Snak

Nu har Liverpool været under angreb på bold.dk med at de kun ligger som de gør fordi ligaen er ekstra svag denne sæson.
Det her link viser ihvertfald at den er ikke svagere end den plejer

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOu_AXmWsAA5Cu3?format=png&name=360x360

Man kan også sammenligne med de andre store europæiske ligaer og se, hvad resten af topfire har høstet af point indtil videre. Det er heller ikke med til at tegne et billede af, at toppen af PL er historisk svag.

Da ManC vandt i 17/18 med 19 point til nr.2 - 100 point og en en masse andre rekorder, blev det af mange udråbt som det bedste hold ever i PL. Nu ved jeg ikke hvordan det ender, men tvivler nu på at de andre klubber fans, vil sige dette hold er det stærkeste i historien, osse selvom vi skulle lave 101 point :)

Da ManC vandt i 17/18 med 19 point til nr.2 - 100 point og en en masse andre rekorder, blev det af mange udråbt som det bedste hold ever i PL

Tror du har ret i at det ikke vil blive anerkendt. Alene det at vi kun ligger som vi gør pga. VAR til vores fordel, held og maginaler, historisk svag Big 6, fortæller jo at alle allerede har taget deres forholdsregler for at forklejne vores sæson.

Fribytter, vi er helt enige i dine betragtninger i tråden om Henderson, men jeg tillader mig at flytte over i jeres fine klubtråd :-)

Det, som fascinerer mig dybt ved Klopps tilgang til fodbold, er hans hyldest til HOLDET. Vi snakker om en holdsport, hvor vi alligevel alt for ofte sidder og tænker i individualister.

Jeg elsker at se Messi drysse magi ud over grønsværen. Det tror jeg i bund og grund, at alle fodboldelskere gør. Igennem de årtier, hvor jeg har fulgt fodbold både som fan og som professionel, så har der været mange individualister, som har løftet deres hold. Pelé, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Maradona for at nævne nogle af de store.

Når Liverpool spiller og Klopp står på sidelinien, så virker det oftere, som om det er HOLDET, som løfter de enkelte spillere, end de enkelte spillere, der løfter holdet.

Derfor ser jeg heller ikke Liverpool falde sammen de kommende år. Heller ikke selv om der forsvinder et par spillere i ny og næ.

Klopp har skabt en rød tråd i klubbens arbejde, hvor ingen synes uundværlige. Det værste, Liverpool kan ryge ind i, er en ny manager, som vil klippe tråden over og starte sit eget projekt op.

Klopps filosofi er langtidsholdbar i en hel anden grad end mange andre managers.

Jeg tror, at I som fans har taget hul på en spændende nutid, men i den grad også en spændende fremtid. Udefra set ser det ud til, at Manchester Uniteds fans snart må se sig overhalet af "lillebror", som en af dem udtrykte det i kamptråden.

Held og lykke, Fribytter, og i øvrigt tak for dine mange indlæg i klubtråden, hvor du gavmildt deler ud af din indsigt.

PS: Håber ikke, jeg træder nogen over tæerne ved at bevæge mig herind...

@Positiv fodbold. Så indspist tror og håber jeg ikke at nogen af de her klubtråde er. Sålænge det ikke er den slags mudderkast, som tilsyneladende er mere reglen end undtagelsen i artikeltrådene, så er alle da velkomne. Jeg er i øvrigt helt enig i det du skriver. Det er vanvittigt hvad Klopp har bygget på så kort tid.

Ja, This Is Anfield, I er ramt af den danske nationalsygdom: Misundelse er en grim ting!

Og helt ærligt, så kan jeg da godt forstå, at andre fans er misundelige ... og måske irriterede ... og at Liverpool pludselig er i den røde førertrøje og så med et projekt, som ser meget langtidsholdbart ud.

Jeg er så heldig, at jeg bare nyder god fodbold, så jeg kan i den grad nyde Liverpool i øjeblikket :-)

Det tror jeg du har ret i. Og det er sådanset også forståeligt. Det kammer bare lidt over ind imellem ;)

Tror bestemt osse, at fremtiden igen ser lys ud. Økonomien er kommet på fode igen, efter klubben var i knæ og så har fodbold bare udviklet sig meget udenfor banen de sidste par år. Jeg skal ikke gøre mig klog på hvordan vores konkurrenter rekrutterer spillere, men jeg læste for et stykke tid siden, dette interview med direktøren for rekruttering’s afdelingen Ian Graham. Han har en doktorgrad indenfor teoretisk fysik :)

DUBNER: Dan, thank you. Lucy Woodall, Oliver Steeds thank you so much for telling us about your mission. And would you please welcome our final guest this evening. He is, as chance would have it, one of the men responsible for bringing the Mayor of London’s favorite soccer player, Mohamed Salah, to Liverpool. Would you please welcome the director of research at Liverpool Football Club, Mr. Ian Graham. Ian, great to have you here. Congratulations on the Champions League trophy. I’m sure that was mostly your doing.

