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Henrikh Mkhitaryan - just a smokescreen

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The club’s chief executive Sergei Palkin said: “I don’t know where Mkhitaryan is now, solely his agent knows this.

“Borussia offered £19.5m. I contacted Mkhitaryan’s agent on Tuesday. I wrote to him about the club’s position. We are prepared to sell for £25m.

“This offer stands for the next 10 days. If Mkhitaryan wishes to leave, they have to pay this amount for him.”
 

So he thinks he's worth £50mill does he? Seeing as they only own half and they value their half at 25mill.
 
Don't know how reliable this is but....


Mkhitaryan chose the "Liverpool"

"Passing from abroad"

English "Liverpool" has reached an agreement to acquire the midfielder Donetsk "Shakhtar" and the national team of Armenia Henrik Mkhitaryan.

According to the "SE", the 18-time champions of England will make an official statement about the transaction in the next few days. The amount of transfer will be approximately 30 million euros. Currently, Mkhitaryan, last season became top scorer with 25 goals in Ukraine, located in Yerevan, and in a few days will fly to Liverpool, where he joined his new team.

Note that the completion of the negotiations between the 24-year-old football player with a foreign club and reported in Friday's program "Extra Time" on the air of the Armenian national television, but did not specify the name of the club.

Add that to the Armenian midfielder also claimed the English "Manchester City" and "Chelsea, the Italian" Juventus ", the Spanish" Athletics "and Russian" Zenith "and" Anji ". (Arthur Petrosyan)

http://news.sport-express.ru/2013-06-28/596680/
 
Muller probably wouldn't leave Bayern either.
I remember when posters used to suggest Iniesta as a signing. WTF.
 
Don't know how reliable this is but....


Mkhitaryan chose the "Liverpool"

"Passing from abroad"

English "Liverpool" has reached an agreement to acquire the midfielder Donetsk "Shakhtar" and the national team of Armenia Henrik Mkhitaryan.

According to the "SE", the 18-time champions of England will make an official statement about the transaction in the next few days. The amount of transfer will be approximately 30 million euros. Currently, Mkhitaryan, last season became top scorer with 25 goals in Ukraine, located in Yerevan, and in a few days will fly to Liverpool, where he joined his new team.

Note that the completion of the negotiations between the 24-year-old football player with a foreign club and reported in Friday's program "Extra Time" on the air of the Armenian national television, but did not specify the name of the club.

Add that to the Armenian midfielder also claimed the English "Manchester City" and "Chelsea, the Italian" Juventus ", the Spanish" Athletics "and Russian" Zenith "and" Anji ". (Arthur Petrosyan)

http://news.sport-express.ru/2013-06-28/596680/
Looks legit.
*rolleyes*

All it needs is the line 'and made this up I just all did' on the end.
 
Can't we just be excited about this 25m player instead of bleating on about who we should have got blah blah blah...
 
  1. Dan Kennett@DanKennett
    2h
    as a comparison: Mkhitaryan 3.1 tackles + 2.2 interceptions | Allen 2.3 + 1.7 | Henderson 1.8 + 1.7

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  2. Dan Kennett@DanKennett
    2h
    Put it this way, 5.3 tackles+ints would rank top 40 in the PL for all players, mixing it with the good centre mids & fullbacks #Mkhitaryan

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  3. Dan Kennett@DanKennett
    2h
    Big standout was the "work" he does to accompany the creative side. 5.3 tackles+interceptions per game is insanely high for an AM

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  4. Dan Kennett@DanKennett
    2h
    Took a look at @WhoScored earlier and there's half a seasons data on Mkhitaryan, 19 CL starts over 3 seasons
 
25m!!! That's quite steep, considering we'll get nowhere near our reported asking fees for Shelvey et al
 
Another twist 🙁



Liverpool and Spurs lose out in race for £20m midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan
The much sought-after Armenian midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan of Shakhtar Donetsk looks likely to join Borussia Dortmund, leaving Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool disappointed.

The 24-year-old suited the profile of players both Premier League clubs seek to sign – young and with the potential to increase in value – even with a £20m price tag on him. While Liverpool’s pursuit of him has been well-chronicled, Spurs also made significant efforts to do a deal for the player.

Mkhitaryan is involved with the Italian-Dutch agent Mino Raiola, who also represents Martin Jol, Mario Balotelli and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Spurs were unable to come to an agreement for the player, who is also keen on the Champions League football that Dortmund can offer. Mkhitaryan missed the start of a training camp this month with Shakhtar, who have already sold the Brazilians Fernandinho and Willian this summer.
 
Boggles me why he's our supposed marquee signing. This article raises the questions:

Why Do Liverpool Need Mkhitaryan?

Regularly writing articles for this blog is a very enjoyable hobby, but the main problem is that I then don’t have much time to do anything else.
That includes watching football matches, aside from the Reds of course, and so when Liverpool are linked to a player I often have no idea how good they are.
Take Henrikh Mkhitaryan; I haven’t much of a clue who he is, yet the gossip columns tell me that a £25m bid from Liverpool is in the offing. Yet a look at what few stats are available for him makes me wonder why.

