Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish believes that all the statistical based scouting methods used by modern football teams are a poor substitute for the footballing judgement of someone like the great Bob Paisley:
“Clubs spend thousands on Prozone, Opta stats and the like but I’ve never seen a better bit of football tech than the eyes and ears of Bob Paisley. He was a genius who could compute any footballing problem and invariably come up with the right answer. . . As for the modern game’s global scouting networks, when they can find an Ian Rush for £300,000 or an Alan Hansen for £100,000 — as Bob did — I will be impressed.”
This will certainly put him in opposition to new Liverpool Director of Football Strategy Damien Comolli, who sees statistics as a fundamental tool for scouting new players, an area he will be primarily in control over in his role at the club. He said in his first interview with Liverpoolfc.tv:
“What I hate is to be in a position where you have to make a decision on a player, but being blind. At the level we’re at, with the amount of money we spend on players and wages etc, the more information you have the more data you can collect, the better it is. . . The more information we can gather, the more information and data we collect which will help us make the right decision, the better it is.”
This certainly suggests a slight contrast in styles between traditional footballing methods subscribed to by Dalglish and modern footballing techniques that both the Fenway Sports Group and Damien Comolli are looking to employ at the club. Although it seems a minor differing on views, there is a concern that there could be a wider fundamental disagreement here.
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This is a bit of a non-story. It is based on reality and truth, but is inaccurate for a few reasons.
First, Scouts in Bob’s era that Kenny was talking about, didn’t have the budget to travel around the world looking at the best 16 y/o Mexican right back etc. We had to look at the Scunthorpe goalkeeper.
Also with the explosion of worldwide media, it’s a matter of minutes before a good display becomes the attention of the top teams, even if you play in the Thailand 2nd division. I remember Rafa saying he had a database of 10,000 players.
If you asked Geoff Twentyman (Paisleys main scout), he had probably seen two or three players a week.
I don’t think their is an argument between the two. But it is a good article to highlight the changes that have happened in football in the last 30 years
mark, i think the point is that at the end of the day before a player is signed he still needs an expert to observe the player in action rather than data and facts that can be manipulated, before you get the dough out, shankly said football is a simple game complicated by idiots, and he was and is still right,
This is the poorest premier league in years. Man Utd will have it won by the end of January, but yet Liverpool cannot even get into the top four. NESV are clearly prioritizing the Boston Red Sox in their business dealings over Liverpool. If NESV are so in love with statistics they should be awake to the fact that Hodgson is incompetent and that the only logical replacement in a poor field of candidates is Dalglish who won the league in 1990. The players clearly have no faith in Hodgson but yet expect the club to spend money in January to play under this clown, rather than the likes of Reina, Carragher, Gerrard and Torres insisting that NESV sack this clown. The players are clearly only interested in picking up their big wage cheques each week.
It makes me cry when I see Roy, I can not undestant why he is not sacked? I dont see new owners are wiling to offer nay role to King. They absolutly dumb about football. We need a new manager……. For god sake sack him now….
I totally believe in stats, and objective evidence.
But if someone would like to use gut feeling to buy player, it should be base on good stats first and the next is the good team player.
Teamwork is Liverpool strength for a long time.
You see, How one man show player like Mcmanaman, affect the team in the long run.
natty
your wrong mate steve macmanaman was excellent for buying time we used to give him the ball and he kept hold of it, instead of today were we cannot keep the ball and it causes us problems by coming back at us time after time
dude sacking roy is not the answer..if hes sacked the clb will move to more crises cos roy has tremedous backing and support from the players..
vinod
you are wrong about the players he is a joke to the player
and what evidence do you have that the players dont like him? perhaps you could name an interview where maybe gerrard, carragher, reina etc have stated this?
well said
Maybe we need to look at Managers stats and then perhaps we would get the correct one! We acknowledge that Roy may have better player Manager relations but can he succeed at the highest level? Roy does need to improve his body language, get behind his players and instill the same techniques away as he does when we are at home!
