After I started following him, Ryan would endure two more difficult seasons at Liverpool before being sold in January 2011, but through Twitter and YouTube, I remained an ardent supporter of his. I’ve always believed that Ryan was never properly handled at Liverpool—he signed at age 20, was thrown into the first-team, yet never played more than four games in a row for the club. And as he’ll attest to in the interview, he never got the same kind of attention and coaching he did at Ajax. How can a young player develop when their only playing time is 20 minutes as a substitute every other match, and they’re basically on their own development-wise?

Fed up with his lack of first-team minutes in a squad that featured bloody David Ngog at striker during all of Fernando Torres’ injuries, I threw this video out on YouTube demanding for Ryan to play. The success and feedback from that video is what actually propelled my channel to move towards European football and then exclusively Liverpool content. Ryan also appreciated the words of support.

That was over three years ago, when my hair was much longer and misshapen, and Ryan was still getting in trouble over a few humorous tweets. We’ve kept in contact here and there, and while I was traveling in Amsterdam one weekend, Ryan made himself available for an interview. We sat down for over an hour, reflecting on the good and bad of his Liverpool experience, the regretful transfer he made to a dysfunctional German club with Manchester City-like ambitions, and how at 26 years old, his career is starting to come full circle with a championship-winning season at his boyhood club Ajax.

Thanks to Ryan for accommodating my interview request, and for his honesty and humility about his past. Watch our chat below!

Follow Justin on Twitter @jblock49

Now, I always try to remain unbiased in how I approach my opinion on a subject regarding LFC. I follow a lot of different fans and journalists in order to get as many viewpoints as possible. It’s nice when we can focus on matters that happen on the pitch, such as our use of the 4-3-3, potential transfer targets, sales, you name it. But one of the main things that always seems to come up is criticism of Brendan Rodgers and, particularly, Fenway Sports Group.

When it comes to Brendan Rodgers, all I can say is this: we’re playing better football aesthetically, have a higher points total and goal differential in the league than we did last season under Kenny, and are improving as a squad in his first season. I believe that comparisons to Hodgson are unfair, and that he does deserve more time in charge of LFC. One year is not enough to judge a manager on, and to say otherwise is absolutely foolish.

As far as the FSG criticism is concerned, it never really sat right with me. As an American Liverpool fan who’s supportive of FSG, I’ve received a lot of unfair criticism because fans are still upset about how previous American owners Hicks and Gillett ran the club, don’t like how FSG are doing things because they apparently don’t spend enough money on the club, and believe that FSG will skin LFC and run for the money like Hicks and Gillett did. But is that really fair? I don’t think so.

Look at the club’s net spend the last two seasons. Almost £80m has been spent by FSG in transfer fees alone. That’s not to mention the massive wages given to players and the pay-offs given to the likes of Milan Jovanovic, Philip Degen, Joe Cole, and Christian Poulsen. Also, FSG have made progress on renovating Anfield, thus keeping the cherished history and lifeblood of Liverpool FC intact. The new sponsorship deals have made LFC one of the most marketable clubs in the Premiership, something that Hicks and Gillett always talked about but were never truly able to accomplish. Yes, the last few seasons have had results that were less than admirable, but this was always going to be a rebuilding process.

While I cannot vouch personally for whether or not John Henry watches football as much as Ian Ayre says he does, the simple fact is this: there’s no way the investment made by FSG is truly profitable if a new stadium isn’t built or renovated, and until that happens, it’s in FSG’s best interest to stay at the club and continue investing. Aside from Champions League clubs, nobody in the Premiership comes close to the investment made in the playing squad when compared to what FSG has done the last two seasons. Blame who you want, but they’ve ponied up the cash, and they’re trying their best. As owners of the Boston Red Sox, they won two World Series titles last decade, and turned the club into the only team capable of battling the New York Yankees’ payroll in the American League. FSG knows how to succeed in the face of giants, which LFC currently face in the two Manchester clubs and Chelsea. They’re smart business people, and smart sporting men. They’re alright.

But having reviewed the last two and a half years under FSG, I can honestly say that there are some fair criticisms of the ownership group’s tenure at LFC. They’ve made a number of mistakes, which we will analyze now:

Being American
This isn’t their fault, but it does factor in to why LFC fans are very vindictive of them. I honestly believe that if FSG was any other nationality, LFC fans would not be as judgmental and vindictive of them as they currently are. Hicks and Gillett didn’t help their cause, and back when the ownership was being sold, if LFC fans had a choice between Singapore’s Peter Lim and FSG, they probably would’ve taken Peter Lim. Is that fair? Absolutely not. Is it understandable? Absolutely. LFC fans have already been bitten by an American ownership group and they have every right to have reservations about the current ownership group because of that fact. What I hate is when anger about the perceived failings of the current ownership group pours over into anti-American bigotry against myself and other American LFC fans.

Some fans who are critical of FSG have some decent arguments. Others do not. Here are some examples of LFC fans tweeting abuse to John W. Henry after he tweets about a CHARITABLE ACTION in the aftermath of the Newtown, CT school shooting:

The “Being: Liverpool” Television Series
I’m sorry, but this was total garbage. There were obviously staged scenes in this, there’s no true appeal to it, and all that it basically does is glorify preseason friendly matches and a trip to Belarus while making other things seem more dramatic than they truly are. I only watched the first two episodes, and quite honestly, I wish I could have those two hours of my life back. I really wish I had never seen those awkward scenes in Rodgers’ home, or when Liverpool players met Red Sox players. That’s completely neglecting the envelopes and everything else in that series that made me cringe. Honestly, there is no defending how awful that was, and I highly doubt that it was worth whatever money the club made from it. A poor job done all around that made a mockery of the club more than anything else.

Giving Kenny Dalglish the Permanent Manager Tag
Before you all start calling for me to be chopped off, hear me out. Look, I love Kenny Dalglish. I didn’t want him to be sacked, and I’m extremely grateful for everything he’s done for the club. However, his success at the latter end of 2010/11 was probably one of the worst things to happen for Liverpool FC in the long-term. He was brought in to replace Roy Hodgson as a caretaker, and the main goal of the appointment was to appease the fans and unify the fanbase. It was the right move to bring him in as a caretaker. That being said, we overachieved during his time in charge, and that created unrealistic expectations. We almost qualified for Europe because of our form during the second half of the season alone. Despite all of that, Kenny Dalglish was not FSG’s man for the long-term future of LFC. By giving Kenny the three-year contract and holding off on hiring a manager for the long-term, FSG set the club back a bit. They gave King Kenny and Damien Comolli £100m to spend (approximately £35m net) and let them sign who they wanted. The result? Overpaying for Jordan Henderson and Stewart Downing, plus bringing in Charlie Adam and Jose Enrique. Everyone at LFC expected a quick return to prominence under Dalglish, when it was never going to be that simple, easy, or fast.

