The Midweek Maxi #22: Ignoring DOGSO, Best in the League & Downing Negating Gerrard
Our new Liverpool FC weekly compendium. News. Stats. Views. Debate. Links. Data. Insights. Delights.
To read about why we’ve replaced Free Friday with The Midweek Maxi, see the intro to the first edition.
So far the bumper weekly roundup is going down extremely well with paying subscribers:
This week:
Excerpts and links to the different pieces we've published across the TTT Substack network, prior to the paywall kicking in;
Then, some of the best comments from the site this past week;
Next, Daniel Zambartas’ bumper LFC News, Media & Transfer Round-Up
Job done! (Oh, and it’s also a discussion thread for the issues raised.)
Note: the Maxi may exceed the email size limit on Substack, but the whole piece can be read online by paying subscribers.
TTT Network Roundup
Links and excerpts to articles on the various TTT sites, which are run by different people and require separate subscriptions to this, the TTT Main Hub.
The Main Hub
Liverpool, who once again suffered from a terrible decision at the hands of the VAR officials in the draw away at Brighton, have had to deal with this level of incompetence (insert lots of other words) for years now. Below Paul reflects on his huge study of the data.
So, having done my final refereeing study, there are still a few things to clarify, and one bit of a bombshell to safely dentate before I step away from the explosive topic.
Let's start with a fact that I’ve been using for a while (courtesy of Andrew Beasley’s database), but which I’ve put into a new context below:
Game-minutes since last 2nd-yellow to a Liverpool player: 21 (PL)*
Game-minutes since last 2nd-yellow to an Liverpool opponent: 27,090 (PL)**
* Excluding around 10 minutes of stoppage/added time **Excluding around 1,800 minutes of stoppage/added time
That's over TWENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND MINUTES of Liverpool matches since Sadio Mané was sent off for Southampton in October 2015. (Or nearly 30,000 with added time.)
The odds of this happening randomly and without any thumb on the scales are so astronomical, given that 444 opposition players have been booked in that time (lower than opposition players booked for rivals, mind).
Are you telling that not once, in 301 games and almost 30,000 minutes of football, not a single one of those 444 players did anything to merit a 2nd yellow?
How many times did a ref, in contrast to Simon Hooper with Jota, stop himself and think “okay, one more warning”?
And you're asking me, with this being just one example, to not ask questions of such inexplicable data?
Of Premier League teams since 2015, Swansea City at 76 games have the longest run without an opponent ever receiving a second yellow. Crystal Palace, Spurs and West Ham are now into double figures for opponent 2nd-yellows in that time, between 11 and 14 each; while Arsenal and Chelsea have nine apiece, and the Manchester clubs five and six.
It does show that title-chasing teams (City and Liverpool) are treated more harshly when it comes to 2nd-yellows to opponents (another example of referees being too scared to influence things?); but City still have 5x as many, in addition to many, many more penalties.
Liverpool are treated more harshly than other clubs in almost every single officiating metric. Fewer penalties. Fewer yellow cards to opponents. Fewer VAR interventions. And so on.
And when weighted for xG for and against, it's even more stark.
At the other end, Alisson kept the score at 2-1 with another big save after Andy Robertson was caught ball-watching. Robertson's fear of doing anything other than stand with his right foot led to the equaliser
He got forward to put in mediocre crosses and poor passes.
He's not without his uses (tenacity, tackles, energy in bringing the ball upfield albeit infield), but the game appears to have moved on from his limited skillset. I feel like everyone else is playing a different game now, and he's both declining as a force and also seems the weakest link in the passing chain.
Simon Adingra was almost unplayable, but that also shows that Robertson can no longer match the fastest wingers. I wouldn't sell him, but the wait for Luke Chambers to come of age is painful, with Kostas Tsimikas also fairly terrible this season.
And Alexis Mac Allister made another costly mistake; too many in the no.6 role. Why did he wait for the ball? He also gave away two dangerous free-kicks, but did use the ball better in the second half, with some zippy progressive passing.
