Despite the presence of heavyweights such as KUMB, Republik of Mancunia and Arseblog, we’ve gone for The Tomkins Times for the insightful news coverage and analysis of all things Liverpool.
One of the more interesting theories associated with football is that success can be ‘bought’; that it’s almost off-the-peg, waiting to be snapped up by any willing buyer who’ll meet the asking price.
The calls to sack Roy Hodgson are reaching fever pitch. While I won’t add to them in this particular piece (beyond pointing out what the complaints are), I will look at the options open to the new owners.
Below is a full record of Roy Hodgson’s managerial career at club level, based on league results only.
This week sees the long-anticpated (by at least three people) release of ‘Pay As You Play: The True Price of Success in the Premier League Era’.
Firstly, a couple of important points. I realise showing that Rafa did better last year than Roy has this year is a no-brainer. It’s also far too early to apply any serious statistical analysis to Roy’s tenure. However, I thought I’d share some stats I have researched in order to try and illustrate how much they differ so far.
It’s been a weird few days. First, the hard-to-fathom sale of promising, albeit rough diamond, Emiliano Insua – all the more strange as he was the third and final left-back out of the club in six months – followed shortly after by the signing of a player who wanted wages Liverpool could not match, Champions League football the club couldn’t offer and a locale that was not in, or near, London.
This piece was originally published on June 21st. Since then it’s become widely accepted that Roy Hodgson will be appointed this Thursday. This tallies with information I received a couple of days ago: that the appointment will only take place once Standard Chartered officially replace Carlsberg as the club sponsors. With this in mind, I’ve brought this piece back to the top of the site, as the main featured article.
With all this is mind, I thought I’d spend the summer (which could be very depressing) picking out those Academy individuals I think might be best suited (in time) to making the step up to the first team ( … but all the while adding the caveat that careers go wrong for a number of reasons.)
Zidane Clustering Theorem is designed to show that teams full of very good players are better than those with a few superstars and a collection of also-rans making up the numbers (the ‘Zidane’ referring to the Real Madrid approach during the time of galácticos.)