FSG released a statement at the close of the 2011 summer window saying that they expected a Top Four finish. Nothing about cup success or anything else, but only a Top Four finish. The squad played well the first half of the season, but then Lucas went down, Suarez was suspended for nine games, and Kenny was up shit’s creek without a paddle. He had no Plan B. Yes, we won the League Cup and went to the Final of The FA Cup, but we finished 8th with 52 points after spending £100m. I’m sorry, but that is just not good enough. Cup competitions are a crapshoot—hell, Wigan could win the FA Cup this year and still get relegated. It’s best to judge overall team performance on whatever competition yields the strongest XIs, the best teams, and the largest sample size. LFC’s 8th place finish in the league happens to be just that. If FSG were only going to give him one season, then it must be asked: why did they keep him on as permanent manager at all? His spending and lost 8th place season only set the club back another year when it could ill afford to do so.

The Luis Suarez Racism Affair
What else needs to be said that hasn’t already been said? Look, Suarez used racist words. By The FA’s guidelines, he broke the rules. Now, while I have a lot of problems with the written reasons, the evidence, the burden of proof, and a lot of other things regarding that case, the one thing that I am certain of is that LFC had a PR nightmare with this and handled it absolutely incorrectly. The club released statements that were very emotional at the time and not thought through, which made a very bad situation even worse. Liverpool was the only party that used the term “racist” in the aftermath of the verdict. The FA said that he wasn’t a racist and Patrice Evra said he wasn’t a racist. Liverpool tried to argue that the linguistics of the language made use of the word acceptable, which is completely besides the point. The club completely botched the situation, the media jumped all over us, and the club has really been unable to bounce back since this episode took place. When a situation of this magnitude gets fucked up, the blame falls upon everyone at the club, especially the owners.

The Insistence on a Director of Football and their Managerial Search
After the sacking of Kenny Dalglish, FSG insisted that whatever manager they hired would have to work with a Director of Football. This makes sense to Americans like myself, who are used to seeing this system used in American professional sports, as teams have a “General Manager” who makes the personnel decisions, and a Manager who fills out the lineups and works with the team on the field. This is a huge mistake that FSG made, as it cut into the pool of potential suitors for the position. FSG interviewed the likes of Andre Villas-Boas and Roberto Martinez, both of whom told FSG that they would not work with a Director of Football. Many believe that Steve Clarke was also interviewed by FSG, which would’ve been an understandable appointment given his background. By that point, they accepted defeat on the issue, realizing how divisive it was, and decided to appoint Brendan Rodgers without a Director of Football. Rodgers replacing The King was not taken well by the majority of fans, with this arguably being one of the two watershed moments for FSG (the other we’ll get to later).

It also did not help that FSG, in the eyes of the fans, was not looking at premier candidates. The big name on everyone’s lips after Kenny’s sacking: Rafa Benitez. Still a hero to many on Merseyside, Rafa was unemployed at the time of Kenny’s sacking, residing in his Wirral home, claiming that he was waiting for a phone call from the LFC Board. Despite being a very controversial figure amongst the LFC fanbase, his supporters were very vocal about wanting him to return. When Ian Ayre was at Aintree, fans at the racetrack chanted Rafa’s name like it was March 2009. The message from those fans was clear: bring back Rafa. Other big name managerial candidates were being brought up as well. Fabio Capello, five-time Serie A winner, two-time La Liga winner and one-time Champions League winner as a manager was unemployed at the time, and had experience in England as the National Team’s most recent managerial failure. Dutch Legend Johan Cruyff claims to have called Liverpool with a plan to get the club back to the top, with FSG not returning his phone call. Ex-Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard was another name floated around. Yet FSG decided to choose Swansea Manager Brendan Rodgers over all of them after a two-week search. LFC fans didn’t like this, and understandably so. That being said, I think that they handled the managerial search relatively well. Could it have been done better? Yes. But they made a appointment who deserves another season to prove himself, as his long-term vision and undeniable progress made seem to be worthwhile.

Deadline Day of the 2012 Summer Window: Andy Carroll, Ian Ayre, Clint Dempsey, and Daniel Sturridge
Even to this day, I’m baffled by what happened in the last 48 hours of the 2012 Summer Transfer Window. I’m not entirely sure who to blame for it either. Everyone knew going into the window that we were targeting strikers. Everyone also knew that Andy Carroll wasn’t favored by Brendan Rodgers, meaning we’d have to sign at least two strikers by the end of the summer. In the last 48 hours of the window, it all went to hell in a hand-basket. Andy Carroll was loaned to West Ham, giving the club 24 hours to sign a replacement. We needed a goal-scorer, and everyone thought Dempsey would be locked up by then. We’d all heard the rumors, and knew that the club was interested after the NESN slip-up in July. Fulham, however, were pissed, and accused the club of tapping him up. When we tried to close the deal, offering Jordan Henderson plus £4m amongst other offers, it became clear that Fulham were not gonna give us a fair deal compared to Tottenham or Aston Villa, and Ian Ayre, fed up, refused to close the deal. We were also going after Daniel Sturridge, but Chelsea wanted £20m for him and we balked. Not having any other targets lined up for some reason, LFC’s window ended with only two first team strikers on the books in Fabio Borini and Luis Suarez, infuriating fans, many of whom saw this as LFC waving the white flag for this season. We eventually got Sturridge for £12m in the winter, but by then it was far too late for us to make a serious push for anything, and the season was effectively over before it even began.

Many still are furious with Ian Ayre over this, claiming that he shouldn’t be involved in transfer dealings at all. I cannot help but agree with this, to some extent. But that £8m we saved by not getting Sturridge in the summer and waiting until the winter could easily be viewed as what enabled us to get Philippe Coutinho. You could easily see that as justification of what happened and there being a method to the madness. But what seemed to be a one-off case of fiscal prudence and poor negotiation from FSG ended up sabotaging the 2012/13 season.

You could argue that FSG have made some mistakes. But they have also financed this club much more than Hicks and Gillett ever did. I do believe that they are trying to make Liverpool competitive for the long-term, and that they are learning from the mistakes they’ve made in the past. I know that isn’t much consolation to those out there who want to win trophies now, but I believe that we will be competitive again soon. Patience is a virtue, and both FSG and Brendan Rodgers should be given time to prove themselves. They’ve done more good than harm thus far (although many fans only see an exaggerated picture of harm), and should continue to bring Liverpool back to the top.

Follow Greg Visone on Twitter @njny

Before I start going into a tirade, I’d like to reiterate that my sincere thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by the terrible tragedies in the last week; not just those that I have mentioned, but everywhere in the world.

These events in the last week have enabled Americans like myself to see both the best and worst of human behavior. While we can clearly see that there are people who are hell-bent on disrupting our lives and ruining all that we hold dear, we also see that there are people who can stare mass hysteria, chaos and terrorism right in the eyes and say “you cannot break our spirit.” The first responders in Waco and Boston, as well as all those who acted in the aftermath of the tragedies, have reminded us that human nature is inherently good.

The last week has put things in perspective for myself, and I’m really upset about it. I feel extremely immature for needing events like this to put my life into perspective. For years, my life has revolved around sports. As a fan of numerous sports and leagues, my schedule has revolved around when my favorite teams are playing and what time the big game is on TV, followed by my schoolwork. I’ve always had political beliefs and a strong grip on the following of the news cycle, but I’ve never really put events outside of the pro sports world above the news cycle. I feel as though I need to live in my own little bubble from time to time. It makes life a lot easier for me. I don’t understand why these events have shaken me so much, but I’m hopeful that I can become a better person because of them.

