Chelsea doing ‘Boy Math’ as Liverpool ‘curse of the big man’ chronicled

Darwin Nunez is just the latest of many ‘big men’ to fail at Liverpool, while Chelsea really are playing a very weird financial game.

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The curse of the Anfield big man
I know it’s early for Halloween stories but reading Ian Graham’s (Liverpool’s former data guru) account of how Jurgen Klopp pushed for the signing of Darwin Nunez against his advice confirmed my worst suspicions about …. The Curse of the Anfield Big Man.

I have been monitoring this phenomenon at Liverpool for several decades and can confirm the curse is real affecting most predictably player and manager when invoked.

Had Darwin been able to kick the ball reliably in the net from 10 yards (having scored in excess of 40 goals at Benfica the year before) Klopp could easily have ended his Liverpool with an unprecedented quadruple. Alas he was not aware of the curse and as Darwin inexplicably (but we know better my friends) broke the Premier League record for hitting the woodwork in one game, Jurgen howled at the moon above Anfield and departed with the “greatest cup of his career” as a consolation.

But Jurgen is not the first.

Remember Brendan Rodgers’ famous plan B Christian Benteke but Brendan apparently pushed for despite the board backing a certain Bobby Firmino (who Brendan played as a right wing back on a number of occasions?!) Brendan too was blinded by the big man lights and departed Anfield shortly after.

Liverpool legends aren’t immune either, King Kenny had a vision apparently of Andy Carroll rising high in front of the Kop to head home a winner. Liverpool had just signed Luis Suarez and Maxi but Kenny pursued his vision of Stuart Downing pumping in crosses to Andy Carroll until the Anfield curse of the big man took care of him too.

And it’s not just managers and their ill fated picks who fall prey to this, Roy Hodgson was batting his eyelids at Carlton Cole before the board halted that madness and even Rafa had a notable failure in Fernando Morientes.

These were all fine players (often much more) with their own clubs but brought to Anfield they became inept, hapless lummoxes and often laughing stocks. I cannot tell you why this is dear reader but rest assured I will continue to delve into the Anfield archives to try and discover the origin of the curse of the big man.

In the meantime a word of warning to Arne Slot, stick with the gurriers Arne, small swarthy lads who know their way around the penalty box and could pick your pocket while shaking your hand, Fowler, Suarez, Owen, Firmino and now Jota show the way, and if ever the lure of the big man calls Arne….beware.
Dave (hapless big man forward myself) LFC

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Klopp cocked it on Gravenberch
I’m genuinely surprised by the amount of Liverpool fans surprise at how Ryan Gravenberch suddenly seems like a different player.

Much as it is blasphemy to question our former manager it’s really Jürgen who should take the blame for Gakpo and Gravenberch being poor. They both played out of position all last year.

Back in Netherlands Ryan played as one half of twin sitting midfielders, his skill set is possession retention and interceptions. It’s no wonder he looked poor playing as a box to box midfield enforcer or number 10 under Klopp.

It’s for exactly this reason why I’m totally fine if LFC make no signings this year because quite a few players may genuinely be different players playing in a different system.

Jürgen didn’t get everything right, his use of inverted fullbacks last year also left massive holes at the back, just ask United.
Lee

…Eric mate, I feel you misunderstood my point. I’ll accept my use of the word clueless has been too harsh to keep my point relevant. I’m not saying Ryan is now well on his way to becoming the world-beater we both want him to be, nor that he was in fact great last year. He wasn’t. And it is indeed, just one game. Against a promoted team no less. That said, here are the reasons why it made sense to be patient with him last season:

It’s a new team, with new teammates, and understanding takes time.

He had very little first-team football in the previous year.

He has never played in England.

Klopp signings (and most of them overall) often do not make an immediate impact, they take some time to produce.

In a system that requires a specialty wrecking ball 6, there were only two positions to fight over, and Mac was undroppable most of the time.

This also led to inconsistency in the role he was playing. You couldn’t find stability in the midfield. Szobo suffered from this too.

