Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

lordderak (Liverpool) says...

I like the fact that the article points out our inability to beat anyone above us so far, a cold hard fact yes but the games do tell a different story I'm afraid. City at Anfield got an undeserved point after a poor back pass, I wont even comment on the Utd game at Anfield as it's well regarded as daylight Robbery at this stage after some awful referee decisions. We got what we deserved against Arsenal and had a perfectly legitimate goal ruled out at Everton. How would you Analyse Utd's season? Yes they are top but have been beaten at home by Spurs and away at Norwich, both of these sides are below them, Chelsea just lost to the worst team in the league. The league is all over the place and to be honest you can never bank on anyone winning in any game at this stage such has been the nature of it so far. Yeah Liverpool haven't beaten anyone above them yet, but teams below them have beaten the top 2 sides in Utd (Norwich) and City (Sunderland) So you can see how that analysis is always flawed.

u are this guy today, i'm worried bout u boo

is it more likely that three new signings transform a team from midtable into cl hopefuls or that a team almost wholly reliant on one player gets found out over an entire season?

Do I need three or four more? Yes, I think so.

eh

xpost, nobody is making big claims for anything and that large body of text you found from fuck knows where is at least 75 per cent otm. they played man u and city off the park, utterly, city at least claimed a draw due to one massive defensive fuck-up, but in man u's case the wild red card decision saw them sneak a win despite being passed off the park, fairly sure even here that was the general consenus, and most pundits disagreed with the red. either way the 10 men did very well.

plus whatever about the overall picture, liverpool are improving as the season goes on. tbh this sudden and wild rage at ismael's fairly sanguine points from a fan of spurs is as good a sign of improvement as there is.

it's wild rage from a fan of ismael, tbph.

I've acknowledged form is good! I think rodgers is doing ok, not great but steady. I really, really think that talk of fourth based on the past 5-6 weeks of improved results is like replacing a methadone clinic's doses with the real shit for no reason whatsoever. Progress is happening! Don't spoil it ffs, it has to be recognised that for fans or rodgers or anyone to start thinking of a final league position now that (imo, obv) is far beyond them is not only damaging, but is the most needless, cliched and self-inflicted type of damage that could be done right now.

The shite posted is shite of the 'if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle' and both yourself and IK seem to be fitting your mum's sister for a strapon (tho you seemed to share my view on where lfc were atm last night!)

i mean, genuinely, if matt mentioned spurs and second in the same way i'd be twice as quick and twice as harsh, we have, as a board, got to give the tough love, remembering that it's love

and both yourself and IK seem to be fitting your mum's sister for a strapon

Can I just ask for clarification of this?

This isn't that kind of website

I never mentioned 4th, is the thing. Nobody is getting particularly carried away as far as I can see, well, almost nobody.

Also your views on methadone merit inspection.

spurs would be looking p good now if we'd not been so wobbly at the start. Callin top four at expense of utd.

― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Monday, October 8, 2012 10:39 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The shite posted is shite of the 'if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle' and both yourself and IK seem to be fitting your mum's sister for a strapon

equal parts lol and o_O and really not knowing what to do with that

Joe Cole has gone back to his spiritual home. I predict two seasons of mediocrity and injury with occasional flashes of brilliance.

+ Chamakh loan. That is a depressing transfer window

can't understand why Sam wd want Joe Cole when he's already got £10 million rated left winger *snigger* Matt Jarvis *cough cough*

I must have wiped all impressions of Matt Jarvis from my mind cos when I saw the Hammers on MOTD this week my initial thought was "Since when does Danny Dyer play on the left for West Ham?!!!"

dunno but I found the traditional signing picture

http://www.whufc.com/javaImages/e8/be/0,,12562~10993384,00.jpg

Dyer was born in Canning Town, to Antony and Christine Dyer. He was a international football player for England fo a short while.(née Meakin).[3]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A_sXdpCCIAAjsYC.jpg

aw they grow up so fast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctWS52IA_JY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSZkoE7TkR0

lampard actually was pretty unconvincing until he went to chelsea as i recall, certainly £11m felt way steep

qpr nobody mark perry also featured in that england yoof call-up storrie talks about smugly there

is there no dutch phrase for "once in a lifetime opportunity"

How is it that some of these elite youth disappear completely, while plenty who never get a sniff at that age go on to have long careers somewhere in the pro game?

I think luck, attitude, health, diet, growth, contacts, choice of club, etc. are all factors. It takes a lot to get to a point where you earn proper wages and many chuck it before that. Many others are shown the door because the clubs can't support the cost of keeping everyone on for another year to see who makes it.

The best footballer at my school ended up a policeman, the second best became a forklift driver and occasional drug dealer. Lesser players became professional footballers.