One of the few things that has brought a smile to my face in the last week is when I watched the Sabres-Bruins game on Wednesday night, before the Waco Explosion happened. I needed to see it because I felt as though watching it would encourage me to embrace normalcy and return to my usual life cycle. Being able to see Boston get back to normalcy should’ve done the trick. Watching Rene Rancourt let the Boston fans sing the National Anthem brought tears to my eyes. It was one of the most beautiful things, and it reminded me of a game I attended as a child 12 years ago.

When I was 8, my Dad took me to a Devils game when they were playing Washington. The date was December 8, 2001 (do not ask me how I remember this), less than 3 months after 9/11, and we were in the upper deck at Continental Airlines Arena on a Saturday afternoon with the building half-full. We stood for the National Anthem. Continental used to play this recording of the National Anthem for its sporting events, and, with the building in the midst of a gradual decline, the recording on that day blasted out the first two seconds and then stopped, completely broken. A few fans in the building were singing it from the beginning, and didn’t stop after the recording crapped out. Slowly but surely, the whole building started singing it, and it got louder and louder until, eventually, the fans were screaming it. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced at a sporting event, and it is something I will never forget.

As I watched those fans in Boston sing the National Anthem, I cried and smiled. It reminded me, for a split second, of the joy I got from singing the Anthem on that day. It makes me feel as though we need to let the fans sing the anthem more often at sporting events in this country. It’s not because of the national pride you get from it or how it makes us feel a sense of unity, but because it’s the right thing to do.

One of the many things I’ve been saying for years is that the National Anthem is being disrespected in this country and has been disrespected for far too long. I was at the Final Four last weekend. One of the things that I remember from the Championship Game was that fans were pulling their phones out during the National Anthem, talking to the people beside them and simply not caring. Since when did this become acceptable?

What’s worse is that the anthem is being disrespected by those who are given the “honor” to sing it; I was at a Washington Wizards game a few years ago where the woman singing it took four or five minutes to get through the whole thing. I got upset because it wasn’t the first time I’ve seen it happen like that, and it has happened far too often. If any other country had their national anthem treated the way that we treat ours, the people disrespecting it would be arrested and executed.

Fan groups at games don’t give proper respect to the Anthem either. I was at the first round of the NCAA Tournament last season in Columbus. I specifically remember NC State fans shouting “Wolfpack!” over “brave” in the last line of the song. Red Bulls fans love shouting “RED” when the word comes up during the line “and the rockets red glare.” Baltimore fans, for some reason, love to shout “OH” for the first word of the line “Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave…” Anybody singing the song from the beginning wouldn’t do that because it wouldn’t fit and it would be blatantly disrespectful.

If fans sang the National Anthem more often, I believe we would treat it better than how it is currently treated in this country. We would sing it with pride and reverence, the way that it is intended to be sung. Just look at how a Vancouver Canucks Crowd sings “Oh Canada,” or just watch one game involving the United States Men’s National Team. When the anthem comes on before a USMNT match, the fans and players sing it with respect. There’s no designated singer. They just play the song and the country’s players, coaches and fans sing it as loud as they possibly can. Astonishingly, they’re able to sing it in harmony without any problems, and the song is shown the proper respect that it deserves.

If there’s one thing that being a fan of football has taught me, it’s that singing is one of the few things humans can and do use to express their emotions accurately and effectively. If fans in this country were to sing our National Anthem more often, I guarantee you that it would be sung with more passion, emotion and respect than any Hollywood singer you could possibly roll out onto the field or ice with a microphone. It’s not gonna solve all our problems, nor will it make us better people, but it’ll make us feel better. I highly doubt that this will happen in the future, but I hope it does.

Follow Greg Visone on Twitter @njny

“They hate what they don’t understand.”—Sean “Diddy” Combs

I’ve never been good at math. Or at least that’s the attitude I’ve carried with me since 1st grade. In elementary school, my parents sent me to a tutoring center two times a week. I’d do endless sheets of arithmetic problems for an hour, and then go home and do more. My mental math was on point, but it always took me longer than the rest of the class to “get it.” I needed individual attention, but was often times too ashamed to ask for it. To this day, I still can’t do long division problems.

When you grow up with an affliction towards numbers, you get nervous whenever they’re presented in a decision-making situation. Adding up the change in your pocket at the deli counter isn’t easy. Simple accounting problems are stressful when they shouldn’t be. Deciding whether Mike Trout deserves to be MVP based on something called WAR, or choosing between Luis Suarez and Robin van Persie by comparing Chance Conversion rates equates to rocket science.

Although I’m never excited to do a math problem, I enjoy analyzing sports statistics. In 6th grade I started carrying a Baseball Prospectus in my backpack. I would pour over the annual additions of the mammoth book in my spare time—the book felt as close to the truth about baseball as any analysis could be. Full of advanced baseball statistics and player projections, it felt like the end all be all of the upcoming baseball season. Why even bother with watching games? Basebsall Prospectus already projected them. In my thirst for the truth about baseball, the “outsider’s” knowledge and perspective found in the Baseball Prospectus books felt indisputable, and it was all coming from guys who had never been on a scouting trip.

I believe there are plenty of sports fans and writers out there who take their “I’m bad at math” attitude and flip it into a dismissal of baseball’s sabermetrics, and soccer’s opta statistics. People are just afraid of the numbers.

Sabermetrics, which is a term derived from SABR (Society for American Baseball Research), have endured a decade-long battle for acceptance in baseball’s mainstream consciousness, starting with their grand introduction through Michael Lewis’ 2003 bestseller Moneyball. (Not forgetting the two decades of work Bill James did before Moneyball was even drafted though.) Over the years, more telling statistics rooted in sabermetrics such as On Base Percentage (OBP) and On Base Plus Slugging (OPS) made their way into box scores and programs. These statistics are easy for any fan to understand and calculate, but still give more insight into a player’s performance than just batting average and home runs. More complicated sabermetrics were left for Baseball Prospectus books and blogs.

The crossing over of sabermetrics into the sporting mainstream peaked with a movie adaptation of Moneyball, and finally hit SportsCenter through the debate over the 2012 American League MVP award.

The 2012 AL MVP came down to two candidates: Los Angeles Angels rookie outfielder Mike Trout, and Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera. Through no fault of their own, each player symbolically represented two different schools of thought in baseball—two schools which were infamously pitted against each other in Lewis’ Moneyball.

Trout or Cabrera: Who should’ve won MVP?

In one corner were “old school” baseball traditionalists. These writers and fans believed that Cabrera was the natural choice for MVP, because in 2012, he was the first player since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967 to lead the league in batting average, home runs, and RBIs. That made him the first Triple Crown winner in over four decades, and in old school circles, a deserving MVP. He was the best player on a playoff team (Trout’s Angels failed to make the playoffs, despite only winning one game less than Cabrera’s Tigers), and achieved a season of historical proportions.

Across the debate were the nerds. Baseball’s statistical revolution, popularized by Moneyball, had revealed a bevy of telling metrics to analyze players with. The statistic at the center of the argument for Trout was Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which is a calculation for how many more wins a player contributed to his team than a “replacement level” player would’ve. According to FanGraphs, Trout posted a 10 WAR (the highest WAR by a center fielder since Willie Mays in 1964), meaning he was worth 10 more wins to the Angels than say, the Baltimore Orioles’ Mark Reynolds, who posted a WAR close to zero. Cabrera’s 6.9 WAR lagged behind both Trout and New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano, who’s 7.8 WAR was good for second. Much was made of Trout’s more complete impact compared to Cabrera. Trout stole 45 bases while Cabrera stole 4, and Trout’s fielding was regarded by observers and statisticians to be far superior to Cabrera’s. Cabrera may have been a better pure hitter in 2012, but Trout’s base running and fielding put him over the top.

