Dicks Nephew

[Mystic]

James Pearce was saying last night that we are ready to spend £50million on him, £50million?!?! That's crazy money. This post is simply to ask the question, is he really worth it?

I get it, I've seen him play, and indeed he's looked very very good, I'm not convinced best in the league good, as you'd expect for £50m, but still very impressive. However Lovren looked very good at Southampton, Schneiderlin looked very good at Southampton, heck even Yoshida and Fonte looked good at Southampton, fast forward to now and none of them look anywhere near as good as they did, and some look outright terrible.

My point is simple, are we once again being fooled into buying a player who excels in a very good system, as opposed to a player who is very good full stop? For me when you're paying this much for a player you need to see more, you need to see a player who's either in a top top team and performing, or a player who's so clearly above his level so it's obvious he'd make the move up, do I see that in VVD? Well I see a good defender who's excelling in a team that's got a reputation of being a very solid unit, I'm not so sure he'll look so good when Milner and Clyne are up field and he's being front up one on one by some cunt on a mission from a relegation fodder club. Add that on to the fact that he's currently out with an ACL, this has all the warning signs of another massive transfer miscalculation.

Can anyone convince me that this is indeed the transfer to solve our defensive frailties and that Virgil will be a perfect fit for our team? Because at the moment I can't help but fear that it's going to be Diagnosis: Flop.

 

[Hansern]

Isnt he out with an ankle injury?

He was very good for Celtic and has been very good for Holland. He'll be a boss signing for the club that gets him.
Seeing as Arsenal, City, ourselves and Chelsea want him, its pretty safe to say he's the real deal.

50 mill is bonkers but transfer fees are so inflated anyway. We'll get 20-25 mill for Sakho for Christs sake.
If we can get him, I'd sign him in a heartbeat. Our centre backs will be sorted for years with Matip, Gomez and van Djik.

 

[keniget]

Given that he's supposedly a top target for Chelsea and City it's probably a moot point anyways.

 

[Rosco]

If we buy him its further proof that we're destined to never win the league again.

We're the stupidest football club on the planet

 

[gkmacca]

It'll be a moral lesson for our idiotic transfer committee. Rodgers said recently: “There is maybe an issue with scouts. When I was at Liverpool I asked about Van Dijk and he was at Groningen and then at Celtic. But I was told he wouldn’t be for us at the time.”

 

[Oliver Twist]

Ok, Brendan.

 

[Hansern]

Yeah Brendan, I bet you did.

 

[Hansern]

If we buy him its further proof that we're destined to never win the league again.

We're the stupidest football club on the planet

Because?

 

[Kay Age El]

First of all, If I was asked about whether I thought he was a player that would improve us, I wouldn't hesitate for one second - he sure is. He is a really good defender with some qualities we haven't had in the team for a long while.

Secondly the fees have gone crazy so I find it difficult to say whether it's the 'right' fee, however as has been said it goes both ways so if we get £25M for Sakho I see Virgil as as £25M signing in that light given we'd recouped half his fee on a player we've so clearly written off completely.

 

[Kay Age El]

If we buy him its further proof that we're destined to never win the league again.

We're the stupidest football club on the planet

I am not sure I understand your reasoning, care to elaborate?

 

[gkmacca]

The last time we got a genuinely top class centre back, when he was relatively unknown and cheap, was Sami - and that was when a former centre back, Ron Yeats, was chief scout. Obviously that isn't to suggest we should keep appointing a new chief scout to match the position that's a priority, but maybe it might do some good if we deployed two or three or so of the ex-pros we have hanging around the club - Molby, maybe, Hansen, Carragher and Gerrard - to go and assess some of the prospects out there, because there's little evidence the scouts we have know what the feck they're doing.

 

[Mors]

Rodgers going full Comolli

 

[FoxForceFive]

Perhaps, but whilst I'm sure many ex-managers & execs at clubs have these stories, I'm inclined to believe some of these simply because even at the time there were articles & reports of the transfer committee making decisions against the will of many at the club.

 

[Oliver Twist]

Undoubtedly. But if Rodgers came out and said which signings of his turned out to be spuds, it'd give this type of story a little more credence.

As it is, he just sounds like a know-it-all cunt.

 

[dantes]

The last time we got a genuinely top class centre back, when he was relatively unknown and cheap, was Sami - and that was when a former centre back, Ron Yeats, was chief scout. Obviously that isn't to suggest we should keep appointing a new chief scout to match the position that's a priority, but maybe it might do some good if we deployed two or three or so of the ex-pros we have hanging around the club - Molby, maybe, Hansen, Carragher and Gerrard - to go and assess some of the prospects out there, because there's little evidence the scouts we have know what the feck they're doing.

Which of those ex-pros have the requisite degree or indeed could in any way be trusted to analyse even the simplest data set?

 

[gkmacca]

Which of those ex-pros have the requisite degree or indeed could in any way be trusted to analyse even the simplest data set?

Who cares? Give me a good ex-pro assessing by watching over some geek with a spreadsheet any day . Besides, why can't the scouting system use both?

 

[tombrown]

Julian Dicks' nephew? What position does he play?

 

[gkmacca]

Undoubtedly. But if Rodgers came out and said which signings of his turned out to be spuds, it'd give this type of story a little more credence.

As it is, he just sounds like a know-it-all cunt.

