Liverpool’s “Losers” and Mental Scarring

http://tomkinstimes.com/2013/03/liverpools-losers-and-mental-scarring/

By Dan Kennett.

I’m very interested in the sporting psychology around “mentality”, “baggage” and “scarring”.

I believe that most sportsmen become scarred by repeated losses and defeat.

The starting point for this is that since the start of the 2009/10 Premier League season, Liverpool have lost one in three games. The Reds’ full record is P144 W61 D35 L48.

I then wanted to look at the “senior players” who’ve been with the club throughout that period. I collected detailed data for Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Gerrard and Lucas (starts only).

(Note: it doesn’t take into account the quality of the opposition.)

P W D L Loss% Win%
All 144 61 35 48 33.3% 42.4%
Johnson 102 46 22 34 33.3% 45.1%
Skrtel 109 41 28 40 36.7% 37.6%
Agger 88 40 20 28 31.8% 45.5%
Gerrard 94 38 25 31 33.0% 40.4%
Lucas 92 42 20 30 32.6% 45.7%

Looking at the headline numbers, it’s remarkable to think that a talented footballer like Glen Johnson has lost 34 of the 102 league games he’s played for Liverpool. It’s a staggering number of defeats.

Martin Skrtel has only won one more league game than he’s lost in four years (41 to 40). Again that’s simply astonishing.

Four of the five players are close to the average loss rate of 33.33%. The relative performance of Lucas and Agger is not significant. Skrtel stands out as his personal loss rate is over 3% worse then the overall figure.

In terms of wins, Johnson, Lucas and Agger are all aboot 3% above the club win rate. Skrtel again is the big exception being 5% below.

Next I looked at results depending on how many of them start:

Number of Starters P W D L Loss% Win%
5 12 7 0 5 41.7% 58.3%
4 58 22 16 20 34.5% 37.9%
3 49 21 15 13 26.5% 42.9%
2 21 10 5 6 28.6% 47.6%
1 4 0 0 4 100.0% 0.0%

When all five start the team win% is up to 58% but loss rate also 42%. Interestingly, eight of the 12 occurrences have been this season under Rodgers and the record is W4 (Southampton H, West Ham A, Fulham H, Sunderland H) L4 (WBA A, Villa H, Stoke A, Man Utd A)

When only one of them starts there’s a 100% loss rate. A total of 107 of the matches feature either three or four of them starting but the results show better win% with three than four, so I moved onto “without you” analysis.

Last table is where one of the five does not play but three or four of the others do play. The results here are extremely interesting

Combo P W D L Loss% Win% PPG
No Skrtel 29 17 7 5 17.2% 58.6% 2.00
No Agger 35 12 10 13 37.1% 34.3% 1.22
No Lucas 40 15 14 11 27.5% 37.5% 1.48
No Gerrard 32 14 7 11 34.4% 43.8% 1.53
No Johnson 20 6 8 6 35.7% 30.0% 1.31

Here we see Skrtel doesn’t start and the team win% goes up to a very good 58% while the four-year loss% is almost halved to 17%. Points per game is a Champions-League-like 2.00.

The absence of Agger looks key as the team only has a 31% win rate without him and the loss% rockets to 41%. PPG plummets to a Hogdson-esque 1.22

Lucas is a curious one, perhaps counter-intuitive. The numbers suggest that the team doesn’t lose that many when he’s absent but don’t win many either.

The numbers without Gerrard are very close to the overall team performance in the four years (win 42%, lose 33%)

Johnson is the other interesting one along with Agger. When’s he absent the team lose more and find it much harder to win. The first part of this again seems somewhat counter-intuitive as the narrative is that Johnson can’t defend and he contributes to defeats.

The most important combination appears to be Agger and Johnson starting. That’s happened in just over half the league games in the last four years (73 out of 144). The record with both of them is a respectable P73, W35, D16, L22, a win rate of 48% and a loss rate of 30% (1.66 PPG, 63 points for a season)

In games where Agger and Johnson start and Skrtel is absent the numbers are P23 W13 D5 L5 (1.91 PPG)

Trying to sum up, there does seem to be the makings of a case to say that the most important factor in Liverpool getting better results is if the talented but nervy Martin Skrtel is not in the team. His absence looks to be more significant than any other combination of players. A classic case of addition by subtraction?