Through a rounded statistical argument, it’s clear that Trout was a player overall player than Cabrera in 2012. But for many writers and fans, the debate started and ended with Miguel Cabrera’s Triple Crown win. The Triple Crown has been a distinction that’s become shrouded in mysticism and improbability. The likes of Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr.—the preeminent hitters of my generation—have all failed to win the Triple Crown. Although there’s no physical trophy for the Triple Crown, it’s an “award” based on three statistics that mean less in a world of sabermetrics, and it’s still guarded in tradition, nostalgia, and Cracker Jack boxes. Much of American baseball’s popularity and interest comes from its history, record books, and old-time lore. The Triple Crown is a part of that, and for it—for baseball’s past—to be defended as a significant part of today’s game, Cabrera had to win the MVP. He ended up garnering 22 of the 28 first-place votes from the Baseball Writer’s Association of America. Trout got the remaining six.

“Call me old-fashioned but, if you win the Triple Crown and lead your team to the playoffs, you’re probably going to get my MVP vote.” —USA Today writer Jorge L. Ortiz

Besides, who the hell knows how to calculate WAR anyway? FanGraphs gives a fairly simple explanation of the statistic and how it’s calculated, but still—anytime you wander into unfamiliar and potentially complicated territory populated by guys like Nate Silver (the statistician who perfectly predicted the 2012 Presidential Election state-by-state) you’re going to be intimidated and hesitant to accept something new and different.

When the traditional box score statistics of batting average, home runs, RBIs, runs, and stolen bases are being challenged, marginalized, and perhaps overtaken by something so superficially convoluted as WAR and a whole host of other advanced metrics, writers and fans who didn’t grow up with these new statistics are going be resistant to adaptation. They’re scared of the numbers because they don’t fully understand them, and as seedy old writers, they can’t be bothered to change. These are writers who are covering a sport that didn’t implement instant replay for umpires until 2008, despite the NFL using it since 1986, and the technology for it existing since the 1960s. The league and its media are the furthest thing from progressive. Yet the is future covered in data, which can be difficult to sort through if you’re not inclined to embrace something you don’t fully understand.

The same reluctance to fully embrace advance statistics in baseball is currently being played out in professional soccer. Up until a few years ago, there were exactly five ways to quantify a player’s performance on the pitch. Goalies were judged by their saves and clean sheets, defenders by their tackles and clean sheets, and midfielders and forwards by their goals and assists. With only so many goals, assists, and tackles happening per match, it was difficult to gauge a player’s value. How could a player like Real Madrid’s Xabi Alonso, who plays in a deep-lying midfield role and doesn’t make many tackles, goals, or assists, have his impact quantified? There was no statistic for controlling the tempo of the midfield.

In the past five years, that’s changed. Opta, a sports data company founded in 1996, has seen its visibility skyrocket as access to their information has become more public. They track every movement in a match to sort out dozens of different statistics for players. They have an iPhone app so fans can observe Opta’s data, a website so fans can dig deeper into the data, and a Twitter account so fans can see the most preeminent data from match-day.

Now, stats like saves, tackles, clean sheets, goals, and assists no longer make up the entire profile of a player or club—they’re just parts of a bigger, more contextualized picture. EPLIndex.com gives subscribers access to 11 different types of statistics with further statistics within those types. For example, the statistics under the “Attacking” category are much more than goals and assists. Assists are cute, but they’re the RBI of soccer—it’s a statistic that’s dependent upon another player. They’re not an independent reflection of an individual player’s performance. A good pass into the right area must be made for an assist to be possible, but that pass is still dependent on another player to finish the movement and score the goal, and for the passer to get the assist. Why bother with assists when Attacking statistics like Chances Created and Clear Cut Chances Created truly measure the creativity of a player? Those two metrics give credit to the attacker for creating the chance even if the player on the other end of the pass doesn’t convert for a goal.

And is it enough to simply say that the Golden Boot winner is the best striker? What if it takes that striker takes an inefficient number of shots to score? According to EPLIndex’s database on April 12th, Liverpool’s Luis Suarez leads the English Premier League with 22 goals this season. It took him a league-leading 130 shots to get there, putting his Chance Conversion rate at 17% and Shot Accuracy at 48%. Meanwhile, Manchester United’s Robin van Persie has scored 20 goals, but only on 94 shots for a Chance Conversion rate of 20% and Shot Accuracy of 54%. While the goal count implies that Luis Suarez is the better striker, a more in-depth look at the opta statistics shows that van Persie’s is a more efficient, clinical striker.

When I first read Moneyball, it wasn’t the characters, stories, business methods, or introduction of sabermetrics that grabbed my attention. It was the notion of objective vs. subjective thinking in situations where it was possible to think objectively. There’s no objective way to discuss how good a hip-hop album is—your ears either like it or they don’t. It’s personal taste. But when it comes to sports, observing a player isn’t enough when objective statistics exist.

Liverpool midfielder Joe Allen may not win plaudits for his aesthetic play. Critics say he’s too small to be useful defensively, and he doesn’t to pass the ball forward enough to contribute to the attack. During any one of his matches this past season, it’d be easy to say that he had a bad game, because he doesn’t make the unlocking passes or the grinding tackles. He doesn’t catch the eye. But his statistics show that he’s 3rd in the EPL in Minutes Per Possessions Won, while boasting a 90% Pass Accuracy with 30% of his passes going forward. The eye doesn’t tell the whole story.

Much of the aversion to opta statistics by soccer fans and writers is due to an incorrect notion of the phrase “Moneyball” and what it means. Real Moneyball is when players within a market find inefficiencies in that market and exploit them for gain. In the book Moneyball, the Oakland Athletics, led by General Manager Billy Beane, saw that college prospects and fringe players who had good OBPs weren’t being valued as highly, so they exploited those two areas (among many others) to field a winning ball club.

When Liverpool were taken over by Fenway Sports Group (FSG), they were labeled by the media as soccer’s new Moneyball club. After all, FSG also owns the Boston Red Sox, who had won two World Series titles during General Manager Theo Epstein’s tenure. Epstein, a Yale University graduate, was known in baseball circles as someone in tune with sabermetrics and the ideals of Moneyball. FSG were seen as the owners to bring a Moneyball philosophy to Liverpool.

Shortly after buying the club in fall 2010, FSG appointed Damien Comolli as their Director of Football Strategy. In 2011, he signed Andy Carroll, Luis Suarez, Charlie Adam, Jordan Henderson, and Stewart Downing for over £100 million in transfer fees. Except for Adam and Downing, all of Comolli’s signings were under 23 years old—such a tremendous outlay of cash for young players raised a few eyebrows, especially the respective £35 million and £20 million fees for Carroll and Henderson (Carroll’s was the largest figure ever paid for a British player).

