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.

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.

Why Rodgers should buy Bertrand

To get sacked and go on holiday.  I have little doubt that buying the Chelsea left back for his estimated valuation of £7m would be on par with buying Aspas for £7.5m or Borini for £10.4m.  Here are last season's stats for Bertrand, who spent the majority on loan at Villa, our Jon Flanagan, and the guy we should sign on a free from Heracles of the Eredivisie, Australian Jason Davidson.

	Bertrand	Flanagan	Davidson
age	25*	21	22
app(subs)	17	23	30
mins	1449	1890	2669
goals	0	1	2
assist	0	1	3
chances	4	13	32
npgp90	0	0.05	0.06
gcp90	0	0.1	0.17
ccp90	0.25	0.62	1.08
pass%	76.4	83.7	76.5
bp%	38.4	42.6	31.4
sacc%	50	42.9	38.5
shot%	0	14.3	15.4
tp90	1.9	3.8	1.7
tack %	60.5	45.7	51.2
intp90	0.9	1.9	2.2
clrp90	2.1	3.6	5.2
dribpp90	0.4	1.9	0.9
bsp90	0.4	0.2	0.5
TTI90	10.2	9.2	7.6

Bertrand pales in comparison to Flanagan and Davidson, in fact, other than his tackle success percentage, he's quite unimpressive.  More damning is that before joining Villa they had 23 points from their first 20 matches, but in the 16 of the remaining 18 matches that Bertrand played, they garnered only 12 points and won the fixture against Chelsea which could not feature him. 

Just don't do it Rodgers.  I read somewhere that the argument was how Rodgers has 'righted' Sturridge and could do the same for Bertrand.  That's a bunch of crock, when Sturridge is allowed to play in his natural position up front, as he did on loan at Bolton, he's highly productive, it has little to do with Rodgers 'righting' anything.  BR should be getting Davidson's rep on the phone as soon as possible before he finalizes his deal with Fulham.  That Felix Magath, he's never won anything.

Southampton must be laughing all the way to the bank

What a terrible bit of business.  Buying Lallana for a reported £27m may end up being worse than United buying Herrera for £32m.  He wasn't even the most efficient attacking midfielder at Southampton last season and furthermore he didn't separate himself enough from his teammates to justify his price tag.

	Lallana	Rodriguez	Davis	Ward-Prose	Ramirez
age	26	24	29	19	23
app (sub)	37(1)	30(3)	28(6)	16(18)	3(15)
mins	3082	2561	2492	1616	526
goals	9	15	2	0	1
assists	6	3	7	2	3
chances	68	20	57	39	14
npg90	0.26	0.53	0.07	0	0.17
gcp90	0.44	0.63	0.32	0.11	0.69
ccp90	1.9	0.7	2.1	2.2	2.4
ap90	0.21	0.11	0.25	0.11	0.52
ccv	11.1	14.3	11.9	5	21.7
pass %	84.6	76.6	84.3	87.2	80.9
bp %	50.3	49	42.4	43.6	38.9
sacc %	41.4	31.7	21.8	35	23.8
shot %	18	14.9	6	0	4.8
TTI90	13.9	12.9	13.2	9.2	19.5
avg rk	2.9	3	3.1	3.3	2.6

Gaston Ramirez who played sparsely due to falling out of favor with Pochettino and injuries comes out on top. Lallana comes second, but only barely ahead of Rodriguez & Steven Davis. If Lallana is worth £27m, Rodriguez is worth at least that much being he is 2 years younger and Steven Davis should not be sold for anything less than £20m. And what about 19-year-old James Ward-Prose? He is already a better passer and turns over the ball much less at 7 years Lallana's junior. He's got to be worth £50m to Man United and at least £30m to the rest of the Prem.

Those numbers above are not worth £27 and the argument that it is because 'he's English' just proves my point. He's a product of the English press hype machine. We paid £8.8m for Coutinho, less than one-third what we did for Lallana, the Brazilian is still only 22-years-old and already a better player.  Basically we just paid that much for someone to keep the seats warm for Gerrard, Hendo, Sterling, Can, and Coutinho.

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.

How much will United pay for Dirk Kuyt?

After dishing out ridiculous sums for turnover prone 25-year-old, Ander Herrera, and the nemesis of Victor Moses, Luke Shaw, they are now linked to splash the cash for soon-to-be 34-year-old former 'Liverpool Legend', Dirk Kuyt. I use 'legend' in the loosest sense there, but Kuyt is much more deserving than say, Roy Hodgson.

