The Manager

[Wizardry]

I'd love that to be true but think it's not. We had Daniel all to ourselves for a couple of months there, thought he was well and truly over the problem and then he presents with a totally new injury. That's not Roy's fault and, while players can often suffer injuries in recovery because they make a subconscious adjustment, this didn't sound good.

He's too injury prone; great player mind but he's more prone to injuries than Owen and that's saying something.

 

[Holle]

No but Id love to see them answer questions about whether or not they deserve to be sacked after every game. Its easy to make the big calls and hide in the corporate box, a manager has to face the music

Of course.

But BR has a lot to answer for without putting the blame on some dubious board.

 

[Fabio]

Why would we want to repeat the same mistake we made in the summer????

Sturridge is never fit!!!! He has intermittent periods where he's not injured but you can't call him fit. If this is the last injury he has this season it'll be astonishing.



Whether Torres is the answer to that problem - even on loan - is extremely doubtful.

Interesting to note that Suarez is being blamed for Barca falling off the pace in La Liga. I don't think he's been too bad - has been looking sharper and trying to come to terms with a very different playing approach. Setting up players for fun though they seem unable to finish the chances (we know how that feels) and scoring twice in the CL.

That said, I'd be kind of happy to see that feeling continue with the Barca fans and media. 😉

He said get Sturridge fit and buy Torres

If we get Sturridge fit then great

Torres is not a capable understudy. Mainly because he's shite with no confidence

Least mario is quite shite with some confidence

I'm praying for us to buy another striker, but Torres is worse than keeping Borini

 

[Wizardry]

Torres is worse than keeping Borini

Wow! You can't offer a greater condemnation than that.

I haven't been following Torres this season at all but I wouldn't have thought him being worse than Borini was genetically possible.

 

[Fabio]

Wow! You can't offer a greater condemnation than that.

I haven't been following Torres this season at all but I wouldn't have thought him being worse than Borini was genetically possible.

Least Borini puts the effort in while not scoring and fucking up

Torres is just shit

 

[Judge Jules]

I'd love that to be true but think it's not. We had Daniel all to ourselves for a couple of months there, thought he was well and truly over the problem and then he presents with a totally new injury. That's not Roy's fault and, while players can often suffer injuries in recovery because they make a subconscious adjustment, this didn't sound good.

He's too injury prone; great player mind but he's more prone to injuries than Owen and that's saying something.

Well, you have expertise in such matters which I can't match, of course, but my mind goes back to the various reports we heard about Sturridge being really depressed over the first injury and that to me made it seem pretty likely that his subsequent injury was indeed down to the kind of subconscious adjustment to which you refer. He's more injury-prone than I'd like, true, but there I return to an earlier point: all the more important that he isn't subjected to the kind of rigidity of thinking which characterises Roy "I can't work smarter" Hodgson.

 

[cloggypop]

Wow! You can't offer a greater condemnation than that.

I haven't been following Torres this season at all but I wouldn't have thought him being worse than Borini was genetically possible.

Well, Borini scored more than him in Italy. Their strike rates were pretty similar at Sunderland /Chelsea as well.

 

[Mystic]

http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=318844.0

Well that's all awfully convenient for Rodgers, this reads like fan faction.

 

[Mystic]

Oh and is anyone else getting fed up of hearing about this fucking transfer committee? It sounds like something invented by Sky.

 

[Wizardry]

Well, you have expertise in such matters which I can't match, of course, but my mind goes back to the various reports we heard about Sturridge being really depressed over the first injury and that to me made it seem pretty likely that his subsequent injury was indeed down to the kind of subconscious adjustment to which you refer. He's more injury-prone than I'd like, true, but there I return to an earlier point: all the more important that he isn't subjected to the kind of rigidity of thinking which characterises Roy "I can't work smarter" Hodgson.

Yeah, I certainly don't mean to defend Hodgson and I agree with your last comments 100%. Roy clearly doesn't have the expertise to handle him correctly and needs to be told by either the club or by the player to back off and let the professionals manage his fitness.

I'm just not convinced that we had managed to stabilise his fitness problems. I think he's always going to be fitness concern for the club and it's beyond us to resolve that - we can only seek to minimise it. If that's the case we need to make plans based on the proposition that he won't be fit for some very important games.

I certainly feel for him. He's no doubt wanted to be heavily involved in the CL for some time and now he finds that opportunity removed due to his own physical frailty. It would be immensely frustrating and I can certainly understand the reports that he was devastated by our exit - particularly without him having a chance to really make a mark.

