵听得到的是-声音,
耳朵听不到的是-声誉

证件上印出来的叫-文凭,
证件上印不出的叫-文化

温度计量出的叫-温度,
温度计量不出的叫-温暖

手指写得出的文字叫-文章,
手指写不出的文字叫-文化

镜子里看得到的是-自己,
镜子看不到的是-自我

金钱衡量出的是-价格,
金钱衡量不出的是-价值

存款显示出来的叫-财产,
存款显示不出来的叫-财富


牵挂在嘴上的叫-情话,
牵挂在心里的叫-情感

Good Timing 002 Fire Bunny



Thursday, April 9, 2015

We’re All Gonna Live Forever! By Paul Tomkins

http://tomkinstimes.com/2015/04/were-all-gonna-live-forever/

By Paul Tomkins.
Last night’s piece, “We’re All Gonna Die!” provoked a lot of debate, much of which took place on Twitter. There were a lot of interesting comments, plus the usual complaints. (And of course, the usual excellent discussions in the comments on this site.)
I figured it’d be easier to write a (fairly) short addendum on here, rather than reply to various queries in a medium not suited to getting across complex ideas.
Obviously the original piece was fairly long, but it deals with a pretty big issue; it wasn’t 4,500 words on why Alberto Moreno chooses to have a stubbly beard. People moaned about it being far too long, and yet loads of other people asked why this or that wasn’t covered; the kind of things that would have made it 9,000 words long. I always try to cover all bases, but you sometimes overlook things, or simply forget to include them.
I worry that I occasionally repeat myself, but it just happens that some of those ‘omissions’ were covered as recently as last week. While I’ve been doing this too long to let general criticisms bother me – you don’t like my writing? tough shit – I do like to address any misunderstandings people may have, especially if I’ve not explained something properly, and therefore I didn’t do my job properly. (I’m well aware that I can’t make stupid people smart.) I usually try to challenge my own theories as I write and edit a piece, constantly testing them, but interactions with others can help to solidify ideas, and to discover new ways of seeing something.
enternal
Apologist
On the accusations that the piece was just PR for FSG, or post-rationalising failure, or ‘apologism’ that has allowed 25 years of mediocrity to flourish, I think these people have missed the point. I mention in the piece about setting a baseline, and that baseline dates back to work I started doing (with the help of Graeme Riley and others) in 2009 under the guise of the Transfer Price Index; indeed, I probably started on the theory in 2006 or 2007, before Graeme helped further develop and refine it. I have also taken the work I did with Graeme and looked into 3,000+ transfers we covered, to find patterns of success and failure.
Finding the baseline is key; otherwise you’re just shooting from the hip. When police give a polygraph exam they take a baseline, so they know the person’s normal heart-rate, blood pressure, sweat levels, etc. If the suspect is naturally nervous, that will come across; it will mean they have a different baseline to someone who isn’t nervous, but the baseline is vital as being nervous isn’t a crime. (I think I’d be nervous if hooked up to a load of wires whilst being accused of something serious I hadn’t done.) If they are lying, then unless they are sociopaths, their readings will still spike; it’ll just spike from a higher baseline.
I’m trying to find Liverpool’s baseline, and as outlined in the piece, everything screams5th.
I don’t see how it can be called post-rationalising something when the theories I usepredate this season, as well as predating Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool, and even predating FSG’s arrival. We have accumulated more data as time passes, and we are learning all the time. But if anyone wants to go back and read Pay As You Play, published back in 2010, you can see all the ideas outlined within, and the basic tenets remain. And of course, I was influenced by Soccernomics and the work on wage bills before that, which I wrote about on the official Liverpool FC site years earlier.
I have criticised previous Liverpool owners and previous Liverpool managers, when they fell below what should be the baseline; I have defended those who haven’t fallen below the baseline. I can categorically prove that Premier League wealth is not as spread around as much as it used to be, and that the league is far less of a meritocracy than the days when Liverpool were the best team in the world. I can categorically prove the increasing links between spending and success, and if you can’t be bothered to read the dozens of pieces I’ve written on the subject, don’t blame me if you don’t understand.
When I write using the models created with the Transfer Price Index database I am usually more accurate than when I write from the heart. No model is ever 100% accurate, and yet according to Graeme in a comment on this site, this happens to be the most predictable of the entire Premier League era. It wasn’t just the name that changed in 1992, but the way the sport works did too. The rich were going to get richer, and fans are happy when it benefits their club but angry when it doesn’t.
Right now, the top four are the top four clubs as ranked team by our TPI model. Liverpool, who rank 5th, are currently sitting 5th. Spurs, who rank 6th, are currently sitting 6th. And over the past decade, the team that ranks 1st has, on average, finished 1st; the team that ranks 2nd has, on average, finished 2nd; ditto for 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th. Only once you get down to mid-table does the model fail over a ten-year average, but by mid-table teams are operating on fairly similar budgets. In any given season a club may have a good year or a bad year, but overall they’ll regress to the mean.
What about Atletico Madrid?
The main criticism of my theory seems to be about what Atletico Madrid did last season, which was undeniably outstanding. But I covered the issue in this piece last week, and it also gets indirectly addressed in the scenario of how it might be better to be the 3rd richest club in the country but the 15th-richest in Europe, rather than the 10th-richest in Europe but only the 5th-richest in your country.
Atletico rank about 19th or 20th in European wealth, but third in La Liga wealth. That means that while they shouldn’t usually be finishing above Real Madrid and Barcelona – and aside from last season they haven’t in donkey’s years – they are more easily able to qualify for the Champions League, and join that virtuous cycle, not least in attracting players. (Madrid is also a more desirable destination to the average football player than Merseyside.) And let’s not forget, they are the first side since Rafa’s Valencia in 2004 to wrest the title from the Spanish Rich Two, while in England, it will be 11 titles in a row shared between our Rich Three. I’ve spoken in length in recent months about how it’s harder to overcome three clubs who are much richer than you than it is to overcome two clubs who are much richer than you, but I’ll briefly sum it up again.
Real Madrid and Barcelona, like Chelsea and Manchester United, fell below their usual high standards last season. Liverpool overtook the Barcelona and Real Madrid of English football of the past decade (Chelsea and United, who had shared eight of the previous nine league titles), but then there was City who, in this comparison, are a weird bastard hybrid not seen in Spain: they are Real Barcelona, or Barçadrid, the third mega-wealthy club. (There’s also no Arsenal equivalent in Spain; has a club outside of the big two qualified for the Champions League almost 20 seasons in a row?)
Perhaps Simeone is also a genius – he may very well be – and Atletico have secret weapons we don’t know about. Maybe they know the way to overcome the odds. But the situations are not directly comparable. La Liga is a different kettle of pescado.
We should have just bought better players
Some people noted “this is all well and good, but why didn’t we just buy better players than Lovren and Balotelli?”
