The greatest trick Roy Hodgson ever pulled was convincing the world that his team’s chances didn’t exist. That, and that his mediocre CV – with some success, but also plenty of failures of varying degrees – is somehow impressive. Only he could take a team ranked in the world top ten, and filled with repeated [...]
Dirk Kuyt is an unusual modern player: humble, generous, hard-working and more interested in his charity than gold watches. After almost 300 games for Liverpool, he has sealed a cut-price move to Fenerbahçe, and I wish him all the very best. While his first-touch could range from very neat and tidy to a 40-yard scuff [...]
Feeling disoriented? You may not be alone. It seems that many Liverpool fans are a little lost right now. Lost between expectations, transitions and reality. We are the discombobulation nation. Far better under Dalglish than Hodgson, but behind Newcastle in the table.
Adios Señor, Bonjour Monsieur: A Look At Liverpool’s Forays Into Different Transfer Markets I have to admit that I wholeheartedly bought into the Spanish revolution at Liverpool; so much more than the French one that went before it. The big difference, of course, was that we got the best of Spanish: best manager, best players. [...]
Assessing the overall tactical master-plan under the new management/coaching team of Kenny Dalglish and Steve Clarke, and guessing where it’s heading, is somewhat difficult, given the number of changes to both the playing staff and the systems seen in the past few months. This season, the task for those who replaced Roy Hodgson and Mike [...]
Although United pulled back a last-minute consolation goal, there was no denying that this was a rout; not a total thrashing, but about as comprehensive as you normally get in these types of game, where often a single goal decides things. While the star of the show was arguably Luis Suárez – whose jinking run [...]
While this wasn’t a particularly exciting game, from a tactical perspective there was plenty to intrigue. A fourth consecutive win under Kenny’s managership and a fourth successive clean sheet – just the sort of sequence that, in Hodgson parlance at least, would be described as a “juggernaut”. Tactical line-ups Having used a 4-3-3 for most [...]
By Dan Kennett. Following on from the previous review after 13 games this article aims to put Liverpool’s performance in the first half of the 2010/11 season into context with the history of the Premier League. Halfway is a fair point for extensive analysis as apart from postponements, clubs have played each other once. As [...]
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.)
The season where Liverpool’s first tactical substitution was on average the latest after the opposition’s (2008/09), was the most successful league season the club has had in years. More relevant to this study, it was the year with the highest number of substitutions that turned losses to wins: six.
In football, we are always searching the past to predict the future. But rather than suggest things definitely can’t happen – “so-and-so will never be good enough”, “Liverpool will never win the league under X manager”, etc – I like to look for examples that show things can change for the better
Following on from other work with Graeme Riley’s Transfer Price Index, this is the list of all of Liverpool’s Premier league signings, and how much they cost in “today’s money”. Subscribers can also download a PDF of the entire TPI database, which contains the signings of every club between 1992 and 2010.
“The Benefit of New Players” … The notion that individual signings take time to settle (or may never settle) is valid. And this may well be at the heart of why significant investment works so well, and leads, within 24 months, to trophies and higher league positions. The injection of new blood seems fairly essential to boost a team; but additional riches give more licence for a hit-and-miss strategy
Using TPI© to adjust the prices according to ‘football inflation’, the following table lists the price of the 50 most expensive Premier League transfers in “today’s money”: the Current Transfer Purchase Price (CTPP ©).
The following five players are the quintet who I believe to be the brightest prospects at the club, out of those who have yet to make a senior appearance, but who are at an age where a breakthrough in the next year is not impossible.
Expecting sense from Paul Merson is like expecting a foreign-language recital of Shakespeare from your dog. You watch and wait, but “it ain’t gonna happen, innit?”. For a second you think it might, then he turns and licks his balls. (The dog, not Merson.)
