Jordan Henderson, the would-be King

Jordan Henderson has come a long way since his Sunderland days.  When Dalglish bought him in June of 2011 for a staggering £16m, I was more than a bit skeptical.  Paying that much for a relatively unproven soon-to-be 21-year-old, was quite the risk.  Henderson displayed flashes of brilliance here and there, but was wholly inconsistent, not uncommon for a player his age.  Fortunately he has proven to be a skilled, versatile midfielder, who can and is willing to do what is ever needed to make Liverpool a better side.

year	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14
age	20	21	22	23	24
app (sub)	23(10)	37	31(6)	16(14)	35
mins	2187	3210	2658	1535	3129
p90	24.3	35.7	29.5	17.1	34.8
goals	1	3	2	5	4
assists	5	4	1	4	7
chances	28	45	40	33	62
npg90	0.04	0.08	0.07	0.29	0.11
gcp90	0.25	0.20	0.10	0.29	0.32
ccp90	1.15	1.26	1.36	1.90	1.78
ap90	0.21	0.11	0.03	0.23	0.20
ccv	18.3	8.7	2.2	12.1	11.2
pass %	68.4	81.2	83.9	84.5	87.1
bp %	-	-	-	43.4	41.2
sacc %	0.25	0.29	0.35	0.33	0.15
shot %	0.03	0.07	0.05	0.15	0.12
TTI90	15.9	11.1	11.1	11.5	9.7

His progression over the past five years has been impressive to say the least, especially his passing.  What's most impressive though, is how valuable he has become on defence.  Last season, he became our most valuable midfielder when it comes to preventing goals.  His goals on pitch per 90 average was 1.18, considerably better than Gerrard (1.37), Lucas (1.28), or Allen (1.31).

To see how truly far Henderson has come I wanted to compare his stats from last season with his contemporaries, players who are of similar age (23-25) and play a similar position.  I went through each squad and found all the players that fit the criteria, they are Joe Allen, Nemanja Matic, Morgan Schneiderlin, Ashley Westwood, Fabian Delph, Sandro, Steven N'Zonzi, Ki Sung-Yeong, Victor Wanyama, Jake Livermore, and Vurnon Anita.  The stat comparison table is below.

The top 5 overall ranking:

1. Jordan Henderson                 4.73

2. Morgan Schneiderlin              5.00

3. Nemanja Matic                     5.33

4. Ashley Westwood                 5.67

5. Fabian Delph                        5.87

Not only was he top overall, Henderson was in the top five in eleven of the fifteen categories.  Among his peers, he is already king and if he continues his current progression, who knows how good he could become.

	Henderson	Matic	Schneiderlin	Westwood	Delph	Sandro
age	24	25	24	24	24	25
app(sub)	35	15(2)	31(2)	35	33(1)	10(7)
mins	3129	1365	2765	3077	3004	828
p90	34.8	15.2	30.7	34.2	33.4	9.2
goals	4	0	2	3	3	1
assists	7	4	1	2	2	0
chances	62	23	30	63	28	7
npg90	0.11	0	0.07	0.12	0.09	0.11
gcp90	0.32	0.26	0.1	0.15	0.15	0.11
ccp90	1.78	1.51	0.98	1.84	0.83	0.76
ap90	0.20	0.26	0.03	0.06	0.06	0
ccv	11.2	17.2	3.1	3.2	7.2	0
pass %	87.1	84.8	89.3	82.9	83.7	84.4
bp %	41.2	31	35.6	28.3	38.3	29.6
sacc %	32.7	15.3	25.8	25	25	23.5
shot %	8.2	0	6.5	10.7	8.3	5.9
TTI90	9.7	12.5	9.3	9.6	10.5	10.8
intp90	1	2	2.2	1.4	1.7	3.3
clrp90	2	4	1.5	0.9	1.5	2.4
tp90	2.4	3.7	3.7	1.6	3	2.6
ts%	42.8	41.5	47.8	47.6	49.4	42.6
gap90	0.86	0.46	1.14	1.64	1.62	1.63