 

[Hansern]

I think some of the blame must surely be pointed at Hodgson for not managing him correctly.
Sure an injury can happen at any time but why not follow the fitness set up we had created?
It was designed so that it would give him more rest in between matches. The day Hodgson denied him a light training session he pulled up during a intense sprint session, just the thing we wont let him do so early after a game.

An injury can happen at any time but why not follow the correct precautions that are set up.
It will surely minimalize the risk of getting injured. That's why I partly blame Hodgson for how this whole mess started.

The lad is injury prone but the shite Roy pulled only make this worse.

 

[hmmmmm1]

Oh and is anyone else getting fed up of hearing about this fucking transfer committee? It sounds like something invented by Sky.

But its not been invented by sky.

so what's the problem?

 

[Hansern]

Well that's all awfully convenient for Rodgers, this reads like fan faction.

It not true either. What James Pearce said on the audio clip in his interview and whats written on RAWK are two completely different things.

 

[Best Believe It]

Would be interesting to know where Duncan Castles is getting his info, especially as he wrote the AVB had been consulted story recently:

[article=http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2296954-inside-line-liverpools-transfer-committee-has-been-a-spectacular-failure]Inside Line: Liverpool's Transfer Committee Has Been a Spectacular Failure
By Duncan Castles , Special to Bleacher Report Dec 15, 2014

How do you spend more than £215 million on transfer and loan fees and sign 24 footballers but end up with only two who have significantly improved your first team?

You hire Liverpool's infamous "Transfer Committee."

Established in the summer of 2012 to introduce science and collective decision-making to the club's recruitment policy, Liverpool's committee is formally composed of four individuals—Brendan Rodgers (manager), Ian Ayre (chief executive), Dave Fallows (head of recruitment) and Michael Edwards (head of performance analysis).

Their collective conclusions have been little short of catastrophic. More than half of the Transfer Committee's spending occurred this last summer, when Rodgers boasted of having a "different vision" and a clear transfer "strategy" to Sky Sports (h/t ESPN FC). Yet with that spending, Liverpool have descended to ninth in the Premier League, scoring just seven times in eight home games.

As they were outplayed and ousted from the Champions League by FC Basel on Tuesday night, Rodgers chose to start just two of Anfield's high-tariff summer recruits.

One of them, Rickie Lambert, began at centre-forward despite, as captain Steven Gerrard put it, having "ran himself into the ground the last five games."

Rodgers had such little faith in his other strikers that he named no backup to the weary Lambert for a must-win game.

Watching from the stands were two Transfer Committee specials: Mario Balotelli (read about his LFC contract here), who was still sidelined with the peculiarly intransigent injury that brought a halt to the Italian's embarrassing barren spell leading Liverpool's attack, and Fabio Borini, the €13.3 million acquisition from AS Roma who Rodgers told the club's website "the supporters will love" in his first spell at the club.

Between them, Balotelli, Borini and Lambert have delivered just two league goals in 40 Liverpool appearances.

Forwards are by no means the sole area of underperformance. Simon Mignolet is a £9 million goalkeeper for whom Liverpool were scouting replacements before his first season was even complete.

More than £45 million in fees have been spent on three centre-backs, yet Rodgers still frequently pairs the error-prone Martin Skrtel with the greatly declined Kolo Toure (brought in for free but with high wages).

Still more money has been spent on midfielders, only for Rodgers to use four inherited players for five starting in midweek.

The Northern Irishman's apologists like to use the committee to absolve him of blame for many of these signings. The truth is more insidious.

Rodgers has the power of veto over any transfer target proposed by Ayre, Edwards, Fallows or chief scout Barry Hunter. The rest of the committee can veto any player proposed by Rodgers.

In the manager's first summer at Anfield, for example, he asked for a cavalcade of his former Swansea City charges, including Leon Britton, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Neil Taylor and Michel Vorm. Purchases were restricted to an inflated £15m fee for Joe Allen.

In May, Rodgers explained his significant role in the Liverpool transfer process to James Pearce of the Liverpool Echo:

"Obviously, I am involved heavily in the identification of the player.

The principal idea when I first came in was that like any manager you will have the first call on a player and the last call.

That's the call on whether he's good enough to continue to look at and try to organise a deal and the last call to say yes or no.

There is a big part that goes on in between. In modern football you need to trust other people to do the work. That's something we do here and that's why we have had the success we've had."

Edwards is the committee's other main protagonist. A former video analyst whom Damien Comolli brought with him from Tottenham Hotspur, Edwards gained the trust of Liverpool's principal owner, John W. Henry, by presenting a statistical model for analysing potential signings.

Famously enamoured with Billy Beane's sabermetric approach to hiring baseball players, Henry believed that in the young Englishman he had a football equivalent.

