Moved for now...

Hey I've moved the blog over to tumblr. For some reason I feel that encourages both longer and shorter posts of little or greater consequence. So check that out if you feel like it. I've just written a thing on homegrown players which I think is quite good.

http://rat-foot.tumblr.com/

Transfer World

Transfer activity is a counter on a screen. The more money that is spent, the higher the counter goes, the better football gets. Records have been broken, so football must be better than it's ever been.

The pundits circle. Arsenal needed a midfielder. Man Utd needed a star name. If only to justify the existence of the pundit, clubs must need something they didn't get. But never get something they didn't need.

If I was down to my last pound coin, no doubt a pundit would exist who could tell me how I should borrow to spend more of it on their favourite thing.

There's nothing wrong with entirely rejecting the premise of all of the media coverage of the transfer window. It's the truth. It's all pretty much bollocks. That's not to say that there isn't truth to be told about transfers, or valuable opinions to be heard, but the truth is that you never hear much of that during the media coverage.

If the truth was told, we wouldn't need these daft pundits or hack journalists anymore.

A signing is not always a positive. There's a truth that you won't ever hear. Bad signings drain resources, they block good signings in the future, they disrupt teams.

Issues at football clubs do not all need to be solved in the transfer market.

Spending money in itself is not a solution.

It's as if the world of football looked at itself in the most simplistic terms using the simplest generalisations possible - 'the clubs that spend more money do better'. 'Players who cost more are better'. And then, rather than accept that these are simple generalisations, the world of football forgot the actual details and just signed up to the dumbest interpretation of itself. And then built itself around that dumb interpretation.

The curious events of Dimitri Payet...

Here's my take on Payet so far at West Ham.

1) West Ham bought Payet to play a central role, because his figures last season at Marseille were exceptionally good.

2) The owners were maybe thinking of the good form with the diamond last season, and wanted to recreate it.

3) Unfortunately the diamond is a very narrow and weak formation. It's a novelty tactic, basically. It was wretched in pre-season.

4) And Payet at Marseille played a tactically bizarre formation last season (3-3-3-1?) that would be almost unthinkable to try and recreate at West Ham. Maybe there was a thought to bring Bielsa in to try it, but it didn't happen.

4) This left Bilic with a quandary - a player bought to be the key central attacking player in the team, but with a struggle to realistically play him in the same role in the hustle and bustle of the Prem.

5) Bilic fended off talk of formations in interview, saying that it wasn't too important where the players played, that he was going to try to be flexible. Alarm bells for me! This was an incredibly naive set of ideas from Bilic imo.

5) Bilic's ultimate answer was the Christmas tree formation, which you'd struggle to find any team in Europe playing. It was presumably the only way he could find to get Payet and Zarate in central roles together. In practice it seemed to be designed to be very flexible, with Zarate and Payet basically going where they wanted with little defensive responsibility.

6) The formation worked inexplicably well at Arsenal, where Wenger's refusal to try and exploit our weakness on the flanks was noted by many pundits. It was an odd game.

7) The formation then worked incredibly badly in two games at home. As all have noted the narrow formation worked terribly against 4-4-2 oppositions, the full-backs cruelly exposed, and players pulled all over the place to plug the gaps. The desire to accomodate Payet and Zarate centrally essentially threw those games imo.

8) Bilic had to admit defeat and picked Payet to play wide today in a very orthodox 4-5-1. And that has resulted in one of the finest away performances in recent memory (3-0 away at Liverpool).

I think that's the story of our season so far. The idea is to get Payet to be our star player in a central role, but in practice this is proving very difficult to do. I think it totally explains our odd set of results so far.

What I don't know is what happens going forward.

