The Fallacy of Unearthing Hidden Gems, As Liverpool's No.6 and Defender Hunt Continues

**Free Read (Part One). Subscribers only (Part Two). Discussion for Subscribers only.**

Well, that's that, then.

For all the puke-inducing disruptiveness of the Saudis and all the sportswashing, it's actually the 8/9/10-year contract that has most altered the Premier League transfer landscape this past year, allied to rampant investor-backed gambles, funded by ... well, who knows?

(Boy, this has been a busy week or so. Season previews bleeding into epic transfer sagas bleeding into the opening game – and write-up – with added epic transfer saga sideshows, bleeding back into into epic transfer sagas; I don't usually write this frequently these days, for any newer subscribers who think my output is an article per day. Also, don't get me started on Manchester officials, VAR, Old Trafford, and the continued unfathomable mistakes. One weekend in, and VARs have already distorted the league table; possibly costing the Reds two points and almost certainly gifting Man United a 80% chance of keeping two points.)

It was a great start to the summer of 2023 for Liverpool, with two potentially transformational signings; and a real mess ever since.

First, let's not overlook those first signings. Peak-end rule means you remember the peak, but also the end; and so far the end, as part of recency bias, has been painful.

But late in the window though it is, it's merely the 11th hour, and not yet midnight. A good end to the window, and while the timing won’t be ideal, it will always be better late than never, if it’s for the right player/s.

I criticised, in real-time, the lowballing for Roméo Lavia, and I criticised the move for Moises Caicedo as likely to fail if he was set on Chelsea (as seemed the case), and I criticised the risk of jeopardising the Lavia deal in the process.

(That said, I praised the ambition on Caicedo – but just hope it was a club-wide strategy and not a case of various people trying to sort different deals without any cohesion. I'd also like to know what Jörg Schmadtke is doing if not transfer negotiations, as there's nothing else in his short-term remit. But this was never going to be an easy summer; hence, all own goals need to cut out, too. And in fairness to Brighton, they did their best to sell to Liverpool, but I don’t know why Liverpool thought Caicedo would join unless he had lied and given his word; and if he hadn’t, the bid looks less wise.)

What's increasingly clear is that Liverpool – even with a willingness to break the British transfer record – cannot compete with 8/9/10-year contracts that Chelsea continue to hand out, and which is only limited to five years in terms of amortisation value for FPP and accountancy purposes (and as someone on the site pointed out, only in Europe, as the Premier League, quelle surprise, has yet to change its rules), but still a legitimate process for a club that wants to tie itself to the next generation of Winston Bogardes.

Not that anyone connected to Chelsea now will have even heard the cautionary tale of Winston Bogarde. (Wasn't he the guy in Casablanca?)

In truth, 8-10 year contracts are totally reckless – but irresistible to greedy agents and players, who don't realise how they can get trapped at a club that is doing the same for about 30 other players; and how it reduces their chance of a pay-rise. They don’t grasp inflation.

What seems a good wage now may feel shitty in three years' time, but Chelsea won't have to offer them anything new until Justin Bieber is a granddad. Suckers!

It feels like career-length security, but it just makes them pawns, and is a disincentive in many ways to further progression.

Liverpool wouldn't be stupid enough to try it, because no one knows the financial landscape beyond the next TV deals, or when the football bubble will burst (and it will burst; after which, it may recover, but it's not something that can be predicted way ahead into 2033, to which year some of these contracts extend). Liverpool manage their wage bill better than any other club.

Most club owners experienced the shock of the pandemic and how it decimated finances.

Chelsea's owners seem to think football was invented in 2021. They didn't have to pay back TV revenue they'd banked on, when playing in empty stadia. They didn’t have that blind panic, and existential threat, of a massively uncertain future.

(And they got the benefits of £1.6bn of debt that the previous owner had to give up, due to becoming an enemy of the British government once war in Ukraine broke out. The new investment moguls inherited all the active players purchased up to the year 2022 with that overspending, to sell for profit. Of course, Chelsea are being investigated for further financial shenanigans, which the Premier League hopes to conclude, along with its investigation into Man City, around the time that the sole grandchild of Prince George ascends to the throne, possibly before the next century.)