	N'Zonzi	Sung-Yeong	Wanyama	Livermore	Anita	Allen
age	25	25	23	24	25	24
app (sub)	34(2)	25(2)	19(4)	34(2)	28(6)	15(9)
mins	3041	2196	1659	3054	2457	1443
p90	33.8	24.4	18.4	33.9	27.3	16
goals	2	3	0	3	1	1
assists	1	1	0	4	1	0
chances	32	28	7	34	38	18
npg90	0.06	0.08	0	0.09	0.04	0.06
gcp90	0.09	0.16	0	0.21	0.07	0.06
ccp90	0.95	1.15	0.38	1	1.39	1.13
ap90	0.03	0.04	0	0.12	0.04	0
ccv	3.2	3.6	0	11.8	2.9	0
pass %	87.2	90.7	84.3	83	83.8	86.7
bp %	36.8	42.1	38.9	38.9	30.7	38
sacc %	19.4	35	12.5	17.9	19	42.1
shot %	6.5	7.5	0	7.7	4.8	5.3
TTI90	10.7	7.2	12.6	11.7	10.2	9.8
intp90	1	0.9	1.8	1.5	1.6	1.6
clrp90	0.8	0.9	2.8	0.8	1	1.3
tp90	1.8	1.7	3.5	2	1.8	4.2
ts%	47.6	55.6	48.2	45.8	45	56
gap90	1.33	1.72	0.76	1.36	1.65	1.31

Gerrard & Sturridge are more important than Suarez

Again and again I'm trying to convince myself that the loss of Suarez won't be that great, well, this may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.  I went through each match last year and broke down goal importance according to whether a point was salvaged or gained (crucial goal) or gave us an advantage (important goal).  I did the same for assists as well.  Then I applied a points system: 3 points for crucial goal or assist and 1 point for important goal or assist.  Here are the results:

	crucial goal	imp goal	crucial asst	imp assist	value
Gerrard	5	4	4	4	35
Sturridge	7	6	1	2	32
Suarez	0	11	1	4	18
Coutinho	2	1	0	2	9
Agger	1	1	1	1	8
Henderson	1	0	0	3	6
Enrique	0	0	1	1	4
Sterling	0	2	0	2	4
Aspas	0	0	1	0	3
Skrtel	0	3	0	0	3
Toure	0	0	0	1	1
Sakho	0	1	0	0	1
Johnson	0	0	0	1	1
Allen	0	1	0	0	1

Not a single goal and only one assist from Suarez was 'crucial' to our title chase last year.  He did score 11 'important' goals though, unfortunately that also means he essentially scored 20 'meaningless' goals or goals that wouldn't have mattered had he scored them or not.

We will be fine if Suarez leaves as long as we improve defensively.  Yes, he's fun to watch and I wish he would play the rest of his days in a Liverpool shirt, but in the end, we go on.

Suarez?! We don't need no stinkin' Suarez!

Don't have much time to post now, but I did some research on match results for the past three-and-a-half seasons and broke them down according to whether Suarez played or not.  Here's the data:

	w/o	with	w/o	with	w/o	with	w/o	with
season	10-11	10-11	11-12	11-12	12-13	12-13	13-14	13-14
matches	1	13	7	31	5	33	5	33
goals for	1	25	10	37	12	59	5	96
goals allowed	0	13	10	30	3	40	3	47
win	1	7	3	11	4	12	3	23
draw	0	2	2	8	1	12	1	5
loss	0	4	2	12	0	9	1	5
points	3	23	11	41	13	48	10	74

	Totals		Avg/Pct
	w/o	with	w/o	with
matches	18	110	-	-
goals for	28	217	1.56	1.97
goals allowed	16	130	0.89	1.18
win	11	53	61.1	48.2
draw	4	27	22.2	24.5
loss	3	30	16.7	27.3
points	37	186	2.1	1.7

Basically we score more goals with Suarez, but allow less and win more without him.  I have a lot more on this that I'll post later.  Cheers.

Paul Scholes: clandestine Liverpool fan

The Ginger Prince appears obsessed with the Reds these days, sounding off on our players whenever he can.  I would say he's a wind-up muppet, but he's not, most of the time he actually talks sense.

He most recently chimed in on the Luis Suarez transfer saga, questioning whether 'El Conejo Loco' and Messi will be able to play together. “If Luis Suarez does sign for Barcelona from Liverpool, will Lionel Messi ‘accept’ him? Suarez is a centre forward and he won’t want to play out wide. I can’t see Suarez and Messi linking well together,” Scholes wrote on his Paddy Power blog.