Diamonds are not forever

I think the diamond formation could be the death of my club this season. West Ham seem to have prepared to play it in pre-season, and have bought players to fill the central roles this Summer, yet the evidence of the system (4-1-2-1-2) actually working consistently anywhere in the world are virtually nil to my knowledge. It's a bizarre situation, and actually a strange leftover from Allardyce's last season. At face value it seems like West Ham last season found success in September and October playing the diamond formation, then abandoned it and found relegation form instead. That's the shallow interpretation of what happened. I think if you look closely at the circumstances and the context for the 'success' with the diamond, you get an encapsulation of why it frankly doesn't work. If you look at the meta of football formations, it seems that there's a cycle of circumstances in modern times. Clubs tend to play one up front and pack the midfield for safety, and then at some point or other that system can seem a bit stale and unaggressive. So teams do experiment with formations that play two up front, either with a 4-4-2, or the diamond midfield, or even 3-5-2 with wing-backs. Invariably clubs then go through a period of experimentation and then revert to some variation of one up front, for the simple reason that to play two up front means sacrifices and less solidity elsewhere in the side. These experiments will keep happening, and maybe at some point the meta will change. But it hasn't yet. Now it just so happens that West Ham started experimenting last season at the same time as some other clubs in the Premiership. Our first game with a diamond was against Hull, who also coincidentally played a diamond formation. Then we played Liverpool, who also coincidentally played a diamond against us. And then we played Man Utd, who were also playing a diamond. There is absolutely no doubt that we outplayed Liverpool particularly, and fans got very excited about this - in hindsight we can say that the Liverpool we beat were in pretty shocking form by their standards. And what seemed like evidence that the diamond formation was working against other formations was a false positive in many ways - it didn't necessarily work against other formations, it only worked against a mirror of the same formation. Also, our diamond success coincided with a couple of other factors. Forwards Sakho and Valencia, both bought by the club that Summer, with Allardyce expected to find some sort of role for them to play, even though his preferred system doesn't really have a natural place for either. So, by his own admission, he chucked them in together away at Hull in hope rather than expectation, and their sheer work-rate working the channels and generally being a massive nuisance was incredible. It still needed a wonder-strike from Valencia to earn a draw in that match though. Also, Stewart Downing, moved to the tip of the diamond, found a lease of life and a bunch of space behind those two forwards, and for short bursts it all really clicked. So for a short burst of games the diamond flattered to deceive, with a handful of eager players in tip-top form. We also played clubs who, for whatever reason, were experimenting themselves. We also then beat QPR and Burnley, poor teams destined to be relegated, which also flattered the approach. Even within these matches the system blew incredibly hot and cold - our first half against Burnley was desperately poor, but one 15-minute burst of attacking movement blew them away in the second half. It felt like a new start. But then, over time, the diamond faltered. The incredible demands it made on the forwards took its toll, with both picking up injuries. Opponents got wise to Downing, who went from one of the hottest form players in the league to a bystander in games. So Allardyce, ever the pragmatist, reverted to his normal plan for attritional survival football (Carroll and Nolan's special partnership up front), and fans spent the rest of the season lamenting this success under the diamond formation, and blaming Allardyce for its eventual demise. It's not even the first time this has happened at the club. Zola used the diamond for his most successful spell at the club in 2008/9, with Cole in the form of his career earning an England call-up off the back of it. That time it was the work-rate of Collison and Behrami covering the flanks that made the system zing for a while - both picked up serious knee injuries soon afterwards, and I have to wonder whether that was coincidence. In similar circumstances Zola once again found that once the novelty of a free-spirited system wore off, the diamond just doesn't work over time. The problems with the diamond are obvious. It is weak on the flanks. It exposes your full backs in defence, and relies heavily on their energy to get forward. Midfield organisation is a problem - players have to cover both centrally and on the flanks, so it lacks the rigidity of other systems where players can know who they are meant to be picking up. It is too easily exploited - any canny team knows where the weakness in the formation is and can easily exploit it. It is difficult to press the ball when you know there are going to be free men to pass to out wide - by the same token it makes it easier for the opposition to play, and takes the pressure off their possession. It is one of those formations where you have to throw caution to the wind and try and outscore the opposition - fun for fans but hardly a proven method for prolonged good form. I think it's a gamble, basically - a novelty approach that can throw off an opponent if unexpected. I would guess what has happened this Summer is that new manager Slaven Bilic has asked the players for their input, and they have said that they want to play the diamond. They remember it working, the fans haven't shut up about it since, and there's no doubt it does suit a number of the players. Basically every winger would love to play centrally, every central attacker wants a system built around them, and every midfielder would like the freedom to express themselves - the diamond provides both. But it doesn't work very well. Or rather it either works incredibly well or incredibly badly. One thing that Zola tried to do was to play the diamond and then, once the team had pulled ahead in the match, he switched to a safer formation to see the game out. But I don't think this option is easily open to Bilic, with a lack of wide players with defensive attributes in his squad. Considering Downing has moved on this Summer, his 'replacement' Payet was surely not bought to play out wide, having provided so much creativity in a central role at Marseille. Zarate, back in the fold after being inexplicably frozen out under Allardyce, simply cannot play wide. So as it turns out, I think two maligned members of the squad, Amalfitano and Jarvis, may have to be employed in the wider roles if and when the diamond formation comes unstuck. I think Amalfitano is seriously underrated at the club, and can play almost anywhere across the midfield and contribute intelligently. But Jarvis has had a torrid time since moving from Wolves three seasons ago for a club record fee, with almost literally nothing to show for all that head-down forward running other then a few corners won! All in all it's more evidence of the real problem at West Ham, which is the dreadful lack of football expertise behind the scenes. It led previously to the club relying too heavily on Allardyce's school of thought, and it now leads to Bilic arriving virtually blind into a club with little continuity of staff or knowledge with the previous regime. The club, in my opinion, is in desperate need of a Les Reed type of character, a general manager or director of football, or just a football man to provide continuity, a thoughtful guiding hand to help lead the staff as a unit in a forward direction, rather than frantically splashing around from one disaster to the next.