I struggle to cope with the number of such responses.
Why didn’t we just sign better players? Why didn’t anyone think of that?
They say this, having just read a piece discussing the surprisingly low odds on signings working, where I note how United’s two big sure-fire hits of the summer haven’t actually been particularly successful. They say this when the evidence shows that five of the ten costliest signings in the PL era after inflation – so including world-class greats like Andriy Shevchenko – were flops. Maybe Liverpool should have signed Falcao instead of Balotelli.
If you knew Lovren was an accident waiting to happen, fair play to you. But Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher seemed keen on him last season. (Equally, did you know that Can was going to be very good at centre-back?) Everyone knew that Balotelli was a risk, but equally he has world-class talent, if not a high level of application and number of brain cells. All signings are gambles; some more so than others. I’m not saying the transfer window of 2014 was a success, but if you’re the kind of person who always knows who will flop and always knows who will succeed – even if most people have never heard of them – then you really should be working in the sport.
Just sign better players. Then play better football.
Score lots of goals. Keep lots of clean sheets. Win lots of games. Just do it. It’s easy.
Why bother?
Another common reaction is, so why bother, if everything is predetermined by financial clout? It’s a good question, and it’s not easy to answer.
The beauty of football is that crazy things can still happen. The stupidity is thinking that they must happen, and happen all the time. You still bother because, on your day, you might play brilliantly and beat someone stronger than you. As David, you might beat Goliath … but over 38 games Goliath will almost always finish above you.
You still bother because even though you’re not going to date a supermodel, drive a Ferrari and land your dream job, you still get out of bed in the morning and do your best. And if those you’re competing with slip up, you might have a chance of doing better than expected.
You bother because occasionally something brilliant happens, and defies the logic that otherwise defines most seasons. If you’re Burnley, that’s a brief stay in the Premier League. If you’re Liverpool, it’s a Champions League Final or being in a title race on the final day of the season. If you’re Southampton it’s being third halfway through the campaign.
It would be nice if there could be rules in place to make English football fairer, but it’s hard to see how it will ever happen. Interestingly, you couldn’t really have a new Man City- or Chelsea-type scenario, as FFP forbids it. The ‘unnatural’ reemergence of those two old clubs, along with the timing of FFP, means that they are now within the virtuous cycle, whilst Liverpool and Spurs sit outside, mainly because oligarchs and sheiks didn’t buy them.
But of course, FFP will also help to keep Everton below Liverpool most seasons, and help to keep Burnley below Everton, and so on. Had FFP come in 15-20 years ago, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal would have been laughing, Chelsea and City would be nowhere. Had it come in 30 years ago, Liverpool and Everton would have been laughing. Timing is everything, and it’s a bit like being Notts County or Luton Town in 1992: you get kicked out of town just as the gravy train arrives. As I said in the article in question, City effectively squeezed Liverpool out of the top four; hence the ‘quart into a pint pot’ analogy.
FFP does not stop clubs improving their financial situation, but unless there is fudging and lying – dodgy sponsorship deals, etc – it has to be done gradually. Increase capacity and you increase match-day income. Increase shirt sales and you increase income. But increasing capacity at Anfield has taken 15 years of farting about, and even though work is now well underway you can’t rebuild a stadium overnight. Global shirt sales are tied to success on the pitch, but that success will go to those who already have the money; Chelsea now have a big international fanbase when they didn’t 12 years ago. You can hope that your club makes lots of little improvements – minimal gains – but it’s not like other clubs aren’t using analytics, or taking their own special bedding on away trips, or utilising sports science, or employing sports psychologists, or developing outstanding academies, and so on. As someone noted on the TTT forum, we’re not trying to outsmart dumb; we’re trying to outsmart smart. (And rich.)
To break the model, and burst through, it probably needs something radical. The Anfield Wrap’s Neil Atkinson thinks it should be going all-out to score as many goals as possible; to ‘buy’ goals, as he puts it. I’m not convinced it’s easy to do, but equally, something along those lines almost worked last season.
While I don’t see how you actually go about doing it, it’s an interesting concept, and one that understands that just doing what everyone else is doing, but with weaker resources, isn’t really gonna fly. Equally, given that clean sheets guarantee points, and that, in and of themselves are worth more than a goal, maybe a 7-0-3 formation might work, if the front three are good enough to nick a goal and the seven at the back form a kind of human spiderweb across the goal. Maybe you need to put all your players on the left side of the pitch, so that the opposition hasn’t got a clue what to do. These last two are extreme and largely silly solutions, but they highlight the difficulties of actually making a radical impact.
In Denmark, FC Midtjylland, who have former TTT guest scribe Ted Knutson running the analytics, are devising all kinds of novel approaches that have seen them go top of the table. But they also know that it’s only possible because of their small stature as a club – you can try some crazy stuff when you don’t have hundreds of millions of fans going apeshit mental about it if it doesn’t garner immediate rewards. And the Danish Superligais a meritocracy. Midtjylland’s cleverness is not restricted to transfer analytics; they work on elaborate free-kick scenarios and recently scored four in one game. Presumably – and I haven’t seem them play – they then have less time to work on passing movements, etc, in training; and are perhaps doing what Sam Allardyce did at Bolton – but which he couldn’t repeat at clubs where a certain style and swagger was expected. Still, it’s great to see innovation, and in Midtjylland’s case is perfect for their environment.
Ultimately, we still need to bother because there’s still plenty to enjoy. If you remove the seething rage and ulcer-inducing desire to have your team succeed or you feel like the world has ended, you can actually just watch football like they used to in the old days: go along, enjoy the game, and not take it all so rabidly seriously. You can be passionate without being an arsehole. You can have dreams without being a douche when those dreams don’t come true.
Of course, when you pay £50 a time (or £100 a month to Sky) it’s hard to brush off a bad performance, but you can do what I did on New Year’s Day, and marvel at the skill without the result being the only thing that matters. You can take a more mindful approach, where you value what you have rather than stress about what you have not. You shouldn’t have to accept players who are not trying, and those who are not good enough, but if you expect more than is realistic you will only feel disappointed.
Finally, someone noted the old saying “shoot for the stars and you might hit the moon”, or variations on that theme, and yet to me I seem to hear and read is “why aren’t we fucking hitting the stars?!!!!!” (Note: number of exclamation marks reduced.)

