What An Incredible Fluke XXXIII!

Several of our team are in the process of developing a robust model for the evaluation of players in the transfer market as the current market is both highly inefficient and analyses undertaken by the Moneyball Brigade are simplistic in the extreme.

Some clubs wish for a better system of valuing transfer targets.

Although the vast majority of such research is proprietary ie it pays our bills, we have made the decision, with the approval of our backers, to focus on one area of major concern - namely, club agents.

Club agents destroy the standing of the club that employs them for personal financial gratification.

By bringing in players that they represent directly, represent via 3rd party arrangements or gain from in extended mutual beneficial structures, these agents devalue the overall quality of the team.

Furthermore, as it is in their personal interests to inflate transfer fees (and hence their percentage), they jolly well do!

These negativities are markedly enhanced when the club agent and club management are in cahoots.
Think Portsmouth!

To prove our point, we are going to focus on Liverpool FC.

Under Rafa Benítez, Liverpool finished 5th, 3rd, 3rd, 4th, 2nd and 7th in the Premier League with a Champions League triumph and losing final thrown in for good measure.

When Roy Hodgson with club agent John Colquhoun took over for the 2010/11 season, the impact was disastrous as players were purchased on highly skewed reasonings.

The outcome?
The manager/agent pair were sacked after half a season with Liverpool sitting in 12th position having only won seven out of 20 league games and having been knocked out of the FA Cup by Man Utd and the League Cup by the might of Northampton Town.

Although, in many ways, Kenny Dalglish was the correct choice to rescue the club from this abyss, Damien Comolli brought in entirely invalid valuation methods - how many Liverpool supporters really believe that the club have got value for money out of Jordan Henderson, Stewart Downing and Charlie Adam, for example?

Last season's 6th position is a distant dream with the currently devalued squad.

The key idiocy in this whole process is attempting to utilise the Billy Beane Moneyball strategy for a sport for which it is evidently not suited.

Baseball is like cricket - a conveyor belt of discrete events that might be analysed in accumulation or singly.
Football is a team sport where it is the performance of the entire team entity that is the key configurative parameter.

The data tells you everything you need to know.

Liverpool FC under a reasonably astute manager averaged 4th position in the Premier League and won the Champions League.
Liverpool FC under Hodgson/Colquhoun were placed 12th.
Liverpool FC under Dalglish/Comolli are averaging 7th position.
And Champions League qualification is off the agenda.

What a weird fluke!

© Football is Fixed 2006-2012