Structures and the Cult of the Manager

There is some consternation among West Ham fans that the club is buying players without having a manager in place. Some fans explain this away that the new manager is probably pulling the strings without having been formally announced, but I think this genuinely isn't true - the club clearly haven't picked a manager, yet the keeper Randolph has joined the club, and Pedro Obiang seems poised to join from Sampdoria.

The obvious point to make is that the idea that the manager buys all the players is completely outdated in the modern game. Obviously it still goes on but I would call it the exception rather than the rule. Put simply, you just can't depend on a Wenger joining your club, sticking there for the long-term, and being a bit of a dab hand in the market. Pretty much all clubs have realised that managers come and go, but continuity is needed in terms of building expertise and continuity in the acquisition of players.

That all said, if you have a manager or coach ill-suited to the players in the squad, you have problems. West Ham was a great example of this last Summer, with Sullivan buying Valencia and Sakho as strikers, when clearly Allardyce wanted them to ultimately operate as wingers and has little experience in playing diminutive strike partnerships, explaining a lot of the problems and frustrations that led to his departure this Summer.

Funnily enough, West Ham have a bit of recent history with this issue. Most obviously there's the very mixed transfer record of Allardyce - he bought a bunch of duds (particularly strikers) and control was taken away from him last Summer, resulting in the club's best haul of players in years if not decades. But you can go further back and find problems - Zola was blamed for Benni McCarthy, the spent force on which we pinned survival hopes in 2010. Curbishley left the club because a player was sold without his consent. Pardew left after Tevez and Mascherano were bought and unsettled the squad (and then there was all that kerfuffle over the registrations). The Icelandic owners that bottomed out during the collapse that left West Ham with a huge expensive squad but no money in the bank. Previous to that, Roeder got a public apology from the board for not supporting him in the transfer market at a crucial time to avoid relegation. And Harry Redknapp was sacked... for a whole bunch of still rather mysterious issues around player transfers. It's been a longstanding mess, basically, at West Ham - that's putting it kindly.

