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Cortese To Liverpool

Gemmel

By Gemmel,
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Gemmel

Gemmel

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The Anfield Talk‏@TheAnfieldTalk

Rumours has it that Liverpool have been looking at former Southampton executive chairman Nicola Cortese to replace Ian Ayre.

 

 

LMFAO - Why don't they just buy the club

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CB Fry

CB Fry

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Would do an incredible job there like he did here, I'm sure. Simply a no brainer for Liverpool if they can get him.

He did a great job for us in the lower divisions.

 

Completely unproven in the top flight.

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david in sweden

david in sweden

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if true, really can't make my mind up about that. Liverpool and Tottenham are struggling with the problem of lost former glories and getting desperate at Board level.

 

in Liverpool's case, If Cortese takes over .....which Saints players will he pursue now?.... Will either be a great success or a flop.

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Redslo

Redslo

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Unless he has changed, I cannot see Cortese working with FSG. They are never going to give him the control and independence he enjoyed at Southampton. Also, they are big on metrics and the money ball approach. That doesn't seem like a combination that will work well with him.

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Fan The Flames

Fan The Flames

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if true, really can't make my mind up about that. Liverpool and Tottenham are struggling with the problem of lost former glories and getting desperate at Board level.

 

in Liverpool's case, If Cortese takes over .....which Saints players will he pursue now?.... Will either be a great success or a flop.

 

or somewhere in between.

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Minsk

Minsk

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if true, really can't make my mind up about that. Liverpool and Tottenham are struggling with the problem of lost former glories and getting desperate at Board level.

 

in Liverpool's case, If Cortese takes over .....which Saints players will he pursue now?.... Will either be a great success or a flop.

 

Hopefully Osvaldo and Ramirez. Oh, and a certain Argie ex-manager - that would be funny.

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FloridaMarlin

FloridaMarlin

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Unless he has changed, I cannot see Cortese working with FSG. They are never going to give him the control and independence he enjoyed at Southampton. Also, they are big on metrics and the money ball approach. That doesn't seem like a combination that will work well with him.

 

I would hardly think an organisation that has allowed a feckless manager to spunk the thick end of £200m during his three years in charge for no trophies and no more this season - other than a slightly higher league position - than the Europa League spot Saints have got, would be adopting the Moneyball approach.

 

I could be wrong, but my reading of the book and Oakland's approach was to use innovative and previously untried data to build a competitive team for as little outlay as possible.

 

I believe FSG hired Theo Epstein to try and develop the A's successful approach (am I imagining it, or did Billy Beene turn them down?) and in fairness they did win the World Series under him.

 

Perhaps with Liverpool it's a reverse Moneyball. Instead of using previously untried data to find talent other clubs were overlooking to develop and move on, they have hit on a new method of paying way over the odds for established players, and then using a magic formula to coach all the talent out of them, requiring the signing of more to keep the cycle going.

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Redslo

Redslo

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I would hardly think an organisation that has allowed a feckless manager to spunk the thick end of £200m during his three years in charge for no trophies and no more this season - other than a slightly higher league position - than the Europa League spot Saints have got, would be adopting the Moneyball approach.

 

I could be wrong, but my reading of the book and Oakland's approach was to use innovative and previously untried data to build a competitive team for as little outlay as possible.

 

I believe FSG hired Theo Epstein to try and develop the A's successful approach (am I imagining it, or did Billy Beene turn them down?) and in fairness they did win the World Series under him.

 

Perhaps with Liverpool it's a reverse Moneyball. Instead of using previously untried data to find talent other clubs were overlooking to develop and move on, they have hit on a new method of paying way over the odds for established players, and then using a magic formula to coach all the talent out of them, requiring the signing of more to keep the cycle going.

 

I think they have tried the Money Ball approach but it has failed them because the knowledge base is not there to make it work yet. Frankly, given what I know about who is working on what Man City is more likely to achieve a break through that Liverpool. But FSG does believe in the approach and will keep trying. Their purchase of Liverpool was based upon a belief that the combination of FFP and their special talent for running a sports franchise rationally would allow them to compete with the four richer clubs. And it could work for them, but they have yet to hire the right people to do it. If they took Les Reed from us, for example, that might change.

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Dig Dig

Dig Dig

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He would probably do a good job there like he largely did at Saints.

 

He doesn't have to be well liked if he gets results, and he did for us.

 

I'd be interested to see how he would operate under the microscope of a much bigger club than Saints and with a completely different and perhaps more accountable structure than what he had for the most part at Saints. Could go horrendously wrong quite quickly.

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trousers

trousers

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Posted (edited)
Left us with a lot of debt as well.

 

Depends what one's definition of "a lot" is I guess. Chelsea (£958m), Man Utd (£342m) and Arsenal (£241m) also have a lot of debt, but its all relative... :)

Edited by trousers
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The9

The9

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I would hardly think an organisation that has allowed a feckless manager to spunk the thick end of £200m during his three years in charge for no trophies and no more this season - other than a slightly higher league position - than the Europa League spot Saints have got, would be adopting the Moneyball approach.

 

I could be wrong, but my reading of the book and Oakland's approach was to use innovative and previously untried data to build a competitive team for as little outlay as possible.

 

I believe FSG hired Theo Epstein to try and develop the A's successful approach (am I imagining it, or did Billy Beene turn them down?) and in fairness they did win the World Series under him.

 

To be fair, you are likely to have a lot more insight into this than any Saints fans - I only have the foggiest clue what you're on about because I'm reading the book at the moment...

