Chiesa, Transfer Lunatics, Squad Depth and Assholes

Two-footed genius Chiesa had the wrong manager at Juventus

So, the madness ends, and then, up next, Man United away, just to add some further stress before the bliss (for me) of the international break and some mental decompression.

We are not transfer fundamentalists on this site.

I don’t want to hear from the irrational, impatient, unhinged, basement-dwelling fans of the club. I don’t want doom-mongers, catastrophisers, and anyone like that commenting on the site; and it’s a policy that’s worked pretty well for 99% of the subscribers in the 15 years TTT has been paywalled.

We can (and do) have disagreements on the finer details, but there’s no point debating someone who is not tethered to reality, or ignores the facts. I don’t want to take the money of anyone who is not suited to the higher level debate, where trying to come at things with facts and context will always trump the ill-informed emotional claptrap better suited to social media.

As I noted last night, the whole transfer window is one big test to find out who’s an arsehole.

(Denis Leary even managed to presciently detail, back in 1993, John Terry’s future parking habits.)

Look at the squad!

Liverpool are blessed with options everywhere.

The squad is massively deep, and full of quality, and at a great age, with a manager who doesn’t want any old signing; just an exact, specific improvement, if it can be found, and procured. If the player backs out due to personal pressure, that happens.

Slot is a smart man, like Jürgen Klopp, in not wanting to spend for the sake of it; bad signings can make you worse, after all.

The idea that transfers solve everything comes from people who don’t understand how coaching improves players, and how time together improves a team. You need transfers, just rarely as many as people expect or want; and again, I said it was fine in 2019 not to make any, and Liverpool walked the league, because of having the same team, with no new players to bed in and confuse things.

I also pointed out, too much abuse, that waiting for Virgil van Dijk might not be such a bad idea, but was told that the club were reckless and negligent; just as they told me when Philippe Coutinho was sold, and Nabil Fekir wasn’t signed, and about 100 different times.

The Reds are going into the post-window season with no real injuries, and one excellent addition for this campaign (one for next); with one or two top players set to join the talented kids in not even making the 20-man match-day squad each week.

If you hang out on Twitter/X (I recently deleted my account), you’ll see all the doom-and-gloomers, who, alas, continued to pop up on Google, via searches I made – but now I no longer need to google for news I hopefully won’t encounter them again for a while.

It’s like Liverpool didn’t already have the 30-or-so excellent players, many of them below peak age, and weren’t trying to find a more effective way to play football than in the final two years of Jürgen Klopp’s reign, when things shifted more towards chaos.

Signing Federico Chiesa? That was so last week.

It must have been two days ago. So that doesn’t count.

Klopp left a fantastic squad, but his injury record for players was a weak spot.

(BTW, seeing Klopp at the Paralympics was a reminder that he’ll always feel like a father or an older brother. He’s family now; the man is a living god. One of the three best Liverpool managers ever. But we can more clearly assess the body of work, now that he’s left and a line has been drawn under it. Another issue ‘caused’ by Klopp, but more down to just interpersonal/working dynamics, was how two directors of football and various others, including Ian Graham, left because of the increased transfer say by Klopp and Pep Lijnders, and the disagreements and sidelining that followed …

… Klopp then had his own man, Jörg Schmadtke, doing transfers, but due to appeasing Klopp and struggling to find someone suitable after losing two key men in a year, the club had no long-term strategist in place, as they’d both quit; hence the contract stasis on three key players, which is not some unforgivable sin but the result of other compromises. Plus, two of them would only have been offered short extensions anyway, aged 33/34 next summer, had Michael Edwards not left in 2022 and Julian Ward before the end of 2022/23; and knowing our history shows that Bob Paisley was the master of moving players on before anyone knew it was time anyway. It should be no surprise to my readers that both Edwards and Ward returned when Klopp had gone; not because they hated Klopp – far from it! – but because the working relationships had become untenable. I don’t want to have to keep repeating it, but that was roughly the complex state of affairs that, like the pandemic TV cuts and Gini Wijnaldum’s contract, showed things can just become difficult to resolve to everyone’s satisfaction.)

(Edit: and just to add, Klopp himself admitted he was not at his best last season. He knew a year ago that he wanted to quit, told the club soon after, and then the club made it public in January. So Liverpool did not lose the best version of Klopp, but the Klopp who had probably done one year too many – which would exhaust anyone, but at a club like Liverpool, through a pandemic in the middle, to have done nine years is incredible in the modern age, when playing by the financial rules. From January 2024 onwards, new deals for players were then complicated from the players’ point of view, as they didn’t know who would be manager, how they’d be used or if they’d be wanted. So, a further incredibly confounding variable, compared with how a club would normally operate.)

