The Spanish-Senegalese 'Raheem Sterling' is there for the picking

Keita Baldé Diao is a 19-year-old Spanish forward of Senegalese descent, who is currently plying his trade at Italian club, SS Lazio.  He was brought up through the Barcelona youth system, but was loaned out to Cornellá after the 2009-10 season due to disciplinary reasons.  Unfortunately it worked against Barça as Keita refused to return and was sold to Lazio.

Keita finally broke through to the first team last season and did not disappoint.  In limited action, he scored 5 goals and posted 3 assists, but he impressed most in his decisiveness.  For a 19-year-old and a forward in general, he posted a fairly low true turnover index per 90 minutes of 9.93, a decent 82.5% successful pass rate, and a 54% shot accuracy percentage, which would have been tops on Liverpool last season.

Here is a stat comparison from last season of Sterling and him:

	npg90	ap90	gc90	cc90	ccv	pass%	tti90	gopd
Keita	0.33	0.20	0.52	1.63	0.120	0.825	9.93	0.07
Sterling	0.36	0.20	0.57	2.06	0.097	0.817	12.1	0.22

Their numbers are eerily similar save chances created 90 (cc90), chance created value (ccv), and true turnover index 90 (tti90).  A tti90 below 10 at his age and position is simply unheard of and a ccv a full 20 points above what is considered the average shows he is efficient and unselfish.

Should we buy him though? Well, word is Lazio want £24m for him, that seems a bit high, but he does have the potential to make that price still seem like a bargain years from now.  To add a player of his pace and skill doesn't come around that often.  Here's a video with horrible music to judge for yourself:

Is Gonzalo Higuaín worth more than Suárez?

We all know Ronaldo and Messi are the cream of the European football crop, but number three is up for grabs with Luis Suárez and Gonzalo Higuaín among the top candidates.  Most people believe the Uruguayan is the clear cut choice, but a closer look at their performance data may lead to a change of mind.

The fact is, Higuaín is the superior player when it comes to the numbers.  The Argentine is considered to be more of a 'poacher' while most believe Suárez is the more complete player, but the stats tell a different story.  Both players have benefited by playing most of their careers at 'big' clubs.  Ajax may not seem like as 'big' a club as it was 20 years ago, but it still attracts some of the best young talent in the world and was absolutely loaded the years El Conejo Loco played there.  His teammates included Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Jan Vertonghen, Urby Emanuelson, Thomas Vermaelen, Dennis Rommedahl, Maarten Stekelenburg, and Gregory van der Wiel among others.

Also, it could be argued that Suarez prospered from playing in a lesser league where his 'world class' talents allowed him to dominant his 'lesser' opponents while Higuain had to deal with the superior defences of La Liga.  Not to mention that the Eredivisie is an 'attacker's paradise' where players tend to rack up more impressive offensive stats than any other league in Europe.

Here are their accumulative stats since the 2006-07 seasons:

	npg90	ap90	gc90	cc90	ccv	pass%	sacc%	shot%	TTI90	gopd
Higuaín	0.73	0.31	1.09	1.38	0.23	0.808	0.518	0.449	12.27	0.11
Suárez	0.62	0.17	0.87	2.50	0.09	0.753	0.407	0.296	17.37	0.09

Higuaín takes almost every stat except chances created, but his chance created value is far superior.  In fact, one out of every four of his chances finds the back of the net while only one out of eleven for Suarez result in a goal.  That is one of the best ccvs I have ever seen and really sums up what Higuain is, efficient.  It's not that Suarez lacks in precision, but he fails in comparison to his Argentine counterpart.

The one thing Suarez does better, though is hard to quantify, is create chances for himself.  Though it doesn't really show self-created chances, the former Liverpool man has a successful dribble rate of 2.88 per 90 at 38% while the Napoli striker posts a 1.40 sdr90 at 47%.  Once again, Higuain is more efficient, though only completes half as many take-ons per ninety minutes.

To answer the question of this post though, no, I don't think Higuain is worth more than Suarez.  Numbers aren't everything and if you put the latter on the worst team in any league, I firmly believe he would make a bigger impact than the former.  Suarez doesn't need highly-skilled teammates to make a difference, but they obviously help.  Higuain is more efficient and can make a good team great, but I highly doubt he would be able to lead a team like Stoke to a Champions League spot.  He would make Liverpool more of a contender though, but £80m?  Messi is the only player worthy of that amount, but if we could somehow get Napoli to agree to half that, Rodgers would be crazy not to break the bank for him.

