SILLY season is now in full flow. The distraction of actual games of football has gone, and the important business of which footballers we should — and shouldn’t buy — is on everyone’s lips. Not even the small matter of who is going to manage Liverpool Football Club can get in the way of the unstoppable juggernaut that is football players moving from one employer to another.
We don’t even just talk about players any more. We discuss philosophies, strategies, wage structures…. I miss the days of ‘Is he any good like?’. Forget pretending to be a manager. Now we are playing fantasy chairman, director of football and whatever on earth Mike Gordon is, all rolled into one.
And you know what? I’m as bad as anyone. As I am going to prove in this article and over about 100 podcasts this summer. Because I’m going to tell Liverpool exactly the kind of player they should be signing now. I might not have a flash computer that tells you the blag value of a footballer, or a 2:2 degree in Sport Science from Sheffield Hallam which apparently qualifies you to tell football managers who they should and shouldn’t buy. But I’m going to have go anyway.
Apparently, success in any walk of life is transferable to football now. So I’m approaching transfers with the only thing I’ve learnt in business over the last 10 years. Which is basically, “When you somehow do something right, try to do it again.”
Admittedly this isn’t exactly the philosophy that results in the formation of Apple, but I’ve also never done the Market Research equivalent of spunking £35million on Andy Carroll, so let’s see how it can apply to transfers.
What I want to do is look at the transfers Liverpool have made which have been an undoubted success. Let’s say since Rafa Benitez took over, and see if there is a pattern. I’ve no idea if there is yet. This is like a school science project that could go wrong. But as long as we all learn something, we’ll be fine. Anyway, I would argue the successes are:
- Xabi Alonso — £10.5m — Real Sociedad (22)
- Luis Garcia — £6m — Barcelona (26)
- Daniel Agger — £5.8m — Brondby (21)
- Pepe Reina — £6m — Villareal (22)
- Momo Sissoko — £5.6m — Valencia (20)
- Javier Mascherano — £17m — Global Soccer Agencies and Mystere Services Limited (22)
- Dirk Kuyt — £9m — Feyenoord (26)
- Alvaro Arbeloa — £2.6m — Deportivo La Coruna (24)
- Lucas Leiva — £6m — Gremio (20)
- Martin Skrtel — £6.5m — Zenit Saint Petersburg (23)
- Yossi Benayoun — £5m — West Ham United (27)
- Fernando Torres — £26.5m — Atletico Madrid (23)
- Maxi Rodriquez — £free — Atletico Madrid (29)
- Luis Suarez — £23m — Ajax (24)
- Jordan Henderson — £16m — Sunderland (20)
- Daniel Sturridge — £12m — Chelsea (23)
- Philippe Coutinho — £8.5m — Inter Milan (20)
There. This ignores young players aged 14-16 — as that feels like a discussion for another day — and anything from last summer, as they mostly feel still up for debate (at best). It also leaves out a whole group of lads who just did, or are just doing, alright, as the aim should be for better than that (even if we accept that alright shouldn’t be seen as a failure as such).
You may disagree with one or two names either way, but let’s try to get on board with the experiment as a whole, rather than argue over certain players.
So what can we learn? I found it staggering how many of the above were aged 21 to 23. A whopping 41 per cent. If we add Jordan Henderson, signed days from his 21st birthday, and Luis Suarez, signed days after his 24th birthday, then this increases to over half.
You may also notice that, according to my admittedly self-determined barometer, we haven’t signed a single player aged 17 to 19 in the last 10 years that can been seen as a success. So sack it off. Abandon it. It’s a waste of time and money. A few lads over the age have worked out at low money. Those are your James Milners. To supplement. Not the focus.
What I also found interesting is that, again only in my opinion, most of the transfers above look perfectly doable now. How many of the above would we miss out on now all things being equal? Probably only Fernando Torres. The rest would still be moving to a club with better resources and prospects, or in a small number of cases, to a club who is willing to play them. The idea that it is almost impossible to sign top players for Liverpool now doesn’t compute with the list above. You just need to identify them and get the deals done.
Of course signing players in this age group doesn’t guarantee success. Those that did make it at Liverpool were the ones who were ready to make the step up — 21 to 23 year olds who have outgrown their current club and were ready to deliver for Liverpool FC from day one.
Xabi Alonso is the prefect example of this. Right in the middle of our target age group at 22, he’d been made captain of Sociedad at the age of 20 and was presented with a ceremonial sword after his last game, such was the regard he was held in by the club. A sword!
Luis Suarez was given his own fireworks display when he left Ajax. Henderson and Torres are held in huge regard by the supporters of their boyhood clubs. Fans who recognise players that became too good for their surroundings. These weren’t lads signed on the back of a decent six months.
The other interesting examples are players who left clubs with greater resources, I won’t say bigger, because they were undervalued. Sturridge, Coutinho and possibly Garcia jump out from the list above.
