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.)

Balotelli is an over-rated narcissistic cancer

By no means should Liverpool waste their time with Mario Balotelli.  The Italian striker may be one of the most talented in Europe, but he is all about one thing, himself.  Before being sold in the January 2013 window, he had basically already cost Man City a chance of repeating as Premier league champions.  If his lackluster, half-assed efforts on the pitch weren't enough, it paled in comparison to his whiny, childish, and distracting behavior off.

When 'Super' Mario desires to make a difference on the pitch, he can be, at times, unstoppable, but when he could care less, he's not very good at hiding it.  At the beginning of the 2012-13 season, Man City fined him for his less than stellar disciplinary record from the previous year, which Balotelli refuted and threatened to take to a PL tribunal.  He eventually paid the fine, but it looks as if he got his revenge in the most classless manner.  Before his transfer to A.C. Milan, he had scored one goal in 14 appearances for City, let's look at his stats from then, the previous year, and the rest of his season in Serie A:

year	club	npg90	gc90	sacc%	shot%	gopd
2012-13	AC Milan	0.47	0.94	51.9	15.6	0.36
2012-13	Man City	0.15	0.15	17.6	2.9	-0.38
2011-12	Man City	0.68	0.95	39.0	15.9	-0.33

Looks like all of sudden Balotelli found his goal-scoring touch again.  In fact, in the first half of the season at City, less than one out of five of his shots were toward goal, but once he got to magical Milan land, half his shots became on-target.  He also had nearly a full goal swing with his goals-on-pitch difference.  I can't say I'm surprised considering his character.

Balotelli turns it on when he wants to and that's just unacceptable.  He doesn't care about the badge on his chest, all he wants is to be exalted and praised.  He has had problems with every club he has played for and now apparently is upset with Inzaghi and the Milan manager's training tactics. He is not a team player by any means, in fact, in the past five seasons he has received 39 cards and dished out just 12 assists.  Even if he averaged a non-penalty goal per match, which he doesn't, he's not worth the trouble.  We'd be replacing Suarez with a player of half the ability and ten times the trouble.

For those who think he would help us win the Premiership, you're wrong.  City would have won with or without him in 2011-12.  When he was on the pitch, they were a third of the team when he wasn't, hence the -0.33 goals on pitch difference that season.  They certainly didn't need him last season either.

Huntelaar to replace Suarez?

There are reports that we are interested in bringing in Klaas-Jan Huntelaar to 'replace' Suarez.  First and foremost, Suarez is not 'replaceable' except for maybe by Messi.  Bringing in Huntelaar would be purely on his goal-scoring prowess and not his goal creation ability, though Suarez trumps him in both regards.  Huntelaar, who had that crazy period where he jumped from Ajax to Real Madrid to Milan to Schalke in little over two seasons, has actually settled at the Bundesliga side for four seasons now.  Here is the output of him and Suarez from last season.

	Huntelaar	Suarez
age	31*	27
app (sub)	17(1)	33
mins	1454	2962
goals	12	31
assists	0	12
chances	9	87
npg90	0.74	0.94
gcp90	0.74	1.3
ccp90	0.56	2.6
ap90	0	0.37
ccv	0	0.14
pass %	74.5	74.8
bp %	41.8	44.1
sacc %	41.8	44.8
shot %	21.8	17.1
TTI90	11.5	17

*Huntelaar will turn 31 in early August.

Huntelaar is only better at one thing, shot selection, but not significantly.  He does appear to hold on to the ball better, but Suarez has approximately 37.3% more touches per match.

Other than the fact that Huntelaar will struggle to make up for the loss of goals provided by Suarez, he will provide little to no assists nor chances created.  Also, he'll be 31 this August and though the season before last he regained his 'Ajax form', he has battled niggling injuries much of the past four seasons at Schalke.  Here are his stats from the past five seasons:

	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14
	Milan	Schalke	Schalke	Schalke	Schalke	Totals
age	27	28	29	30	31
app (sub)	11(14)	22(2)	32	26	17(1)	108(17)
mins	1046	1986	2796	2225	1454	9507
goals	7	8	29	10	12	66
assists	0	1	8	4	0	13
chances	5	11	39	22	9	86
npg90	0.52	0.32	0.74	0.36	0.74	0.55
gcp90	0.6	0.41	1.19	0.57	0.74	0.75
ccp90	0.43	0.5	1.25	0.89	0.56	0.81
ap90	0	0.05	0.26	0.16	0	0.12
ccv	0	0.1	0.21	0.18	0	0.15
pass %	81.7	76.2	76.1	74.1	74.5	76
bp %	-	-	-	47.4	41.8	45.8
sacc %	30.6	30	35.3	28.7	44.8	45.6
shot %	14.3	8	19.3	9.3	21.8	19.8
TTI90	10.4	11.5	11.2	10.3	11.5	11

The most impressive thing is that his TTI90 stays consistent, but he appears to be unpredictable in most every other stat, which only adds to his risk.  The other thing is his price.  His valuation is set at £10.56, not a chance in hell should anyone pay that much.  Even at £8m, it's a gamble for a 15-20 goal scorer.  I can understand Rodgers' thinking here, right-footed poacher to pair with Sturridge, but there's definitely better prospects.  If Huntelaar's teammate, Jefferson Farfan, wasn't about to undergo knee surgery, he would be a much preferred choice.