cuppatea

Moneyball is about signing players undervalued by the market to compete on a budget, what we did under Comolli was the complete opposite of that, we looked at players in their a career-best run of form, with their fees at an all-time high, and then signed them for ridiculous money. I'm still half-convinced Comolli was actively working to destroy the club, while Kenny's idea to abandon the formula which worked so well in his first 6 months (fluid interplay between the likes of Suarez, Meireles, Maxi and Kuyt) to sign a load of Premier League cloggers to pump the ball into the box for Andy fucking Carroll was a disaster which has and will set us back years, if not decades.

I thought "bollocks to reading that shite" when I opened the thread but it was actually an entertaining read in the end.

To be honest, after losing a friendly I'm surprised they didn't just sack him on the spot.

Thought we'd get at least £10m for him, it's not like he's got any worse here, he's still the same mediocre player he always was.

Seems pretty clear Suarez's camp are briefing the press.

He was their player of the season by a landslide according to this: Biancorosso, mejor jugador temporada 2012 - 2013 - Otros temas del Atlético - Foro del Atlético de Madrid

Atletico fans seem to really rate him, which is reassuring, especially when you consider how many quality forwards they've seen over recent years.

But surely if we're hoping to catch up to those teams we should be looking to sign players good enough to play for them? Both us and Arsenal are apparently looking for a centre back, now if there was a top class one available and willing to come to England for a reasonable fee, he'd probably already be at the Emirates by now. If there was a top class holding midfielder available in the £10-20m range, Man Utd would probably snap him up so they don't have to play Phil Jones and Wayne Rooney there next season. We're in the awkward position of needing top 4 quality players but only being the 6th most attractive team in England right now (with at least another half dozen more attractive teams than us on the continent). As I said, it's mostly £15-20m international players, who would walk into any team below us in the league, that we're looking to improve upon, which isn't easy to do with a budget of probably no more than £20-25m.

They need to be better than what we've got, reasonably priced (Carroll was better than N'Gog, just about, but you wouldn't advocate spending £35m on him with the benefit of hindsight) and willing to come. Bear in mind a lot of the players we're looking to upgrade on cost about £15-20m themselves. If signing quality players was that easy, Man Utd and Arsenal wouldn't have spent fuck all so far, despite having transfer budgets much larger than ours.

I'd be very surprised (and very disappointed) if we didn't make at least one quality addition to the first team before the window closes. There's going to be hundreds of millions spent on players in the next month and I'd expect at least £15-20m of it (more if we sell Suarez) to come from us.

Is your crusade against FSG and Rodgers really all about the fact that Kenny was sacked?

Fuck that shit, I'd like to think we'd learnt our lesson not to pay massively over the odds on a player based on a single season of good form after the Carroll, Downing, Henderson and Adam debacles. There's no value in those sorts of signings, he had 10 years to suggest he was a £2m player and then 1 season to suggest he's a £20m one. His price would be based on his current form and he'd have to maintain that career-best level of performance to even justify what we'd have to pay. If he proves to be another Zaki, Ricketts, Jones, Carroll, Adam, Chimbonda (insert the name of a thousand other shit players who have had great seasons) we'd have fucked ourselves yet again. I'd rather sign a player who's just had the worst season of his life than the best, at least there's a chance of us getting good value for money with that.

Do you not think you're overreacting just a touch to a tenuous link in the press to a loan move for a backup leftback?

You're a bad mong if you think that's actually how this deal worked. Chelsea: "Okay, we'll pay £50m for Torres but we're not going any higher than that." Liverpool: "Oh hang on a minute lads, Newcastle are only asking £10m for Carroll now so just give us £25m for Torres and that'll do it." Or maybe FSG really are a bunch of even bigger mongs than you (they'd have to be to negotiate a deal in such a unbelievably fucking stupid manner).

Firstly, I'd like to think we weren't stupid enough to actually negotiate that way and that Henry was just trying to justify a deal that, even at the time, looked absurdly overpriced. Secondly, Moneyball is all about extracting value from the market by using statistics to discover undervalued players, which is the complete opposite of what we did under Kenny and Comolli. Spending £35m on a player who was worth about £8m six months earlier, based on a run of good form, is NOT a Moneyball signing. Our transfer strategy under Comolli was seemingly to sign players in a career-best run of form, when their price was at an all-time high, thus ensuring we got the least possible value for our money. I'm still waiting for evidence to appear proving that Comolli was in fact actively trying to destroy Liverpool, there's almost no other explanation for the level of incompetence and negligent spending he showed.

After spending £80m on Carroll, Downing, Henderson and Adam, I'd have been alarmed if they gave Kenny any more money to waste.