Edwards was invited to spend time with Henry at the businessman's Florida mansion. His guidance was taken seriously when Henry and the rest of Fenway Sports Group sought a replacement for former Reds manager Roy Hodgson.

Aware that numbers mattered to FSG's vision for the club, Edwards appointed Ian Graham as Liverpool's director of research. Holder of a PhD in theoretical physics, Graham had developed a computer programme designed to add discriminative value to player performance statistics provided by companies such as ProZone.

When Rodgers, a scout or an agent suggested Liverpool sign a particular player, Edwards would have the player's numbers run through the Graham model. If the computer said no, the deal was off.

When Red Bull Salzburg were looking for a buyer for Sadio Mane in the summer, Liverpool were one of the clubs approached. Graham's analysis indicated the Senegal international wasn't good enough, so Mane ended up at Southampton instead (paid for with a fraction of the money Rodgers channelled to the South Coast club for Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Lambert).

Mane's new club currently sit fifth in the league table, five points ahead of Liverpool.

Edwards' backing of a "moneyball" approach and Rodgers' limited knowledge of non-Premier League players has led to several standoffs.

Oussama Assaidi and Nuri Sahin were Edwards' men whom Rodgers assented to signing then hardly used in their preferred positions.

After seven league appearances in five months, Sahin's loan was terminated. The Turkey international ended the 2012-13 season playing a Champions League final for Borussia Dortmund.

Assaidi, recently identified by Raheem Sterling as his most skilful team-mate, per Sky Sports, was permitted a total of 83 minutes in the league before being loaned to Stoke City for the last two seasons.

In their first summer working together, Edwards pushed for Fiorentina centre-back Matija Nastasic to be recruited. Rodgers wanted a player with Premier League experience, but during the standoff, Manchester City bought the Serb instead.

Nastasic was named Manchester City's Young Player of the Year during his first season in England, while Liverpool still hasn't found a reliable central defender.

For another Premier League manager whose club also utilised the Graham model, part of that comes as no surprise.

"That guy was a serious nerd," he says. "And the program was ridiculous. The parameters were set from his own view of what a defender, midfielder or attacker should do. They were ludicrous and inaccurate."

For two Anfield years, Luis Suarez's unalloyed excellence compensated for a multitude of recruitment and coaching sins. Yet between Edwards' faith in analytics and Rodgers' poor eye for a player, Liverpool have managed to blow well in excess of £250,000,000 pounds once payoffs and agents' fee are factored in.

Even the committee's conspicuous success, Daniel Sturridge, was recommended by an unconvinced Rodgers to only be brought in on loan.

If you were the man who paid this pair to run your football club, you'd be forgiven for wondering if you might not be better off replacing both of them.[/article]

 

[Mystic]

But its not been invented by sky.

so what's the problem?

It's a glorification of something that happens in every club.

 

[themn]

Duncan Castles may make some good points in the above article (haven't read it because I hate him) but for those that don't know, he is a Chelsea-supporting, Liverpool-hating ginormous weeping sore of a cunt.

 

[Best Believe It]

Duncan Castles may make some good points in the above article (haven't read it because I hate him) but for those that don't know, he is a Chelsea-supporting, Liverpool-hating ginormous weeping sore of a cunt.

The thing about the article is that it contains a reasonable amount of specific detail about the individuals involved in the transfer committee, their background and how they work. He's clearly being fed this from somewhere - I'd be very interested to know where. Normally I would dismiss his stuff as I don't know any links he had with the club (as opposed to, say, Tony Barrett) and so would have ignored the AVB article he wrote the other week but this particular one is so detailed he can only be getting fed it from someone either at the club or closely connected with it.

 

[themn]

The thing about the article is that it contains a reasonable amount of specific detail about the individuals involved in the transfer committee, their background and how they work. He's clearly being fed this from somewhere - I'd be very interested to know where. Normally I would dismiss his stuff as I don't know any links he had with the club (as opposed to, say, Tony Barrett) and so would have ignored the AVB article he wrote the other week but this particular one is so detailed he can only be getting fed it from someone either at the club or closely connected with it.

If that's the case (someone inside/close to the club feeding Castles info) then it's rather shitty.

Giving someone like Castles (tranparent LFC-despiser) ammo to undermine the manager/club is akin to re-hiring Benitez (no, I am not advocating we do this) and bringing Neil Warnock in as Director of Football.


As much as we are awful at the moment, I'm not having it from that fucktard.

 

[gkmacca]

It not true either. What James Pearce said on the audio clip in his interview and whats written on RAWK are two completely different things.

Right, that's it - YOU'RE BANNED!! AND THIS THREAD IS LOCKED!!!!

 

[peekay]

@JamesPearceEcho: @robbieclfc What I said on the audio and what's in that written summary of it on RAWK are very different.