Moneyball Man Damien Comolli

Comolli’s new class of signings intensified Liverpool’s Moneyball label. There were two strands of logic behind the signings that connected them to Moneyball, albeit incorrectly. The first was the signing of young players for high fees in the hope that over the long-term, the lower wages and high performance of the players as they entered their prime would justify the price tag. Comolli signed Carroll, Suarez, and Henderson to be at the club (hopefully) for the next decade, and over a period of time thanks to debt amortization, those transfer fees would be seen as appropriate. Comolli was paying the price for future performance. He was treating his signings like a stock, buying early for a big payout down the road.

The second idea was the implementation of opta statistics to determine ideal transfer targets. In previous years, Liverpool had struggled to create goal-scoring opportunities. The signings of Henderson, Adam, and Downing were supposed to rectify Liverpool’s offensive woes. All three midfielders were in the Top 12 of the EPL’s Chance Creators from the previous season, and were all viewed as excellent passers and crossers of the ball. Their crossing, combined with Carroll’s outstanding heading ability (46% of his goals were headers—the second highest proportion in the EPL that year), and Luis Suarez’s dual threat as a creator and goal scorer should’ve made for an attacking juggernaut.

Although Comolli was exploiting exactly zero inefficiencies in the transfer market (promising young players and creative midfielders are always in consistently high demand. I’m not sure they’ve ever been out of favor), it was seen as a Moneyball approach, because he used financial techniques and opta statistics to decide on his signings. Writer Joe Hall for the popular website Sabotage Times wrote an article in April 2012 titled “Damien Comolli: Here’s Why The Moneyball Philosophy Was Never Going To Work At Liverpool.” It’s perhaps the finest example of the misunderstanding of Moneyball. He speaks on the film more than the book, and writes, “Football, however, is a vastly different sport to baseball and the sport is still some distance away from fully embracing the “moneyball method…to what extent can this model, of recruiting and deploying players based solely on statistical data, be applied to football?” (At that point in the article, I lit myself on fire.)

Through a misinterpretation of Moneyball‘s ideals, Moneyball suddenly meant using statistics to build a team—a gross oversimplification to say the least. In the case of the Oakland A’s, an undervaluation of certain statistical categories was the market inefficiency they observed. Because of that, statistics and Moneyball were lumped together. In a Bizarro Baseball World, that inefficiency could be quality scouting in a market dominated by only statistical analysis, but the principles of Moneyball would be the same. They’d still be exploiting an undervalued area for their benefit. Comolli did no such thing.

The Moneyball headline was further perpetuated when none other than Billy Beane sang his praises for Comolli’s work at Liverpool. In an interview with The Daily Mirror, Beane spoke about his friendship with Comolli, and defended the signings of Carroll, Henderson, and Co. With Mr. Moneyball himself publicly siding with Comolli, Liverpool was forever stamped as the Moneyball Club—a team built on statistics and clever accounting.

Comolli was fired seven months after the Beane interview. The season following his £100 million spending spree, Liverpool continued to struggle in front of goal, and languished to an 8th place finish. Comolli was lambasted for spending so drunkenly and failing to improve the squad, and soccer fans the world over instantly become skeptical of opta statistics. As it turns out, Carroll, Henderson, Downing, Adam, and Suarez, despite all of their previous metrics pointing to a new team full of creativity and goal-scoring ability, didn’t fit together tactically. The Chances Created statistic is useful, but unless the players are put in proper position tactically, they won’t be able to create. The supposed Moneyball Club built on numbers was undressed by tactical naiveté. The eye actually told more of the story than Liverpool paid attention to.

“You want to make sure you are getting more value than you are paying.”—Billy Beane on Comolli’s signings for Liverpool

Those who were initially skeptical of Comolli’s methods were vindicated. Don’t leave a number cruncher to do a football man’s job. Those who had admired Comolli (myself included) were left without a good answer—only tactical excuses. As was the case in baseball, soccer is now struggling to bring credibility to their own statistical revolution, because of the one-off failure of Liverpool’s falsely identified Moneyball Experiment.

In actuality, every EPL club uses some form of opta statistics and advanced data tracking to assess themselves and their transfer targets. They all employ statisticians and data analysts, but those departments are less visible than the one Comolli ran at Liverpool. Last summer, defending EPL Champions Manchester City open sourced all of their opta data from the previous season. Liverpool weren’t the only club to use opta statistics to build their squad—the title-winners were too, along with the other 18 clubs. On Opta’s website, they list the 122 soccer and rugby clubs they work with, including Barcelona, Liverpool, Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund, the MLS, the Italian and Dutch soccer federations, and all of the United Kingdom leagues.

In the media and in our own conversations, there’s been extreme deference to statistics in both baseball and soccer. Both are old games tied to the cultures and histories of the United States and Europe. Both have been analyzed using only a handful of statistics and subjective observation. Both are two decades too late in their current implementation of instant replay. Both are controlled by an old guard—soccer by FIFA’s fossils in Zurich, and baseball by the Writer’s Association’s nostalgic hacks.

Many of the fans of each sport grew up looking at the same statistics: goals and assists, home runs and RBIs. Progressive thinking and new ways to evaluate players were always going to be held back in two old timer’s games, but a breakthrough is inevitable. The 2012 AL MVP discussion brought attention to WAR and the logic behind it—soon enough, we’ll be seeing WAR on baseball cards and in programs. Although Comolli’s Liverpool failed, the negative perception it gave opta statistics can only last for so long, especially as successful clubs like Manchester City develop their public databases, and websites like EPLIndex and WhoScored? rise in viewership.

Nobody ever won an argument in a bar by opening up EPLIndex’s database and running through Joe Allen’s possession stats. It’s easier to yell “he’s crap” and move on. Listing the WAR and UZR of baseball players never decided a water cooler debate at work. Triple Crown numbers are more familiar. I prefer to let the WAR and opta discussion play out in the one place they actually matter: the field. It’s harder to fear the numbers when they mean wins and losses.

Follow Justin on Twitter @jblock49

Enjoy the tour around Barcelona FC’s legendary ground and current home to the best team/player ever.

Follow Justin on Twitter @jblock49

I also might’ve been the first person ever to buy a Barcelona Basketball Club jersey from the team store.

With the rising cost of tickets, transportation, and concessions, it’s now become customary to watch the game at home amongst friends. Television production has advanced rapidly the past decade, making sporting events watched from home a more informative and comfortable experience. NFL games are remarkably different without the little yellow line, and unbiased instant replay doesn’t exist at the stadium.

Still, I like to get out to MSG, Red Bull Arena, and Yankee Stadium at least once a year, and to MetLife Stadium whenever the Packers are in town just to say “I was there.” It feels strange that my ticket purchasing decisions hinge on whether or not my tweets, statuses, and photos from the game will get lots of likes and retweets, but that’s 2013 social media going to work. It’s not enough to tell your real life friends about it for social gratification—you need to push it to your network too.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be in attendance at a few classic match-ups. I’ve seen Yankee-Red Sox playoff games at Yankee Stadium, Red Sox games at Fenway Park, Packer games at Lambeau Field, Giants Stadium, and MetLife Stadium; Juventus and Red Bull games at Red Bull Arena, and a nice string of Knick games at MSG: I was there for the last two Knicks playoff victories the past decade (over the Raptors and Heat, respectively), the birth of Linsanity (25 points against the Nets), and the height of Linsanity (28 points and a 3-point shot over Dirk Nowitski and the then defending NBA Champion Mavericks).