I have been unable to find any in-depth stats for the Ukrainian league, so have to make do with Champions League figures. This is clearly far from ideal, as it only adds up to eight matches, but I thought it would at least give some indication of what his strengths are.
For the record, in the Champions League he twice faced Chelsea, Juventus, Dortmund (which are all obviously tough matches) and FC Nordsjælland. Here are a selection of his stats:
  • No accurate through balls, with only two attempted in total.
  • Only 0.9 chances created per game on average. Over one hundred players in the Champions League created more than that.
  • He was dribbled past by opponents 1.7 times per game in the group stage (which was the joint eighth worst figure by any player).
  • Mkhitaryan scored two
    goals from twenty-six shots, which is a low conversion rate of 7.7%.

  • He lost possession by either being dispossessed or committing a turnover 4.1 times per game. Not an abysmal figure, but approximately 40th worst in the Champions League.
  • His passing accuracy was decent (86%) as was successful dribbles (1.8 per game; top 20 for Europe’s elite club competition) but aside from that, purely on the numbers I’m not seeing what the fuss is.
As I’ve said, these are from mostly difficult games so I’m certainly not going to be overly critical, and as I’m often reminded, statistics certainly can’t tell you everything about a player (with important variables such as pace and movement being unmeasurable).
In fairness, Mkhitaryan did score twenty-five league goals from midfield in the league this season, which is no mean feat. But then of course a question mark has to remain over how strong the Ukrainian league actually is.
hm.jpg
I would have thought that for £25m Liverpool should be getting someone who contributes more significantly at Champions League level than Mkhitaryan appeared to this season.
To be clear, enough people who know far more about football than I do rate him, so I’m sure he must be a good player. But the Reds don’t have £25m to spend too often, and it seems to me like Liverpool supporters are desperate for the club to sign him without knowing exactly why!
I guess my main question is this: as most Reds fans who have seen him will have seen him in the Champions League, what do the eyes suggest that the numbers appear to miss? Answers in the comments section below will be gratefully received!


And also a direct CL comparison with Eriksen

Mkhitaryan vs Eriksen: Champions League Showdown6 Comments

I recently wrote a piece which looked at the Champions League stats of Liverpool target Henrikh Mkhitaryan (and you can read it here), but it only had figures from this season.
Following publication of the article, I received several requests for Christian Eriksen’s stats, as he is also rumoured to be on Brendan Rodgers’ radar, and supposedly cheaper to boot (at £15m, compared to £25m for his Armenian counterpart).
Thanks to a tip-off from Dan Kennett, I have located and compiled the figures from Champions League football for both players for the last three seasons. It’s still a small sample, but hopefully it might add a little something to the transfer debate.
Attacking
ce-hm-attacking.jpg
Eriksen has the edge on both shot conversion and frequency of chance creation.
Defence
ce-hm-defensive.jpg

Mkhitaryan appears better in the air, and gets involved far more with tackles and interceptions. As I noted in my last piece though, he does get dribbled past a lot, which hasn’t happened so much to Eriksen.
Passing & Possession
ce-hm-pandp.jpg

The duo have a similar pass accuracy overall, and lose possession at essentially the same rate. Eriksen attempts passes more frequently, and has been more accurate with his crossing, whilst Mkhitaryan has found a teammate with a higher proportion of his long passes. Neither player attempts through balls too often, but for the record Eriksen has the edge.
Having never seen either player in action, based purely on the stats and the supposed transfer fees, I’d go for Eriksen. Who do you prefer?
Update:
As per the first comment below, it’s only fair to show which teams the two players played.




 
What boggles me is how can someone run a blog about football and never see a single game by either Mkhitaryan or Erîksen? And then have the chutzpah to make judgments based on nothing but a couple bullshit numbers he found somewhere...
 
  1. Artur Petrosyan@arturpetrosyan
    9h
    Well, let's wait for some good news in the next couple of days... #Mkhitaryan #LFC

  2. Artur Petrosyan@arturpetrosyan
    9h
    Speaking five languages, having a humble smile and scoring cracking goals will surely help though!

  3. Artur Petrosyan@arturpetrosyan
    9h
    Also I'm worried, how a young lad without a girlfriend coming from a far, far land is supposed to get one if he has to wear that away kit?!

  4. Artur Petrosyan@arturpetrosyan
    10h
    Has any #LFC player ever lived in Melwood before? Cause you know... there are some lads who prefer to live on a training base ;-)

  5. Artur Petrosyan@arturpetrosyan
    15h
    Everybody's asking what's going on with Mkhitaryan. Well, Henrikh is back to Armenia for now. But I can't say anything else, sorry…
  6. Artur Petrosyan@arturpetrosyan
    Don't believe what Bild wrote, don't believe what #Shakhtar GM said, just wait. It's hard but I hope it'll be worth it
 
Thanks Rurik - that throws a spanner / double decker bus in the rumour mill.

If Dortmund are in then you have to say they are a very attractive proposition for a young Armenian. Huge crowds and great support, wonderful manager, playing really powerful & attractive football, chance of winning the Bundesliga and virtually guaranteed CL football every season.
 
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