The Midweek Maxi #25: Insightful Outliers, The Real Darwin Nunez & “Personality Incarnate”

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

Lots of content on TMH this week, including two excellent My Day At The Match’s, but first Paul’s analysis on what has an impact on league position.

Outliers Be Outlying – Too Young, Too Old, Too Cheap, Too New, All Affect League Position

Only Man City have played teams with fewer league points than Spurs, at 1.06ppg, and then come Arsenal, at 1.08ppg.

RPI models tend to average out once nearer the halfway point of the season, but are particularly helpful at the quarter-point, when it’s nowhere near to everyone having played everyone else.

In the rest of this piece:

• The team with the costliest £XI and the most expensive squad (both adjusted for TPI inflation) is challenging for the title yet again; but two of the costliest squads have teams that are massively underperforming (none of three teams should be difficult to guess).

• One team in the top four are way in front of the whole division in terms of Balance of Big Decisions in their favour; at a rate that is freakishly good and impossible to maintain. They are on course for 20 penalties this is not sustainable (Manchester United were awarded 14 penalties the most penalties awarded in Premier League Season 2019/20, the record in the modern era.)

• Liverpool are getting one red card this season for every four yellows!

(The league average, excluding Liverpool, is one red for every 22.5 yellows.)

• Out of the traditional Big Six, plus Newcastle, the Reds rank 5th on Big Decision balance (and 8th overall).

• The team with the longest average time spent together is also the most over-achieving based on spending rank vs league position.

• The team with the shortest average time spent together is the biggest underachiever when based on spending rank vs league position, albeit another club is pushing them close.

• The shortest team (height wise) and the youngest team are both in the relegation zone.

(Last season I predicted trouble for Southampton before this point of the season, when they were not in the relegation zone, when I saw that they were both the shortest and the youngest. To be both short and young – especially as younger players will generally have less bulk too – is to be pushovers. To be a ‘new’ team too, with little shared history, is also asking for trouble.)

• The oldest team in the league is struggling.

• As is always the case, and which counters what fans say, some smaller clubs get more Big Decisions than some bigger clubs/better teams. One of the worst teams in the league this season sit above Liverpool, Man City, Man United and Chelsea for Balance of Big Decisions.

Each category has some trend-buckers, but the overall patterns remains, as I will discuss below in more detail. Outliers – good and bad – often hold some of the best or worst positions.

Andrew Beasley’s MDATM

I reflect on that fact as I make my way to Anfield for Liverpool’s match with Nottingham Forest on Sunday. The Kopite of the late 1980s would’ve been a lot more hyped up for a visit from Brian Clough’s boys than your average fan would be to welcome Forest in 2023. Nonetheless, as an infrequent match attendee, any visit to L4 retains a buzz and a thrill.

This won’t match my last trip up from London though, a once-in-a-lifetime 7-0 humbling of Manchester United. Or will it?

What time is now? How soon is it? When you have to set the alarm for 5am on the morning after the clocks change, it’s anybody’s guess. I certainly didn’t have a clue as I threw my clothes on and headed for the bus stop…

…for a bus that never came. With the LFC London coach departing Euston station at 6am, this was not an auspicious start to my 18 hour round trip. Fortunately, an Uber was close at hand to get me to the tube station, though he dropped me at an entrance that was closed (and who can blame him for that when it’s still the middle of the night as far as I’m concerned).

The Victoria line train then had to be held at Seven Sisters for five minutes I didn’t have. Thankfully, modern science means you can text people from down there if you’re running late. What I didn’t need was to then have to run up all the escalators and through the station – I wasn’t quick in 1988, never mind now – but I did at least make the coach.

The journey up to Merseyside was a bit of a blur. We definitely stopped at a service station, I certainly had a bacon roll and a black coffee, but beyond that? Maybe I’ve forgotten everything in my bleary-eyed state or maybe there’s nothing more to say? Coach journeys through the midlands of England and up the M6 are rarely that memorable, after all.

My Day at the Match: Liverpool vs. Nottingham Forest

We met at the famous Homebaked pie shop before kick-off and had a Shankly pie for good luck. I showed my true Cypriot side by turning up 15 minutes late (to our agreed meetup time, not kick off!) Gianni showed his true Cypriot side in the fact that he couldn’t have cared less about my lack of punctuality.

Cliched as it sounds, as soon as I saw the green of the Anfield grass I instantly felt my week improve. I’m so fortunate in that I have been to a lot of games over the last few years, but that feeling never ever wears off, not even a bit.

Gianni had a bet on Jota to score first and Liverpool to win 3-0. I told him he should have put 3-1 because we would almost definitely concede a stupid goal. Which we did. Either way, we were both half right…

The game itself was an absolute joy to watch. Liverpool played some incredible football. The last Europa League game was quite dull but this one had a completely different feel. The players looked well up for it and Jota set the tone with a superb goal. Gianni and I both watched in amazement at the quality of Ryan Gravenberch. We howled in laughter at the entertainment of Darwin Núñez, who I’d pay to watch on his own. Just him and a football in an empty stadium. I think that would keep me occupied for hours.

My Day At The Match: Liverpool Vs Toulouse

At one point he did an excellent job of tracking back and winning the ball back, then started running towards his own goal. Then he decided to stop running and just stand there with the ball loose in front of him. Then he realised there were indeed footballers playing against him, and just in time, got the ball and turned, dribbling past two players before finally passing.

Then with an open goal gaping, he selfishly decided to assist Gravenberch who couldn’t have deserved a goal more, by smashing the ball against the post directly into the Dutchman’s path. The lengths Darwin will go to allow for footballing justice.