He's not afraid to criticize his former club either.  On the Shaw transfer, he wrote, 'For a left-back to be worth £34m shows how silly the game has gone. For that money I want a centre-forward who’s going to score 30 goals a season.'  Preaching to the choir, my frienemy.

Before the World Cup, he praised 'the Liverpool way' of playing football and challenged the English to emulate it in Brazil.  On the subject he wrote, 'It would be refreshing for England to adopt Liverpool’s attacking mentality in Brazil. Really go for it. That means certainly four, and possibly five, Liverpool players in the England starting XI against Italy on June 14' and 'I’d love to see Roy be brave enough to play like Liverpool (or Man United teams of the past).'  Glad to see he realizes the glory years of his former club are in the past.

When it comes to Gerrard, he's had nothing but love, stating in the same post, 'Gerrard (a good leader who will have quickly moved on from that slip) has adjusted his game superbly, very much like I did' and 'That’s the big difference between Steven (Gerrard) and Lampard, for example. I’m not sure Lampard has the ability to control a game. He’s always someone who’s up trying to score goals.'  You know now he's expecting a nice Christmas present for the Gerrard household.

The best part is he gets a joke in here and there, for instance, 'Defensively Liverpool were poor – conceding 50 goals – but they can be contenders again next year IF they can get two world-class centre halves and a left-back. I’m talking about players of the standard of Jaap Stam and Rio Ferdinand.' Rio Ferdinand, world class!?!? Oh the wit.

It's too bad Scholesy wasted his career on the dark side.  He should have went to Italy or Spain, where he's actually more appreciated and wouldn't have played in the shadows of bigger personalities.  No matter what, I've never desired him to play for Liverpool and he has never been better than Gerrard.

DeAndre Yedlin? You must be Yanking my chain.

There are reports that Rodgers may be interested in 20-year-old American International and Seattle Sounders right back, DeAndre Yedlin.  The only interesting thing about Yedlin is that he is of 'Native American, African American, and Latvian descent' (thanks Wikipedia). Look, he plays for the Sounders in the MLS and he's far from setting the place ablaze.  If that were the case, I'd say bring him over.  Here are his stats from the previous and current MLS seasons:

	2013	2014
age	19	20
app(subs)	32(1)	11
mins	2712	959
goals	2	0
assist	2	0
chances	20	12
npgp90	0.07	0
gcp90	0.13	0
ccp90	0.66	1.1
ap90	0.07	0
ccv	10.6	0
pass%	74.6	80.3
bp%	32.9	28.8
sacc%	35.7	0
shot%	14.3	0
tp90	2.5	2.5
tack %	65.7	53.3
intp90	3.6	2.7
clrp90	3.2	3.3
dribpp90	0.83	0.9
bsp90	0.43	0.6
adwp90	1.7	0.7
adwon%	57.5	70
TTI90	12.1	10.7

At first glance, these stats look impressive, but they aren't.  If he posted these numbers in the Prem, Man U would buy him for £30m, but in the MLS, he doesn't even break the top 20 in any category.  Seattle has also allowed 23 goals so far this season, that's tied for 9th, so he isn't contributing to a stifling defense.  

The only positive that I can see is his progression, his passing has improved from last season, all the while lowering his back pass rate, and he is turning over the ball less.  Still no reason to get excited and put in a bid.

What about his World Cup showing?  What about it? He made 3 good passes, but was mediocre at best in his 115 minutes of pitch time.  Here's what Squawka thought about his performance in Brazil:

What about his potential? He'll turn 21 in four days and yes, his development is coming around nicely, but he's not 16 and has shown zero desire to leave the safe haven of MLS.  In fact, he was born and raised in Seattle.

Rodgers can not be serious about signing Yedlin. Andre Wisdom and Martin Kelly would both run circles around this kid. Going for players that are products of the World Cup hype machine rarely pan out, Yedlin would be lucky to just to train with our first team.