As a sports fan, I’ve been spoiled. Totally and irreversibly spoiled. I can’t go to basketball games without comparing it to the excitement of beating the Heat in the playoffs at MSG. Football games at MetLife are cold and classless compared to Lambeau Field. Baseball games without “BOSTON SUCKS” and “Pedro, Who’s Your Daddy?” chants are boring. The lens through which I view every single live sporting event I now attend is skewed, usually for the worst, because of the incredible feats, scores, and crowds I’ve been a part of in the past.

Soccer, however, is the one sport that has yet to be tainted. Red Bull games are fun, and sitting in the supporters’ section while Thierry Henry continues to bless us with his once-in-generation technique is special, but it’s still just the MLS. Outside of the supporters’ section of Red Bull Arena, nobody really cares about the game on hand, which almost makes the diligent chanting, singing, and general noise making of the supporters’ section feel disingenuous. It all feels forced when you and the 400 other diehards around you are the only ones who constantly give a damn in a 25,000 seat arena. There’s nothing hallow-hearted about the raw emotion let go after a stunning goal, but everything else in-between feels like the work of a “try-hard.”

This past week, soccer has become totally tainted for me. I’ll never be able to sit at a Red Bull match again with the same attitude. Even going to an Arsenal match at the Emirates Stadium would put me to sleep. Actually, I’ll never be able to go to another sporting event—outside of maybe the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, or World Cup—without thinking back to that night at Anfield.

Last Thursday, Liverpool played Zenit St. Petersburg at their home stadium, Anfield, in a Europa League knock-out stage tie. The Europa League is far less prestigious than the celebrated Champions League, but that doesn’t make it less important to the clubs playing in the competition. In the international arms race to acquire the best talent amongst the Petrol-dollar fueled likes of Manchester City and Chelsea, and the appeal of Barcelona and Real Madrid, any European trophy is important for a club, especially for a struggling Liverpool side.

After being defeated 2-0 in Russia the previous week by Zenit, Liverpool needed to win by at least a 2 goal margin and to not concede an away goal to advance. A mighty, but not impossible task against the Russian Premier League Champions. Liverpool and their home fans would have to conquer the Russians physically and mentally. Physically, the players had to do their jobs. Mentally… well, that’s where us fans had to bring it.

Fans of Liverpool have an architectural advantage to their mental battle, because Anfield is unlike any other stadium in the world. It’s small for a soccer club of Liverpool’s size (Liverpool is the 4th most valuable soccer club in the England, and Anfield’s capacity is 45,276. Comparatively, the most valuable club in England, Manchester United, can squeeze 75,765 fans into Old Trafford), but that works to the fan’s advantage. The playing field itself is no more than 15 feet away from the first row of seats—there are no massive sidelines full of players, reporters, and cameramen like at NFL stadiums. Anfield, which opened in 1884, has no modern amenities—there’s no big screen video board, luxury boxes, or cup holders. It’s just hunks of timber, metal, and fans.

Because of Anfield’s minor league size, and the massive overhanging roofing above large swaths of the seating, sound gets trapped within the grounds. Decibels hang over the pitch instead of dispersing into the Merseyside air. The crowd has complete control of the atmosphere, which can either lead to doom or gloom for Liverpool.

Earlier that week, I was in the stands at Anfield for an English Premier Match against Swansea City. It was an important fixture for Liverpool, but a sunny Sunday afternoon against a non-rival was never going to generate much oomph from the crowd. Still, if a player messes up, the hissing from the Anfield faithful will begin. Around the 20th minute, Liverpool winger Stewart Downing had a golden opportunity to strike from distance. The ball was teed up for him to smash into the left upper 90 of the goal. Downing had all the time in the world for a clean strike. It should’ve been a basic training ground score for him. He followed through, but his shot ended up closer to the corner flag than the frame of the goal. Anfield responded with a 45,000 hisses and grumbles, which remained in the air for a full minute after the mis-kick. It sounded like a cicada farm. The hushed whispers, grumbles, and gossip murmured on.

Downing wouldn’t dare to take another shot until after Liverpool had already established a lead, and the crowd was on their side again. He had been scared off by his own fans. If the crowd is tense, the players are too. If they’re in full-voice and gunning for the players to score, then players will feel more comfortable.

Prior to the Zenit match, Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers called on fans to be their 12th man. He spoke of the Luis Garcia “ghost goal” from 2005 as a moment that was influenced by Anfield’s roars: “I was here for the first one, the ‘ghost goal’ and for me, it wasn’t a goal — it was the sheer force of the crowd that got it.” He was a coach for Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea at the time, who were knocked out of the Champions League by Liverpool because of the ghost goal—a goal that was called even though Garcia’s shot never broke the plane of the goal line. It’s widely believed that it was given by referee Luboš Michel because he was pressured by the celebrations of the crowd. Mourinho himself has called it “a goal that came from the moon—from the Anfield stands.”

We heeded Rodgers’ call last Thursday. I sat in the famous Kop end of Anfield, and we were brewing a cauldron of resistance 20 minutes before kick-off.

Every time a Zenit player got on the ball, we hissed and booed until he was dispossessed. Whenever Liverpool were orchestrating a build-up play, relentless calls of “ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK-ATTACK-ATTACK” rained down. It was relentless. The Liverpudlian sitting behind me literally didn’t stop shouting the entire match. In his scouse, he drunkenly yammered for all 90 minutes. “Come on Liverpool!” “Get in now lads!” “C’mon you Reds!” “That’s a penalty!” It didn’t stop. It was like he was single-handedly trying to will Liverpool in on goal.

Liverpool conceded the first goal of the match after defender Jamie Carragher had the ball stolen from him near his own goal by Zenit striker Hulk. This all happened, of course, while the Kop was singing “A Team Full of Carraghers”—an ode to Jamie Carragher himself. “Well that’s a bloody team full of Carraghers for ye,” quipped an elderly woman in front of me.

Liverpool, now needing to score 4 goals to advance, were basically left for dead. 100% of fan bases that I’ve been around would’ve sulked, sat on their fans, and waited out the rest of the match in bitter disappointment. These fans didn’t. We weren’t going to accept that. After Carragher’s blunder, a brief “Did that just happen?” moment was allowed for all, and the “Come on Red Men!” chants started again. We responded with more noise, more energy, and even louder singing after a calamitous death-blow. A dagger that wasn’t.

Frankly, that’s unheard of. Jet fans would’ve left immediately, Knick fans would’ve booed relentlessly, and every other American sports fan would’ve wallowed in self-deprecation and mumbled cursing.

After non-stop singing and chanting—it was like the Zenit goal never even happened—the magic of a European night at Anfield started to thicken the air. Liverpool got one back from a Luis Suarez free-kick. And then another from Joe Allen’s right foot at point-blank range. 2-1. And then this happened:

3-1 to Liverpool, all on the backbone of our voices.

Liverpool would search for a fourth goal for the remaining thirty minutes. They’d come up short. A gutting result for fans, but a courageous and near-magical one at that. There’s no way Liverpool come back and score three goals after conceding first without Anfield behind them. A reserved crowd will almost always lead to a tense match, and ultimately a disappointing final score. Never before have I witnessed a home crowd tangibly will their team to victory. If the atmosphere of that night is ever surpassed, it’ll be by fellow Liverpool fans during another Anfield night.

