Al-Fayed And His Money Are Soon Parted - A Flashback

Over the next couple of weeks, we might be selecting a range of historical posts from the Football is Fixed blog - the blog was established in November 2006 but over 90% of the posts are no longer publicly viewable.

The post addresses some nonsenses relating to the transfer market.
It first appeared on January 5th 2009.

The Holistic Sabermetrics Project became the Enhanced Sabermetrics Model and this entity has been utilised by teams in numerous primary and secondary tier European leagues to gain value for money in the marketplace.

We bet Hodgson wished that he had plumped for Champions League finalist and gladiatorial forward Mario Gómez!
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This January Transfer Window promises to be the most unusual (and analytically complex) market since the buying and selling of footballers became a restricted process.

The transfer market is already a highly inefficient marketplace as numerous key holistic parameters are not taken into account in the player evaluations.
So, for example, a ridiculous amount of weighting is given to sabermetrics - a pseudo-science based on player statistics - while virtually none is given to the impact of corruption on match outcomes (and, hence, player values).
It was this rampant market inefficiency that persuaded the Dietrological Trading Team to establish the Holistic Sabermetrics Project eighteen months ago.

As market analysts, we seek out inefficient markets ie markets where all the information is NOT in the price. In any mature market sector, virtually all markets are inefficient due to the corrupt natures of the market infrastructures.
So, football betting markets and football transfer markets are central to our portfolio.

Last year, we held discussions with several different British entities about our Holistic Sabermetrics Project, but each operation had organisational or individual limitations, either due to a lack of professionalism or a fondness for criminality. Or both.
As the state of the corruption in English football is cartelised, to a very large extent, we decided to look further afield for an operation that chooses meritocratic routes as opposed to corrupt ones.

And our patience has undoubtedly paid off.
We are working, on a trial basis it must be said, with a leading entity from another territory.
We are providing a range of high level consultancy services - basic player evaluation based on the fundamentals and the sabermetrics; the role of the betting markets in any assessment of a player value; enhanced scenario analysis relating to the state of the global financial system and its effect on future transfer windows; the impact of the Recession/Depression, now and in the future; issues relating to currency volatility; the development of hedging strategies to minimise risk.

We detail these aspects briefly below, before we go on to look at the current transfer market in England and the role of corruption in this market, as we complete the post with a basic fundamental player assessment, stripping away the fake layers to determine the Real value of the player concerned, rather than the neohyperreal market value.
We could have chosen virtually any players but, because we like a good wind-up, we have selected Andrew Johnson.

Using fundamental parameters is obviously a vital input to any player rating. But, such parameters are also of limited value unless treated as a big picture whole. Percentage of passes that are successful over different distances, and the fitness of players, for example, are key.
But, think about this for a moment.
If you are solely going to base evaluations on such data, what if there are systemic impacts that render the data as corrupted?
It is of minimal value to utilise the basic fundamental data, although some much more interesting sabermetric analyses may be undertaken utilising a more configurative approach. But, even with such laterally thought experimentation, the major impacts on the transfer values are omitted from the analytical process.

A Real player evaluation may only be determined with a holistic approach, and this is why our Holistic Sabermetrics Project has received such interest.
Nobody else has access to the proprietary databases that we possess, and consequently, they all compete using the same over-rated and expensive sabermetric services eg ProZone, Opta etc.

Equally important in these financial times are the scenario analyses both with respect to the football sector itself, and to the wider financial system.
The transfer market is characterised by short-termism and kneejerk reactions are generally what passes for a strategy.
By modelling the manners in which the markets, the sectors and the global template might progress, Holistic Sabermetrics are able to place all transfer activity into a continuum, allowing for the buying and selling to be undertaken at the most appropriate time.

The Recession/Depression is also an elephant in the transfer teashop.
Apart from the obvious basket case/ potential basket case issues eg West Ham United, Newcastle United, Portsmouth, Chelsea etc, strategic planners like Abu Dhabi United are able to purchase, at inflated prices it must be said, by taking a longer term perspective.
But the Recession/Depression is going to have far greater systemic impacts than the short-term winners and losers in this current transfer window.