Agger was our best defender last season, Sakho was worst

Last season Brendan Rodgers utlilized 16 different line-ups on the back line.  I remember back in the day when Benitez used to change the line-up that often, he was ridiculed as a 'tinkerer'.  The truth is, he was ahead of his time and most successful managers started to do the same including Mourinho and Ferguson. Nowadays it's the status quo for clubs involved in multiple competitions, especially Europe (Sorry Man U).

 Rodgers, though, had a ton of injury issues to deal with last season.  Sakho, Enrique, Johnson, Toure, and Agger all had injury spells, some multiple.  Here are those line-ups along with their stats:

				M	GA	GAPM	CS
Johnson	Toure	Agger	Enrique	2	0	0.00	2
Johnson	Skrtel	Agger	Enrique	1	0	0.00	1
Johnson	Skrtel	Agger	Cissohko	2	0	0.00	2
Johnson	Skrtel	Sakho	Flanagan	3	2	0.67	1
Toure	Skrtel	Agger	Sakho	1	1	1.00	0
Flanagan	Skrtel	Toure	Cissohko	4	4	1.00	1
Johnson	Skrtel	Agger	Flanagan	5	5	1.00	2
Toure	Skrtel	Sakho		5	7	1.40	0
Flanagan	Skrtel	Agger	Johnson	2	3	1.50	1
Wisdom	Skrtel	Sakho	Enrique	1	2	2.00	0
Johnson	Skrtel	Agger	Flanagan	2	4	2.00	0
Johnson	Skrtel	Sakho	Cissohko	1	2	2.00	0
Johnson	Skrtel	Sakho	Agger	1	2	2.00	0
Johnson	Skrtel	Sakho	Flanagan	5	10	2.00	0
Johnson	Skrtel	Toure	Cissohko	2	5	2.50	0
Johnson	Skrtel	Toure	Flanagan	1	3	3.00	0

Those are sorted by goals allowed per match and if we break it down per player:

	ms	ga	gapm	cs	cs%
Agger	16	15	0.94	8	0.50
Cissohko	9	11	1.22	3	0.33
Johnson	27	36	1.33	9	0.33
Toure	15	20	1.33	3	0.20
Skrtel	36	50	1.39	8	0.22
Flanagan	22	31	1.41	5	0.23
Sakho	17	26	1.53	1	0.06

It's pretty clear our most valuable player on the back line is Agger.  It's not even close.  In fact, we only had 2 clean sheets without him.  What's disappointing is Sakho appears to be the biggest liability.  One clean sheet in 17 starts and the highest goal allowed per match average at 1.53.

I'm not sure what Rodgers plans on doing since it was pretty clear by the end of last season that Skrtel and Sakho were his first choice centre backs.  If they continue last year's form, that's not acceptable.  Agger is our best defensive back and I don't know what else proof the gaffer needs.  We will not win the league next year unless we shore up our defense, no matter what hard decisions need to be made.  I like Sakho, but if that means sitting him, so be it.

The age-old debate: Coutinho vs Ozil

Ever since Michael Owen trolled Arsenal fans by claiming Coutinho is superior to Ozil, an endless debate has spawned.  One thing before we look at their complete stats from last season.  They usually don't play the same position, but when Coutinho plays central midfield, Ozil's primary position, the Brazilian has the higher production.  I'll explain more after the stats.

	Coutinho	Ozil
age	22	25
app (sub)	28(5)	25(1)
mins	2323	2139
goals	5	5
assists	7	9
chances	64	76
npg90	0.19	0.21
gcp90	0.47	0.59
ccp90	2.5	3.2
ap90	0.27	0.38
ccv	10.8	11.9
pass %	80.6	88
bp %	36.7	41.5
sacc %	28.7	60
shot %	7	16.7
TTI90	11	12.4

As you can see, Ozil edges out in most every stat, but he should.  He's older, more experienced and usually plays the same position, central attacking midfielder.  Which takes us back to my aforementioned point.

Coutinho played 16 matches at central midfield and in those matches he scored 3 goals and served up 7 assists.  At that rate, had he played all his matches at that spot, he would have probably had more impressive stats than his Arsenal counterpart.

It's all speculation in the end, but to be honest, if Coutinho puts up the same numbers as Ozil in three years, I will be slightly disappointed.  He's nearly at that level now and he's potentially much better.  Rodgers wouldn't trade the Brazilian for the German and neither would I.