Anyway, injuries seemed built-in to the exciting style of play.

Injuries then allowed the youngsters to come in and thrive, which was great; but the football, by the end, left a few too many gaps at the back. (Something that wasn’t as prevalent in 2019/20.)

Even then, last season was hardly a failure; just hitting the wall from so many games and so many injuries in the final straight of a quadruple attempt that would sap most teams anyway.

What the club didn’t have was a full season of this squad last year; tons of injuries derailed a campaign, in which Liverpool were also the worst affected by VAR and officiating in general (for once, according to someone else’s data).

And the club has bought versatile players for years now, who can fill-in in various positions.

If Slot can tweak Liverpool’s style to keep most of what Klopp had, but just get the balance a bit sweeter, then that could be a winner.

Indeed, I noted in the summer (and in ‘Quadraphonic’) that Feyenoord had an elite xG Difference across the season. Most excellent teams are around +1.0xG per game (creating one more expected goal than they give up).

• Feyenoord were +2 per game.

Who has the best xG difference per game this season in the Premier League? Liverpool.

• Liverpool are now +2 per game, by some margin from the rest of the league.

It’s early days, but it’s interesting that it mirrors Slot’s last season so closely; and while there will be tougher games, there will be easier games too: away to a promoted club is like a fierce cup tie, and Brentford’s MO is to make life difficult for you.

The Reds gave up 45.7xG last season, and while also top xG creators, the balance was closer to +1 xG Difference. So far, it’s 0.5xG again per game, or on course for 19 per game (but it likely won’t be that low). The Reds are +4.1 on xG Difference, or over 2 per game.

I didn’t really expect Arne Slot to make Liverpool a +2 xG per game team right away, but if he maintained it, that would be a title challenge, for sure. But right now, the aim is to improve and compete, not to fixate on title challenges.

Again, games like Old Trafford away could test that, but then a promoted team at Anfield will offer more fodder.

As I’ve also been saying that if Slot and his staff can keep more players fit, as he did in Holland and as he’s done so far at Liverpool, it’ll mean the squad will feel bigger, in addition to the massive development of so many younger players last season.

(To the point where so many have had to be sold or loaned, as there’s just not space; but it hasn’t been done to placate PSR, which is being used as a tool by clubs spending like maniacs. Erik Ten Hag is the latest to say they ‘had’ to sell Scott McTominay as its PSR's fault. No, you slaphead – speaking as a fellow slaphead – you spent £200m on Antony, Mason Mount and Casemiro, and then more on countless other players. If you don’t spend so stupidly to start with, you don’t need to panic-sell; and you could also try and sell Antony, Mason Mount and Casemiro if you wanted to keep McTominay, but no one would want them now. The spending of some teams is just alarming, and keeping up with the Joneses is a bad idea.)

Again, these are two of the key reasons I said Slot could take things forward: a more controlled style of play that creates a good amount of xG (keeping most of the Kloppian attacking verve) but gives up little; and keeping players fit.

So far, the evidence is utterly in keeping with the best-case scenario; almost freakishly so. While it’s just two games, players often pick up all kinds of things in preseason, and that didn’t happen either.

That probably won’t last. But it may not get as bad as it was last season, or in other Klopp seasons, where the great work he did was also as if working with a golf handicap where you’re minus eight players.

Once it passed six, as Andrew Beasley showed, the points per game plummeted; below six, and it soared. Season after season, the trend was clear.

And as we all saw and acknowledged last season, this was a younger, newer team, and so the scope to improve as individuals and as a collective remains strong. Last season was the reset, this season is the transitional season under the new manager.

For example. Klopp and others said Ryan Gravenberch could become an elite no.6, and now that he’s settled and at the grand old age of 22, that process is underway. He can do it all; he just has to learn and develop, and even a new no.6 would take time to adapt (to the club, the tactics, the league, the pace of the game, the language, etc.; just as it took Fabinho half a season, and he arrived very early in the summer).

Tougher tests await the team, as does the grind of football that can also lead to injuries. And you’ll always get horror tackles.

The eight group games in the Champions League will test the Reds; especially as it’s about as tough as it gets.

The new format has pitted the Reds, ridiculously, against the champions of Spain (and Europe), record-breaking German champions, record-breaking Dutch champions, and the Man City-backed Girona, as one of two Spanish teams, to go with two German teams, and two Italian teams, including AC Milan.