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

We’re All Gonna Die! By Paul Tomkins

http://tomkinstimes.com/2015/04/were-all-gonna-die/

By Paul Tomkins.
In order to let in some light, let’s first study the darkness. The one thing that’s undeniably definite in life is also the thing we most stridently ignore: death. We distort reality in order to avoid facing that grim conclusion; facing our grim conclusion. We tell each other that life should be good, and fair, and that we should be happy, but shit happens. If you live a long life you will see a lot of death around you* … and that’s what happens if you’re lucky.
(*If you’re a football commentator, you will see a lot of death “in and around you”.)
Perhaps we cling to the myth of immortality – or simply ignore our inevitable demise – just as we cling to the notion that our club should be doing better than it actually is, which is a delusion shared by fans of approximately 92 English league clubs. Even fans of those who are top of the league think things should be going better.
Often when I confront fans with the realistic likelihood of what their club (usually Liverpool) will achieve they accuse me of destroying their hope. But hope can also be the denial of reality. If you want to hope that Liverpool will win the league, feel free to do so. But unless it’s 1988 again, you’ll probably end up disappointed. And when people get disappointed they lash out, and get depressed, and are irrational. And they never, ever seem to make the connection. Hope is great, in theory, but in practice it’s what drives you crazy.
Grim-Reaper
Martin Skrtel, is that you?
Liverpool have some problems right now, which I will come onto. But much of my work the past few years has been about setting a realistic baseline, against which league performance can be judged. In individual games all kinds of crazy shit can happen, butmore often than not the teams with the costliest XIs and the highest wage bills win those matches (maybe 60-70% of the time).
A team costing £1m can beat a team costing £200m, but it will almost certainly never finish above it in the league. This is a basic fact that people seem to misunderstand; the difference between the one-off shock and the 38-game season. On the day, tactics are important. But over the course of the season, player quality and the strength in depth evens things out, smoothing it into the natural order. Occasionally that order can bring about a surprise, but it’s usually the same old names in roughly the same old positions at the same old time of year. It never brings about a surprise like a team like Southampton being in the top three come the end of the season. The surprises mostly happen in the first few months of the season, when the sample size is smaller.
Regressing?
I wonder how people can say that Liverpool are regressing when last season wasn’t an accurate reflection of the quality of the squad and the strongest XI, but a mixture of outrageous talent (Suarez), super-positive football that at times rode its luck but deserved the rewards, a freakish number of set-piece goals, plus some circumstances in the team’s favour (rival clubs in turmoil, lack of hindering cup games, lack of serious injuries to key players, etc.).
You can’t take last season as your baseline. It was an outlier.
Liverpool have gone backwards? Or did they simply lose their best player and pick up a goal-killing injury to their other star striker, whose return, many months later, showcased clear rustiness? Was it not also the difficult, but inevitable phasing out of an ageing legend? And then, amongst other setbacks – and just as things were looking up – did we not see the loss of the 19-year-old who broke into the team to become its most exciting player?
If I recall correctly, we were hoping we could finish around 5th at the start of last season. But it all went a bit mental. Like a team that gets promoted to the Premier League “too soon”, the problem can be that you aren’t as good as one season’s data suggests. You outperform the model just once, and then you’re cast into a situation beyond your abilities and experience. You’re in too deep, and you flap about.
Negativity
A few weeks ago I talked about negativity bias, and how an equally good and an equally bad event would result in the bad event feeling five times worse than the good. I pondered, after Liverpool won nine or ten games virtually in succession, if just two defeats would put the mood back down to where it was before the great run. Does two bad defeats cancel out ten good wins? Well, you can answer this for yourselves.
When Liverpool were winning lots of games I still felt the Reds were likely to finish 5th (I voted so in a poll on this site). Once you’ve gone on a great run of 12 or 13 games, defeat has to be lurking soon; only the best teams can beat those odds and go unbeaten for 20 or 30 games. Could a team that cost roughly half of what the best teams cost, and which has a very young average age, overcome those odds? Remember, winning 11 league games in a row last season was an event that occurs, on average, once every five years in a Premier League season. Only once every five seasons will someone win 11 games in a row in the same season. You can’t expect these things to be like buses.
And it would always only take a couple of defeats to kill off the chances this season, because when you’re playing catch-up you have less room for error. I spoke at length in the first half of the season about what was going wrong, but Rodgers rectified those things ahead of the u-turn in form that resulted in an excellent few months. However, Liverpool essentially needed to maintain title-winning form just to finish 4th; and with a team averaging around 24 years of age, you won’t get title-winning form over many many months, especially when the youngest Champions in the modern era (Chelsea in 2005) were over 25, and the average is about 27.