Sporting events back home will never be the same again, thanks to 45,276 fans from across the Atlantic on the fields of Anfield Road.

Follow Justin on Twitter @jblock49

For the first Super Bowl in four years, I didn’t have a vested interest in the game. I had no bets wagered, the Giants weren’t there to root against, my Packers weren’t there to root for, and the Drew Brees wasn’t there playing with all of post-Katrina New Orleans on his back. Still, with a considerate 11:30 PM kick-off time in London and no class until 2 PM the next day, I ventured out to the University of London’s bar for their Super Bowl party.

On the walk to the bar, I noticed that every single pub I passed (it was a half hour walk, and given that there’s at least one pub per block on London, I must’ve passed at least 3,000 pubs) was open and advertising “the Big Game.”

At UL’s bar, I expected a handful of Raven and 49er fans, a small sect of Americans wanting to watch the Super Bowl just to attain a sense of American normalcy in a foreign country, and nothing more. It was late. Kids had class the next morning. The half-time show would be on YouTube the following morning. It’s just the NFL. To my surprise, half of the bar was full of British NFL fans, all cloaked in NFL apparel, and NYU students were aplenty. Never underestimate the drawing power of a Ray Lewis speech and a Beyonce performance.

British NFL fans are nothing new to me. At my first Packers game at the old Giants Stadium a few years ago, I met some British Packer fans in the parking lot. With the expansion of NFL broadcasts overseas over the past twenty years, they had watched Brett Favre’s Packer teams dominate the mid-90s, and had adopted the Pack as their own, despite not even knowing where Green Bay was on the map.

I get the Packer connection. It’s a historic franchise that has produced winning seasons for the past two decades. It’d be the American equivalent of picking Manchester United as your favorite team. When there’s no natural connection, you fall in love with the consistent winner.

What didn’t make sense was the group of British NFL fans wearing Donovan McNabb, Mark Sanchez, Roy Williams, Tom Brady, and Eli Manning jerseys in the heart of London. The jerseys could’ve been just a novelty. When I go to MLS games at Red Bull Arena, it’s common to see American fans wearing whatever soccer jersey they happen to own to the game. The Red Bulls could be playing the Houston Dynamo and you’d still see about 30 Lionel Messi jerseys around the stadium. To these fans, wearing any soccer apparel to says, “Hey, we’re here because we know something about the sport.” In actuality, they probably know very little about the MLS, and could probably name only five European soccer players, but they know Messi. It’s a shame that Mark Sanchez was the finest representative the NFL had to offer for one British NFL fan.

At the bar, the NFL Brits noticed my Liverpool jersey. Worse, they saw that Joe Allen, the much lamented midfielder, was the name printed on the back of it. I should’ve known to not wear that shirt in public. It was only a matter of time until the crows came out to give me a hard time.

Here’s how the conversation went down, edited for appropriateness (you can probably guess where the warm beer-fueled expletives came in):

“Ey mate, are you a real Liverpool fan or a joke?”

“What? Why?”

“Well you’re wearing your crap club on yer chest with the name of a midget Welshman on the back.”

“5 European Cups, and 18 Leagues, that’s what we call history. Anyway, you have a JETS jersey on. You’re a disgrace to my city, the NFL, sports fans who grew up with a pre-sensationalist SportsCenter, and TMZ.”

“What’s a ‘European Cup’?”

Pause.

I had just encountered a Londoner wearing a Mark Sanchez jersey who knew enough about Liverpool to insult me but not enough about international soccer to know about the European Club Championship… WHERE WAS I?

After further conversation and a round shared with his mates, I learned that these guys actually hated the English Premier League, and only had anecdotal knowledge of their national sport through their friend’s Twitter rampages. Mr. Sanchez has a friend who’s a Liverpool fan, so the “midget Welshman” name was fresh in his mind. They admired the physicality of American football as opposed to European soccer’s divers and whiners.

Going around the table, I got to know the background stories behind these NFL Brits. Mr. Sanchez started following the Jets after a visit to New York two years ago, at the peak of the Rex Ryan era. The lad wearing the Tom Brady jersey picked the Patriots because he’s a history student and thought the Patriots’ Minuteman logo from the 90s looked cool—ironic, considering, well, you know, these Minutemen blasted his ancestors back across the Atlantic en route to Independence. The Cowboys fan had read about Tony Romo dating Jessica Simpson in the tabloids (“She has great knockers,” according to my new friend), and started tuning in every Sunday night to Cowboy games.

They couldn’t afford to make it out to the NFL In London annual games at Wembley, but those games are “the third biggest day of the year” according to one NFL Brit. The two days above in his pecking order of grand occasions: the Super Bowl and Christmas.

These were all very random roads to fandom fueled by either whims or pop culture references, but all backed up by an exceptional knowledge of the game. These fans knew the difference between a 3-4 and 4-3 defense, wondered how Kaepnerick and the 49ers’ pistol offense would fair against a strong Ravens front 7, and lamented the fact that European sports didn’t have a hard salary cap like the NFL did. Any novel reader of the game could dissect a 4-3 defense, but these guys actually knew the difference between a “hard” and “soft” salary cap. They were practically Sport Management majors!

Eventually, I left their table to participate in matters concerning Beyonce, but these fans had genuinely impressed me. I’d be hard pressed to find well-versed soccer fans at a World Cup party back in the States.

Before leaving, I asked them whether they’d like an NFL team in London one day. A resounding “YES!” was blurted in my direction. Roger Goodell, I just found your first 6 season ticket holders for your future London franchise. Finding 85,994 more to fill Wembley every Sunday shouldn’t be so hard now.

Follow Justin on Twitter @jblock49

Thank you to David Russell of Ireland for hooking me up with a ticket to the match.

Follow Justin on Twitter @jblock49

That began last Wednesday, as Liverpool traveled to the Emirates for a tough draw with Arsenal on a cold and windy London night. Liverpool were coming off of a disastrous performance against Oldham in an FA Cup draw, but with the proper back four and 4-3-3 shape installed once again, I reckoned that we’d see a better performance from the Reds. A draw was always on the cards, and that’s just how the match ended up. 2-2.

It was disappointing to see Liverpool throw away a 2-0 lead in the second half, but Arsenal deserved those goals, as they out-shot, out-possessed, and terrorized Liverpool with consistent pressing and lightening quick build-up play. I’ll take the point.

Just like I did with the Boston match over the summer, I put together a mini-documentary of this match. I interviewed fans around the ground, got some great shots of the pitch, and ate my first pie! Watch it below. I hope to attend 2-3 more Liverpool matches, so look out for me England! I’m here!

Follow Justin on Twitter @jblock49

This was always going to be a rebuilding year for LFC. The majority of us accepted that after the massive Deadline Day fuck-up on 31 August, when Andy Carroll left and no new striker came in, leaving LFC very, very barren at the striker position for the next four months. Brendan Rodgers had been preaching for patience with him for months beforehand, but after Deadline Day, the certainty of a rough season was etched into stone.

