Emre Can will be boss

I remember back in the day when Momo Sissoko galloped across the pitch to and fro, wreaking havoc, it's just too bad he couldn't hold on to the ball.  Well Emre Can, our latest signee, can and does, he just needs to sharpen his passing skills and decision-making.  Here's how he matches up with his new teammates (stats from last season, Can played at Leverkusen in the Bundesliga):

	Can	Lucas	Allen	Gerrard	Henderson
age	20	27	25*	34	24
app (sub)	24(5)	20(7)	15(9)	33(1)	35
mins	2190	1896	1443	2895	3129
goals	3	0	1	13	4
assists	3	0	0	13	7
chances	16	13	18	67	62
npg90	0.12	0	0.06	0.09	0.11
gcp90	0.25	0	0.06	0.81	0.32
ccp90	0.7	0.62	1.13	2.1	1.78
ap90	0.12	0	0	0.4	0.2
ccv	0.17	0	0	0.19	0.11
pass %	77.9	90.8	86.7	85.9	87.1
bp %	39.6	30.3	38	30.6	41.2
sacc %	31.4	22	42.1	51.7	0.15
shot %	12	0	5.3	27.1	0.12
TTI90	13.2	7.9	9.8	10.9	9.7
tp90	3.1	4.2	4.2	3	2.4
t%	44.8	43	56	52.2	42.8

Can certainly holds his own with the exception of passing and turnovers, but he's only 20 and the guidance of Rodgers should help.  His versatility is what makes him exciting, he clearly is more of a box-to-box midfielder, but can play at the holding spot as well.  He sort of reminds me of a young Gerrard or Yaya Toure, when the latter was at Olympiacos & Monaco.

The thing Can will have to display most of all is discipline.  If he's playing defensive midfield, he must be cautious about going forward, but I'd rather see him be something of a factor on the attack unlike Lucas, who prefers not to get involved except via long balls.  Man City's DMs go forward all the time, but when you pair a Yaya Toure with either Fernandinho or Javi Garcia, you always have coverage.  So does that mean we should start Lucas and Can together? If it gets to that, it probably means Gerrard and Henderson are both out due to injury or discipline, which I don't think anyone wishes for.  It would be great to see it as an experiment in a cup tie though.

Another interesting aspect is that Can can play left back.  He did so for 10 matches last season at Leverkusen.  In fact he got some of his highest match ratings on whoscored playing that position:

His talent alone makes him a steal at £9.75m, but his versatility may make Rodgers look like a genius.

Individual defensive stats, for the most part, are irrelevant

Recently when I was researching centre back prospects, I started to notice a trend.  It appeared that individualized defensive stats such as tackles, interceptions, clearances, and blocked shots had little relevance in regards to team defensive performance.  Though not completely irrelevant and in the very least a sign of hard work and involvement in a match, it just does not reflect on the scoresheet.

Ranking team defense ultimately comes down to goals allowed, four of the Prem clubs that finished the season in the top five last year, also finished in the top four in goals allowed.  Liverpool was the only top five club not to, they were 8th.  So the key is to figure out what stats are most important in goal prevention, but it's not that easy.  There should be a stats called 'turnover produced' and/or 'chance prevented', but what exactly would that entail and how would it be measured?

There are team stats that already exist that should carry more weight: shots conceded, possession, and passing are the most important in preventing chances for the opposition. These are better described as 'anti-attack' stats instead of defensive ones, but they still strive to accomplish the same objective. There are two interesting samples to discuss from last season's Prem, Man City, who won the league and was 2nd in least goals allowed, and Crystal Palace, who were far and away the best defensive-minded individuals thrown on the pitch falsely called 'a team'.

First, I set up a table taking the rank of each Prem club in each respective stat.  Those stats are goals allowed, non-error goals allowed, shots conceded, tackles, tackle %, clearances, interceptions, blocked shots, defensive errors, critical defensive errors, possession, and passing %.  I then broke that table down into two, one with only non-individual team stats and the other with just individual team stats.

Overall Table

Non-Individual Team Table

Individual Combined Table

Man City finished 7th on the overall table, 1st on non-individual team stats, and dead last (20th) on the individual combined table.  If that's not convincing enough for you, Crystal Palace tied with Chelsea for 1st on the overall table, was 16th on the non-individual table, and finished 1st by a mile on the individual combined table.  In fact, Palace had an avg rank of 2.86 on the ict, a full four points ahead of second place Hull and 11.71 average places higher than Man City.