Feel free to add to this the 6 month goodbye tour that probably didn’t add much comfort, but might not have been critical.

There are probably more reasons, but I’ll stop.

The conditions weren’t easy at all, and it’s a process even when they are all good. I merely wanted to point out that being “very harsh and very vocal” has no reasonable reason at all when it comes to a 21 year-old player who you WANT to be successful. I do not see a reason to be impatient in that situation other than, well, impatience, and I think that’s short-sighted and not reasonable for a veteran fan at least. Maybe at United (he said, fishing for angry comments), but not at Liverpool. After all, It does Mean More (he hung yet another lure).

Either way, let’s hope for the best with him, and remember, being vocally and harshly critical in the early days helps no one, especially when we’re dealing with young new players. If you were coming after Joe Gomez, for instance, we’d have a very different conversation.
Tomer, LFC (the comment sections here are a special kind of dreadful. Shoutout to the horrendous Keith and his many many personalities, all of whom are tw*ts).

Chelsea are now just an investment entity
After reading the short piece on Chelsea’s signing of Joao Felix, it got me thinking.

I’m a Man City supporter and in no way blind to the frequent assertions that City are the harbingers of doom when it comes to the PL and English football, what with all their money, (alleged) accounting chicanery and hilariously overpowered squad.

Now, the effect of City’s dominance and the rights/wrongs of the club’s owners has, and continues to be well documented for a long time now. Especially by triple Z list TikTokers like Mark Goldbridge. But I ask you, are they more of a danger than the current owners of Chelsea?

I say this because I feel this is the first time that the owner(s) of a club aren’t even trying to hide their agenda anymore. What Chelsea are doing isn’t in the interest of the club, the league or football in general. It is being run as an investment entity, gobbling up assets in the expectation that it will vastly inflate the club’s value.

As a result, I would be surprised if Chelsea weren’t in the hands of new owners (or worse) by the end of the season.

This isn’t the first time something like this has come about of course, the Glazers at Man Utd are the next best example, saddling the club with huge debts for which they have no personal liability but help themselves to a very generous portion of the profit. But the difference here is that I at least see *some* understanding of the need to run Man United as a football club first, whereas I don’t see that over at Chelsea.

Right now, Chelsea are Wall Street in English football. And much like the financial crash of ’08, the bankers will leave nothing but carnage in their wake, and disappear without trace or accountability with the rest of us left holding a very large bag of sh*t.

Yes, state ownership may come with its own issues no doubt, but I argue that they pale in comparison to the problems that this type of Americanised corporate ownership will cause. You want to see the real boogeyman in English football, turn your gaze away from the Etihad and towards Stamford Bridge.
Marc, Bolton, MCFC

…I saw a stat today that said Chelsea had an effective 191 years worth of contract years left in their current squad. If you take average weekly wage (60 000- very generous) times by 52 weeks and time by 191 you get a figure of £595 920 000. Yes nearly £600m in wages due in the next however many years. I started to add owed transfer fees to that, but stopped as I started to get dizzy.

Todd Boehly there’s a saying: If you want to be a millionaire, start off as a billionaire and buy a wine farm. This might apply to football clubs like Chelsea.
Dale (Chelsea doing Boy Math) Denton

Actually, Spurs are following last season to the letter…
Point of order on Will Ford’s commentary comparing the Spurs match with Leicester unfavourably to the ten-match unbeaten run at the start of last season.

The first match of that unbeaten run was also a score draw away at an ostensibly weaker opponent in which Spurs scored first but were then pegged back. Spurs failed to score in the second half of that game as well. If anything, we’re following that example too closely.
AJ, Spurs, Bishop’s Stortford

Maddison and Son among Spurs players who could be dropped
Should I send an email re Spurs? Naw, someone else will do it. Plus, ya know, I don’t care, do I. Okay, so nobody wrote in and I clearly, somewhat, do care.

Somehow I always knew this was going to be a draw. In fact, the more we battered the Foxes in the first half without making it count, the more it would so come true.

The good, the bad and the ugly; I’ve watched the majority of pre-season and was coloured thoroughly impressed by both Archie and Lucas. They aren’t just the future, they’re right now.