What hurt was the fact that every Liverpool fan knew that they needed to add a striker in this window, and it was really the worst-kept secret in the Premiership that Brendan Rodgers didn’t wanna keep Andy Carroll, so two strikers would need to come in for the club to stand a chance. It didn’t really matter to me that LFC had signed Joe Allen, Fabio Borini, Oussama Assaidi, and Samed Yesil. It didn’t really matter that Nuri Sahin, a year removed from being Bundesliga Player of the Season in 2010-11, was coming in for a season on loan. As far as I was concerned, the club had just taken this season and flushed it down the drain.

Now, over four months have passed since the deadline day fuck-up. This season has been, for lack of a better term, a disappointment by Liverpool standards. As things stand right now, LFC is in 8th place, which is where they finished last season in spite of having a net spend of £20m during the summer. LFC have yet to beat a team in the top half of the table (however, it should be noted that Suarez’s Merseyside Derby winner wrongly disallowed at Goodison Park). LFC are out of the League Cup after losing to Swansea City at Anfield. They advanced to the knockout stages of the Europa League, but if Di Natale converts that last chance in Italy, they been knocked out in the group stage. To top it all off, LFC lost to Aston Villa 3-1 at home, a young side that has been getting demolished by clubs since our encounter with them.

Almost all signs on the pitch have pointed to this being a season of everlasting disappointment. And yet, I’m still optimistic. Why, you ask, would I still be optimistic about this club in spite of everything that has gone wrong? It’s because I believe that this squad is finally starting to come together as a unit, and we’re seeing improvement.

Suarez has had a tremendous campaign so far this season. He carried the load after Carroll had left and Borini went down. Keeping that in mind, Daniel Sturridge has come in from Chelsea for £12m. He’s looked solid in his first couple of appearances, scoring two goals. Borini has come back as well. Brendan Rodgers now have multiple attacking options up front to play with for the last half of the season. Imagine what’ll happen if Suarez can finally have a rest at some point this season!

In addition, the youth players that have come into the team are doing well, getting first team experience, and showing improvement. The likes of Andre Wisdom, Raheem Sterling, Jonjo Shelvey, and Suso have all stepped in and done well for LFC in the last four and a half months. All are under the age of 21, part of the LFC Academy, and have contributed for the first team during the season. Because of the fact that these players have gotten games this season, the club will benefit in the long-term. Yes, this LFC side does need experience, and from an outsider’s perspective, have put a very large emphasis on buying young players, but the fact that LFC is putting in a foundation for the future is something that should be admired and not derided by the fans.

To top it all off, the wage bill can still be thinned out, and when the last stage of wage bill slimming occurs, it will enable this club to make major moves in the transfer window and help us move forward. Before you all start on how John Henry, Tom Werner, and FSG are a bunch of cheap, useless piece-of-shit owners who don’t care about the club or its fans, I want you to keep an open mind when I lay out these facts:

• In the last two seasons, Liverpool have averaged a net spend in transfer fees of £33,825,000. This season hasn’t even ended, and LFC can still increase that average.
• Compare that to other clubs that aren’t in the Champions League: Tottenham have averaged a net profit of £13,500,000 in transfer dealings the last couple of seasons, Newcastle £5,000,000; etc. Nobody outside the Champions League Top Four comes close to LFC the last two seasons. The club’s current position suggest that it hasn’t been money well spent, but that’s not ownership’s fault.
• The only Premier League clubs that have spent more than LFC in transfer fees the last couple of seasons are in the Champions League.

Yes, the wage bill slimming is a valid point when it comes to the finances of the club’s fees being offset by the big transfer fees. Yes, the bad buys under Dalglish and Comolli also have to be factored in. But the fact of the matter is that there’s no non-Champions League club in England that comes close to LFC’s spending on players in the last two seasons, and that still doesn’t include the new contracts handed out to Suarez, Agger, Skrtel, Suso, and Sterling, all done to keep the poachers further up the table from snatching the club’s brightest talent. LFC are not a selling club anymore, and they’re not afraid to be ambitious in the transfer market when the right targets are in line.

As far as the wage bill right now is concerned, things can still be improved. Joe Cole was sold to West Ham, offloading approximately £45,000 per week from the wage bill after his £3m pay-off. Sahin’s loan move was terminated on Friday, freeing up £60,000 per week for the next six months, which is reported to be exactly the wages that Daniel Sturridge is on.

Keep in mind that there are still moves that can be made to thin the wage bill. Carragher may retire at season’s end, and his £50,000 per week wages could go off the wage bill. Doni’s contract also expires at the end of this season, and he reportedly makes €4 million per season in wages. Coates is reportedly being allowed to leave by Brendan Rodgers, and Danny Wilson, who has gone missing since being signed from Rangers in the summer 0f 2010, is probably going to leave pretty soon as well. Dani Pacheco is also reportedly being allowed to leave. Downing could leave if LFC get a bid of £8million for him, which will also offload £80,000 per week (or probably £60,000 cause LFC have to give him a pay-off). Last but not least, West Ham are obligated to buy Andy Carroll for £17 million if they stay up, which seems very likely right now. Whether or not they try to decrease the fee is a different matter, but bottom line is that he probably will not return.

All of these moves would free up funds for Liverpool FC to use next summer, some moves more than others. With all of this in mind, should these moves occur and Rodgers is given the usual £30,000,000-plus to spend next season, the club will be a lot more flexible with who it can buy than it was in the last few seasons. This is rather exceptional when you consider the fact that LFC is a club currently in its third year without Champions League football, going on a fourth (but hey, there’s got a shot at that, right? No? Okay then).

If Rodgers uses the funds that he is given wisely, injecting the necessary experience into the squad that would go in conjunction with the young core he currently has in place, LFC can make a serious push at 4th place next season. But he needs to improve the squad next summer, and he has to start getting results on the pitch. If he doesn’t use the money wisely and signs the wrong players, then Liverpool FC is going to be resigned to mid-table mediocrity for the next five years.

As much as I love Suarez and truly believe that he loves Liverpool, he is a ticking time-bomb, much like Torres was. He will probably leave after next season if improvement isn’t clearly visible. While we’ll get a huge sum for him as a result of that transfer, his presence is something that LFC won’t be able to replace. There are more who can and will leave after next season as well. Pepe Reina could also leave if things don’t improve, and if he doesn’t, he’ll still be going on 32 years old at the end of next season.

All of the aforementioned moves are based around the fact that Liverpool FC, a club that prides itself on and sells itself to players and fans around the world as being one of the biggest and most successful clubs in Europe, has been out of Europe’s top competition for the last three seasons, going on four. If LFC fail to make the Champions League in 2013-14, it will mean half a decade out of the Champions League. It doesn’t matter how big a club you are, how many trophies you’ve won or how big a stadium you aspire to have: if you’re out of the Champions League for five seasons, it is something that very, very few clubs can successfully recover from.

That is why the summer of 2013 is so important. LFC need to build this squad up and start showing improvement when it comes to results in the Premier League. If LFC fail to do that next season, when the wage bill will be at a very low point and the club will be incredibly flexible with how much it can spend on players, they’ll will be set back irreparably as a result. Liverpool FC is not in as terrible a shape right now as some fans will lead you to believe. But results have to start coming next season, or LFC is gonna feel the consequences of it for years to come.

Follow Greg Visone on Twitter @njny