About 1.5 - 2 years into Harry's reign I was having a debate with a gooner friend about our club's respective "success-rate" with transfer. As a result both of us went through our clubs' transfers in over the previous five or so years giving a simple "hit" "miss", "n/a" rating. Throughout the Comolli period in my sample I gave us about a 30-odd % "hit" rate. This actually changes to something like 50% post-Harry (he did, after all like his tried and tested like Defoe, Parker etc). Arsene Wenger, who has clearly played the market incredibly very many times, had a "hit" rate of about 50-60% (can't quite remember). Bear in mind, too, that my mate was a little optimistic - a few months into the season and Chamakh was labelled a "hit". This is my point: Even if our transfers this summer have a very good success rate (50ish%) only 3 or 4 of them will turn out to be real "keepers". By that I mean a Walker, a Modric rather then a Pavlyuchenko, a Dos Santos. If our success rate is closer to what it was during the Comolli years then change that to 2-3. Because players are not collections of stats like in a computer game. They are humans who sometimes "click" in a league, in a team and sometimes don't. They make decisions in a game that can make them effective as players or not,they can feel confident, comfortable, worried...(no matter what their "agility" or "stamina" or "skill" level is on a computer game). Bear in mind that we lost some good first team players this summer (Hudd, Gallas, Bale, BAE) have we any right to think that the expected gains of 4 or so (likely max) decent players will leave us with a net gain in good players?
You're not accounting for the supposed Baldini effect though Len... Though, most of them have looked bang average so far.
Alright, but would you rather have Gallas start a league game for us or Chiriches? Even if you disagree (and yeah I understand people might question Hudd too though I'd have loved to have him on the bench today) my main point is about the likely success-rate of the incomers and why it's not even pessimistic to expect half or so of them to fail overall.
Didn't see the EUFA game but Chiriches was supposed to be very good I hear. Gallas we got at the twilight of his career and he was too slow and full of himself.
What's happening with Lamela? Incredible talent, but has clearly not set the world alight, yet. In fact, he is not even starting that many games for you.
ah yes - the Baldini effect. Well we can't even start to judge him yet but I'll say this (and I think it was played out when Arnesen and Comolli were DOFS): if you appoint someone where a large part of his job is player recruitment aren't they immediately encouraged to make lots of signings? Whether that position is needed or not? Cos you know they're good and available at a good price? I know Baldini has many other responsibilities too, BTW. We certainly had a scatter-gun approach to signings with our other DOFs. And sometimes the successes were excellent. But it does seem to be the case that with DOFs we sign more players and less of them succeed. (Perhaps, if you're always signing loads of players, less of them can get into the team and become a success by definition).
Being eased in, apparently. Villas-Boas said something about language and culture adjustment, but Sigurdsson's also been playing well. Shown some decent bits and bobs in the cups, but he's probably not ready to start in the league, yet.
His distribution was massively awful v Villa. Some moments of OK defending but he looks a little raw to me.
It's a bit soon to assess seven players, none of whom had kicked a ball in the PL before and all of whom will need to learn to adapt to the pace, energy and physicality of English football.
I'm not assessing players. I'm assuming that previous success-rates of transfers will be some judge as to future and present success-rates. Not exactly hard science but it sort of suggests that all 7 will not succeed, 5 or 6 succeeding is highly unlikely, 4 is not very likely and 3 is pretty likely. 2 or 1 would also be highly unlikely. But let's hope that Baldini is more like one of the best in the business at transfers and we get that 50-60% success-rate and 4 of them come good. Though I'm happy if more do, of course. Unlikely things happen.
Oh - and I was mentioning this home-made stat in the pre-season too when people were convinced that we had seven world-beaters absolutely nailed-on to improve the team. Transfers are always risky - I seem to say that a lot. Unfortunately they also get fans excited. So then I have to say it some more.
Lenny, its a fair point as im not trying to get arrogant but I had a conversation on here with YV and said I expect some of our players will be flops and its unrealistic to expect all to be a success and I feel overall we made far too many signings. This is why there is a chance we will finish 6th or 7th, especially as now we lost heavy, who are the leaders in midfield? too many mixed internationals and another point I made pre season was we need more players who are proven here. Experience is crucial, especially when signing a high number of players. currently the balance isn't right and its going to take time before we know the full potential of this squad.
Yeah. Dawson is a good example of how a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And why Harry's policy of mainly tried and tested PL players had a decent success rate. You know what you're gonna get with Defoe, Parker, Gallas, Crouch etc.
Lamela hasn't had a chance yet in a run of games, at the moment he is just chucked on when Avb thinks we need a different approach yet unfortunately it looks like the lad is lost and unsure of his role, yet how can he gain confidence if he doesn't play? Similar to Holtby last year. I remember you had Pires who took a year to settle , maybe Lamela will be the same yet he also had the incident of his brother being kidnapped and getting to grips with the pace of our game.
capoue - looked good chiriches - too early to say lamela - too early to say eriksen - too early to say; 1 great game, 2 really poor games. chadli - too early to say soldado - should be a good asset to the squad. not top class though and several better strikers in the league. paulinho - squad player at absolute best; poor pass, poor touch, poor shot, poor decision making.
Ridiculous after 10 games together! soldado won't be top class? He's been unlucky at best and rushed or underconfident at worst. Scored in spain. Let's see if he can do it here! As for paulinho, starting brazilian CM? he should come good. Brazilian bbc footy pundit really rated him. Give them all time and we will make it work.
I agree that we cannot make judgements on the players yet. But what we can do is be realistic and understand that several of them will most likely not make it at Spurs. Who that is would be speculation at this point. But they ain't all gonna make the grade no matter what their price-tag is. If half of them do that will be success.
Usually you have players that surprise you. God help us if its Chadli! What about Holtby, does he count as a new player who will never get 90 minutes again in the league. What would be interesting is if someone had put together stats on all foreign signings made since the premier league started and what percentage where a long term success.