We all remember falling from 2nd to 5th under Houllier, and 2nd to 7th under Benítez, but while I felt that there was always a slight chance that Liverpool would improve this season (there’s always a slight chance of something unfathomable occurring), there was also the strong possibility of regression to the mean. And that mean is 5th. It’s the average position of the club in the two seasons before this campaign; and it’s the ranking of Liverpool’s team cost (£XI), it’s squad cost, and its wage bill. Yes, I got carried away after the 3-0 win at Spurs, when the new players looked great, but I was still being carried by the fantasy of last season.
If there’s one thing you should have expected this season it’s that Liverpool were likely to finish 5th, or thereabouts. Remember, if you beat the odds one season then unless you have some radical secret weapons you’ll probably struggle to do so the next season.
As it is, the hedonic treadmill means that after finishing 2nd we can’t even be satisfied with 2nd again; it always has to be better, otherwise it feels worse. We acclimatised to 2nd over the summer, and even then, people stupidly asserted that Brendan Rodgers’ tacticscost the Reds the title, when his tactics – or his approach – were part of an unforeseeable improvement, and indeed, radical over-performance. These critics put the failure in a couple of games down to tactics, and ignored how 26 games were won – almost always enough to win you the title – and 101 goals were scored; again, almost always enough to win the title.
And if you also happen to do well in the cups – which fans demand – you will probably suffer some kind of league hangover. It’s no secret that clubs want to avoid the Europa League because it’s shown to make life harder in the league.
Again, if you have the quality of side that usually wins 50% of its league games, then you play 15 cup games and win 10 – perhaps likely in a smaller sample – it seems likely to me that you might then win only 40% of your league fixtures. If you’re capable of winning half of your games, you’ll probably win half of your games; those victories may just be spread across different competitions. You may take wins out of one pot to put in another.
Unless your team consists of machines, players will feel the burden of a higher workload, and experience an increased chance of injury. Also, teams often lose a higher number of league games both before and after a big cup clash, as they may be a fraction less sharpafter one, and perhaps a tad wary of getting injured (or exhausted) before one (and managers may rest stars for the bigger clash). You can talk about professionalism, but even the world’s elite athletes train to peak at certain periods of time; they don’t run at the same level for 10 months of the year. And football is a more complex psychological experience than, say, athletics, because you are competing against an opponent, in ‘combat’. Athletics would be more psychologically complex if rival athletes were able to hinder their opponents, rather than simply run in their own lanes. Imagine running 400 metres with Robert Huth bearing down on you from the side.
Odds, Odds, Odds
Liverpool are all about overcoming the odds: the odds of being the 5th-ranked team in financial terms, and being expected to fit into the top four, like a quart squeezing into a pint pot. In the summer they spent £110m (people add £10m as if Origi could have played a part this season), and my study of the odds (based on 3,000+ transfers) suggests that, based on the law of averages, maybe only £50m of that will prove to have been invested very wisely. Some will prove to be invested on players who neither fail nor succeed, and some of it will prove to be invested on flops. Very occasionally (such as 1987) you get a freakishly successful crop of signings, but it’s pretty rare for any club to do that.
My study of transfer odds also suggested that maybe only 25% of the spending would have an immediate and significantly positive impact this season. Now, this is based on a smaller sample, but it relates to the best 50 Premier League signings, according to my Transfer Price Index model. In other words, only one in four of many of the best players in our league since 1992 were clear successes over the course of their first season (some came good in their first season, but often too late to call it a clear success). Over time they became the successes that we remember, but more were slow or slowish starters.
Now, one of the main reasons Manchester United are doing better than Liverpool this year, despite not necessarily playing superior football (both teams have had long stodgy periods of the campaign, particularly early on, plus some good runs), is the greater costs of the squad, the XI and the wage bill. Overall, providing that they are not being managed by someone promoted above their station, their quality will out. Unless seriously mismanaged, they should be above Liverpool.
What’s interesting is that, as many Liverpool fans moan about £110m or £120m being “wasted”, United’s £150m summer spend hasn’t necessarily worked out any better for them, despite it being largely based on the kind of ‘world class’ players Liverpool supposedly needed. (Of course, United also didn’t lose their best player to poachers.) Angel Di Maria has looked worth only a fraction of the £60m he cost, and Radamel Falcao’s £16m loan has thus far been a waste of everyone’s time and money. Luke Shaw hasn’t even played half the games, and Marcos Rojo hasn’t worked any wonders. But Daley Blind has done an important job, and Ander Herrera looks increasingly impressive; statistically the best all-round midfielder in the league, I hear, despite struggling to get a regular game in the first half of the season.
In time, I’d expect high-quality young/youngish players like Shaw and Rojo to stand a very good chance of succeeding, and Di Maria’s pedigree is fairly likely to shine through, given that he’s still only 26. But if we took a snapshot now, we’d see that, at best, maybe half can be considered clearly successful, and only one – Herrera – exceptional. That’s £150m spent, for – to date – £30m of top-class return, but even the little cameos of players like Di Maria, even if underwhelming for the fee, can win games.
Plus, Falcao shows that even the megastar signings can still flop (before the start of this season, five of the 10 costliest Premier League deals, once inflation is taken into account, have flopped; had he cost £50m, rather than a loan fee, the Colombian would also have been in the top ten.) Give or take a slightly subjective disagreement here and there as to how well these United players are doing (and I’m only going on what I’ve heard, given that I don’t regularly watch them), it seems about par for the course according to my model.