Lampard wasn't even that impressive in his early seasons at Chelsea, it was only when Mourinho joined that he really took off. None of that generation of West Ham kids were that great when they moved on, except maybe Ferdinand - certainly not Carrick or Defoe. The young Joe Cole is being preposterously overrated in retrospect by the kind of people with the requisite level of bovine stupidity to write something like this.

I mean BEFORE they moved on.

come on, if anybody's gonna give Cole a free role and tell him to express himself it's gonna be Big Sam

hopefully cashley will also be signed and perhaps the dream team of coles will finally happen

this dream:
Target 2006 - World Cup qualification banter starts here

Speaking of elite youth, Pato has waddled off back to Brasil

gonna perform a cover of the leaving of liverpool here, i'm not slagging them or rodgers at all but really i have to not argue about them at 2.30 am anymore, it's 2013 ffs

moving on

lampard actually was pretty unconvincing until he went to chelsea as i recall, certainly £11m felt way steep

― r|t|c, Friday, 4 January 2013 13:03 (2 days ago)

Lampard wasn't even that impressive in his early seasons at Chelsea, it was only when Mourinho joined that he really took off. (Matt)

iirc his goalscoring record was extremely impressive at west ham in the few seasons before his move, and at the time i thought it was a great signing, if a little expensive

And the Cameroon defender insists he will make the position his own once again.

"It's not a problem," Assou-Ekotto said when asked about competition for his position.

"When I came here six years ago I was in competition with Gilberto, Lee Young-Pyo and Gareth Bale and it ended up being my place (in the team) so it's not a problem."

ah please god ta fuck zeki fryers, vertonghen, naughton and even danny rose have all got to be better than that competition, please god

i thought you liked Ass-Ek now?

xpost to Ismael. A lot of it has to do with physique, too. Often the most successful youth players are the ones with the most adult physiques for their age: they are simply faster and stronger and more powerful than the competition. But that advantage is negated when everyone else catches up, or when they start playing against actual adults.

Classic example of this was Kevin Gallen. QPR mythology holds that had he not done his knee in at Fratton early in the 96/97 season he'd have been the greatest goalscorer in English football. In the youth team he had smashed Jimmy Greaves's all-time scoring records. He played in the England U18 Euro winning team in 92. Made his first team debut at Old Trafford in Aug 94 and Hansen talked about him as a £20m player. Thing is, even before doing his knee, he hadn't scored many goals for the first team and didn't look to me like he was setting the world on fire. Gerry Francis told me a couple of years later - I was interviewing him - that Gallen had always been the strongest kid in any team he played for and found it too easy as a kid, but in adult football he proved to be not that fast and not that strong - hence not that much of a scorer.

I see that, but he still eked out a decent career, had celebrity pals, etc. It's the ones who have no professional career at all that I have trouble with - if you're elite youth at 17, surely you'd be good enough to go on to do a job at Gillingham?

At Gillingham? If your class comes matched with being a big strong lad, maybe.

BAE is clearly the first-choice left-back, I doubt that's even up for contention, especially as it allows Vertonghen to play CB again.

question of numbers isn't it? probly more elite youth than there are jobs? also iirc most of the kids at my school who physically matured earlier had beer guts and smokers lungs by the time they hit 18

took me another 10 years dammit

if you're an elite youth at 17 and don't make it at elite level, it's probably hard to stay fit and bothered about gillingham, which is where the scrappy kid without your talent starts getting games ahead of you?

xps I'm fine with bae now, he's sensational going fwd and much improved in defence. I'd just like to think the fuckin competition is stronger than lee young pyo and timothee atouba or whothefuckever these days

Also, "elite youth" are competing against a much narrower pool of players - usually only a cohort of two years' worth of players. Therefore even at international level, even an outstanding team is likely to be a handful of outstanding players plus the best makeweights, yet we tend to assume they must all be outstanding because The Team won the competition (or whatever). Whereas once you reach 18, you're competing against up to 17 years' worth of players. Statistically you are simply much less likely to be good.

Yup, that makes sense.

rip keith o'neill et al

course, that outlook leads you to question how teams haven't more youth products at a level where they can at least fill a squad berth.

Does it? Not for me. You have a first team squad of 25, drawn from a 17-year cohort. You have a youth team squad of 25, drawn from a two-year cohort. Primary school maths would lead you to assume that no more than an eighth of those players would be good enough to have a chance at the first team squad.

Other thing to remember nowadays is the concentration of youth development resources at a handful of clubs, so fewer clubs even get access to the the small number of kids good enough to play professional football. That must surely mean even fewer now make it through to the pro game because a) there are only the same number of squad places to go round, but a higher quality of competition at the biggest clubs b) so many who would once have come through to the first team at Notts County or wherever are now being picked up and discarded by Man U or wherever c) and historically few discards get picked up by other clubs anyway (hence Hoddle's old scheme to rehabilitate them at his own academy in La Manga and get them back to a UK pro club)

i dunno, i have a standing joke about every club in the country having an "ex-Man U" player