I'm inclined to believe him about that particular player, but poor old Brendan can't help rewriting history. Take his recent claim about Benteke: "He’s a big, talented player. It just didn’t quite work out [at Liverpool]. It’s difficult. I brought him in and within a couple of months I was out the door. It’s difficult when that happens". So the implication is he'd have thrived at Liverpool if only Brendan had been given the time to bed him into the system, whereas the reality was that Rodgers had already tried in vain to get anything promising out of him.

 

[Kay Age El]

Perhaps, but whilst I'm sure many ex-managers & execs at clubs have these stories, I'm inclined to believe some of these simply because even at the time there were articles & reports of the transfer committee making decisions against the will of many at the club.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but fact is, we do seem to have a long and not so glorious history of fucking up transfers. We have not won the league for soon to be 30 years, so obv something is - or hopefully were - very wrong within our setup also with the way we've acted in the market.

Perhaps the foundation to our failures was made back in the 80s where everything went well on the pitch still and we seemingly acted like arrogant bell-ends behind curtains, running away from agreed upon deals in the 11th hour, pissing players and middlemen off and maybe this 'culture' has been brought into the new millennium as well. That we were in our own perception better than anyone, more attractive for players and therefore could act like dullards.

Fact is, whether it's all been down to arrogance or incompetence or lack of awareness or something else, there have been so many wrongs and so few rights over the past many years of player transfers, it's impossible not to think that it's more down to the very nature of the way we've conducted our business than it is because of a continued lack of good scouting or managers.

 

[Kay Age El]

Julian Dicks' nephew? What position does he play?

We should probably stay away from that one.

 

[dantes]

Who cares? Give me a good ex-pro assessing by watching over some geek with a spreadsheet any day . Besides, why can't the scouting system use both?

Exactly. It can use both as long as the ex-pro is used in the majority, and the geek used in the minority as a final check or filter. That's the proper way to make it work.

But in reality, I can see why it won't happen. It takes an ex-pro an entire day to look at one or two players and write a report. It takes an entire minute to perform a statistical analysis. So in terms of bottle necking, you can't have a geek sitting around doing a minutes work every few days, waiting on the scout to come back with something. Therefore we have the geeks pointlessly and endlessly analysing data, then send a scout out after the fact on a fools errand.

 

[Judge Jules]

Julian Dicks' nephew? What position does he play?

"Once you've had bull terriers you'd never want any other dog. I've got two bull terriers, a Rottweiler and a bulldog." [Julian Dicks]

 

[Red Astaire]

"Once you've had bull terriers you'd never want any other dog. I've got two bull terriers, a Rottweiler and a bulldog." [Julian Dicks]

Haha - I found this - I actually cried laughing when the music kicked in! WTF!

 

[Brizzle]

Who cares? Give me a good ex-pro assessing by watching over some geek with a spreadsheet any day . Besides, why can't the scouting system use both?

Agreed - you need someone who knows what to look for to then get some fancy data scientist to go and find it.. Neither should be trying to do both roles.

 

[Judge Jules]

See, I'd put those the other way round. Let the geek suggest a list of players whose numbers indicate they might be worth a look, but let the ex-pro be the one to actually go and scout them - and allow him to turn them all down if he doesn't rate what he's seen.

 

[keniget]

I wonder how much a top scout costs irrespective of whether it's an ex player type or a data scientist?

Surely it's insignificant in comparison to that of a failed transfer.

Put a world class structure in place and pay well over the odds to bring in the best.

 

[tombrown]

Haha - I found this - I actually cried laughing when the music kicked in! WTF!

Still annoys me that Souness got rid of Burrows (and Marsh I think?) to get Dicks in. Bugsy was admittedly limited, but I loved him, especially when my regular 50/1 wager on him being the first scorer came up trumps 48 seconds in on one particular derby day

 

[dantes]

See, I'd put those the other way round. Let the geek suggest a list of players whose numbers indicate they might be worth a look, but let the ex-pro be the one to actually go and scout them - and allow him to turn them all down if he doesn't rate what he's seen.

The geek's list is worthless because it is based upon past information with no real world context. The idea of a transfer is to predict future performance. The nature of prediction is that you have to account for every conceivable factor that you can in coming to an answer. Otherwise your margin of error is too wide. I say a pair of eyes and a brain can account for 70% of the physics happening on a football pitch. A set of statistics accounts for barely 10% of it. So we should be selecting our targets based upon the 70% model, rather than taking pot shots with the 10% version hoping to get lucky.

 

[gkmacca]

I wonder how much a top scout costs irrespective of whether it's an ex player type or a data scientist?

Surely it's insignificant in comparison to that of a failed transfer.

Put a world class structure in place and pay well over the odds to bring in the best.

If you scout for a smallish Premier League club like Bournemouth or Hull, the pay can be absolutely terrible - aside from a very modest salary, you can expect to earn no more than about a fiver for one day's scouting plus the submission of a detailed player report, and about £30-£40 bonus if any recommendation results in the club signing the player. More and more clubs are becoming increasingly reliant on video scouting, which sounds horribly unreliable. Liverpool have a pretty big group of much better paid scouts here and around the world, using more or less the same system that Comolli set up. And the degree of expertise varies wildly.

 

[dantes]

As if those reports won't be a generic copy-paste job with a few words changed here and there to tailor it to the brief. What we should do is pick up the god damn phone and simply ask the scout to tell us about what they saw.