Ian GRAHAM: Yeah. Oh, only 80 percent.

DUBNER: Let’s start with the discovery idea. Which football player would you claim as your favorite discovery?

GRAHAM: So it’s important to say that signing a player is a multidisciplinary exercise. So you’ve got the traditional methods of scouting, some newer methods of video scouting, the coaches and the manager have to be on board and enthusiastic about the player. My role is the data-analysis side of analyzing football, which is the newer side. And the sorts of players that I really like are players who shine through in the data, but don’t naturally shine through for your typical football fan or even your typical scout. These are sort of awkward, ungainly- looking players or players that have been overlooked for various other purposes. One of my favorite players is Andy Robertson, our left back, one of the best left backs in Europe, and now European champion of course.

DUBNER: And is he horribly ugly or something? What was the problem?

GRAHAM: No, so, Andy Robinson’s problem was his background as much as anything. So he only started playing English Premier League football maybe at the age of 22. And he played for Hull City, which was not a very good football team. They got relegated from the Premier League. And he was the best young fullback in Britain at the time. He was a really strange case of a really attacking fullback playing in a really poor defensive team.

DUBNER: And which metrics particularly could you look at that would identify that ability?

GRAHAM: So we get data on every ball touch that every player makes in a game, where it was on the pitch, and what happened next. We can see where all of the players are, at 25 frames per second. It’s done with optical tracking. The same technology that is used for missile-tracking, originally. It’s much easier to track a person than a missile. They travel a little slower.

DUBNER: Can you name just one or two on-field metrics that are measurable, that really matter a lot, but which are not obvious to fans and maybe even managers and scouts, but you can identify in the data?

GRAHAM: Yes. That’s a really good question. We tried to put everything into one currency. So football is measured in goals because that’s what gets you a win. We try to take whatever action a player does on a pitch — whether it’s a pass or a shot or a tackle if you’re a defender — and ask the question, “What was this team’s chance of scoring a goal before this action happened?” And then, “What was this team’s chance of scoring a goal after that action happened?” And we call that “goal probability added,” which is a really catchy name. The thing that I’m really obsessed about is the risk-reward payoff of passes. So, some of the best passers in the game have some of the lowest pass-completion percentages in the game. And that’s because the risk-reward payoff is very, very skewed in soccer or football. We are in London, not in New York. So it’s very easy to massage your statistics and get a high pass-completion percentage by playing very conservative passes that do nothing for your team’s chance of scoring a goal. And the passes I really love are the passes that go in behind the opposition defense, that take four or five defenders out of the game. Those passes are really hard to make. But someone who gets those passes correct half the time would be a world-class attacking midfielder.

DUBNER: That is really fascinating, and a great illustration. Is it difficult to identify those high-risk passes in the data?

GRAHAM: When we look through the lens of the data, it’s not a perfect lens, you see a smeared-out view because you don’t see all of the details of exactly how much pressure this player was under or exactly where the defenders were. But the players who play a full season of football attempt that sort of pass, or the good ones at least, attempt that sort of pass often enough that the law of large numbers starts coming into play, and you can get a good statistical reading of the player.

DUBNER: So let me ask you this: you got a Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Cambridge. I didn’t mean to laugh at that part—

GRAHAM: It’s a good university.

DUBNER: Yeah, no— but how do you go from that pursuit to analyzing football?

GRAHAM: Lots of luck and questionable career decisions is the answer. So I was doing a post-doc after my Ph.D. and responded to an advert that asked, “Would you like to do football statistics for a living?”

DUBNER: So it was pretty straightforward, really.

GRAHAM: Yeah.

DUBNER: All right, so let me just ask you a very basic question: in your job as director of research for Liverpool Football Club, in which way is analytics more important — on-field play, the actual game and the athletes? Or the allocation of resources when it comes to buying and selling players?

GRAHAM: So, it can help a lot with both things but the place where it really can help is the acquisition of players in terms of helping our scouting process. In Premier League football and European football in general, there’s a worldwide free market of football players. So if we spot a player that we would like to play for Liverpool and we can pay the price that the selling club demands, then we can buy him. And the real power of data analysis is when the data set is large. We have detailed data on hundreds of thousands of players. Maybe only five percent of those would be anywhere near a Premier League level player. But that’s still 5,000 players, which is too big a set of players to scout everyone in depth and in detail. So we can really help that filtering and identification process.