 

Interesting but it all seems to mean nothing.

 

It is interesting but there are like 2000 other variables left out which makes the stats utterly useless as they are an incomplete set.

For example, Johnson's mere presence alters the way an opponent may approach a game. This type of thing amongst many others are not and cannot be accounted for. I guess this sort of analasys is better applied to cricket Baseball and such sports imo

Also there are games where Skrtel has been left exposed which are not factored in.

These figures tie into individual games and their dynamics in no way.

 

The fundamental premise is also pretty flawed. Bale's zero win percentage in his first two seasons for Spurs has hardly left him scarred has it? I seriously doubt Agger and Johnson are thinking "Skrtel's in the team, we lose 16.9% more games when that happens, **** it let's give up"

What might be more interesting would be the psychology of the team and their performances as a whole. It seems over the last few years that whenever criticism of the team is at its highest and you're sitting in around 8th or 9th place there's an immediate response and you go on a run of games up the table. Then as soon as the optimism builds and you start to look like you could get top four it all goes to pieces. Thus no matter what players you bring in or let go you have ended up bouncing around from 6th to 8th.

The same argument could be applied to other teams recently - Everton seem to do the same kind of thing keeping them around 6th-8th, every season Arsenal look like falling out of the top four but always do just enough when the pressure is on, and Wigan spend every season flirting with relegation only to pull a good run out of the bag in the last minute. Surprised more journos, particularly the ones with a love for sports psych, haven't looked at those areas in more detail.

 

I think it suggests how highly we rate our defenders but in reality they are simply not as good as we think. Of course, the losses and draws could be due to us not scoring as many as we should too though

 

Fist bit Exactly. I am of the opinion his nerve has gone somewhat and being left exposed to certain players by the midfield just makes it worse. Like Rio he is much better acing play than running back or being pulled out wide.

Second bit..
Expectation is a bitch

I've been asking of late about sports psych, it is important. I do blame Wigan's crap players on their demise and I do blame Wenger for Arsenal losing their momentum at the end of every season, he buys good players but relies on these few better than average players too much over the length of a season, the mental and physical toll on them I think comes into play in the final third of a season. Only when he had ample cover of quality players did he achieve success consistently.

Everton have some good players balancing out not so good players so mid table seems accurate given his resources.

All of this is of course is just my opinion

Confidence is everything, but it must be a confidence in the team as much as in yourself!!

 

I found that pretty interesting and confirms to me Skirts really isn't that good.

 

20 years and 0 losses that is the statistic facing CM Punk, ooooooooohhhhhhhhhh yes he is the greatest

 

You could probably massage stats to make most players look bad. results in games he's played in is just not enough to make any kind of assumptions without the actual individual game facts imo

 

I prefer to use my eyes, they tell me Skrtel isn't top notch without the need for stats

 

It ain't about Skrtel, we lose when the team plays **** lets not start blaming one player

 

This isn't a new development, I've moaned about Skrtel for a long time now He'll still get my backing whilst wearing a red shirt but I think its an area in need of improvement.

 

We can improve in a lot of areas

 

True!

 

Let's not forget who was the better of our centre backs for most of last season Gerrez Let's be honest we all knew Skrtel wasn't going to particularly suit a game where the manager asks the defenders to pass it between them 30 times before going forward. He, like the rest of our defence was always going to suffer having the full backs playing practically as wingers and a midfield that's more open than Arkwrights corner shop.

These stats mean little as there are so many other things not taken into account.

 

A few stats and all of a sudden one of our players is utter scheite apparently. Our team have been scheite and defenders can't hide neither can keepers, the rest can hide on the pitch when not playing well.


Not lost on me that Skrts and Agger have looked a lot less accomplished in the time Lucas has been out.

 

I'm not forgetting. I actually praised him a lot last year because he was great, didn't he get voted the club player of the year too? However, out of all the seasons he's been at the club, last season is the odd one out

I actually think Skrtel is pretty decent on the ball, not as good as Agger but much better than Coats and Carragher.

As I said before, I don't judge players on stats

 

Quite right too (the stats bit wasn't aimed at you btw).

My issue with Skrtel is that he's decent but that's about it, we could do better....however knowing our buying record we could also do a lot worse

 

Was that another agreement Billy?

 

Need players with ambition and drive, along with good quality skill ( see summer signings thread).