Ballotelli business better than Man United & Falcao

I will probably never be happy that Mario Balotelli is part of our club.  Three years from now, if he's still a productive member of the squad, I'll eat my words, but his track record speaks for itself.  He grows tired of his manager, the staff, his teammates, club officials, the press and the supporters and starts acting out in the third year.  It happened at Inter, it happened at City, and most recently, it happened at Milan, where they got rid of him before he became a cancer.  If he breaks the cycle, great, but don't hold your breathe.  Let's not wait like City did, if he starts costing us matches by his behavior either on or off the pitch, I hope whomever in charge, hopefully Rodgers, puts him in the reserves dungeon and throws away the key until he can be shipped off elsewhere.  Madrid will probably come knocking by then anyhow.

No matter how it plays out though, £17.6m to sign Balotelli is a much better deal than acquiring Falcao on a year-long loan for £6.7m plus £10m salary and an option to buy him at the end of the season for an additional £40m.  Super Mario is basically a younger, faster, stronger, and more skilled verison of Falcao.  If anyone complains, like myself, that all Ballotelli can do is score goals, well, Falcao can only score less.  Plus the Italian can physically impose himself on the opposition and worry their defence to no end, creating space for teammates.  I don't see the 177cm (5'10"), 72kg (160lb) Colombian with no Premier League experience having much presence, wait until they play Stoke.

Their career club league stats are quite comparable:

	npg90	ap90	gc90	cc90	ccv	pass%	sacc%	shot%	sdr90	tti90	gopd
Balotelli	0.47	0.14	0.77	1.33	0.1	0.757	0.382	0.121	2.14	14.6	-0.46
Falcao	0.57	0.08	0.75	0.90	0.05	0.797	0.492	0.305	0.79	11.21	0.06

First things first, Falcao is four-and-a-half years older than Super Mario.  Which means he's probably at his peak and won't improve much more, not to mention he'll have to make the adjustments for the English game.  Quick, name a 28-year-old South American and/or La Liga player who came to the Premier League and made a significant impact? Don't even try to say Valencia, he's been in the league for eight years now.  The closest is probably Coloccini, but he was 26 when he signed with Newcastle and he's a defender.  Maybe Falcao will make history, but I doubt it.

Mario is a better team player and that says mountains, since we all know what kind of a 'team player' he is.  The thing is, Balotelli has the ability to be a great asset to the club as a whole, while I don't think Falcao has the capacity to do so, because if he did, he would have already done so with Porto or Atletico or Monaco.  He has never been a significant 'defending forward' and forget about setting up others on goal.  When Balotelli cares and tries, which honestly, this is his last chance to do so before he becomes a true pariah, he is eons better than his Colombian counterpart.

In the end, it won't matter though.  If Falcao scores goals and does nothing else, even have the worst efficiency in the league, the Mangoloids won't care.  I honestly think the EPL is too physical for him and can see an injury-riddled season where he gets sent packing back to Monaco in the end.

(Oh and just a quick point because I can see it coming, 16 of Falcao's last 63 league goals since joining La Liga have been penalties compared to 15 of 55 for Balotelli, so save that rubbish for your pub trash bin banter.)

What Falcao would bring to Liverpool

If rumors are true and we are about to sign Falcao on loan for ridiculous wages, well, I guess it's better than nothing.  The 28-year-old striker does one thing really well and that is score goals.  His career non-penalty goals per 90 minutes average in league matches is 0.57, while his goal created per 90 is 0.75.  He scores a non-penalty goal every other match and creates a goal, which includes penalties, two out of every three matches.  In European competitions, he improves those numbers with a 0.89 npg90 and a gc90 of 1.07. His shot percentage, that is goals-to-shots (on or off-target), of 30.3% is one of the best percentages I've ever seen for a player with such a high volume.

As for other attacking attributes, well, don't expect much. The Colombian averages an assist every 12.5 matches and he creates almost a chance per a 90 minutes (0.90 ccp90).  His passing has improved over the years as he posted a career high 84.7% success rate last season at Monaco, though his career back pass percentage is a dreadful 58.7% and his specialized passing numbers are virtually non-existent.  He also lacks the pace and skill to dribble past defenders as he averages 0.79 successful dribbles per a 90 minutes at a 39.5% rate.

Other than his scoring efficiency, Falcao is rather useless.  Bringing him on board with the objective to increase goal-scoring ability is fine, but is a temporary fix to a problem that re-arises next summer.  Liverpool really don't have much choice, the front line needs depth.  Though it would be better to bring in a prospect like Falcao's Monaco teammate, Lucas Ocampos, that's a luxury LFC can no longer afford.

Good riddance Suarez, we'll be better without you

If Suarez leaves, and it's looking highly likely, we'll be fine.  We still have Sturridge, Sterling, Coutinho, Gerrard, and Henderson, all but one are young and all will be improved.  We don't need to necessarily make up 31 goals, we could actually play better defense.  If we would have prevented just 5 more goals last year, we would have won the league.  Last season, we lead the league in defensive errors with 42, 13 which directly resulted in a goal, that obviously has to stop.

If there ever was an example to follow,  look no further than Ateltico Madrid from last season.  They only scored 77 goals, 27 less than Real, and 23 less than Barça.  They also only allowed 26 and committed just 17 defensive errors, which was not best in league, but only 5 off and light years better than 42.  They also lost Falcao and Martin Demichelis from the season before.