The Zen Den

I know this might sound like hyperbole. It may well be hyperbole. Indeed, it probably is hyperbole.

However. I never thought I’d see a more complete Liverpool player than Steven Gerrard. Now I’m starting to wonder.

(I can't speak of players from before my time, which was also often before the time of all action being filmed.)

Others have been up there in terms of brilliance, but maybe lacked a touch of pace or work-rate; and if adding another category, which no new player compete with, the longevity of Gerrard's brilliance is what made him the greatest of my match-watching years.

(But a new player also has the added difficulty of adapting, especially if from overseas.)

While Dominik Szoboszlai will never out-fight peak Gerrard (albeit Szoboszlai has the build and the height to look after himself), I can’t see an aspect of of the new man’s game that I’d rate below a 9/10. In that sense, he’s also like Virgil van Dijk when he signed – someone who ticks every single box.

To me, Szoboszlai mixes the brilliance of the brand-new John Barnes in 1987 (where it took just a couple of games to realise he was ultra-special) with the stamina and midfield chops of Gerrard.

Can Szoboszlai Be the Most Complete Liverpool Player Ever?

Szoboszlai does a lot of what Gerrard did so well, but with an even better touch. Gerrard had lovely skill, but it was never super-silky. It was dogged skill, borne of effort.

And if you loved Gerrard’s tackling, you can say that Szoboszlai’s pressing is better, and that he makes far fewer obvious red-card tackles per game.

If you give the Hungarian leeway of only having just turned 23 and the potential to further improve in the Premier League, then you have to wonder what he could be like at 25, moving towards the usual peak years for a player of 26-31.

Gerrard was quick. But Szoboszlai has been clocked as the quickest in England. At his best, with reliable speed tracking, maybe Gerrard would be up there too, but perhaps he was a km/h down on the Hungarian.

Szoboszlai is perhaps more tactically aware, and both players are/were versatile.

I would say that Szoboszlai can't carry a team the way Gerrard did, but Gerrard was often the one being sent off, and this season Szoboszlai ran the games with the Reds having 10 and even nine men. When Liverpool faced a 10-man Everton, Gerrard was subbed as he was all over the place.

Dynasty

We finally get to the departure of Brendan Rodgers and the arrival of Jürgen Klopp.

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 …

Following the announcement, Dortmund remained unbeaten for the rest of the season and reached the German Cup final, beating their biggest rivals Bayern Munich on penalties in the semis (die Schwarzgelben would lose in the final itself to Wolfsburg, continuing Klopp’s less than stellar record in finals).

Klopp seemed at peace, and with grimly ironic humour that would soon become very familiar to football fans in England, announced that “if I’d known before the start of the season that we’d put such a run together, I’d have announced my departure back then. Seventh place feels brilliant.”

Part 21 - A Quarter of a Century of Liverpool FC in the Premier League Era, 1992-2017

There may have been more than a degree of sarcasm in the German’s claims but Dortmund’s final league position ensured Europa League football for his successor the following season; a scenario that would eventually bring a thrilling sense of serendipity to Liverpool fans.

For the next few months, as speculation intensified over the then Liverpool manager’s position, Jürgen Klopp and his assistants Zeljko Buvac and Peter Krawietz took a well-earned sabbatical – their first break in fourteen years. As Klopp’s agent, Marc Kosicke, said at the time:

“Jürgen has two great loves in his past, and it’s difficult to jump right into the next relationship. He wants to feel like a “single manager” and experience things with his wife that he hasn’t had time for in a while. That need became increasingly strong.”

There was, predictably enough, widespread speculation linking Klopp with every big club over the next few months and Liverpool was seen as a potential destination throughout the summer of 2015. Could the Anfield club, if they decided to dispense with the services of Brendan Rodgers, attract such a stellar name, a genuine world class coach, when the titans of the European game were all mooted as potential employers? The likely reality, of course, is that Klopp never really wanted a job like Real, City or Chelsea. A deeply anti-establishment figure, he didn’t see himself coming in, the latest big-name, world-renowned coach, and routinely winning a league before getting sacked. The only possible exception to this was perhaps Bayern because he was (and is) adored in Germany, by far the most popular and charismatic manager in the country, the cult of the personality incarnate and a figure whose face could be seen on billboards and on TV advertisements throughout Germany.

TTT Transfer Hub & Deep Dives

The start of this campaign has shown us exactly that. With just about 500 minutes of football in all competitions so far, he has got four goals and four assists. Not just that, he has added a lot more to his game in terms of off the ball work, being unselfish in the final third and hurting opposition defences in different ways.

Now, the hope is that the former Benfica man stays fit till the end of the next international break and gets a regular run in the side from the start during the December and January games. With Mohamed Salah missing a few weeks of action in January/February due to AFCON, Liverpool will need the likes of Núñez to step up in that time.

Let’s deep dive into the Uruguayan’s numbers this season and do various comparisons to show how he has progressed as a player at Anfield after a proper pre-season in the summer (unlike last year when everything was done in a hurry to accommodate a mid-season World Cup).

Is Darwin Nunez Becoming The Full Package?

D. Núñez - 23/24 PL Numbers Ranked

This section has Núñez’s numbers from this season so far, ranked among the strikers and wide forwards in the Premier League. Players who have played a minimum of 350 minutes are included for sample size purposes.

Three goals and three assists are great returns for someone who has played close to only 350 minutes so far in the league. Looking at those ranks, it shows you how well the Uruguayan has done compared to some of the top forwards in the division. Mind you, he is yet to start games on a regular basis (only three starts in the league). International breaks and 12:30pm fixtures on a Saturday after that has meant that Jürgen Klopp has had to protect him on occasions.