Carrick was 9 years ago and Berbatov and Keane were 7 years ago...Levy pissed Liverpool off by complaining about them making an illegal approach...apparently, on top of the £20m they paid for keane they had to make a donation to the Tottenham Charity (reported to be a million quid) in order for us to drop it. United were so annoyed at Levy refusing to bend over on the price that they are not keen to do business with us. Also...all 3 demanded to go, Carrick only had 2 years on his contract left, Berbatov effectively went on strike and keane whacked one out about being a childhood liverpool fan. I think lloris will go abroad...if he goes to united it won't be until after we play them and they will pay a minimum of £30m...That's what they are demandi g for De Gea who only has a year left on his contrac, while Lloris has 4 yrs left. Spurs will not sell Kane as he won't demand a move.
Agreed. But part of the equation is what kind of aerial threat he’s crossing to. We’re better than most, I’d guess, with Kane, Chadli and a number of big players. If we got Llorente, it would make Trippier likelier to start--if he can actually cross better than Dier, which is debatable. Because Trippier put in more crosses doesn’t mean that he crosses better. I tend to believe in data analysis. Money Ball proved good data analysis beats old hand instincts conclusively. But good data analysis is much easier in a 1v1 game. I’m concerned that analysis in a team game may be a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Stats at least can offer insight, but they may be misleading. Another problem is that goals are such low-probability events that things may never even out, if you know what I mean. Chance may be the crucial factor pretty damn often. Frederic Fazio is a great example of a player stats indicate is much better than he is. He’s our best player and the 17th best player in the PL, according to WhoScored. What the hell, you might ask, as I did. Well, he’s among the leaders in clearances and blocks, and second in aeriel duals won (to Bentecke). The problem in this case is that they don’t have stats for goof-ups leading directly to goals, or times getting burned for pace.
Stats often tell part of the story, but miss out massive chunks of important data. Dier's crossing seemed to improve steadily last season and he was putting in extremely dangerous crosses towards the end of the campaign. That wouldn't show up at all though, as nobody was getting on the end of any of them. Time and again he'd swing in perfectly timed and executed balls and the opposition would watch them sail through the box and out, panicking all the while. Chadli scored plenty of goals and got a number of assists, but was often pretty anonymous in games. Dembele would beat the whole team twice and the make a successful pass, but the move wouldn't go anywhere. Soldado would make endless runs in behind and not get picked out. Stats don't reveal any of this or show what's really going on. They can be useful or utterly misleading.
It's hard to tell at the moment, though it appears that Pritchard and Alli will be given a go. Some of the players have been talking up the latter's training performances and the former's rumoured to have caught Pochettino's eye last season. The pre-season games will give us a better idea. Did you mean McEvoy by the Peterborough lad? He signed a new contract in the summer and got married. Hasn't had a succesful loan yet though, so he might be sent out again to prove himself.
I think that the shortcoming of data analysis in team sports is that there are some things that are unquantifiable. Some players just seem to 'get' each other for example, its hard to statistically quantify effective communication on the pitch. Decision making can be hard to quantify too. Dembele probably has great stats in terms of take-ons and pass completion, but when you consider that most of his plays involve beating his initial marker and then laying the ball off a short distance, normally backwards or sideways, its not surprising that a couple of impressive stats alone do not a successful player make. Thought I'd post this here and in the Pre-Season Thread too - Hugo apparently shattered his wrist over the summer and is being assessed. Probably why he came back a week or so later than Vorm, although he should be ready to go at the start of the season. http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/hugo-update-130715/
I don't think stats about individual players are very useful at all. But analysis of what sort of move is more likely to lead to a goal from a corner, say could be worth a lot, particularly if it could be segregated by how good the defence was, zonal or man-to-man marking etc. I'd be amazed if there wasn't a particular move that was stand out the best - you couldn't use it too often though as people would get used to it but using it more often than usual should give a return. As far as I can tell teams score about one goal per 60 corners which equates to about 4 goals per season. If you could find a way to get it up to one in 50 then that would be one extra goal and about 1 more point. If you can do the same thing for free kicks and corners and knowing this stuff also prevents others scoring from those situations then you might get 6 more points a year. We'd need to spend £100m on players to achieve that.
Not sure where to put this but Levy appears to have broken Lloris's wrist to stop him putting in a transfer request. What it lacks in subtlety it more than makes up for in effectiveness
This opens up a whole new field of transfer maneuvering. Interesting. It’s still tricky to tease out the better tactic from the strategy which fools your opponent. Hitting the ball at the first defender will always be a bad tactic no matter how many times you do it, but trying a pass on the ground to the side of the box may work wonderfully the first time you try it, and then not again the entire season (since everyone saw you score from it, and expects you to do it again.)
Karma for what? Signing a manager who fell out with the saints board for sacking his mate 6 months previously? finishing above you even though we were poor for the first 4 months of the season? Or signing an Athletico madrid player? Liverpool have signed 4 of your players, united 2 and arsenal 1and you have a problem with us? **** me...thought I could be bitter old git but you got me beat
I read somewhere that Filip Lesniak has turned down a new contract with the club and is looking to leave.
I read that he's definitely gone hbic. We seem well stocked in his preferred CM position and he was having to play out of position in defence just to get game time, so its perhaps not too surprising that he refused a contract extension. For anyone else interested, a non-official twitter account that seems to know an awful lot about the Spurs youth setup is @THFCacademy (I am in no way affiliated FYI)
If Liverpool are getting Benteke I think we should try to get Lambert in, there's no way he's going to get games and we could use a decent striker to bring off the bench. Add in Berahino and Illaremendi on loan and I'll be very happy. Doubt we have much chance with that last one though
It's because they're our "direct rival", RCL. You know, finishing 8th and 7th in consectutive seasons, their highest ever in the Prem, makes them our equal because we've only finished 4th twice and 5th five times (add a 6th too) in ten seasons. Their manager, staff and players prefer us to staying put at St Mary's (same goes for Pool, Utd and Arsenal, too) and they're yet to beat us since coming back into the Prem but of course, us and Soton are clearly direct rivals, if you can't see that then I suggest you get your head tested, RCL, because our friend sa1nts clearly sees it ()
As I said a while ago, Liverpool signing Benteke would be a mistake: trying to fit in Sturridge, Benteke, Firminho, Origi, and Ings - and that's assuming Balotelli and Lambert will be sold this summer - is going to unbalance the side and lead to unrest as at least one of that list won't be getting many games.
