KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum What Will It take To Challenge For The Title Again

Nowhere near it - I'd want a refund even we got him on a bosman!

With the state of the national team, surely english players should cost less than their foreign counterparts, not more!?

To be fair, if you buy exclusively British players, you're more-likely-than-not going to be over-paying for mediocrity. When FSG came in, we all thought that this would be the beginning of a new era of Moneyball-esque transfer dealings. In reality, things have gone the complete opposite way. Instead of spending money intelligently on under-valued players, we've been vastly over-spending on wingers with no pace and strikers that don't score goals. I'm not as worried about Henderson because I think he has time on his side and he's shown signs of improvement already, but Downing has nowhere to go but down and Carroll looks like a Conference player at best.

The idea behind Moneyball was finding value in non-traditional sources, such as the following:

1. Proven college players (rather than high-schoolers with potential but no track record). High school players are often good only because of their physical gifts - they are good because they are the biggest or fastest. When everyone else around them catches up to them, they don't look so hot anymore.

2. Players whose assets are inherently under-valued. Statistics show that players with "good gloves" (players whose strength lies in fielding rather than hitting a baseball) are vastly over-priced. Other assets, like the ability to generate "walks," are hugely under-priced in the market, but arguably more valuable.

3. Players who have mastered the fundamentals of the game but seem to lack "flash." For example, contact-hitters are under-valued when compared to power-hitters, despite the fact that contact hitters reach base more often. And, it's a lot easier for a contact-hitter to learn how to hit with power than it is for a power-hitter to learn how to make contact. We'd probably be better off signing someone like Joe Allen from Swansea rather than Charlie Adam who puts in a couple Hollywood balls every game and that's it. And a signing like Shelvey, who can pass, tackle, etc., makes a lot more sense than a "raw diamond" (aka a rubbish player who is a big project) like Ryan Babel.

What does all this baseball have to do with this thread? Think about it. Despite claiming lineage to Billy Beane, Moneyball's spiritual father, FSG (or Comolli?) have seemed to completely abandon those principles.

1. We've over-payed for young, un-proven talent like Henderson and Carroll. On one level, it makes sense to buy young players with potential and watch their value grow. But that only really works if you buy them cheaply. Even if Carroll and Henderson improve, they're unlikely to ever be £20 or £40 million players. That's just absurd. There's more value in finding someone who has a proven track-record, even if it's in a weaker league (i.e. Cabaye, Tiote, SUAREZ!)

2. We're over-paying for certain attributes. Carroll is an obvious example - sure, he scored goals in the Champo and 1/2 of a Premiership season, but if you can't put the ball on his dome, he contributes absolutely nothing else to the team. His build-up play is poor and he doesn't work hard enough to put defenses under pressure. We also appear to put too much emphasis on this new "chances created" statistic. Henderson and Downing were supposedly experts at creating chances for Villa and Sunderland, but how many chances has Downing created this season? Maybe we'd be better off concentrating on the less-heralded statistics, i.e. tackles won, pass completion percentage, etc., so we can find ourselves another Lucas.

Really? Kuyt is rated near 10m, and Henderson has been better and provided more assists.



8 home grown players, a change from 4 places a premium on local talent. I'm surprised you hadn't noticed that Bent went for 24m, Milner for not much less PLUS Steven Ireland, etc. Those deals were ok, but all the ones involving Liverpool were poor decisions based on price alone? What has Milner done that makes him better than our players, despite costing 5-10m more? Not to mention his wages....

I can ony speak for myself but Bent (who always scores) at £24m is an infinitely better deal than Carroll at £35m. And milner is btter than adam & henderson put together, quite easily.
But if you really want to talk about hugely over-valued players......where have you got a £10m figure for dirk kuyt from?!?!? And why compare his bit-part stats to those of henderson who has 50% more starts and seems to get a game no matter what?

Henderson is Kenny's love-child, like Kuyt was to Benitez. Try and prove me otherwise!

Dalglish get's a huge hard on from being able to mold Henderson into the player he wants. All though the whole "He's the next Gerrard" talk is absolutely nonsense. He is nothing like Gerrard, nothing like Gerrard at the same age either.

All managers have their favorites and mark my words, Dalglish loves the attention and if Henderson can be molded into a success, Dalglish will feel like it was all his own doing.

It's hilarious hearing Dalglish on the touchline every 5 seconds.

Jordan! Jordan! Jordan! Jordan! (looks away in disgust) Jordan?!?

It's almost like Fenton the dog!

actually gave me a good laugh, nice one stan.

we need quality players, to challenge for the title, simple as that.

quality players cost big money sometimes and some can be signed for less.

if i was manager, i wud [oops] off comolli and get my own scouting network set up, not based on opta stats.

sell some players ie fabio, kuyt etc etc.

buy players of the quality ie hummells, de rossi, shaqiri,

and improve the starting 11 and bench 1st.

then i wud add players, to improve the whole squad ie young talented and some xperienced one's.

Out of those three only Shaqiri would join us.

ok, signing shaqiri, wud be a improvement on the starting 11, its a start.

why wud the other 2 players not join us

De Rossi is targeted by teams in the champions league or in contention for major trophies, Hummels the same.