If you look at how Liverpool spent their £110m (and let’s not include Divock Origi, whose stats are actually very good for his age, until he arrives), the odds aren’t out by too much; although perceptions fluctuate on how well these players are doing, which is coloured right now by two bad defeats against top-four sides.
Remember, even if last summer Liverpool signed the Suarez who arrived in 2011 they wouldn’t have had the Suarez they sold. It took the striker two years to become that lethal; he wasn’t a £75m player then (if he was, he’d have cost more than twice what Liverpool have ever paid, and of course, been out of reach). Perhaps Liverpool were always going to struggle given the age of many of their new signings, in that the budget (and individual wage packages) made it harder to sign top-end ready-made talents. This takes us into catch-22 territory, but first, let’s quickly look again at the signings made in 2014.
Emre Can, at £10m, is a mega-bargain. It’s probably fair to say that, given that he’s only just turned 21, he has the clear potential to be worth £40m within a couple of years. We’d all be happy with his performances so far had he cost £20m, so that’s worth bearing in mind, and parking the idea of him being worth more than that until more time passes.
Lazar Markovic and Adam Lallana have had bright moments, and a couple of man-of-the-match displays, but haven’t yet looked worth their fees; at just 20 you’d expect Markovic’s exceptional pedigree – a regular international in his teens – to shine through by the time he’s 21 or 22, and fully adjusted to life in England. But nothing is guaranteed. Alberto Moreno has been a mix of good play with pace, and some terrible defending. And teenage loanee Javier Manquillo did okay when he was in the team earlier in the season.
So far, Lallana aside, these are all aged 22 and under, and in need of some patience; just as I demanded be afforded to Jordan Henderson after his first season.
For the fee, you could argue that Rickie Lambert has done okay; but he’s been a fringe player of little note. The problem for the club, which hasn’t changed from early in the season, is that Lovren, 25, and Balotelli, 24, just haven’t settled, and they represent a big chunk of the outlay, with the Italian – a late gamble after other deals fell through – also taking home a relatively a hefty wage. The ‘here and now’ buys have been the problem; the ‘ones for the future’ have been the ones doing more this season.
At 25 I wouldn’t write off Lovren, given his youth pedigree and the later-blooming nature of centre-backs, but his start has been so bad it may have irrevocably damaged his confidence, and his need for a quick partner to cover for his lack of pace limits the options. Balotelli has, at best, looked like the right player playing the wrong game; and at worst, like he wasn’t playing at all, even when he was in the XI. As disappointing as Balotelli has been, he’s fared no worse than the “far more reliable” Falcao, whose one-year loan fee matched the Italian’s entire transfer fee, and whose wages are more than £100,000-a-week higher.
(It’s worth clarifying here that high transfer fees improve the odds of success, but only by about 10% from average-priced transfer fees; the richest clubs succeed because they buy lots of expensive players and the flops are merely moved to the margins of a strong squad of 25-30. Like a gambler at a slot machine, they simply pay for more spins of the wheel. In Chelsea’s case, they’ve also used their wealth, in the build-up to FFP, to cleverly/cheekily stockpile promising players who other clubs in Europe then pay Chelsea for the privilege of improving them before they get sent back.)
The key is not to think that these Liverpool players are only as good as they’ve been this season; just as Henderson, aged 20, barely looked a quarter of the player he now is, and in his first 18 months Suarez was essentially only half the goalscorer he would become. Equally, Philippe Coutinho is better at 22 than he was at 20.
The problem has been that in order to finish in the top four again this season the Reds needed to exceed the ‘normal’ odds on signings, and that clearly hasn’t happened. But that doesn’t mean the money is wasted. Players often come good after their first season, especially younger ones.
But there’s no doubt in my mind that Liverpool are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to transfers. The owners are rich, but relative paupers when compared with those at City and Chelsea; and FFP means that the club cannot spend as freely as United and Arsenal, whose greater turnovers mean they can also pay higher wages. Liverpool cannot call upon the cosmopolitan glamour of London, which proved a deal-breaker over Alexis Sanchez, and which has helped Chelsea over the past decade.
Perhaps the only sensible alternative for Liverpool is to buy high-quality youngsters who are still underpriced in terms of fees and wages. They just may not be immediate stars, and of course, any club doing this risks losing them once the richer clubs come calling. And yet when ranking 5th in all the important financial measures, Liverpool can’t afford to build a squad big enough to tip the odds in their favour of continual top-four finishes; and continual top-four finishes are a virtuous cycle, with Liverpool left outside in the vicious circle, the catch-22.
Perhaps consciously choosing to play less cup football would help initially, until the squad is more complete, but how do you expect Liverpool fans to accept giving up silverware in the hunt for the finances that will improve the odds of better silverware? Liverpool weren’t entirely ready to be back in the Champions League this year (certainly once Suarez wanted out), but being in it complicated domestic matters. It may be simplistic, but last year there was virtually no cup football, and this year there have been 17 games already.