Chelsea are filling their squad with excellent young players, who worked hard against Liverpool in the sunny first-day fun that all opening games represent; but will lack maturity and cohesion, and half the players signed in the £1bn madness will find themselves moody and on the fringes; a bloated squad proving a big problem last year as the French lads took the piss out of the manager, from one of 16 different dressing rooms.

(And this year they have no Europe, so it'll be a lot of sitting around for the fringe players.)

You join Chelsea with a promise of playing, then two weeks later, they sign someone else. Suckers!

I noted on my separate ZenDen Substack yesterday about how I predicted Southampton's struggles based on nothing more than a graphic we published on the site around the time when Southampton were in 7th place after five tough opening games. (It showed Southampton to be the youngest team, and the shortest team. Ouch, I thought.)

Let Chelsea Win the Battles; Let Liverpool Win the Wars

As soon as I saw that their team was averaging an age of just 24, and they were fielding the shortest XI in the division, and that hadn't been together long, they I could tell that they lacked, a) sufficient experience, b) height (and likely some heft as general physicality), and c) shared cohesion.

As such, their "clever" recruitment was as if someone had read a book about what makes for transfer success, and forget about the bigger picture of the actual team. They bought no fewer than nine players aged 18-20, many of them for the first XI, out of the 13 purchased overall – excluding two backup keepers.

(They bought three older players in January, and two aged 19 and 20 respectively, but by then they were in a hole. They belatedly bought a giant player, but he was 6'7" and didn't look very good.)

They can now sell those young players, as they likely always had good sell-on values. But will do so from the 2nd tier. So, not so clever, huh?

(I then went on to examine how many 'young' teams actually often weren't as young as people said, and had a core of older pros, as well as the young players being ones coming up together with the unity, imbedded playing style and shared experience of the youth team.)

Anyway, Liverpool need to get away from the compensatory wild-eyed swinging of Todd's tiny todger and focus on what the Reds do best.

And actually, have continued to do successfully up to 2023, bar the usual blip or two.

And that's not unearthing cheap gems, but paying healthy (but not record-breaking) fees for players who are ready "now".

(As well as being super-smart with academy recruitment, where the numbers were reduced, and with all players are offered very little money relative to other clubs, capped at £52k a year. It produces hungry, proper footballers as a result.)

I'll get onto where Liverpool go from here with regards to the remaining signings, but first, before the paywall, I wanted to make this following point clear.

The Fallacy of Unearthing Hidden Gems

The notion that Liverpool, in the Michael Edwards period and beyond, 2015-2023, constantly unearthed hidden gems is a weird one.

Andy Robertson, who'd just played a full season in the top flight?

Joël Matip, excelling Germany? Like James Milner (signed just before Klopp arrived), hardly unknown, and on a Bosman.

Brighton, like Southampton before them, can unearth hidden gems for South America or Africa or Japan.

Much smaller clubs. Low-pressure environments. Time to have those players settle in a low-key situations, albeit the better they start to do as a team, the harder it is to just find the next gem and give them game-time, unless they are constantly selling; like Southampton found, it may soon fade, and that's part of the cycle of football.

Brighton are the best-run club in England right now; their team was the best to watch last season. They are doing remarkably well; but it's a different game for them. Look at how Graham Potter crumbled at Chelsea, beaten by the pressure.

Liverpool simply have no way to integrate some obscure foreign signing. And no time; a draw for Liverpool, even away at Chelsea who have just spent £1bn, is seen as a disaster.

Sadio Mané prior to two seasons at Southampton – as people often use as an example – would have come to Liverpool with zero experience of the madness of the Premier League, and wasn't the player he became by 2016; and he may not have got game-time to become that player.

A clone of the younger Mané (lets call him Mané B) arriving any time between 2016 and 2022 gets almost zero game-time, because Liverpool have the actual Mané, as well as Mo Salah and Roberto Firmino.

Mané B could go on loan, but if you send players on loan when they've never really spent time at your club, they are very different to homegrown players going out on loan. They become pawns, almost; commodities, not Liverpool players. But they may develop (see Taiwo Awoniyi, but who probably still was never good enough for Liverpool).

However, if it's a loan overseas, they won't adapt to English football and they may not learn English.

A loan aside, they could play U21 football, but that is beyond a joke.

It is basically U18 football, because ... all the best U21 players are either in first teams or out on loan.

Even a 17-year-old like Ben Doak may not be playing U21 football this season, as he's so good he may now be above that, unless he needs minutes.