DUBNER: Now, I understand that you played a role in hiring Jürgen Klopp, the manager of Liverpool now. Correct?

GRAHAM: Yes, it’s a small role.

DUBNER: Tell us about that quickly.

GRAHAM: So our owners, and me and all my colleagues were huge fans of Jürgen and his Dortmund team. In the early 2010s they played the most exciting brand of football in Europe and coming from a place really not of financial dominance. So they won the German Bundesliga twice, at a huge financial deficit compared to Bayern Munich. And so he was always one of our dream hires for a manager. But his last season at Dortmund was disastrous. So they were in the relegation zone. And the German media said it’s all over for Dortmund, Klopp’s lost it, and there’s no way back for them. Our analysis showed something quite different. Which was that they were still clearly the second-best team in Germany. But the performances did not match the results. So I analyzed 10 seasons of Bundesliga performances, and Dortmund were the second-unluckiest team in that 10-year history. It was just some terrible luck that cost Jürgen that one season.

DUBNER: In addition to being a wildly successful manager with Liverpool and Dortmund before, Jürgen Klopp also appears to be an extraordinarily kind and thoughtful human being. Can you please tell us about something horrible that he’s done?

GRAHAM: I’m going to have to disappoint you, I’m afraid. My concern about Jürgen was his act that you see on the cameras every week, was just that, an act, and that the real person would be someone different. But it really isn’t.

DUBNER: That is disappointing.

GRAHAM: It’s very disappointing. I mean, data analysis, because it’s new and because football is a very conservative sport, it’s something that is difficult to get across and it’s very understandable for a manager who has a hundred other things to worry about to just say, “You know what, I’m not interested in this.” But Jürgen took the time and was kind enough to let me explain our approach. He understood it and appreciated it, which already puts him in the top 5 percent of managers, in my opinion.

DUBNER: Okay, but I’ve got something on him. I’ve also read that when Klopp came to Liverpool, and you needed a striker, that you brought to Klopp a list of what you thought were the 10 best available strikers. And at the top of the list I believe, was Mohamed Salah, who at that point was playing for Roma. And Klopp came to you and said, “This list, my friend, Ian Graham, is not good enough. We don’t want those players. Give me more.” You gave him more, then he said, “These are even worse.” And then went back, and ultimately you did hire Mo Salah. So what did he not see that the rest of you did see, and how much nicer was he to you after it all worked out well?

GRAHAM: So luckily enough, in the aggressive way that Jürgen would have asked this question, I wasn’t the person that he was demanding these answers from.

DUBNER: Can we do some role-play? I’ll be you and you’ll be him. Sorry. I’ll be the person who’s not you, that he’s yelling at and you’ll be him. So what would he say?

GRAHAM: I’m afraid my German accent would be culturally insensitive.

DUBNER: Do you want to do it in a neutral— you’re Welsh, yes? Do you want to just do it in neutral Welsh then, and we’ll imagine?

GRAHAM: Well, I think so. The process that we go through is to—

DUBNER: I can tell by your dissembling you’re not going to tell me, are you?

GRAHAM: Oh yeah. I can be direct if you like. No.

DUBNER: So Liverpool, you, paid Roma $41 million for Salah, yes?

GRAHAM: I’m not sure about the exchange rate, but sounds about right.

DUBNER: What’s he worth now — I realize he’s only a year-and-a-bit into a five-year contract.

GRAHAM: Yes, that’s true, and he’s not for sale.

DUBNER: If he were, what’s he worth of the transfer market right now do you think?

GRAHAM: I think if we could benchmark him against a recent player that we sold, that was Philip Coutinho, to Barcelona, your minimum starting bid would be 150 million euros.

DUBNER: Yeah.

GRAHAM: At which point the answer would be, “No. Stop wasting our time.”

DUBNER: Last year, you had a phenomenal year. Won the Champions League. Came in second in the Prem, with enough points to have won in just about any other year. So there is this statistical concept we all know called regression to the mean, which suggests that a particularly good result — or a particularly bad result — is usually followed by a more average result. So considering your season last year, how many trophies do you think Liverpool wins this year?

GRAHAM: Well, I shall give you a straight answer. Just over half. And let me give you the details and you can check, the bookmakers kind of agree with our internal opinion, which is nice. So Premier League, 25 percent. Champions League, maybe 12 to 15 percent. League Cup, 12 percent. FA Cup, 12. So the chance of at least one trophy is greater than 50 percent.

DUBNER: Which trophy do you want more this year?