Dirk Kuyt's evolution as a footballer is interesting to say the least.  At FC Utrecht and especially Feyenoord in the Eredivisie, he was a poacher, a goal-scoring machine.  Unfortunately, he didn't have the pace to translate his finishing skills in the Prem and had to change his approach if he wanted to survive.  So he became a more complete player, a blue collar one mind you, but good enough to earn a starting place as a supporting striker.  His determination to stay and fight for a place at Liverpool after a disappointing first season instead of returning to the Eridivise where he could have easily reverted back to his prolific poaching ways was a testament to his character.

In his first season at Liverpool, he had one assist in 34 appearances, in his second he had 8 in 32.  In his final three seasons he had a chance created per 90 of 1.79, but it was not just his ability to make important passes that improved, he became a defensive forward, if one ever existed.  From 2009-2012, he averaged 1.91 tackles per 90 and 1.56 int per 90, for perspective, during that same period, Rooney contributed 0.63 tp90 and 0.42 intp90, a massive difference.

His latest rebirth as a left wing back for the Netherlands in the World Cup apparently has spurned Van Gaal into thinking about taking him to United when the Dutch coach starts his term there.  If I can say so sans punishment, playing the heavy-footed Kuyt at that position actually is a genius move, it takes advantage of his strengths and less exposes his weaknesses.  His contributions have been solid on both ends of the pitch and the coverage he provides for Daley Blind is pricelesss, but will it translate in the Prem?

The potential big winner here is Fenerbache.  With United willing to pay double and triple a player's valuation, the Turkish club could possibly get £10m for a player they bought for £880,000.

The evolution of Raheem Sterling (or why we may not need Suarez anymore)

Rumor has it Real Madrid is very high on Raheem Sterling.  I'm not sure how realistic their intentions are, but if it is true, we need to do everything we can to hold on to him.  He is ultimately more important than Suarez because he is 19-years-old and exhibits 'Messi class' potential.  If he gets even remotely close to that, he's worth what ever LFC has to pay him.

I was curious to see what Sterling's potential output of the next two seasons could be, so using a very simple projection model based on his progression over the last two seasons, I came up with this:

	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16
age	18	19	20	21
app (sub)	19(5)	24(9)	27(7)	28(8)
mins	1748	2220	2520	2935
goals	2	9	23	32
assists	2	5	7	10
chances	37	51	60	72
npg90	0.1	0.36	0.82	0.98
gcp90	0.21	0.57	1.07	1.29
ccp90	1.91	2.06	2.14	2.21
TTI90	12.3	12.1	12	11.7

Before anyone takes leave of their senses, these are max potential projections.  I'm not saying Sterling won't score more than 23 goals next season, but it's highly unlikely.  What is probable though is that he'll have more than 7 assists and that his goal created per 90 will be around 1.07.  Let's say he only reaches 80% of his goal max, which means he scores 18 goals.  To reach a 1.07 gcp90, he'll need 12 total assists, a very realistic achievement.

As you might have noticed, with these projections, Sterling will break the Prem goal scoring record in two years.  The chances of that happening are as likely as Everton winning the league.  In fact, if he accounts for 42 goals created, it will be tied for Drogba (2009-10) for second most all-time next to Suarez from last season.  Probably not going to happen either but even if he has a 60% goal output, he finishes with 19 goals plus 10 assists, which is a decent season to say the least.

I was curious to see the progression of Messi from age 18 to 21, for a possible comparison.  Unfortunately, 'chances created' is a relatively new recorded stat, so I only included what I could.

	2005-6	2006-7	2007-8	2008-9
age	18	19	20	21
app (sub)	11(6)	23(3)	23(5)	27(4)
mins	909	1995	1998	2513
goals	2	14	10	23
assists	6	2	12	11
npg90	0.2	0.63	0.27	0.72
gcp90	0.8	0.72	0.99	1.22

Interestingly enough, his goal creation regressed from age 18 to 19 and if you take away his penalty goals, he actually only had an open field goal creation of 0.81 at age 20.  Lack of chances created makes it awfully hard to compare the two players.  By just these stats alone, Messi is far and way the better player, but will Sterling have a lapse in his career next season like the Argentinian did?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I'm not saying Sterling will ever reach the heights of Messi, but he does possess the potential to do so. You don't get mentioned in the same breathe as Real Madrid if you don't.