It beggars belief that they have taken so long to realise the problem with having a haphazard, uncontrolled transfer policy, and have taken steps to sort out the mess. Tony Henry has been brought in as the head of recruitment, and according to some sources actually has full control of the spending this Summer, regardless of which manager joins the club. There is a sense of unease over the input that the chairman David Sullivan has on who comes through the door - though he always claims that he just supervises I think he effectively controls the decisions these days. It's all fine as long as it works, but if it fails then the owner is hardly going to sack himself from the job.

There is a wider tug-of-war going on among managers. There was talk that Klopp would join Liverpool only if they gave him full control of the purse-strings - their transfer committee has been widely criticised for recent signings (on what basis I'm not really sure, as there was literally no way of filling a Suarez-shaped hole in that squad). Alan Irvine at West Brom announced that he had no idea about their star signing. The issues between Pardew and Graeme Carr at Newcastle. Clearly some managers would like to be the old-style of manager who buy all the players and have full control. And it seems to me that most fans prefer that as well - they know who to trust, and then who to blame.

Basically the issue is between the short-termism of managers fearful of their jobs, and the more balanced view that might be provided by those with the long-term health of clubs in mind. The evidence is pretty much everywhere of the damage short-termism can do to clubs who just bet the farm each Summer on a new set of stars who may succeed or fail or be average until the next bunch come in the next year.

And the wider issue may well be that managers simply do not have the time to do a full and exhaustive job of dealing with the health of the club and the transfer market, at the same time as running the squad. The job is no longer possible for one man. I would guess that Wenger for example, rather than an old-school manager, is more of a director of football in all-but name - the nitty gritty of coaching and man-management is the job of the coaches he employs at the training complex he helped design, operating the philosophy of football that he founded.

At a fan level, it all leads to more confusion - we don't know who did what at clubs, so having any sort of view on it can become an art in itself. Brendan Rodgers is being questioned by Liverpool fans for supposed failed signings that he had little to do with. Moyes was criticised for failures in the market at Manchester United, but are we to assume that was his responsibility coming into the club? - the finger should surely have been pointed at a weak infrastructure in terms of recruitment at the club (which has presumably been solved to some extent as a result).

Basically I believe that the era of the cult of the manager is over, and we should stop expecting all-powerful figureheads to bend clubs to their will. Managers and coaches are employees, and that's all. Examples like Koeman at Southampton, who may well have contributed to their success, but builds upon a very settled structure with a short history of expertise in the market. Managers come and go, and the media spends a lot of time complaining about how little time they are given to succeed, but the truth is that like players if they don't deliver results they need to be discarded quickly.

People ask me who I'd like to see in charge of West Ham. I already know that answer, or I hope I do - the owners, the heads of the departments, the director of football (should one be appointed). The question of who coaches the players is a different one entirely, and in my opinion is much less important than getting the key structure in place.

Summer strategies

What clubs do in the Summer is look at their options and presumably, unless they're very haphazardly run, they come up with a battleplan for what they are going to try and do in the transfer market. Obviously this is true, but what I find odd is that watchers of football seem either disinterested or completely ignorant about this process.

Presumably my club West Ham have a strategy for the Summer. It won't be written about in any of the papers, or on websites or blogs, for some reason. I think the media has an obsession with gossip, and stuff that may be happening, but not the reasons why the gossip exists and the stuff that happens comes to be. I suppose many writers think their readership wouldn't be interested to look so far under the hood, or perhaps the writers are just largely oblivious to what they could be writing about.

Perhaps this is sometimes because it's bad news. I'm not sure Spurs fans want to read that actually their club's strategy would rightly consider the blatant truth that they won't be cracking the top four next season, and that actually shrewd management of their squad would consider a medium to long-term view. Fans just want big signings, even if the clubs go bankrupt in the process. I think football, and football covrage and football writers and pundits, have created this destructive desire in many ways.