So, to be clear, FSG can’t pump money into the club for transfers, or the club will breach FFP. The club can’t pay more than the 5th-highest wage bill right now because they don’t have the turnover that comes from being settled in the top four, and would again breach FFP (and handing out five-year contracts based on top four qualification isn’t really wise after just qualifying for the first time in five years). They can’t attract the biggest stars unless they pay the biggest wages and become Champions League regulars; but they can’t become Champions League regulars without the money that comes from being Champions League regulars. And they can’t attract those who prefer would prefer London, because Liverpool isn’t in London.
(For those telling me that we should simply bring back Rafa Benítez, who I will always love and admire, it’s worth noting that the Reds were always in the top four financial rankings in England during his time; often ranking 4th out of the top four – and therefore expecting the title would have been unfair, as I argued at the time – but always competing with ‘just’ Chelsea, United and Arsenal as part of a top four that rewarded the top four; whereas now there are four richer clubs hogging those top four spaces. Rafa’s brilliance helped create European runs that attracted top names, but he never had the kind of squad depth – as backed up by how much it cost at any given point – that the title-winners had; those teams that can handle European runs and still win the Premier League. Rafa has done brilliantly with the cups with Napoli, but two extended cup runs this season seems to have finally scuppered their league form. While I think Rafa inherited a pretty poor squad at Liverpool, and worked wonders for five years, Rodgers has done more than enough in my eyes to continue in the job.)
Perversely, Liverpool are one of the ten richest clubs in the world, and yet only the 5th-richest domestically, when the odds heavily favour the four richest (the current top four, funnily enough; who says I just make this stuff up?). If Liverpool were only the 15th-richest club in the world, but the third-richest in England, things might be much more beneficial; they’d be guaranteed the regular Champions League income and the kudos of competing in it to attract better players. And there’d only be two richer teams in the country to try and overtake, even if only for one season.
With all this in mind, what do you do?
Seriously, what do you do? 
One logical solution – as crazy as it seems – would be to try and bring through the best young players you can, over a period of a few years, with a manager who isn’t going to clog the XI up with hoary old pros.
I know, it’s nuts, isn’t it?
You risk losing those who want out before the project comes to fruition – or those whose agents agitate for too much money – but then you bring through the next starlet, providing that you have one (which is never guaranteed, but is the ideal scenario). Maybe that just leads to maintaining the status quo – running to stand still, as an ponytailed Irish rocker once said – but unless you can buy hitherto ‘unspotted’ great talent at cheap prices – at least a couple of Emre Cans a season that you smuggle out of Germany – then going down the youth route could be as good an answer as any, even if the initial phase with youngsters can be inconsistent.
As a quick aside before I conclude this sermon, two of the most famous ‘youth-based’ English sides of the last 25 years were the Liverpool and Manchester United vintages of the mid-‘90s. For a while the home-grown likes of Fowler, McManaman, Owen and co. looked as good as Scholes, Giggs, Neville and Beckham. Both clubs saved a lot of money by having such an unusually high number of exceptional youngsters. The difference was that Alex Ferguson spent the money he saved on an excellent backbone to the side – Schmeichel, Pallister, Keane, Ince, Cantona, Cole et al – whereas between 1989 and 1998 Liverpool barely signed anyone who was much better than average (I’d plump for Rob Jones as the one top-class signing, before injury struck, and with Jamie Redknapp, also a teenager when signed, another important player for a while. Patrik Berger was great in patches, and Danny Murphy proved a useful much later on, but neither were sensational).
Both clubs broke the British transfer record a number of times in those nine years, and both clubs made big mistakes in the market; but for a decade, most of Liverpool’s buys proved massive disappointments. Liverpool lost a lot of money on their buys, whilst United won a lot of titles with theirs.
Hope Hurts
I’ve mentioned the saying “it’s the hope that kills you” a few times before, but it’s a paradox that’s actually proven in studies to be true.
Two examples. People who had colostomies (the removal of part of the bowel) were found to fare better mentally if they were given no hope of further treatment than those who were told they might be eligible for further helpful procedures later on. And in a study of criminals given life sentences in America, it was discovered that those who stand no chance of parole – those who will definitely die in prison – fare better mentally than those who have a chance of possibly seeing the outside again. How fucked up is that?
To accept your fate – particularly when you can’t change things (and as individual fans we can’t really change things) – actually brings a sense of relief; to constantly crave an improvement in your circumstances, particularly when you can’t change things yourself, actually makes you unhappier. There are times when hope can be helpful, particularly ashopelessness is not a good state to be in; no one wants their club to be on the brink of oblivion. But I’m not sure unrealistic hopes actually help. By all means be positive at the game, but don’t go there (or onto Twitter) with a sense of entitlement.
And so I’ll say again: we’re all gonna die. So – and here I’m just spitballing – maybe just enjoy the experience of football rather than torturing yourself with hopes of great things; hopes that, if they ever get realised, will only wither on the hedonic treadmill and become stagnation. If you win 7-0 every week you’ll just find reasons to moan about why you’re not winning 8-0 every week. That’s how our minds work.