Crystal Palace finished 11th in the table, scoring only 33 goals (2nd worst overall) and ranked dead last in both passing and possession.  Being that Tony Pulis is still their manager and they haven't brought in any significant attacking transfers, I don't see that changing much next season.  Meanwhile Man City lead the league in goals scored and was 2nd in both passing and possession.  Maybe the old adage 'the best defense is a good offense' rings true.

Liverpool vs Man City: A look at the stats

Let's take a look at some key statistics from last season:

(league rank in parenthesis)             LFC                       MCFC
overall possession %                     55.8 (5)                   57.6 (2)
pass success %                             84.5 (4)                   86.1 (1)
chances created                             488 (3)                    533 (1)
shots conceded pg                        12.8 (8)                     9.5 (1)
shots OT pg                                   6.8 (1)                     6.3 (2)
fouled pg                                      10.8 (6)                     8.9 (20)
offsides pg                                     2.1 (9)                     1.6 (19)
open play goals                              55 (3)                       66 (1)
counter attack goals                         9 (1)                        5 (2)
set piece goals                                26 (1)                      20 (2)
crosses pg                                      17 (20)                    23 (6)
through ball pg                                5 (1)                         3 (4)
long balls pg                                   56 (18)                    55 (20)
short passes pg                              469 (4)                    502 (3)
possession in own half %                 29 (13)                    23 (1)
possession in opp half %                 28 (11)                    31 (1)

Clearly some of these are obvious: you keep the ball more (possession %), you make better decisions on the ball (pass success %), you create more chances, you don't allow your opponent many chances, and you keep the ball out of your own half, you've got a better chance to win more games.

What surprised me the most was LFC's attack efficiency, they scored more with less opportunity.  They had a goal per chance opportunity of 4.83 compared to Man City at 5.22.  Against the run of play which factors in possession pct per match, Liverpool is even more impressive since their possession pct was not as high (8.66 compared to 9.06).

Which leaves the white elephant in the room, defense.  Liverpool was not bad defensively, they were just merely average while Man City was very good (though not excellent).  The problem in statistically analyzing defensive performance is that it is nearly impossible to quantify things such as 'forced back pass' or 'passing lane reduction'.  These things limit opportunities of an opponent to score, but unless you watch every match and keep statistics yourself, which neither I nor no one I know has the time to do so, it's just not going to happen.  Plus there are judgement calls.

One thing I find interesting is how little opponent passing pct really matters, even in the attacking third.  According to StatsBomb, through April 21st, Man City was allowing a pass success rate of 81.5% overall and 68.2% in the final third, while LFC were superior in both at 79.2% and 66.7%.  The problem being that direction of pass is not being considered, Man City may be forcing their opponents to make back and horizontal passes by cutting off passing lanes/opportunities.

The bottom line is Man City were the best at preventing opponents from scoring chances, which unfortunately we can only validate by shots conceded per match, and though Liverpool were more efficient offensively, they created less chances for themselves overall (even though it lead to just one more goal overall).

Some observations that I think separated the two sides are lack of discipline by Liverpool defenders, especially Skrtel and Sakho, and not having a true defensive midfielder on the pitch a lot of the time. It also doesn't help that MCFC just has better defensive midfielders in Fernandinho and Javi Garcia with Yaya Toure occasionally deputized.  One of these problems may have been resolved with the addition of Emre Can, but he is closer to a box-to-box than a defensive midfielder and the lack of discipline has to be addressed by the coaching staff or else look for those who will listen.
                  

Liverpool 0, Man City 0: Player ratings

As I said in my review, we actually played quite well, but not well enough. I'm going to have a hard time not reflecting my disappointing of certain players. Anyhow, here's the scale:
1 - Take off the f*%kin' kit
2 - Still not fit to where it
3 - It better have been just a poor day
4 - Drink too much last night, did we?
5 - Glad you showed up
6 - Good effort, but you could do better
7 - Solid performance
8 - Brilliant at times, adequate at others
9 - Top man
10 - Unbelievably f&*kin' brilliant

Pepe Reina 5
Pepe is usually always the hardest player to rate and today was no exception. I mean, he did what he had to to get the clean sheet, but that wasn't much. So giving him a 5 is in no way a negative rating.