Can't believe he's agitating for a move to fucking Arsenal. Real Madrid fair enough, maybe even Chelsea or City, but Arsenal?! The team that's won fuck all in 8 years and is struggling to hang on to 4th place every season? If he's kicking up a fuss trying to force a move to Arsenal then he really is a massive twat.

He may or may not, it remains to be seen, but I am suggesting that those names had no real pedigree to speak of when they were given big jobs at big clubs and would have been dismissed as potential candidates here by our fans. Is that not to do with the mentality in England? Top clubs in Europe routinely appoint relatively unproven managers, yet we think we're above doing the same over here. There's a belief in England that you're not allowed to manage a big club unless you've already done so before, so you've got to go make a name for yourself at the Milan's/Dortmund's/Barcelona's of the world before you earn the right to a big job here. And yet Rogers is being dismissed not based on his ability, tactics, philosophies, man-management, eye for talent etc but on the lack of trophies or big jobs in his past (same with Moyes at Man Utd). Can you imagine the reaction on here if we had appointed any of the names I mentioned when Milan, Juventus, Barcelona, Arsenal, Porto, Dortmund etc did? Any manager would be a long shot for success here (assuming success is winning the league), as the odds are stacked against us but FSG had the chance to run the rule over several candidates before opting for Rogers and I think it's a bit unfair on him and them to suggest that shows proof of a lack of ambition.

And if you don't like the example of an unproven manager in Germany enjoying great success, how about Wenger coming to Arsenal from the J-League, having being sacked in his previous stint in European management? Or Guardiola getting the Barca job after 1 year coaching their B team? Or Rafa going to Valencia with more sackings than trophies on his CV? Or Allegri winning fuck all before going to Milan and winning the league? Or Conte doing the same at Juventus? Or Mourinho getting the Porto job with less than a full season in management?

The irony being that Dortmund appointed a no mark from the 2nd division (having got his team relegated the season before) as their manager and one of the elite he outwitted there was Van Gaal, who was sacked by Bayern as the unglamorous, unproven and under-qualified Klopp led his team to the title.

What exactly is it you want/expect them to do? Arsenal's record transfer is £15m, we've spent equal or in excess of that 5 times (would have been 6 if we'd landed Mkhitaryan) since FSG have been here, including the (at the time) 8th most expensive transfer in the sport's history. We've offered lucrative new contracts to our best players and the only wage trimming we've done is in shifting those whose performances weren't justifying the massive amounts of money we were paying them.

We finished 8th under Kenny with the 5th highest wage budget, almost doubling the money spent on wages by 2 of the teams that finished above us and comfortably outspending Tottenham in both transfers and wages, so Rogers inherited a squad that was overpaid and under performing. As for hiring a relatively unproven manager, if they genuinely believe he's the right man for the job, having done their due diligence on him and a number of other candidates, then I've no problem with it. Klopp got the Dortmund job on the back of getting relegated with Mainz and then failing to go back up the following season and Rafa had more sackings than trophies when he went to Valencia. If you look at the clubs we're presumably trying to emulate, those who have built success rather than bought it, then you could argue that an ambitious young manager with something to prove is the way to go.

We've comfortably outspent all but 2 or 3 teams in the league since they've been here, including shattering our transfer record and eclipsing the record of clubs like Arsenal and Spurs several times on top of that. The wage cutting we've done is in moving on players whose performances on the pitch were in no way justifying the massive amounts we were paying them and I honestly can't believe anyone has a problem with that. We have less income than the teams above us (even though we still outspend some of them), which means we have to spend what we have more wisely. Clearly when we were spending more than Spurs in transfer fees and wages, yet finishing miles behind them in the league (not to mention almost doubling Everton's wage bill), we had a problem with overpaying, which had to be addressed. Even in Reina's case, as great a servant as he's been to the club, if we're going to have the 3rd best paid keeper in the league on our books he has to be amongst the best performing, which clearly he hasn't been in the last few seasons (with almost every significant goalkeeping stat placing him somewhere in the bottom half). If moving him on frees up money to be better spent elsewhere then so be it,that's the kind of thing we need to do if we're going to compete with teams that have more money than we do. Going down the City/Chelsea route was never on the cards with FSG, if we're going to have any success with them it'll be through following the Dortmund model of clever management, on and off the pitch. A lot will depend on what happens the rest of this summer but so far I'm quite encouraged.

Which manager would have taken a squad that finished 8th and was in free fall for the second half of the previous season and led us to a top 4 finish?

Paying £35m for a slow, lumbering, lazy, technically deficient pisshead based on a few months of good form is not only by far the worst signing in our history, it's arguably the worst signing in the sport's history. When you consider how much more we then spent on the likes of Adam and Downing, presumably to get the best out of Caroll, it only makes the whole ludicrous affair even more tragic.