For a start, there is a bubble in transfer evaluations which has parallelled the bull markets in stocks and housing. The recent evaluations have been a case of buying at the top of a market, and that is hardly a sensible basis on which to build a trading entity.
So Fulham spent £31 million in the summer - it is our estimation that those assets have since depreciated by nearly 50%. This is partly because only fundamental sabermetrics were utilised in the transfer evaluations, and partly because the market has dropped by 30% since the last transfer window.
30%!!!!
In 4 months...

And the Recession/Depression will have increasingly greater impact until the Great Depression MkII has played out its secular bear market phase - around 2017, on current projections.
Consequently, all player evaluations must incorporate an adjusted view of history, a present state of play, and a future of probabilistic scenario analyses, which, when combined, will provide the ultimate modular approach to assessing player values and the timing of purchase/sale.

Currency volatility, counter-party risk, toxic 'assets', a freeze in the payment mechanisms, the prospect of publicity for the criminalities that are widespread in the transfer markets (eg third party agreements, agents working for both club and player, bungs, suitcases of money away from taxing eyes, and the imposition of a virtual slavery conveyor belt in West Africa, in particular) etc etc add further levels of complexity to the transfer market when viewed in the longer term.

As does the impact of the gambling markets.
There is a dichotomous neohyperreality to a corrupt player who is involved in short-selling his teams matches for his and his agents proprietary gain. For, although the said player is of minimal value to his club, he is of maximal value to the corrupt agent.
The mainstream media is the acquiescent party that allows this fallacy to be maintained.
Regular readers will be aware of the players who have been repeatedly mentioned on Football Is Fixed as being dodgy.
Regular readers will also be aware that it is these self-same individuals, with the transfer rumours and the ghost-written newspaper columns, who are able to maintain a high profile in the public eye, entirely at odds with the Reality of the corruptions perpetrated on the pitch.

The model that we have created incorporates all of these inputs, and more, and is robust.
You would be astonished at some of the player values that appear as outputs.

In the summer, Fulham paid between £9 and £13 million for the Everton striker, Andrew Johnson, who arrived at Craven Cottage alongside Bobby Zamora, another forward from West Ham United.
Both of these purchases were poorly judged on every level.
Firstly, as we mentioned above, Fulham spent heavily on players at the top of the market, meaning that all of their transfer payments were inflated considerably.
Secondly, Bobby Zamora has played 17 Premiership matches to date, and has scored precisely one goal. 'Nuff said...
But, thirdly, and of far more interest, is the case of Johnson.

Lets check out the hindsight initially.
In three seasons in the Premiership for Crystal Palace and Everton, Johnson had scored 38 goals in 98 appearances, and it was this goal/game ratio of 0.39 that persuaded Roy Hodgson to purchase.
But this figure is a fallacy, for 13 of those goals were scored from the penalty spot.
One goal in every four games is most certainly not worth the transfer fee.
Additionally, Johnson had secured zero goals in his 8 appearances for England.

As a comparison, we'll look at Mario Gómez of Stuttgart, who Fulham were also rumoured to be interested in.
In the last three and a half seasons in the Bundesliga, Gómez has scored 39 goals in open play from 66 games, and his market value was said to be around £15 million in the summer.
The club evidently made the incorrect choices.
Mind you, they also acquired Pascal Zuberbuhler who is, by some distance, the worst goalkeeper that I have ever set eyes on, so we should not be surprised at such nonsenses...

But the Real situation is worse than this.
In his first five games of the current campaign, Johnson failed to score.
In the next match (the internally corrupted match against Wigan, where Johnson 'presciently' wore a '100 goals' vest to celebrate this milestone, even though this was his first goal in over six months!), Johnson netted two pseudo-goals as the match was rigged.

So, in Reality, Johnson has scored 2 goals in fifteen appearances since moving south.
This evidently displays the dangers of i) trusting agents and ii) using simplistic sabermetrics.
For when we apply a Holistic Sabermetric template to Andrew Johnson, our model suggest that a true current value would be £3 million.
And, Zamora is worth even les...
As for Zuberbuhler.........

If they didn't have Jimmy Bullard and Brede Hangeland in their team, Fulham would be West Bromwich Albion.

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