It's not his prime position but to me, Wataru Endo looks very limited; a great squad player but not dynamic or strong enough to come into the team in the no.6 position. His videos from Germany looked great, but they were of a player just before the crest of the hill, not just over it. For him not to be trusted shows he’s not ready, and while it can take time to adjust, at almost 31 he’s not likely to get much better. (Again, a handy signing, but not the answer to the no.6 problem.)
Once Gravenberch came on we saw Dominik Szoboszlai come to life, but Liverpool never did quite enough to justify the three points, and didn’t quite have enough attacking options to change the game, with three ruled out.
As it was, Salah was superb, and increasingly reminds me of the older Kevin Keegan: another player who lost acceleration but gained the thighs of a Greek god, and who eked out those later years with a squat power that was hard to disrupt.
I've also just seen Daniel's post below about the DOGSO, and now I'm baffled yet again by VAR. I'll try to let it go, mind. But questions should once again be asked at Stockley Park, and we should request the audio for that, too.
The Zen Den
Far more positive from Paul on The Zen Den, with his look at how the Reds have been performing this season compared to their rivals.
One of the problems even with xG league tables earlier in the season is that, even if it shows more granular detail of performance compared with just the normal league table (which is skewed by all kinds of factors), it doesn't take into account the quality of who each team has played, and whether or not it was home or away.
Even without any kind of ratings system, I could tell that Liverpool had gone away five games to three, which is a huge differential at this stage (“5 is a 66.7% increase of 3”.) This is far more of a factor than it being after 25 or 30 games. Liverpool have a 100% record at home in those three home games.
Then, it's been away at Chelsea (biggest spenders by far in the past year or so and full of opening-day optimism); Brighton (European team now, and best team, pound for pound, last season); Newcastle (now a Champions League team); Spurs (now a Champions League team); and Wolves (tough to beat at their place).
At home it's been Aston Villa (European team now) and West Ham (European team now). Plus Bournemouth, beneficiaries of a dreadful red card to Alexis Mac Allister.
Even a ratings system can't take into account how long you've played with 10 men, with four very harsh red cards to the Reds, one of which reduced Jürgen Klopp's XI to a IX, at which point the damn finally burst in the 97th minute to an own goal.
But we can say that, with the full XI, Liverpool's numbers have been excellent. We cannot ignore the extra difficulties placed on the Reds by just the worst officiating seen in all sport, ever (slight exaggeration, but only slight).
It cannot take into account the cost of not allowing Luis Díaz's goal at 0-0, and how the injury to Cody Gakpo, and the ludicrous two yellows to Diogo Jota, were influenced by straining with 10 against 11; and the suspensions to Jota and Curtis Jones, the latter missing 3.6 games including the time after his dismissal, especially when rivals can make far worse tackles and repeated fouls involving studs into the achilles and studs into the ankle and stay on the pitch. The inconsistency is beyond shocking, and the suspensions or lack therefore skew the integrity of the competition.
This Red Planet
My piece this week looks back - at the creation of our data department and journey to being world leaders in recruitment, as well as forward at what our structure looks like now and how it compares to those so-called halcyon days.
And this brings us back to Roberto Firmino, because, suggests Rory Smith, when the deals were agreed to sign a forward who Rodgers believed “didn’t score enough goals” compared to his preferred choice of Benteke, the club decided to buy both of them. An utter farce. A waste of either £29 million or £32.5m.
Someone was going to lose their job, and bearing in mind the club had invested heavily in a data driven approach, it was unlikely to be Edwards or Graham. This was the first test of the new model for signing players. Everyone, other than Rodgers, had faith that Firmino was perfect for Liverpool.