 

Your thoughts about Beene and Boston are confirmed in here: http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2011/oct/12/liverpool-boston-red-sox-henry - a fair way in. They were at least in theory attempting to use some of the tenets of sabermetrics to deliver their success.

 

As an aside, one of the problems of the A's model is obviously that if everyone else starts doing what you're doing then the advantage you have disappears and you're back to square one, still less money than the others but now with them all using your methods to recruit the same players you wanted at fees you can no longer afford to pay.

 

FWIW in hindsight I think the A's success was also due to the very specific rules around baseball - like the draft and the protected period you get on signing players before they are allowed to leave and negotiate much bigger contracts. Saints for one would have been delirious if it was the case in football, as we'd be keeping all our Academy players for a fixed number of years and no-one could take them - in reality we lost half the team due to our successes and that might keep happening.

 

There's obviously scope for a different type of analysis of football, just as there was for baseball, but when Man City (start of last season) say they are happy to share their performance data in the hope that someone will develop something beneficial to football analysis, you have to assume there's nothing out there for football yet which makes links between key activities and results in the way OPS (that's on-base and slugging percentage, geeks) correlates to wins in baseball. Which is not to say there's not a load of data, but it's WAY easier to see the relationship between pitch/hit/location runs/wins (and to compute stats which produce a "cost of losing a player from a position") than it is the infinite possibilities of non-set play football.

 

To do that kind of analysis in football you have to look at all kinds of variables, all of which make the underlying cause more difficult to ascertain. Prozone may tell you how many passes, and where, and goals from crosses etc. and you hear rumours of Germany analysis time in possession per player per action and getting their success from working out that players need to hold the ball for a maximum of x seconds because after that time the opportunity has gone, and you hear that Aguero's title winning goal came from taking one more step nearer goal to increase his goalscoring chance from 50% to 70%, but there are still SO many different permutations that it must be incredibly difficult to coach or more importantly work out which players have the skillset to be coachable or already deliver the kind of play you want to focus on.

 

Aaaanyway, Liverpool are hilarious, moving on. :)

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The9

The9

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I bet he changes the strip to all red...oh hang on

 

Logically red and white stripes. The blue and white stripes argument would only be the case if he'd tried to make us look like Portsmouth, which he didn't.

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Chez

Chez

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I would love to see the look on Kenny Dalglish's face when nik nak asks him to pay for his match ticket, not to mention the reaction of fans when their next home kit is red and white stripes.

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Redslo

Redslo

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To be fair, you are likely to have a lot more insight into this than any Saints fans - I only have the foggiest clue what you're on about because I'm reading the book at the moment...

 

Your thoughts about Beene and Boston are confirmed in here: http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2011/oct/12/liverpool-boston-red-sox-henry - a fair way in. They were at least in theory attempting to use some of the tenets of sabermetrics to deliver their success.

 

As an aside, one of the problems of the A's model is obviously that if everyone else starts doing what you're doing then the advantage you have disappears and you're back to square one, still less money than the others but now with them all using your methods to recruit the same players you wanted at fees you can no longer afford to pay.

 

FWIW in hindsight I think the A's success was also due to the very specific rules around baseball - like the draft and the protected period you get on signing players before they are allowed to leave and negotiate much bigger contracts. Saints for one would have been delirious if it was the case in football, as we'd be keeping all our Academy players for a fixed number of years and no-one could take them - in reality we lost half the team due to our successes and that might keep happening.

 

There's obviously scope for a different type of analysis of football, just as there was for baseball, but when Man City (start of last season) say they are happy to share their performance data in the hope that someone will develop something beneficial to football analysis, you have to assume there's nothing out there for football yet which makes links between key activities and results in the way OPS (that's on-base and slugging percentage, geeks) correlates to wins in baseball. Which is not to say there's not a load of data, but it's WAY easier to see the relationship between pitch/hit/location runs/wins (and to compute stats which produce a "cost of losing a player from a position") than it is the infinite possibilities of non-set play football.

 

To do that kind of analysis in football you have to look at all kinds of variables, all of which make the underlying cause more difficult to ascertain. Prozone may tell you how many passes, and where, and goals from crosses etc. and you hear rumours of Germany analysis time in possession per player per action and getting their success from working out that players need to hold the ball for a maximum of x seconds because after that time the opportunity has gone, and you hear that Aguero's title winning goal came from taking one more step nearer goal to increase his goalscoring chance from 50% to 70%, but there are still SO many different permutations that it must be incredibly difficult to coach or more importantly work out which players have the skillset to be coachable or already deliver the kind of play you want to focus on.

 

Aaaanyway, Liverpool are hilarious, moving on. :)

 

This is one reason lots of people were surprised that Beane let the author inside to write the book.

 

Baseball is/was peculiarly susceptible to a money ball philosophy. It had an establish old guard that was in control rejecting the new ideas. It had a vibrant community of fans generating the new ideas so that immediate advantage could be taken by someone like Beane who was willing to listen. It is a game that can easily be broken down into discrete units for detailed analysis. It had a database of historical information that could be analyzed going back more than a century. Each team plays in excess of 150 games a season so there is a massive amount of data and chances to experiment. The administrative rules of baseball (and most American sports) are designed to give underperforming teams the opportunity to catch up in the off season with better draft picks and such. The teams have control over players in a way that can no longer happen in football. There is no relegation so the downside of failure is greatly reduced.

 

Under such circumstances, it is no surprise that football lags behind baseball in this kind of analysis. I think that FSG was probably surprised that they could not more easily and quickly develop this kind of knowledge.

 

That being said, Manchester City released their data in 2012. Is it still being released? If not, it might mean they have found something.

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