The club shouldn’t be scared of making these signings and can’t be worried about the implications of signing reserve players from those we are trying to compete with. The reason being is that they are often being left out for no valid reason by clubs who would rather throw money at a problem than develop what they have.
Sturridge was always seen as a youth player at Chelsea, before moving to Liverpool and proving he was better than all of those ahead of him in the pecking order at Stamford Bridge.
Inter Milan sporting director Piero Ausilio says he is ‘sad’ every time he watched Coutinho play for Liverpool. So he should be. In his autobiography, Didi Hamann says he had to leave Bayern Munich as he felt he would always be seen in a certain way there, no matter how well he played. We can take advantage of that.
Of course there are other factors in signing players, but I’ll leave the pass completion stats and ‘aerial duels won’ to others if you don’t mind. There will be plenty of those blogs about this summer.
The only things I am focused on — and what Liverpool should be focused on if you ask me — is: Are they aged 21 to 23? Are they undervalued by their current cash rich club?
Or: Are they likely to get a sword or a fireworks display when they leave their current club?
Someone carve that on a stone in Melwood, please. Those are our lads.
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda
You’d think the stattos would have worked out that we’ve had most of our success in the market with players coming into their peek or near to it. If you look at what we’ve done with the money for Torres, Suarez and Alonso alone there must be something a “business brain” or non football expert can see is wrong. I think you can’t underplay the Benitez affect and the echoes of Istanbul when assessing whether we could get these players today. On the whole I think we’ve regressed in the football aspects under FSG.
It seems that the possible deal for Milner will be seen as an astute buy,a player who can go straight into the team and improve us.That’s simply because our midfield consists of Henderson,Allen,Lucas or Can.Ten years ago we were singing about Xabi,Momo,Gerrard and Masch.
Hodgson started the process of lowering expectations and it’s continued with FSG and Brendan,all the major wage earners are gone and we’ve adopted the moneyball/youth/potential approach which will end with a squad of inexperience,so the signings of Milners and Toures will be seen as intelligent even though the’ve had their day.
Fans view the club differently to the owners.We want the best players to win silverware with the owners viewing value for money with a good sell-on price on acceptable wages.Ings and Milner have replaced Torres and Gerrard.
If Brendan survives his meeting with Werner next season will have to be on a par with 13/14,not 14/15 because most of us want him gone on so many levels,but FSG may think he’s doing fine,Ings and Milner being their level of ambition.
Great article and premise, it seems half written though in that I’m now dying for a list of targets currently available. I hope we can get part 2 soon. First send the list to Ian Ayre.
Great article John. At last someone who doesn’t just go along with the current thinking in the media (and it seems Brendan) that we should be buying ready – made experienced pro’s and not younger players and that this will somehow solve all our problems. I’m no big fan of FSG but there seems to be a misconception that their policy of focusing on younger players last summer is to blame for this mess of a season. Let’s face it, Brendan had a decent amount to spend and if you look at the players brought in it was a nice balance of Premier League experience and promising young foreign players. For me it’s not the young players who have disappointed but those experienced pro’s like Lovren, Lambert, Balotelli and to a lesser extent Lallana.
I was reading an article by Paul Tomkins which said that Paisley only ever signed two players over 24 – most of our greatest-ever players like Souness, Hansen and Rush were signed in their early twenties or occasionally late teens.
The other misconception is that it’s because we are the only club to have a transfer committee. Every club in the league has a similar group of people assessing transfer targets – manager, technical director, sports scientist, stats man, chief exec. etc. Even Mourinho has Michael Emenalo targeting players for him. The problem is not the transfer committee idea but the quality of the people on it (including the manager) – are they good enough? If current rumours of signing Benteke for the same price as Arsenal got Sanchez for is true, then the answer is most definitely no. Too much is made of age and stats, these shouldn’t matter, lets just get someone on the committee who can recognise quality!
You make some great points mate- and that’s a great stat about Bob Paisley’s signings. My memory says Bob signed younger players to sit in the reserves for a year and then challenge the older guy for a first team place – a first team that I have no idea what their average age was, but one that memory tells me had plenty of experience. Jan Molby told me that we used to scout a player 9 times – always away from home- to see if he had the required character & quality.
Yes I read that excellent Tomkins article on signings recently and was surprised to see the age group that Paisley seemed to prefer signing,
Kenny was one of the few signed who were considered old for a Bob signing.
Enjoyed that, John. You’ve saved the concept of LFC transfer articles from the moneyball/sabermetrics bores. Your Sturridge/Coutinho/Garcia point is a good one. I’ve been thinking Jovetic along those sort of lines. Possibly Cuadrado as well, but in about a years time when Mourinho’s bored of him and has stopped seeing us as a threat.