Firmino was the first step in selling analytics to the public. Firmino was the first step in convincing not only fans, skeptical managers and cynical pundits but also analytical owners who had spent nearly four years - at this point - trying to build a club at the cutting edge. We’d had the contrast of Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll; the flawed data used to sign Downing, and yet also Henderson. Trying to replace a mercurial, world class, biting Uruguayan with Ricky Lambert, Mario Balotelli and Lazar Markovic. The ‘model’ previously could find gems, but it also found dirty great big rocks of mud. Firmino was the start of becoming the best in the world. From being mocked in the Daily Mail when Rodgers did a hatchet job, to envied the world over. From losing 6-1 at Stoke to overcoming state-funded corrupt teams with unlimited resources and winning all the trophies.
Dynasty
Originally written by TTT Subscriber Anthony Stanley, this major series was first serialised on The Tomkins Times and then published by TTT as a book, called A BANQUET WITHOUT WINE - A Quarter-Century of Liverpool FC in the Premier League Era.
Covering the period from the onset of the Premier League in 1992 to Klopp’s arrival in 2017, the book is available from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Banquet-Without-Wine-Quarter-Century-Liverpool/dp/1521850674. It remains a definitive matter of record of Liverpool FC during the period in question.
Stewart Downing had just utterly negated the influence of Steven Gerrard on a football pitch.
Let that sink in. Downing, now a West Ham player after he had been shown the door by Rodgers at the start of the 13/14 season, had, barely a year later, gained some form of revenge.
3-1 to the Hammers on a cold Saturday evening towards the end of September and those heady, gorgeous days of late spring felt like an eternity away. This felt stifling, felt like a rancid morning after the night before, the memory of the revelry sickening as we tried to come to terms with the new reality. This felt all too familiar.
Liverpool had been here before, of course. Both previous times in the Premier League when the Reds had really looked like breaking their hoodoo and finally capturing that elusive trophy, the following season had been a grim swimming towards a new consciousness, a waking up to despair. Houllier had tasted a similar bitter vintage in 2003 as had Benítez in 2010. Brendan Rodgers made it a hat trick of hangovers following the incredulity which morphed into belief during the previous campaign. Though Rodgers could, like his predecessors, point to some mitigating circumstances that contributed to this season becoming such a desolate one, by the time this period had ended the Liverpool manager had lost the vast majority of fans.
To stretch a metaphor though, the last real party had been Norwich away in the early summer of 2014. By the time the Reds, almost visibly wilting and scarred following two harrowing matches against Chelsea and Crystal Palace, faced off against Newcastle United in the final game of the season, the coming hangover was, in hindsight, almost palpable. Liverpool’s players had given everything, had ridden the crest of an emotional wave but had fallen at the final hurdle. They looked shattered as Newcastle took the lead on a Sunday afternoon, yet another definition of anticlimactic. That, thanks to two brilliant set piece assists (again) from Gerrard, Liverpool fought back to win their last game was testament to the team spirit that had been forged by Rodgers. But for the first time ever, there was a Premier League trophy at Anfield on the final day of the season; though unlikely, Man City could still throw the title away. That they never looked like slipping up and took an early lead merely compounded the empty feeling of loss, of coming so agonisingly close.
The comedown would be a merciless one.
TTT Transfer Hub & Deep Dives
Finally, Mizgan’s look at the improved performances of our new captain and asking the question about his return to previous levels of brilliance.
Van Dijk - 2023/24 Season Numbers Ranked
Below, we have a table consisting of van Dijk’s numbers so far this season ranked amongst the centre-backs in the Premier League. Players with a minimum of 300 minutes under their belt are included for some sort of sample size inclusion.
The 32-year-old is best when it comes to winning all sorts of duels - be it defensive, overall or aerial. Considering the amount of aerials he is contesting, winning close to 88% of them is simply phenomenal. It shows that he is physically strong and the trust in the legs are there to make the jump for these duels and land perfectly thereafter.
The interception numbers being very good shows that the Dutch captain is back to his best in reading the game well and snuffing out opposition attacks before they become troublesome for the team. Passing accuracy numbers don’t surprise me anymore because there aren’t many centre-backs in the game who have had that level of accuracy and control with their passing over a period of many years.
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