Fabio Aurelio 7
Played well in all facets of the game: on defense, on attack, passing, and shooting, and if one of his efforts had even lead to a goal, he would have been a candidate for Man of the Match.

Jamie Carragher 9 Man of the Match
Was simply brilliant in the first half and did what was needed in the second, including getting involved on attack by coming forward at times, but mostly by making some brilliant long passes. He cleared nearly every ball and stopped nearly every Man City attack single-handedly throughout and almost got the assist on the winner.

Alvaro Arbeloa 6
I'm cutting him some slack since he was playing out of position and after about thirty minutes he actually regained composure. In the second half, discipline set in and he appeared much more reliable.

Steve Finnan 6.5
Would have liked him to get more involved on attack, but can't ask for much more from him. This was the second match for him in five days and I don't care how fit a 31-year-old he is, that's still a lot.

Harry Kewell 7
Solid performance, kept the ball well and created chances on attack.

Steve Gerrard 6.5
His distrust of Arbeloa in the first half probably hurt us from taking control of the match before the second half, but once he got involved on attack, asserting ourselves became much easier.

Javier Mascherano 8
A tremendous performance from the Argentine as he plucked away the ball from the Man City players almost effortlessly and got to show off some of his ball-handling skills.

Yossi Benayoun 7
It's hard to get down on Yossi for holding on the ball too long when he creates so much and does make some great passes, but the truth is, he does try to do too much at times.

Dirk Kuyt 7
Probably his best performance of the year. He made some great plays, tried some different things, and made few mistakes. Ultimately though, Kuyt just doesn't have the pace to help us become Premier League champs.

Fernando Torres 5.5
Man City put on a clinic on how to stop El Niño and for the most part it worked. I thought the ref was awfully lenient on the roughness of the Man City defenders, but still, Torres lacked in creativity. Gerrard set him up with a perfect give-and-go which Fernando failed to put through, instead he tried to create something else on his own.

Ryan Babel 6
Like Benayoun, only worse, Babel needs to learn when to give up the ball instead of keeping it himself. It's fine if he scores, but most of the time he doesn't. I don't know if it's just a lack of intuitive skills or selfishness, but it's frustrating and very predictable for the defense.

Liverpool 0, Man City 0: He may be gold, but he's not perfect

I hope that was the worse match I ever see Torres play. Much credit to the Man City defense is due though, particularly Dunne and Richards. I knew that Richards would be able to match El Niño's pace, but I was unaware Dunne would out-power him. That clearly canceled out our young Spanish strikers one-on-one abilities, which leaves him to rely on his other attributes. Obviously he needs to work on his passing, but he's not the only one. Benayoun and Babel frustratingly held on to the ball way too long as well.

In some ways it was a bizarre affair with Kuyt being the better forward on the day, Aurelio basically playing the John Arne Riise role, though an improved version as of late, and Arbeloa starting at centre back, where he appeared to be lost until about a half hour in. Most the positives were on the defensive side of the ball, with Carra and Mascherano not allowing Man City to exert themselves on attack. On the other side, the aforementioned Kuyt had one of his better days while Kewell almost looked back to the form of old.

In the first half, Gerrard arrested most of our attacking development by staying too far back. Maybe he was distrustful of Arbeloa and wanted to make sure he settled in before going too far forward, no matter what, it clearly made us a less dangerous side early on. Carra was absolutely out-of-his-mind in the first half, determined not to allow Man City a lead. Most of the time I don't really care for players taking shots 30 yards plus out, but Aurelio looked the threat, so I say fire away.

The second half was utter domination from our boys, keeping the ball in their half most of the 48 minutes. Our old demon from previous seasons of being unable to finish re-appeared somewhat, but it really was the outstanding play of the Man City defense. Playing back and boring, a staple of the Sven days with the Three Lions, looked to be their game plan, and it worked on the day. We had our chances though and didn't covert, particularly Torres, and usually taking a point away at a side as good as Man City would be a satisfactory result, but we were without a doubt the superior side.

Ultimately, we're going to have to win these matches if we hope to compete for the leauge, especially when Man U falters. Also, playing as well as we did, and overall, we played quite well, while not getting the result, cannot do much for our confidence. Thankfully we have Wigan coming to Anfield on Wednesday.

Liverpool at Man City: I have no clue what Rafa will do...

