Comolli's had a fair bit to say about us recently, his quotes taken from
http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/soccer/henderson-signing-cost-me-liverpool-job-says-comolli-296561.htmlhttp://www.thescore.ie/damien-comolli-liverpool-1766282-Nov2014/“When we signed Jordan Henderson, he got so much criticism, I got so much criticism,” Comolli said. “I was never told why I was sacked but I was led to believe it was because we signed Jordan Henderson, and the owners were convinced he was not good enough.”
Comolli says statistics played a big part in the transfer policy at Anfield in his time, and were integral to the club signing Luis Suarez.
Comolli said Liverpool had relied on the “eyes, ears and numbers” formula to evaluate Suarez while he played in Holland.
“We’d watched him since Groningen, so we were aware of what he did, how he played and so on. That was the ‘eyes’ part,” said Comolli.
“Numbers? We didn’t have a lot of data on the Dutch League at the time, but we knew he’d scored 41 in 61: numbers.
“We tried to measure what goals in other leagues would be ‘worth’ in the Premier League. It’s not perfect but we felt a goal in Holland was worth one-10th of a Premier League goal.
“So we felt he wouldn’t get 41 in 61, but we were wrong — he got 31 in 33 games.
“We looked at other factors — how and when he scored, did he score when they were chasing the game or when they were three-nil up, did he get equalisers, could you rely on him to score away from home, did he only score against weak teams or against top teams.
“Did he create chances, did he deliver assists, how did he play in the last third?
“Another question was personality. We needed personality up front, — would he be a technical and emotional leader for the team at the front and give it that spark?
“When we looked at it, he gave us everything.”
Comolli says the last part of the equation then came into play.
“Our chief scout heard that we could do the deal, that they (Ajax) wanted to sell him: ears. We couldn’t believe it and decided to move.
“We heard people saying he couldn’t play in the Premier League — Spurs had him, but they decided he couldn’t play in England, so they moved away.
“They heard we were interested and tried to move in, but it was too late.”
Comolli also said that statistics contradicted an article of faith in field sports, that young players can play more games because they recover quicker.
“Measuring the load the young player can take, you want to ensure that when he becomes a mature player at 23 that he’ll continue like that for 10 years.
“At Liverpool we had devices to measure player load, we had five and tried them on young players. At the time John Flanagan was in the first team, he was 18 but playing quite a lot.
“What we found out went totally against everything I’ve heard since I was brought up in football, that young players can play more because they recover quicker.
“Rubbish. We found that John Flanagan’s heart rate was coming back to normal 72 hours after a 90-minute game, whereas a senior player was coming back to normal 24-36 hours later. That meant the risk of breaking down for him, if we played him within 72 hours of that game, was massive
the second link:
"I think it’s very interesting to compare it with Atletico Madrid’s approach. They and Liverpool both lost their key player – Diego Costa won the league for Atletico on his own and took them to a Champions League final on his own. Luis Suarez took Liverpool to second place on his own, Champions League too. Atletico asked themselves ‘Can we find a replacement for Costa that we can afford? No we can’t. But what we can do is sign Mandzukic, who is quite similar, and Griezmann.’ They basically swapped one for two and kept a very stable team. Liverpool have done it the other way around.”
“Liverpool have invested in youth with the likes Philippe Coutinho, Mamadou Sakho, Raheem Sterling, Jon Flanagan – and suddenly they change everything. I think the philosophies (at Atletico and Liverpool) are very different and time will tell which is the best one.”
"But Atletico still have a very functional team and are doing very well – they haven’t destroyed what they’ve built. You look at Liverpool from the outside and they’ve kind of destroyed what they built, what they had. If you compare the two clubs – and if you ask yourself whose been the most successful at it, you’d say Atletico Madrid.”
“I don’t know what’s going on from a fitness point of view. They don’t look right. Being in clubs for a long time, I know sometimes that the eyes tell you that the team is not right physically but when you look at the data, it tells you otherwise. But when you look at the Liverpool players against Newcastle, the quick players looked slow, the players with great stamina looked heavy-legged so I don’t know if there’s a physical aspect to why they’re not performing.”
“Last year, as much as they were killing everybody with the pace they had, the team spirit, team dynamics, togetherness and cohesion was unbelievable in the second part of the season. And it seems that this season, they’ve lost that completely. Which brings me back to my first point – bringing so many players in compared to Atletico Madrid. Did they kill the team spirit? Did they kill the cohesion they had? Maybe they did and that takes a long, long time to come back – especially if results aren’t going their way.”
"That’s why Liverpool deserve credit. Losing your strike-force – one player because he’s sold, the other because he’s injured, is probably too much to cope with. If Sturridge was fit, it would be a different story. But it reminds me so much of what happened to us at Spurs. We had programmed to sell Dimitar Berbatov and we ended up selling both Berbatov and Robbie Keane because Keane wanted to go and the money offered by Liverpool was unbelievable and impossible to turn down. And then we lost the best attacking partnership in the Premier League – the best pair over two seasons was Berbatov and Keane in terms of assists made and goals scored. Liverpool have been getting a lot of criticism but I think it’s a bit unfair because Sturridge is not there. If it’s still not working when Sturridge gets back, then there’s really grounds for concern.”
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I found the bit about Flanagan's recovery compared to senior players going against the perceived wisdom to be interesting, there's probably some truth about team cohesion / spirit becoming diluted with so many signings; beyond that the rest seems fairly routine except for a goal in the dutch league rated at around 1 / 10th in the English league haha.
