Fair enough mate but I think making snide insinuations to thousands of followers without saying what it is he's actually saying, does make him a bellend.
Edit - at least that's a bit dick head behavior, doesn't necessarily make him one I guess
Yeah, I replied to him both times questioning it - the first one and the one about Van Den Berg. The nerd community is pretty tight on this front (Ted Knutsen's tweet when it was announced was a bit similar, but more cryptic). Like 'the pendulum might be swinging away from analytics a little'. They know something from someone in and around it (that's what I've heard anyway).
But he's implying that Lijnders is responsible for our lack of transfer market activity, which is a bit mad isn't it?
I didn't read it that way - more that he'd put the blockers on the inputs from the back office team and demanded they get what they wanted.
I'm not quite sure what he means when he mentioned van den Berg either, because he was a cheap young player with little downside and we've also signed Jota, Thiago, Konate, Diaz, Nunez so does Lijnders not get any credit for them? We've not signed enough midfielders but Klopp's made it clear that he's wanted additions, he's not being overruled by his assistant.
Yeah as I say I replied on that - to me Van Den Berg, along with Hoever, looked like an example of good scouting and analytics along with understanding of the contract situation of the target. He admitted he was agenda-driven and out of order on it. What he's said is that he reckons more people will leave the backroom team and that the root of it is the deadlock instigated by Lijnders. On the flip side of that, though, I can't see why that's intrinsically a problem for Liverpool or for Jurgen Klopp. It's not long since we signed Konate. We still signed Carvalho and Ramsay and Doak in the summer and all of them look a continuation of the same theme - good scouting, good analytics, good common sense engagement with the player on their pathway from the point they join. We know what good looks like on recruitment.
Yes, we've paid big bucks for players the manager seemed infatuated with in recent windows, but I don't see that as the problem - each of those players has aspects that jump out as notable in the numbers - whether they fit the system obviously I guess is a question, but they do look wonderful players don't they?
I think the agenda is on player retentions - the tension over Wijnaldum's contract extension, then letting him go, then the same over Henderson's contract extension, then Klopp getting his way. And now Mane and Salah's situation... I can't help but feel that's where it's reached a deadlock. The nerds don't get to build a better train set their way without churn in the squad (and Bob Paisley might say they have a point), but Jurgen wants a stable squad that stays together - he namechecked Real Madrid and Spurs on that (as John Gibbons put it on Monday) and he'll still be raw from the trauma of seeing his squad plundered by Bayern at Dortmund.
That's why I don't think it's a problem. I think three or four good signings in the right age profile right the ship. We own the technology and the data inputs/approaches, we know how to use data well, we have a genius of a manager... and we know if we plug in the right nerds to replace the old ones, it'll rebalance to something workable again.