...mainly because I've been computer-less for about a week now. Which is also the reason for my lack of updates. I apologize, but hey, Man U lost today and Arsenal is losing (knock on wood).

Because I don't have a computer, I'm pretty much lost in what's going on in Liverpool land, so I don't have much of a clue of who's set to go. Is Arbeloa still ill? Have there been any fresh injuries? I have no clue.

So here's my guess anyhow:
Reina
Auelio
Agger
Carragher
Arbeloa (or Finnan)
Riise
Xabi
Mascherano
Gerrard
Kuyt
Torres

Bench:
Itandje
Finnan (or Hobbs)
Babel
Kewell
Benayoun

That's who I'd go with anyhow, pretty much what I consider our best defensive XI. With United's loss today, a win tomorrow has become even more crucial. Cheers, and I should be back tomorrow with a recap though I won't be announcing the starting line-up.

Today's Banter: Rafa waiting Mascherano game, Swansea wants Anderson permanently, City to make Crouch offer, & more

- One of the bigger mysteries at Liverpool, outside of the enigma that is Harry Kewell, is Javier Mascherano's contract situation. The good news is that the Argentine wants to stick around, the bad news is that it will cost us an additional £17m to keep him. With other needs to fill in January, I'm not sure we'll have the funds to make the acquisition then, but I think if we wait until his current on-loan contract runs out his price may go up. I don't think we need Masche, but he certainly makes things a lot easier for us. Rafa is at least willing to wait and see what FIFA rules about third-party player ownership since Mascherano is still technically owned by Kia Joorabchian’s company, Media Sports Investment (MSI). I think that's a good idea, but let's just hope that happens before the January transfer window closes.

- Paul Anderson has made such a splash at Swansea City, that the Swans want to keep him permanently. I personally hope Rafa has future plans for the 19-year-old winger at our club, but I can definitely see him being loaned out again next season and if Swansea gets promoted to the Championship, I don't see why that wouldn't be one of the options. I don't see him joining anything less than a Championship side with maybe a SPL club in consideration. His contract runs through 2010.

- Sven and Man City look to be early suitors for disgruntled striker Peter Crouch. The problem is they are only willing to pay £8m for him. I can't see us taking less than £10m. The reason being is that he'll be a fresh addition to any side thanks to Rafa's rotation policy. If Sven can't get ole Thaksin to cough up an extra £2m, I'm sure Redknapp Casino FC aka Portsmouth can.

- Remember Rob Styles? The man who gave Chelsea a point at Anfield with a rubbish call. Well, it turns out he could get an additional ban for the same match, though this time for his showing of two yellows to Michael Essien. Not sure why the FA has waited this long to try him again, but it sounds awfully fishy to me. Maybe he's had a fallen out with the good ole boys in the FA.

Fergie loves the 'Pool

In an odd turn of the screw, Manchester United boss and overall managing legend, none other than Sir Alex Ferguson, has praised Liverpool Football Club as the greatest club in the history of the world, ever. And if you believe that, I've got some beautifully refurbished country meadows in New Jersey I'd like to sell you.

No, I think about right now Rafa Benitez and LFC are more likely on Sir Alex's shit list than on his Christmas Card list. His latest comments about the Anfield club includes calling them 'opportunists' in regards to the Heinze controversy and then to add a few logs to the fire he says that he just grew tired of pursuing Torres and pretty much just let us have him. Thanks, Sénor Alec, your generosity is unrivaled.

I won't even address the latter comment since it's obviously just the case of one heartbroken girl veiling her wound after being rejecting by a boy for a girl she deems inferior. As for the 'opportunists' label, if that's not a case of the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is. This coming from a man who basically stole Giggs from Man City. At least Fergie admits he'd do the same if the tables were turned and he had the opportunity to sign Steven Gerrard in a similar manner.

Still, it's not like Man U has ever given a rat's ass about anyone else in their pursuit to better themselves. It's pure rubbish for Ferguson to even try to imply that he and his suitors have an ounce of concern for the clubs he plucks his players from. At least Liverpool make an effort to help out smaller clubs like Wrexham, Crewe Alexander, and MTK Hungária FC because they realize their importance in the overall scope of football.

And what's this crap about 'like the rest of them'. Is Sir Alex shitting gold these days? It's not like Man U has much of a history before 1993, before Cantona, before Roy Keane. You're not the cream of the football crop, you're the shit that won't flush.