Actually I think there are betting opportunities in considering the possible outlooks for clubs. My own club West Ham, are moving into a new stadium next Summer, and you can be absolutely sure that not a penny will be saved this Summer to try and guarantee that move is made in the Premiership - my expectation is for short-term gains in the squad, maybe significant ones. I think a bet on a top ten finish for West Ham next season would likely be a value proposition.

Whereas teams who have spent the season at the struggling end of the division simply can't bet the whole farm on survival next year - the sort of pragmatic signings that West Brom have made in recent years will continue to be made, because anything else risks an apocalypse should they be relegated with a wage-heavy under-performing squad. It's not that West Brom are necessarily unambitious - they are actually well-run and keen to do the right thing, by and large.

At the top of the Prem, it seems to me the motivations are very clear. Chelsea are in charge, and have little real motivation to shake up their squad very much. Man City have had a dreadful season by their budgetary standards, and face a mass shake-up. Man Utd have a taste of possibility and should be big spenders. Arsenal face another season where the pragmatic choice is to make small strides - in many ways Arsenal's curse is not Wenger's failures, but his successes at providing good value teams who look very near to real success (thus never necessitating radical action in the transfer market).

All of this is assuming pragmatism rules, of course. It often doesn't, and there have been some bewildering decisions made in the past. I would argue that my club West Ham's splurge last Summer was somewhat out of character for a team in danger of relegation - it was a panic rather than a pragmatic sign of progress, and shows that the club is under the influence of the whims of its passionate but eccentric owners. All part of the fun I suppose.

Where decisions get interesting is at clubs where the strategy is not obvious or a necessity. Do Southampton roll the dice and buy big to make further progress? I think they might do that, but I don't think they should as the upside just isn't that great. Should clubs like Swansea and Stoke, making steady progress, abandon their reserve and go for it - logic suggests not. But sometimes confounding the received wisdom of what a club should do could be a correct strategy.

The other fascinating one is Liverpool, who clearly to my mind suffer from a bit of hubris. As soon as Suarez left that club there should have been a realisation that expectations must be lowered, and perhaps there was internally. But they actually face a similar issue this Summer - tbey could spend massively on world-class players and still not crack the top 4 next Summer, and risk imploding the club on the back of all the good work Rodgers did getting them to outperform a year ago.

The basic question, how does this club improve its lot, is no closer to an ideal answer. Especially with FFP. But what should be obvious is that the same answer does not apply to the same clubs equally, and just spending money on players can at times signal the beginning of the end.

Southampton Hype

The biggest transfer story of the Summer is Southampton - a bunch of their players being picked up by some of the top clubs in the Premiership. At the time of writing, they've sold five of their better players for over £100m. And more may leave.

The question to ponder is whether this is a bad thing for Southampton (the prevailing view) or a rather good thing (my view)?

Historically fans of smaller clubs hate losing players, because it underlines their club's position as a feeder club to the bigger outfits. But in those terms, all clubs except the very biggest and best in the World are feeder clubs. When Real Madrid wanted Ronaldo there was little Man Utd could do to stop it. I doubt Southampton or their fans are very happy about losing so many of their players in so short a time - that is undoubtedly problematic, as it leads to a period of unsettled uncertainty and flux. Never the best thing in such a competitive league.

But modern football is modern football. The relationship between clubs and players has changed enormously in recent years. Running down contracts is a thing, and it just means that any well-run club simply cannot hang onto players and let their value run down without disastrous results. We're already at the point where most contracts for footballers outside of the big time are relatively short-term deals, and players simply flit from club to club looking for the best deal. The idea of a player sticking with a club throughout their career is becoming less and less common. I don't think fans or pundits have come to terms with the reality yet - that players move clubs a lot. These players used to get called mercenaries, but that description has died out now because it's simply become the norm.

I remain convinced that the best (and maybe only) way for any 'normal' club to succeed now is to sell their players at their highest value, and create or purchase replacements who are undervalued.