What concerns me is that I like the non-striker signings that are meant to be going on in Milner and Clyne (reminds me of a young, arsed Johnson but a better defender – probably should have got him last year instead of Lovren) but Benteke and Ings don’t do anything for me. Too similar to Balotelli and Borini respectively, for me to go into a new season thinking it’s going to be anything other than another joyless slog forcing balls in to nets. Melissa Reddy nailed the Benteke thing but if we splurge a load of money on another target man after that season, Coutinho needs to be looking to get himself to Barca a year sooner than he was probably thinking. It’s been 4 and a half years since the Carroll deal, so I reckon it’d be as good a time as any for the club to at least try and make it look like they’re learning from their mistakes.
Berahino looks like he has neo-Sturridge pace and the runs in behind to give Coutinho something to work with but I’ve heard his agent is the same knob rot who is Sterling’s so that won’t happen. Not dealing with that divvy would be one instance of learning from mistakes I suppose.
I’m sorry but Milner is not what LFC need. LFC need a player that brings flair, technique and creativity to the midfield. Milner is just an older version of Henderson. Milner does exactly the same as Henderson which is bomb forward down the channels and make crosses or shoot.
LFC need a player in midfield who is technically able to control the tempo of play. Instead of more British players who just run around we need to actually go out and spend money on a proper technical central midfielder. Our midfield is totally unbalanced especially with Gerrard leaving. Who takes the set pieces?
Arsenal have Cazorla and Ozil. Chelsea have Fabregas. United have Carrick and Herrera. City have Yaya Toure. Milner will add a few goals but he’s not going to make this team much better and push it to the next level. This is the same Milner who benches for England while Henderson and Delph get games ahead of him.
We were totally outclassed by United in the 2-1 defeat and Arsenal in the 4-1. Would Milner have dominated the central midfield in those games? He has mainly played winger for Man City. You only need to see the vine of Messi so easily nutmegging him when Pellegrini finally gave him a chance at CM to know Milner is not a central midfielder.
And I don’t want to hear that Milner is a great versatile squad player. He is not leaving title challenging City on even bigger wages to come to Rodgers’ LFC and be a squad player. He has been guaranteed confirmed playing time as a starter and might have even been offered the captaincy who knows? If you have a midfield trio of Henderson, Milner and Lucas/Can/Allen that is extremely unbalanced. Your two central midfielders in Hendo and Milner will be bombing forward because that’s all they know.
He is a fantastic hard working player but not what LFC need to truly push on to the next level. He’s an upgrade on a lot of what we’ve got but a small upgrade is not enough.
We should be allocating resources to a top controlling midfielder like Pjanic. There is also Cabaye who is a cheaper option.
Yeah, like Milner is the only player to ever be nutmegged/made to look foolish by Messi …
Things move quickly, eh. Rodgers is here to stay, and Blatter is now available to fill that Director of Football role!
Started the article very well but I don’t see a realistic conclusion. You say “most of the transfers above look perfectly doable now” – but the vast majority of players on your list were purchased when we had Champions League football. We do not have that now and therefore, most of the transfers would not be doable now.
Which ones aren’t we getting Neil? Suarez, Coutinho and Sturridge signed for a club in a similar position. We rescued Mascherano from West Ham. Is Agger suddenly not coming from Brondby? Sissoko nearly signed for Everton. Show me your working
I think 10 of the 17 names which have been listed, don’t look “perfectly doable now”. And I would include Suarez as one of those names.
When we bought Suarez, we were buying the best player in the Dutch league. The best player in the dutch league was looking at liverpool and seeing that in their last four seasons, they finished 7th, 2nd, 4th and 3rd. He saw realistic hopes of Champions League football on the horizon.
The best player in the Dutch league now looks at Liverpool and sees their last four league finishes as: 6th, 2nd, 7th and 8th.
Perhaps why a player like Depay has gone to Man United (whose last four finishes have been 4th, 7th, 1st and 2nd).
And another thing, players on the list above were looking at Liverpool and some were seeing Champions League football and some were seeing the chance to play with World Class players. Some got to see the chance to play with both.
Arbeloa saw Torres, Reina and Alonso. Players were seeing Gerrard.
We don’t have Champs League football or World Class players now – so I can’t see how the majority above are still doable now.
So what do we do, pack up and give in?
We’re still a rich club able to pay decent wages. We still have better players than the majority of the clubs above. It is still a step up.
By the way we were 12th in January 2011, the month that Suarez joined. I doubt he saw realistic hopes of champions league football that soon on the horizon
Just curious to know if this group of successful signings (which i agree seem doable) have a totally different composition to the failures? What was their average age, for instance. Maybe their is another shared feature which we are missing, and age isn’t as consequential as it may seem. I mean, already, half the successful signings were not in their early 20s. I guess the list of failures is so damn long that it is just a pain to make the list and check.