On paper, the ‘worst’ team is the French side Lille, and the PSV team that won 29 of its 34 games last season, and had a +90 goal difference.

(Slot’s Feyenoord again put in title-winning numbers, improving in all areas after they won the league in 2023 as they went up to +2 xG Difference across the season, but PSV raised the bar.)

City, meanwhile, face Club Brugge (H), Sporting Lisbon (A), Sparta Prague (H) and Slovan Bratislava (A). Despite the fairer format, they still get a cakewalk.

So Liverpool essentially play pretty much only the kind of teams that seem like the usual quarter-final candidates.

That said, it’s great to be back in there, and tested against proper sides, with two huge Anfield games that at least redress the balance of facing Real Madrid and Leverkusen.

Chiesa’s ex-team Juventus play City and Aston Villa, albeit they’ve now gone modern with their manager.

I noted in ‘Quadraphonic’ how Max Allegri, returning manager of Juve until this summer, was just one of the latest of a long line of “proven winner” managers whose methods were outdated, with c.50% possession per season; which for a big club is an utter waste.

Quadraphonic: How Jürgen Klopp Won Hearts, Minds and Trophies At Liverpool

For these serial “winners”, most of them stopped winning a long time ago. I still marvel at how the concept of the winner is like some concrete attribute, when it fades with time, and dates in the shadow of new ideas.

Managers like Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte, Diego Simeone and Erik ten Hag (in his two seasons prior to this season) were bringing relative anti-football to big clubs with big budgets; reactive football, not controlling games, despite massive advantages most weeks with resources.

(Conte and Simeone both won the title in 2021, but curiously, both were pandemic seasons, when norms went out the window.)

Elite league-winning managers become cup-winning managers, then fall down the leagues. They end up in Turkey, moaning about things over there.

I don’t follow Italian football closely, so I made the mistake of thinking that Chiesa was not the same after the injury (the general football buzz), but he played 37 games, as has been widely noted. Far from washed-up, he was in a mediocre side, that didn’t boss the ball.

Also, his fastest speed of 36.2km/h last season showed the elite pace remains; it was faster than all but eight Premier League players from the first 10 games (so, data on all 469 players to play minutes, as of November 2023).

At that stage, Dominik Szoboszlai ranked 3rd in the league at 36.7km/h, and Darwin Núñez 19th, at 35.3km/h.

I still don’t know how accurate these speeds are, and peak speed does not cover the distance of peak speed (maintained for five yards or 50?), or the ever-vital pace off the mark (for which Mo Salah still excels allied to his anticipation), or the number of times in a game a player can get close to peak speed.

Back in 2019/20, I seem to recall Mo Salah making 600+ sprints in the season, with Ben Chilwell second in the league at around 500. These won’t have been at top speed, but fast nonetheless.

But generally the speeds listed pass the eye-test. Other players in top 20 at the time were: Chiedozie Ogbene, Pedro Neto, Anthony Gordon, Dominic Solanke, Bryan Mbeumo, Kyle Walker, Gabriel Martinelli, Adama Traoré and Micky van de Ven, who rose to the top later in the season when passing 37km/h.

Otherwise, Liverpool had no one at that point of the season even that close to 35km/h, given that 30km/h is about as slow as a top-level player gets you’re talking about an envelope of 30-37; with two of the below up past 36km/h at their peak.

• 49th Mohamed Salah 34.5

• 52nd Andy Robertson 34.4

• 57th Trent Alexander-Arnold 34.2

• 58th Virgil van Dijk 34.2

And as we saw Luis Díaz, who didn’t feature in the top 100, it often just needs to time a run well to gain the few yards, and to usher the ball in the right direction, and then a top-10 speedster like Mbeumo can’t quite catch you. Díaz isn’t slow, for sure, and he’s like Diogo Jota in being quick with the ball at his feet. (The opposite is Darwin Núñez, who is only really quick without the ball.)

But pure pace, with skill, makes you uncatchable.

While Federico Chiesa still has that pace, his ability and elite skill means he can help unlock deep packed defences, while his finishing has been the opposite of Liverpool’s for a while: exceeding his xG by some margin in his time at Juventus, instead of falling well short.

In some ways he mirrors Mo Salah at Fiorentina and Roma, getting into double-figures and just generally being excellent while going under the radar; before his numbers went stratospheric with Liverpool.

**The rest of this article, looking more at Chiesa and what he can bring, is for paying TTT Main Hub subscribers only.**