GRAHAM: Premier League. Well, as a rational person I should say the Champions League, because the income, the difference between winning the Champions League and the semifinal for example, absolutely dwarfs the difference between first and fourth in the Premier League. So rationally, I’d take the Champions League.

DUBNER: Does the director of research get a pretty nice cut from the Champions League victory?

GRAHAM: A small cut.

DUBNER: Do you want to tell us how small?

GRAHAM: I do not.

DUBNER: Dan Schreiber do you have some other football discoveries to share with us?

SCHREIBER: Yeah, I discovered that for the last 12 years there is an annual football cup that’s been played, called the Tolstoy’s Cup. Have you heard of that, Ian?

GRAHAM: I have not.

SCHREIBER: It’s amazing. Okay, there’s only two teams that play actually. It’s the War Studies Department at King’s College London and the Peace Studies Department at the University of Bradford. So they’ve met 12 times. Peace has beaten war eight games to four. And then this is — I got told this by a fellow researcher, I really hope it’s true. As part of a holistic training regime, footballers at Sweden’s Östersunds football club are contractually obliged to read Dostoyevsky. I don’t know if that’s put into your training with Liverpool.

GRAHAM: It’s not mandatory. It’s advisory.

DUBNER: Dan, good stuff. So Ian, I’m guessing you’re not aware of this but Freakonomics Radio actually sponsors a soccer team, or football club. They’re called Dun Cow FC. They’re in Shrewsbury, and this began with an email out of the blue from the club’s media manager and third-string goalkeeper. His name is Alex Simpson and we decided to sponsor the club when we realized that Alex Simpson was actually 15 years old at the time, and had worked up the gumption to write and ask for sponsorship. His dad is the team’s manager and the star player on the team is his older brother. So Dun Cow, they are a Sunday league amateur club who are playing right now about 17 tiers below the Premier League. But they’ve received three promotions in the past few years so it’s possible that in 17 more years, they’ll be playing with you in the Premier League.
And Alex Simpson is now studying history and politics at Keele University, and he’s actually here tonight and he’s got something for you, Ian Graham. Alex, would you come on up? So what we’ve got here is an official Dun Cow FC jersey. Freakonomics Radio logo on the breast. And you can see on the back, “Graham.” So, before you actually take permanent ownership of it though, Ian, let me ask Alex to ask you — Alex, I know that your ultimate goal is to get Dun Cow all the way to the Prem, and you’ve got here a guy who probably has some good analytics software he could maybe loan you. And I’m just curious if you have a shot here with Ian Graham and he’s on the spot and you’ve just given him a beautiful free jersey with his name on it. I think you should try to get some info from him.

Alex SIMPSON: So we’ve just been building our squad for the new season and there’s one position we think we slightly could do with an extra body there, which is a quick center back who can also play at right back, like Joe Gomez for Liverpool. So from your analytic side, what we should see in those players?

GRAHAM: And you’re — you’re playing the 17th tier of English football? So the fuel of data analysis is data, and in the English game, our data probably only goes down to the eighth level. We might know some names of players that low. So in terms of specific recommendations, I’m stuck.

DUBNER: You seemed so nice up until this moment.

GRAHAM: Without data, I’m nothing. I mean, my general observations about lower-league football is that the level of quality flattens out quick, so as you go down the levels, the impact of athleticism becomes higher and higher and higher. So just get big strong players who can run for 90 minutes, because that’s going to be your limiting factor.

DUBNER: I am curious, though. Alex, when you’re trying to recruit players to an amateur team, you’re dealing with different issues than just athleticism — like reliability, right?

SIMPSON: One hundred percent. One hundred percent, yeah.

DUBNER: And I know that, Ian, even at the top level of all sports, there are athletes who are 100 percent on the physical-ability scale and very low on the reliability scale.

GRAHAM: Yeah, absolutely.

DUBNER: Do you have anything to help Alex scout for reliability?

GRAHAM: That’s a really good question. Many years ago, we did a study with an unnamed club’s academy, where we asked the players to rate themselves on talent, and we asked the coaches to rate the players. And we also asked the players, the coaches, a personality questionnaire to say, are you strong-minded, are you punctual? And the correlation between the player’s self-rating of ability and the coaches’ rating of the player’s ability was zero. The coaches’ rating of ability was only correlated with ability to obey instructions and punctuality. So the way to get far, even at sort of good academy level, is to do what your coach says and turn up on time. Those are not necessarily the best players. So if you have a mercurial talent, as long as you can somehow get him on the pitch, they might be difficult to manage, but that’s the sort of player that will be overlooked by your rivals.
DUBNER: Alex, your dad, the manager, is former military. Does he do a pretty good job of getting people to show up and fall in line?