And there's little doubt in my mind that a number of Southampton players are at the peak of their value. Jaws dropped at the £33m paid for Luke Shaw at aged 18 - two solid if unspectacular seasons at left-back give little real indication to his valuation. Lovren's value has gone up 150% in the space of a season. £27m for Adam Lallana, who was playing in League One three years ago, is similarly surprising. Actually there's an odd theory with Lallana - if he is really worth £25m to Liverpool at 25, then he was probably worth even more than that to a top club at a younger age with more capacity to excel (as Shaw is at that price). But I'm not sure anybody really subscribes to that theory - the most likely and obvious truth is that Liverpool have paid well over the odds for Lallana, and full well know it!

One explanation for these high prices is the state of the transfer market in Britain. There is undoubtedly a lot of transfer money sloshing around, and prices have gone up as a result. But I don't think that is necessarily the primary factor here - after all there are still potential bargain signings coming in elsewhere in the league. But maybe the major difference is that the expanded list of big clubs battling for a Champions League place are, perhaps more now than ever before, desperate for proven quality over value. So while the 'normal' (ie not endlessly rich) clubs still need to operate in terms of value, those at the top are simply desperate to pay for 'quality', wherever that might seem to be guaranteed.

And there's something about the hype around Southampton that has created a sort of price bubble around their players. Something to do with the mystique of Pochettino as a progressive modern manager (though Southampton and many of their players were doing well enough before he came). Something to do with their early season form that made them the media darlings and designated surprise team of last season (even though their success was fleeting and they finished in mid-table just above Stoke). And something about the club's reputation as a hotbed for young talent, which has been building over years and is fed by the success of former youths like Walcott, Oxlade Chamberlain and Bale (who the club almost released at one point). I just think it's become the perfect storm where being a promising player at Southampton is suddenly enough to turn heads not just among the competition in mid-table, but from the biggest clubs in the land. And I also think this clamour for their players has been infectious, as if the big clubs are panicking over the pickings in the desperate assumption that they must get on board or risk missing out.

It sounds like I'm belittling the professional judgement of big clubs in Britain, but I'm really not. It's just that I think that clubs in the transfer market are considering imponderables in terms of ultimately valuing possible signings, and that this is a sign that they are more and more reliant on measures of short-term form than almost any other measure. It's all very well to search the World for technical ability, but at the end of the day the top British clubs are desperate for players who will hit the ground running and deliver in the first few weeks of their new seasons at their new clubs. As it happens I think that Shaw must be judged as a good player for Man Utd to have, whatever he cost them. Same with Lovren and Lallana for Liverpool.

What of Southampton? I would argue that if their plan was to produce players of great quality in demand at the highest level, then they are at worst a victim of that success. I speak as the fan of a club who would love for any of their squad to be considered worth £5m in the market, let alone £25m. I fail to see how this episode can be taken as anything other than a sign of the good health of Southampton and their methods. Their investment in their youth academy must already be in massive profit, with more to come. Their transfer strategy must be judged absolutely superb, with the few exceptions that are always to be expected. They seem like the current model for what a well-run club should be. Those predicting disaster in the wake of these sales seem to me wilfully oblivious to the reasons the players were worth that in the first place - isn't it more logical to expect that Southampton will repeat to at least some extent the process with new signings and new youth products.

I think their future looks extremely rosy. They have bought statistically the two best players from the Eredivisie, Pelle and Tadic, and in Koeman a respected player and manager with good experience of working in that arena. They've just loaned Bertrand who seems a very worthy short-and-maybe-long term replacement for Shaw. They still have Schneiderlin and Rodriguez among their prize assets, along with Fonte and Wanyama and Yoshida and others. And they may well have youth products to blood in the next season, of which Ward-Prowse is already a noted talent. As long as they don't syphon off the profits from their recent sales, they have many millions to reinvest in the squad in future, in the infrastructure of the club, to keep them healthy long into the future. Whether they can ever step up to the very top level is very debatable, but I can't think of another club in a better position to have a decent attempt over the next decade or so. And I'm in no doubt that they're in a better state to do that with £100m extra in their pocket.