Stefan Bajcetic, 18, is well beyond U21 football, unless for minutes on his recovery from injury. Harvey Elliott just turned 20, but has been beyond that level for years. So what the hell is the U21 league?!

There's no second-tier Liverpool B team for Mané B, unlike what exists for clubs in Spain, Germany, Holland and many other countries.

Cheap, fairly hidden gems? (In other words, not playing in a top division of a top league, or young, or at an unfashionable club.)

Let's list them:

Taki Minamino. Fabio Carvalho. Calvin Ramsay. Divock Origi (albeit after a goal at a World Cup). Kostas Tsimikas. Ozan Kabak. Ben Davies. Marko Grujić. Sepp van den Berg. Steven Caulker. Loris Karius. Dominic Solanke.

Go back further, to just before Klopp, and it's Oussama Assaidi, Iago Aspas and Luis Alberto.

Origi – deserved cult hero – won the Reds trophies but never nailed down a place. Carvalho needs to bulk up a bit, and just develop in general, as the step-up was too great. Ditto Ramsay, who had a bad injury. Sepp van den Berg had a bad injury on loan in the Bundesliga last season, but remains a good prospect.

Assaidi was a bust. And when Steven Gerrard first saw Aspas and Alberto in 2013, he saw them as too lightweight; zero upper body strength.

Both have gone on to have great careers, but neither was Premier League-ready. Alberto's career took off four years after joining Liverpool, in his second season at Lazio.

Kabak, too young, and Davies, too mediocre, were not ready for the Premier League, as gambles. Grujić was a good player, and still is a good player. He was not quite good enough for Liverpool; ditto Solanke. Caulker was a loan, and the player had serious personal issues. And Karius … well, the less said the better.

Aspas went back to the smaller Spanish club at which he felt comfortable, having admitted that he struggled to settle (and was behind Luis Suárez and Daniel Sturridge in a season that left little chance for him to shine and to actually take a good corner, even). Brendan Rodgers also didn't really want him, which didn't help; but he also wasn't ready.

I loved Minamino from the moment I saw him in the flesh in the 4-3 game against Salzburg (a game in which I can't recall Dominik Szoboszlai, who was so young at the time and thus doing well to be involved, but did notice Erling Haaland as a sub, and was just dazzled by Minamino) … but Minamino ended up little more than a handy reserve striker, who never quite handled English football.

Kostas Tsimikas has been a decent backup: poor first season, good second season, mediocre third season. He was bought as backup, and backup he has been.

You could add Ragnar Klavan, as a pretty good 4th-choice defender.

Which, excluding youth-team signings like Harvey Elliott, Ben Doak and Stefan Bajcetic (peanuts, some old coins and a bag of tracksuits) basically leaves ...

Andy Robertson, Joël Matip (free, and hardly obscure) and a teenage Joe Gomez?

So to me, Robertson is mainly the confirmation bias that people use to prop up a myth.

This is a kind of vanity for big clubs; they mythic notion of the unearthed gem. That if they just picked up these later-proven stars, they’d all still end up as proven stars. Except there’s no pathway.

If Mané B pitched up at Liverpool he'd likely fail to develop, get disillusioned and leave. If you want a smaller, tight-knit and manageable squad, why bother with him at all? You can't develop him, as there's no room to; especially if you're in the Champions League every season, as until this season, the Reds basically were.

There just isn't a way to buy youngish and obscure talent and develop it properly if you're a big club that needs big results week after week after week.

Roberto Firmino, a star in Germany, cost Liverpool £77.5m in 2022 money; remember the hatchet-job article asking why the hell Liverpool had wasted a fortune (around £30m) on this "nobody"? But he wasn't a nobody, was he?

Before moving onto the rest of the article, below are the Reds' 2015-onwards signings in 2022 money, which will be adjusted to 2023 money soon (which probably means further increases).

The list runs from most expensive downwards, and all fees are taken as the most possible payable at the time of signing. (Harvey Elliott appears to be missing, but was dirt-cheap, but also, just a kid at the time.) EDIT: Now with corrected list-numbering.

Part Two

Where next?

The second part of this article is for paying subscribers only. The debate on the no.6 saga can now move to this thread, after hundreds of brilliant comments in the past week, for which I thank subscribers for their insights, knowledge and research. I always learn a lot from the community.