SIMPSON: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, definitely. We have one club rule for signing players, which is “no dickheads.”

GRAHAM: The problem is that if everyone has that rule there’s gonna be a surplus of really talented dickheads that could win you the league.

DUBNER: Ah yes. I love my job, I really do. I’m afraid, however, it’s time for us to go. It’s been a remarkably interesting evening, at least for me, and I very much hope for all of you as well. I have to say, I feel that our faith in the spirit of British discovery has been at least partially restored tonight. Thanks to all our guests tonight: Ian Graham of Liverpool FC and Alex Simpson of Dun Cow FC; Lucy Woodall and Oliver Steeds of Nekton Mission; Oriel Sullivan of University College London; Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London; the truly wonderful Dan Schreiber; but most of all thanks to all of you for listening this week and every week to Freakonomics Radio. Good night.


En anden fra “holdet” er Tim Waskett som er astrofysiker og Will Spearman som har en doktorgrad indenfor filosofi. Det er jo ikke mennesker man umiddelbart forbinder med fodbold :)

Jeg er overbevist om, at Liverpool nok skal få en masse anerkendelse, når mesterskabet er i hus.

@ Positiv Fodbold

Ja, Klopp lægger meget vægt på kollektivet. Taktisk er det ret interessant, hvordan holdet fungerer. Klopps fodbold er blevet kaldt "heavy metal" og "kaosfodbold". Han har selv udtalt, at presspillet er den bedste playmaker. Man kan ikke forstå ret meget af, hvordan Liverpool spiller ved at se på formationen. Klopp er nok den træner i topfodbold, der bruger færrest referencepunkter. Jeg tror næsten, at det kan koges ned til Sacchis berømte fire punkter: bolden, rummet, modstanderen og holdkammeraterne. Det er de fire punkter, der i høj grad styrer holdets struktur og aktioner, og derfor er den indbyrdes koordination på holdet afgørende. Men det betyder også, at det er svært at analysere et typisk Liverpool-angreb eller opspil. Guardiola benytter også et meget flydende koncept, men på trods af at han ikke opererer med fikserede positioner, så har yderpositionerne et større ansvar for holdets struktur, og positionsspillet betyder, at holdet konstant arbejder på at få de rigtige spillere hen i de rigtige zoner - eksempelvis med afleveringsreglen, der er en tommelfingerregel om, at holdet ikke er sat rigtigt op til at angribe, før det har lavet 15 vellykkede afleveringer i træk (og en vellykket aflevering betyder ikke bare, at afleveringen har ramt en medspiller). Imellem yderpositionerne og i positionsspillet er der plads til, at spillerne kan indtage mere spontane eller improviserede positioner, men det er ikke ligegyldigt, hvem der gør hvad.

Det er det i princippet for Klopp. Triggeren er først og fremmest bolden, og derfor er spillernes positioner ofte "tilfældige". Hvis et hold med specialister eller store individualister spillede på den måde, ville spillerne ofte befinde sig "ude af position". Det sker sjældent for Klopps hold, og det skyldes, at spillerne er alsidige og "omstillingsparate". Det handler konstant om overgangspil og bevægelighed. Man behøver ikke at vente på, at en struktur bliver (gen)skabt for at angribe. Det resulterer i en meget direkte spillestil, hvor bolden bliver sat meget på spil, hvorfor genpresset også er et vigtigt offensivt våben. Til sammenligning er genpresset ikke på samme måde vigtigt for Guardiolas offensiv. Jo, det kan skabe omstillinger og føre til chancer, men Guardiola genpresser for ikke at miste struktur og fastholde den organiserede boldbesiddelse. Og positionsspillet gør, at holdet ideelt set er sat op til at genpresse modstanderen ved at have mange spillere tæt på bolden, når den mistes.

Mourinho udtalte vist engang noget i retning af, at man kan kontrollere en kamp ved at kontrollere, hvor modstanderen har bolden. Klopp har føjet nogle ekstra taktiske lag til konceptet. Dels er der en smule mere organiseret boldbesiddelse for bl.a. at spare på kræfterne, når man er foran, og dels fordi modstanderhold ofte er tilfredse med at opgive at angribe for at kunne stå dybt og bevare organisationen. For at løse den udfordring er Liverpool begyndt at slå en del klassiske høje indlæg. Det er dog på mange måder i tråd med det til tider positionsløse koncept.

Der er selvfølgelig også en psykologisk side ved det her Liverpool-hold, som er af enorm betydning. Men for mig at se er taktikken mindst ligeså vigtig og interessant.