 

[Markeh]

http://www1.skysports.com/football/...omplete-review-of-player-recruitment-strategy

Liverpool will undergo a complete review of their player recruitment strategy after struggling to implement a host of new signings this season.

The Merseyside club sit 11th in the Premier League and have been knocked out of the Champions League group stages, with two wins from their last 10 games in all competitions.
After Luis Suarez was sold to Barcelona for £75million, the Reds spent over £100m on eight new players last summer, including £16m on Mario Balotelli.

"Liverpool missed out on a big target in Alexis Sanchez last summer. His decision to go to Arsenal was a major hindrance in the club's transfer plans."​

Sky Sports reporter Vinny O’Connor understands a meeting will be held between head of recruitment Dave Fallows, managing director Ian Ayre and manager Brendan Rodgers ahead of the January transfer window.
"There is talk today that Liverpool are going to have a full review of their transfer procedure; how their committee decides on transfer targets and how they go about bringing them in," O’Connor said
"Liverpool missed out on a big target in Alexis Sanchez last summer. His decision to go to Arsenal was a major hindrance in the club's transfer plans.
"They thought there was a deal to be done there, perhaps as part of the Suarez (deal) or separately, but it added to the list of recent failed signings along with Yevhen Konoplyanka, the Ukranian winger, and Mohamed Salah, who went to Chelsea."
Speaking ahead of his side’s Capital One Cup quarter-final against Bournemouth, boss Rodgers suggested he would welcome a meeting of this kind.
“Within, we are very analytical of performance and analyse how we’re doing for constant improvement,” he said.
“But my work is very much focused on the players that we do have, on trying to improve them individually and as a team. I think I’ve shown in my career as a coach and a manager that that’s what I get my teeth into.”

 

[Judge Jules]

Hope something comes of this, 'coz it definitely needs to.

 

[gkmacca]

Productivity way down, absenteeism at record levels, and one bloody calamitous accident after the other. You're an absolute shower! What do you have to say for yourself?

We are very analytical of performance and analyse how we’re doing for constant improvement...

GET OUT!!!

 

[tombrown]

Didn't we have the best win streak in our history while he was going through a divorce and banging a tranny?

Good point, let's have a whip round and buy him a lady boy

 

[jan]

Good point, let's have a whip round and buy him a lady boy

There is already a thread about it: http://sixcrazyminutes.com/index.php?threads/torres-on-a-free.58700/unread

 

[Mors]

How do clubs that have a consistent'ish (no one is ever 100%) successful transfer policy do it? Is it a committee or is it on the manager? For the money that's been spent since he's come in, you'd have to say the overall returns are woeful. I know there's a lot of players 'for the future' but pretty much all the the ones he's bought for the here and now have flopped.
If the committee put them forward, and he didn't veto them, then it's all on him. If they veto'd his suggestions, they then the committee needs sacking, and I'm sure Rodgers would bring it up to FSG, it'd be hard not to. 'so brendan, why did you spunk all the suarez money on rubbish and why are we midtable?' 'well, I asked for Costa, Sanchez, Falcao, Cavani, Remy and the committee said no and gave me Rickie Lambert and Balotelli'.

 

[My_Blood_Bleeds_Red]

I'm actually quite confident that many will resume praising and even apologizing to Brodgers, once Studge is fit again and/or when we buy a proven goal-scorer.

 

[Whirly]

It seems like the committee is constantly trying to be too clever.


They tend to overspend on young players looking for the next big thing at a cut rate, and then compensate for the lack of experience by overpaying for domestic players as well.

We don't overpay because it's the modern cost of doing business. We overpay because it is the cost of doing business when you're terrible at doing business.

 

[Hansern]

At this point I'll start praising him when he sorts out the defence

 

[peterhague]

It seems like the committee is constantly trying to be too clever.


They tend to overspend on young players looking for the next big thing at a cut rate, and then compensate for the lack of experience by overpaying for domestic players as well.

We don't overpay because it's the modern cost of doing business. We overpay because it is the cost of doing business when you're terrible at doing business.

Broadly speaking it's the committee buying the young players and Rodgers buying the overpriced PL players: it's not an attempt to balance the one with the other, but a consequence of allowing BR some residual power.

IMO the young players were well chosen: perhaps not universally, but overall they look sound choices. The problem is that Rodgers is fucking shit at choosing players, and the players he signs are for the here and now, and so that gives the impression that our summer business was much worse than it was, because a huge amount of the value of the business is bound up in the future.

Balotelli is the significant exception here, clearly. I'm not saying the committee is doing a brilliant job or anything, just that the last thing we should be doing is giving more power back to Rodgers or any manager.