Falcao scored 28 goals for Atletico in the 2012-13 season, that was a ridiculous 43.1% of their total output of 65.  Suarez was 'only' responsible for 30.1% of our goals last season,  but his 13 assists means he took part in 42.6%.  Atletico rebounded with Diego Costa and added David Villa, we have Sturridge and added Rickie Lambert.

In fact, over the years, Atletico has lost a number of key players.  Since summer 2007, they've lost Falcao, Martin Demichelis, Eduardo Salvio, Serio Aguero, David De Gea, Diego Forlan, Jose Manuel Jurado, Simao Sabrosa, Maxi Rodriguez, Martin Petrov, and of course, Torres.  In that time they've won a Copa Del Rey, 2 Europa Cups, and 2 UEFA Super Cups.  Their progression in La Liga since 2009-10 has been consistent to say the least, they went from 9th to 7th to 5th to 3rd to winning it last season.  

They also reduced their goals allowed each season starting in 09-10 they conceded 61, then 53 in 10-11, 46 the next season, and 31 the year before last.  The thing is, their goal scoring showed no such progression save last season.  Over the same period from 2009-10 to 2012-13, they scored 57, 62, 53, and 65 in each successive season.

Brendan Rodgers appears to have solved our goal scoring issues, but now he needs to focus on defense.  I think we'll be better because our defenders, Sakho in particular, should be more familiar with on another.  Communication appeared to lack last season, I just hope that changes.  Also, the addition of Emre Can gives us another option at defensive midfielder, which is the most important defender on the pitch.

Suarez leaving is far from the end of the world.  Yes, he scored and created goals, but he also gave away the ball an awfully lot.  Counter attack goals killed us last year, particularly late in the season.  We can make up for Suarez by playing smarter defense and most of all, holding on to the ball longer and making smarter passes, though we will need to add at least one more attack-minded player.  Hopefully that's Shaqiri, Sanchez, or in the very least, Memphis Depay.

How good is Luis Alberto Suárez Díaz?

Before the World Cup match between Uruguay and England, Roy Hodgson said that Luis Suarez is not yet 'world class'.  Well, he found out the hard way how wrong he was.  Suarez may not have had the greatest match, but his world class ability shone through.

Let's see how he sizes up against some other players considered 'world class'.  Charted below is their previous seasons in their respective leagues except for Falcao, his stats are from his previous and last season in La Liga with Atletico Madrid.

	Suarez	Messi	Ronaldo	Bale	Costa	Falcao
age	27	26	29	24	25	28
app (sub)	33	29(2)	30	24(3)	34(1)	34
mins	2962	2498	2537	2065	2952	2896
goals	31	28	31	15	27	28
assists	12	11	9	12	3	1
chances	87	75	47	40	45	32
npg90	0.94	0.79	0.89	0.66	0.67	0.62
gcp90	1.3	1.4	1.3	1.2	0.91	0.9
ccp90	2.6	2.8	1.6	1.8	1.4	1
pass %	74.8	85	80.3	76.3	75.5	79.9
bp %	44.1	44.6	56.4	52.2	61	59.4
sacc %	44.8	46.3	43.1	34.1	50	43.1
shot %	17.1	17.5	14.4	17.1	25	22.8
TTI90	17	13.1	12.9	11.5	15.5	12.8
	Sturridge	Y. Toure	Aguero	RVP	Rooney	Ribery
age	24	31	26	30	28	31
app (sub)	26(3)	35	20(3)	18(3)	27(2)	18(4)
mins	2267	2917	1526	1578	2446	1635
goals	21	20	17	12	17	10
assists	7	9	6	3	10	10
chances	29	40	34	16	56	56
npg90	0.83	0.43	1	0.57	0.51	0.55
gcp90	1.1	0.9	1.4	0.86	1	1.1
ccp90	1.2	1.2	2	0.9	2.1	2.8
pass %	79.3	90.1	84.9	76.7	80.1	83.9
bp %	53.4	35.1	56	50.9	48.4	50.8
sacc %	42.4	42.2	50	33.9	42.6	49.2
shot %	21.2	31.3	19.8	19.4	16.8	17
TTI90	11	10.2	11.8	10.5	15.4	17.8

Suarez comes in 2nd in non-penalty goals per 90, 3rd in goals created per 90, and 3rd in chances created per 90.  He also finished 4th in shot accuracy.  Unfortunately he had the worst pass rate, but he did have the second lowest back pass percentage, bettered only by Yaya Toure.  His TTI90 was second worst after Franck Ribery, mainly due to bad pass attempts.

Overall he is bested by Messi alone, but the Argentinian's stats are padded by 6 penalty goals where Suarez had none.  If you consider the six penalties that Ronaldo converted, Suarez is much better overall.  He already trumps the defending Ballon D'or winner in nearly every category, but take away spot kicks and CR7 is not even part of the conversation.

Speaking of the Ballon D'or, if Suarez can continue his scorching pace, Messi should be the only other player considered.  How they and their teams perform in the World Cup is probably on what the award will hinge.  Both are off to great starts, but Uruguay will have to beat Italy if they want to advance to the knock-out stages.  Suarez will probably once again have to prove his 'world class' if they are to do so.