Seriously I think some Reds are being so beggered off (I’ve out it politely) by Roy they don’t see the long term picture. No I’m not advocating Roy being our manager but if we sack him now we limit our chances of getting the right person, would Deschamps leave in the middle of the season? Would Klopp (Dortmund) leave when his team is clear at the top of their league. We could be stuck with a Martin O’Neill who’s good for clubs with small budgets but would he fit in here? I don’t think so, so we’re probably far better off in the long run waiting for May to replace him and take our time to assess who is willing to come and then get them so they hit the ground running. And Vinrod seriously do you honestly think these players back Roy? I certainly don’t! You only have to see how Torres is reacting to tell you he’s far from happy and it’s not just him either the away performances have been unacceptable time after time, I doubt the players back him apart from Poulsen and Konchesky who like Roy are not good enough.
torres always looks like that even when he was at atletico so i hardly think thats a good marker to judge whether he is happy with hodgson do you
Uh, does Liverpool have a Bob Paisley today to do the job? If not, then do whatever it takes to get the job done with quality decisions, please! Probably using both methods together would do us well. Not sure we can count on Roy to be the Bob Paisely replacement however. What do you think?
I agree with Andy H’s comments, NESV seem to be more in the spirit of Liverpool than most fans. I do not think Roy is the right man for the job but I do not want to get into the habit of sacking managers left right and centre. I understand a lot of Liverpool fans are now of a new generation where their spirit is willing but their brain in lacking. What gave Arsenal and Man U the blue print of there success way ‘The Liverpool Way’ we stood by our managers no matter what. That is what attracts top managers not the ‘Real Madrid, Chelsea way’ of dumping managers after one loss. Roy up to now hasn’t done well but he only has to finish in the top 6 to improve on last year (something which I feel he will achieve). For all you delusional fans out there that think we was going to challenge for the league this season are bonkers! and realize Roy’s transfers in the summer he was lucky to get 2 pence o9f those Yanks so even if he brought in John Terry’s mother as back room staff I would have been impressed. This club needs stability and all you knee jerk reaction fans out there are now the only one’s trying to unstable it by wanting 3 managers in 2 seasons! Get a bit of reality in your life let Roy see out his contract (which I hoped was 2 years instead of three) and in that time if we spend some money on top youngsters of world football during his period I feel he will do no harm to our progression. I think we are not going to win the league for at least 4 or 5 years if we go in the right direction and agree with our current youth policy and hope we can challenge for the title 2 or 3 years.
at last someone who speaks sense!!
Kenny is right you can have all the stats and data on a player but the players pass rate could be 95% complete but with out seeing him play they could be square or back ward passes which are all marked as passes . when shanks went to watch keagan other clubs had been watching him for a long time shanks watched him once and bought him paisley did exactly the same with rush when man city were making there mind up this is a talent as both managers trophy haul proves so what the club needs is a person with that talent spoting who can win leagues and cups erm there is one person at the club who can do that and it is not that nob head hodgson its King Kenny
I just checked out some statistics…
King was Liverpool’s manager last time they won PL, he was Blackuburn’s manager when they won (their only)Premier League title in 1994–95 season , and when he took over Newcastle in January 1997, they finished second in League, with no away defeat and only two home defeats. His Celtic managership isn’t good for comparison (though they won Celtic League Cup), I am talking about PL which counts. Maybe this is the statistics they should look at…
sack roy. get king kenny anf kook how he is doing. he still have all qualities to become
lfc manager way a mile head of roy
Jay you are seriously deluded if you think the best thing for LFC is to have Roy at the helm for 3 years. Nobody wants us to end up like Real or Chelsea with managers, but the biggest mistake you can make in any walk of life is to refuse to acknowledge you made a mistake
jay liverpool football club and our supporters have been brought up as a top top club we expect the best no we demand the best and i am sorry to say roy does not fall in to that catagorie in fact he is well short of second best. his performances in the prem have been poor to say the least in europe it has been the reserves who have put us in to the next round players hungry to impress the manager not like some of the first team players he has failed to motivate roy was found out at blackburn he went to fulham and had a good season by there standards but he is out of his depth at liverpool so jay we needto replace him before we loose are best players and become a fulham ( no disrespect to fulham ) and become happy with seventh place every season we need a manager with the respect of the players that can keep the players we have and bring in quality players and the only man available is King kenny he has won championships with lfc , blackburn and finished second with newcastle he is younger than roy to .