Saturday, April 4, 2015

What Wins League Titles? Here is the Answer By Paul Tomkins

http://tomkinstimes.com/2015/04/what-wins-league-titles-here-is-the-answer/

By Paul Tomkins.
Note: this was originally a draft version of the Introduction for the follow-up to Pay As You Play. In the end, due to other commitments, we’ve shelved the project, and will use the 2015 content for TTT and the TPI blog instead, and maybe look to do a book at some point in the future.
What Wins League Titles? Here is the Answer…
People will always argue that a certain type of playing style – relating to tactics, formation, attacking intent, and so on – or a particular managerial quality – everyone’s friend, or strict taskmaster who doesn’t allow the poor players any tomato ketchup – is what’s required to win the league, especially when a team lacking that supposed quality falls short. But if you look at the past decade in the Premier League I’m not sure that this idea holds water. Perhaps certain managers make life easier or harder for themselves with specific approaches, but playing style or managerial philosophy doesn’t seem to be the key factor behind being crowned champions.
City
If you go back to 2004 (and more will follow on why I chose this date) you can see how the trends in the second-half of the Premier League era have unfolded.
First, the notion that you have to be attack-minded, supposedly just like Alex Ferguson. This falls down when you look at Roberto Mancini, whose style was seen as far more defensive; and even Jose Mourinho, who is regarded as a tactical coach rather than an exciting up-and-at-‘em manager.
You can argue about whether these are indeed ‘defensive’ coaches, because they often have some of the world’s costliest attacking players at their disposal (and so you’d expect a decent amount of goals), but often anyone who doesn’t go hell-for-leather 100% of the time gains the label. And let’s face it, there aren’t many truly negative managers at the top end of the game, because they have to be looking to win two-thirds of their matches. Perhaps in different seasons you need different qualities, depending on what everyone else is doing that year – if you can find a point of difference by doing the opposite particularly well you may flourish – but you can’t know in advance how rivals are going to perform.
What about all the other claims made at various points?
Do you need to be British, like Ferguson, and ‘understand’ the league? Well no, because again, Mourinho and Mancini are foreign, as are Carlo Ancelotti and Manuel Pellegrini. What about needing prior Premier League experience? Well no, because those four foreign bosses all won the title at their first (and, to date, only) British club; indeed, three of the four did so in their debut season. Since Kenny Dalglish in 1995, no British manager bar Ferguson has won the title.
Maybe just experience in general counts? Do you need to be a wise old owl, again like Ferguson? Well, no, because Mourinho and Mancini won it in their 40s, Ancelotti was 50, and Pellegrini had just turned 60. That’s a fairly broad spectrum of ages when you consider that Ferguson was in his 70s when he won his final title.
So, do you need league success in Europe’s other major leagues?  Mancini and Ancelotti both arrived with Serie A titles, not to mention plenty of other trophies; and it’s always hard to argue against a winning pedigree. Mourinho, in 2004, had only the Portuguese title (but had also just won Champions League).
However, Pellegrini’s only prior successes dated back to his days in South America, over a decade earlier. Of course, bar one season at Real Madrid he hadn’t previously been at clubs set up to challenge for the title, so it’s not that he had proved himself incapable – he just hadn’t had the realistic chance (and at Real Madrid his team finished second with a quite incredible 99 points). But equally, he didn’t arrive with the aura of a winner. Obviously all of these managers are good managers – it’s hard to think that you’d win the league with a bad one (few clubs have that much money) – but Pellegrini and Mancini aren’t revered in the way that, say, Arsene Wenger used to be (going back to before the cut-off point of 2004/05).
So, does a manager have to keep a settled team? Well no, because no one rotated as much as Alex Ferguson, despite the allegations of tinkering labelled against other managers. (If you have a smaller squad and rotate you’ll be accused of fielding sub-strength players when you fall short; if you have a smaller squad and you don’t rotate you’re likely to tire in the final stretch of the season.)
What’s clear, surely, is that you need homegrown and/or British talent? Manchester United’s titles were built on them, and Chelsea had a couple of stalwarts in Frank Lampard and John Terry. But Manchester City’s outfield ten in 2011/12 was often foreign, and the same was true in 2013/14. British players like Barry, Hart and Milner, although English, were all purchased from elsewhere, rather than brought through the ranks, and none was local to Manchester.
Perhaps having a local core can help bond a team that bit better, because there are fewer ‘mercenaries’ just passing through, but by the same token, it’s better to have true professionals like Vincent Kompany – who had no connection with the city before he moved there – than inferior players in the team because they were born in Manchester or graduated through the ranks. It’s obviously not easy to find world-class local youngsters, as how often does a world-class talent emerge in any city?
Perhaps authority is an issue, with a tough manager essential? And yet the league has been won by teams with “dictators” as managers (Mourinho, Ferguson, Mancini), and it’s been won by placid “thinkers” (Pellegrini and Ancelotti). So an aggressive demeanour is not essential, even if, more often than not, big, combative personalities win the Premier League. The authority that’s required is respect.
Is the age of the team important? Well, in the past 11 seasons the title has been won by teams with a low average age (Chelsea, 25, in 2005), and much older average ages (Chelsea, 30, in 2010, with much of the side untouched – Terry, Cech, Drogba, Lampard, et al – and simply five years older).
So, is having the league’s top scorer the key? Well, the title has been won by teams with low-scoring strikers (Drogba in 2005 and 2006), and great forwards compensating for relatively weaker players in midfield and defence (Manchester United in 2013). It’s been won by teams with the best defence who didn’t have the best attack, and it’s been won by teams with the best attack who didn’t have the best defence.
There are doubtless many other vagaries. You probably don’t want to play too many cup games if you want to win the league, as injuries can mount, fatigue can set in and fixtures can pile up, but then sometimes it seems to lead to what we perceive to be momentum (even if some studies dismiss the concept as a fallacy). The very biggest squads can just about cope with the extra demand, and perhaps even thrive on the relentless rhythm of games. And while the colour of a team’s kit may provoke strong psychological reactions that apparently lead to advantages, the last 10 titles have seen a 50-50 split between reds and blues.
Common Denominator
So, what’s the one true common denominator?
Well, there’s the fact that all 10 titles went to teams whose £XIs and squads weresignificantly higher than the rest; and barring a miracle, the same will happen again, with Chelsea odds-on to succeed.
This is the only thing I can find that unites the title-winners over the past decade. Have an £XI and a squad cost that exceeds a certain level and you’re in the club. This is what I dubbed the Title Zone in a recent article. (The £XI being the average cost of the team over 38 games, adjusted for TPI inflation.)
You can have an expensive side and still have a terrible season (see Manchester Untied under David Moyes), but the odds on all three of the mega-rich clubs having a bad season at the same time are very, very slim.
Indeed, including 2014/15, which looks set to belong to Chelsea, it hasn’t happened in the last 11 years; each time one, two or all three of them have posted (or are on course to post) great points tallies. In the past 10 seasons the average points tally posted by the champions is 88.2, whilst in the previous nine seasons (after it moved to 38 games in the mid-‘90s) the average was just 81.6. In other words, you used to need roughly 80 points to win the league (or, to put it another way, to finish above what were otherwise the best team that year) and now you need almost 90.