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.

Shaqiri, Rojo, Sanchez, & Origi: The transfer vultures are circling

Though it appears Lazar Markovic is a likely signing, others who were once possibly on our radar are gone or slowly disappearing.  Of the four I listed in this post's title, the only one whom I'm disappointed about is Shaqiri. Apparently Bayern Munich offered him more money, but will that translate into more playing time for the loaded German side? Not that he'll be handed a spot at Liverpool, but Der FCB isn't called 'FC Hollywood' for nothing.

Apparently Roma are now in talks to sign the Swiss International.  If I were Shaqiri and an Serie A club came for me with an offer equivalent or greater than what I could make anywhere else, I'd sign faster than an imploding Brazilian defense.  Shaqiri will run rampant in Italy and his has the technical prowess to persevere as well.

Personally I have not been all the impressed with Marcos Rojo at the World Cup.  He's got that WC hype feeling.  He has received praises for his play in Portugal, but his stats do not overwhelm other than his card collection of 14 yellows and 3 reds in 33 matches.  If that's not a red flag, I don't know what is.

I don't care about Sanchez.  He prefers Arsenal and that tells me he's absolutely clueless.  The reason being his family wants to 'live in London' is just lame.  Oh well, have fun getting rotated to death and make sure not to make Arsene angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry.

Finally we get to Origi, who I have already written about. Now there are reports that Spurs are interested in him.  I couldn't care less either way considering we would probably loan him back to Lille anyhow.  Seems ridiculous to me to spend £10m for a player just to loan him back to the club we bought him from.  What are we, Chelsea now? And if Origi wants to know how things will probably work out for him at Tottenham, I suggest he give Erik Lamela a call.

Oh and we missed out on Ashley Cole.  You can only imagine the tears.  Let's just hope we 'miss out' on Bertrand as well.  I will really be crying then.

We should have signed Dusan Tadic, not Lallana

With the announcement of our signing Adam Lallana forthcoming, I have not held back on my disappoint of his transfer.  He is just not good enough and brings nothing to our side that we don't already have a better version.  We need to bring players that offer a special dynamic, not one who actually created less chances and had less assists last season than his 29-year-old unheralded teammate, Steven Davis.  Here are last season stats for Dusan Tadic and Quincy Promes, who play for FC Twente in the Eredivisie, Lucas Piaźon, a Chelsea player who played for Vitesse, and Lallana, Sterling, and Coutinho:

	Tadic	Promes	Piaźon	Lallana	Sterling	Coutinho
age	25	22	20	26	19	22
app (sub)	33	31	24(5)	37(1)	24(9)	28(5)
mins	2970	2724	2106	3082	2220	2323
goals	16	11	11	9	9	5
assists	14	8	8	6	5	7
chances	133	84	78	68	51	64
npg90	0.27	0.36	0.34	0.26	0.36	0.19
gcp90	0.9	0.63	0.81	0.41	0.57	0.47
ccp90	4	2.8	3.3	1.9	2.1	2.5
pass %	79.3	82.3	81.7	84.6	81.7	80.6
bp %	45.4	52.2	52.3	50.3	46.8	36.7
sacc %	37.4	34	39.1	41.4	48.9	28.7
shot %	17.6	11	15.9	18	20	7
TTI90	16.1	12.7	14	13.9	12.1	11

Tadic's 133 chances created is beyond impressive, it is phenomenal.  He had 40 more than Antonio Cassano in Serie A, who finished second in all of Europe with 93, and 49 more than teammate Quincy Promes, who finished second in the Eredivisie with 84.

An interesting stat that I've been toying with is chance created efficiency, the percentage of chances created that actually results in goals.  A player can create chances all day, but if it doesn't result in goals, it usually produces a loss of possession.  Tadic has a 22.6% cce while Lallana has a 20.6%, which doesn't seem much of a difference, but when you consider the amount of key passes it's why Tadic has created twice as many goals while playing in a full less match.  Sterling, by the way, has the best of the above group at a very impressive 27.1% cce.

The bottom line is we could have bought a playmaker with Fabregas ability for £12-15m, but instead we paid £23-26m for a player with Kevin Mirallas skills.  Mirallas isn't bad, but he's far from great, and when his days at Anfield are over, I hope Lallana gets at least that much respect.