The thing is that buying players that don't fit has happened time and time again under FSG. Only a Club that recruits based on pounds, shillings and pence could buy Suarez and Carroll on the same day. Two players with styles so different to each other that they may as well of played different sports.
Our recruitment strategy isn't based on buying players to fit an ideology or a system it is based on extracting the most value. We are buying players based on financial sense and not Footballing sense.
We bought Carroll because he was £15m cheaper than Torres and on much lower wages, we bought Suarez because he had bit someone and was available for below his true worth. We bought Balotelli because he had fallen out with Milan and was available at a cut price, we wanted Remy because he had a clause in his contract that meant we could get him on the cheap.
There is a pattern there and it is one of putting value above whether the player is right for our system. That isn't how the big clubs act could you see Barca or Arsenal compromising the way they play because they could get a player for below his true value. Well that is what we are asking Rodgers to do and then blaming him when it doesn't work out.
We need to start recruiting the players who fit our system and who will kick us on in the here and now. not looking for players who are available on the cheap or just available like the players we bought from Southampton. Posters keep mentioning how much we have spent without actually quantifying that players like Manquillo, Moreno, Can, Markovic and Origi simply aren't ready or in the case of Origi even here yet.
The thing is they didn’t know wtf they were doing when they first came, and they still don’t. They saw a bargain and being business men they grabbed it. They signed what they saw as a safe pair of hands in Roy, an old style traditional British football manager, that didn’t work out, so they opted for the safe route again with Kenny, and that didn’t work out either. Then they changed their strategy after they watched Barca a few times, but unfortunately the type of player they had previously sanctioned under Roy and Kenny, while suiting those two's traditionalist philosophy, didn’t suit the Barca style at all, so they had to be shipped out under their third manager (Rodgers) with 100m down the tubes. Then on top of their newfound footballing philosophy, they came up with the idea of experimenting with their Red Socks moneyball strategy in a footballing context. This strategy is predicated upon using statistical analysis to identify and sign promising young prospects, developing them, and then selling them on at a profit (hence the recruitment of Rodgers). What they didn’t and (it would seem), they still don’t realise is:
1) Barca style football requires a much more technically developed player than does the older less possessive style footballing philosophy, therefore signing prospects was hardly a good idea.
2) Given the complexity of football, and the footballing environment, the current first generation statistical software is still well off the pace in terms of being a reliable tool for assessing the future competence of a young a footballing prospect, and is therefore likely to be misleading, as indeed it has been.
3) Because of these complexities, promising Prospects in football, as distinct from Baseball, suffer a much higher attrition rate than is the case with baseball players, as we all know, only a small percentage of promising young footballers ever come good, so far that is proving to be the case here.
4) Football is played in the present, not in the future, and a club neglecting to ensure the availability of a competitive first team in the here and now, could well be two leagues down by the time all 23 or so prospects are ready to compete, even if by some miracle all or most of them did come good! And despite an improvement in application and performance the signs are worrying.
It’s comic book stuff, and reads like fiction, as some here no doubt will label it. But if proof were needed, this saga proves that sometimes the truth is indeed stranger than fiction!