For me, this is evidence of the übersquads being able to share around the required energy load, and how the richest clubs are now much wealthier in relation to the rest of the competition.
Wenger As Proof?
My theory suggests that if Arsene Wenger had been manager of Man City over the past five seasons he’d have won two or three league titles. This can never be proved, but I think it makes sense all the same.
Arsenal, like Liverpool, have been adrift of the Rich Three, to the point where squad and £XI costs are almost half that of the wealthy trio. When Wenger was winning the league he had squad and £XI costs that were comparable with the richest teams of the day. At most they were around 10% worse off, whereas now they’re 50% behind the others, and there are more ‘others’ (with City having joined United and Chelsea).
There is no better metaphor than to say that Chelsea, City and United are Formula One cars, and Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs are decent road coupes. Obviously driving ability is important, but you can’t expect even a BMW to match an F1 Ferrari. A good driver in a Formula One car will always beat a great driver in a coupe (assuming that it’s not rally driving we’re talking about here).
In Spain there are two giants, rather than three. They may happen to be the world’sbiggest giants, but the odds of those two clubs having struggles in the same season are better than the Rich Three all failing over here. This is not to diminish what Atletico Madrid achieved last season, which was remarkable; but Real Madrid were 6% down on their average points haul over the previous four seasons (which had been an amazing 93), and Barcelona were down a whopping 10% from their eye-watering four-year average of 96.5. Atletico did brilliantly to take advantage, but they took advantage in part because the elite pair were below par. The fact that Diego Simeone’s team also made it to the Champions League Final shows what a strong team they were, but right now they sit 4th in La Liga. It doesn’t seem as sustainable as it would be for a richer team. If the best clubs run perfect ‘marathons’ then you don’t stand much chance.
People often mention Atletico and Borussia Dortmund to me as examples of how you can win league titles on a much smaller budget, but as I’ve already noted, it’s more realistic to be able to overtake two off-colour giants once in a blue moon than it is to overtake three. These are not countries who had mega-benefactors before FFP was introduced.
Last season Chelsea and United weren’t at their best, but City broke goalscoring records to win the league. Also, it appears that Bayern, always the biggest club, have become significantly richer than everyone else in Germany, and, like Manchester City, are buying up their rivals’ best players. In the past decade, as well as Dortmund, teams like Wolfsburg and Stuttgart have won the title, and Shalke 04 have gone close on three occasions. But perhaps as a result of FFP, Bayern are simply growing bigger and bigger.
It’s true that Dortmund and Atletico seemed to scout players particularly well. And yet, for a while, they got much better by selling their best players – because that allowed them to buy better ones. These are selling clubs, and it’s harder to get to the very top in England by being a selling club; and yet, if you don’t have the wealthy backing, you pretty much have to be a selling club. The trouble with selling to improve is that, at some point, you’ll make mistakes in the market and fall off a cliff. But clubs don’t always have full control over who they sell, particularly if the players are on short contracts and want out.
To me, it’s as if Jurgen Klopp was like Wenger in 2004, and now he’s like Wenger a couple of years later: his team have been weakened by an über-giant, whose increased strength came in part from raiding that rival (see how Ashley Cole moved to Chelsea in 2006, unthinkable a few years earlier).
Faults
You can pick faults in any manager, and say that those faults are what cost his team the title, but it’s often far more complicated than that. Arsene Wenger may have had a bit of reserve cash, but Arsenal were very vulnerable to seeing their best players picked off by both Manchester clubs over a handful of years, and as just mentioned, by Chelsea in 2006. If Arsenal had the wealth of the Rich Three, these departures probably wouldn’t have happened. Not only were they weakened, but in the process their rivals were strengthened.
It also didn’t help that Arsenal didn’t recoup full fees on a lot of these players, many of whom were down to the final year of their contracts. You can of course blame Arsenal for allowing that to happen, but it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: Arsenal couldn’t quite compete with them, so it became harder to convince them to stay; they left for clubs who could pay higher wages and who were in a better position to win the league title. They then won the title in part because teams like Arsenal have been further weakened. Winning the title meant that they got richer, and the virtuous cycle continues.
Those at the top of the food chain – City, Chelsea and United – don’t lose their best players to other Premier League clubs, whereas everyone else does. That in itself tells a story.
Only Real Madrid and Barcelona, and maybe Bayern Munich, can lure players away from the Rich Three. This is in contrast to Liverpool, who lost Fernando Torres to Chelsea; and Arsenal, who lost Robin van Persie to Manchester United, and Samir Nasri and Bacary Sagna to Manchester City (plus Gael Clichy, although he wasn’t a key Arsenal asset), as well as Ashley Cole to Chelsea. Liverpool did manage to buy Daniel Sturridge from one of the Rich Three, but mainly because he was not someone they wanted to hold onto.
And of course, wealth isn’t just about buying the best players, but keeping them.
You sense that things are improving for Arsenal, with a trophy last season and the possibility of another this season, as well as now appearing to match Manchester City in the league and getting as far as them in Europe. But they are still seven points behind Chelsea, having played one more game. Their financial situation has strengthened with the Emirates stadium, and they’re perhaps less vulnerable to poachers, although it seems that any Premier League player can be lured to the big Spanish clubs if they come calling.
No matter what a team costs there will be fluctuating fortunes within a season, but over a longer period of time these tend to even out, and the cream rises to the top. In defence of Manchester City, it also seems true that defending the title is hard to do, because of several reasons: some players will naturally slacken off (Ronnie Moran would have had something to say to them), while others may have less energy; the opposition will raise their game, and expectations also rise; and there are rich rivals ready to take advantage, should the chance emerge. I also think that once a team wins the league its priorities shift towards Europe, because that is the logical next step, and if defending the title is hard, defending it while trying to win the Champions League is nigh-on impossible.
City are in an interesting position now, as they have an ageing squad, and, creative accounting aside, FFP means they can’t just do what they did five years ago and parachute in a load of new talent. Arsenal are also in an interesting position, as their wealth increases. Liverpool are in an interesting position, as they have the best young side in the country (roughly the same age as Spurs, but better), but are currently just outside the top four. And Manchester United are in an interesting position, as they struggle to escape the shadow of the Ferguson years, investing hundreds of millions in players in the process. They might not have looked much like a ‘team’ this season, but the hugely expensive squad allows individual talent to get them the points even when they don’t play well as a unit.
If Chelsea win their game in hand then they’ll be 10 points clear of Arsenal, their closest challengers outside of the Rich Three; and, for an 11th year in a row, the title looks set to go to one of that super-wealthy trio.