Maddison should fear for his starting place because, despite his solid 9/10 first half showing, he quickly regressed to his pre-season and end of last season form – a stinky and smelly 2/10. It ain’t pretty.

Bentancur looked more like his old self before the injury and he brings a calm no one else can to the centre of the park. Pape can sometimes go unnoticed but his ability to recover and cover (gaping) spaces we often leave, is not to be sniffed at. So, I am sort of happy/hopeful with the midfield. And that’s nice because it really was a problem for 70% of last season. Bissouma should not get a look in. Not because of his love for balloon sucking, he’s just kinda whack.

Quick line on the defence, that was our strongest back 4. Rightly so. At the end of the season people will point to the goals conceded column and scream ‘yeah, but they’re shit’. Oh no, they are not. We just have full backs playing as midfielders and sometimes even as a beautiful, late arriving, sexy, central attacking midfielder to gloriously nod in a goal that prime Dele would have been proud of. It’s the system and we gotta live with it. Like it or lump it.

Where’s the issue then, I hear absolutely no one cry as I am sat at home alone and won’t let the voices in my head win.

Well, in addition to the torturing psychological issues forever cursed upon as a football club, it’s up top. When Werner comes on and looks elite compared to Son and BJ, we have an issue. This may sound really dumb but, last season, goals aside, Sonny was very poor. If he doesn’t hit the old onion sack – which looks more and more likely – he is a total passenger. Can’t win a header, can’t hold the ball up and constantly loses possession. Does not own the pace he once did. Always been a huge fan and I love the guy but he’s kind of smoked now.

Talking of pace. I get why Big Ange selects BJ. Tons of pace, hugs the line? Great – perfect fit for his system and the reason why a red-hot Kulu was benched (looked tip top in pre-season). Anyway, shame Brennan doesn’t take anyone on, pick anyone out or do anything of use. Also very very weak on the ball, a la Son. Weak wingers who don’t take on their man? Lovely.

Finally – onto our new target man. Yeah yeah, probably should have scored at some point but apart from the first chance (the header he maybe should have buried), he didn’t have any glaring chances. What did he show though? The ability to win headers, hold the ball up, lay it off nicely – and not just to any football player on the pitch – to an actual teammate. Wearing the same shirt and everything. Madness.

Whether he will justify £65m is a question for another day far into the future. But he suits us and will be a success. He’s only been with us 3 minutes and had to suffer with playing alongside Son & BJ. Get Kulu next to him and (I can’t believe I am saying this) Werner, then watch him cook. Werner, for all his flaws will take a man and usually beat him. Does he have the end product? Rarely. But at least he takes his man on. Kulu is strong, offers variety in his attack and although not blessed with pace, will beat a man through skill and will. That rhymes, Marge, and you know it rhymes.

We could finish 3rd, we could finish 13th. What we definitely don’t have is a starting 11 good enough to be anywhere near the top 2. Whether we end up more Villa (a good thing) or more Chelsea (a really really horrifyingly terrible thing) is yet to be seen.
Glen, Stratford Spur

Rutterly ridiculous
As someone who likes to geek out way too much on the history of football, I can’t begin to pretend the game was ever pure and ethical. After all, the first ever £1,000 transfer was paid way back in 1905, by Middlesbrough for Alf Common, in a desperate but ultimately successful attempt to buy themselves out of the relegation zone.

Yet, recent events have convinced me that the Premier League is coming to the abyss. We’ve come to accept over the last half-decade that Chelsea and Manchester United regularly pee so much money up the wall without any tangible result they make Brewster’s Millions look like a Netflix docu-series.

Meanwhile. Brighton appear to be firmly in the category of ‘well-run club’ in the football journos’ handy narrative playbook. So then, what about the case of Georginio Rutter? The transfer may go under the radar of many publications, but Brighton have just spent £40 million on the 22-year-old Breton. Yes, 40 million pounds, not Turkish lira.

In full disclosure, I am a Leeds fan, and am therefore furious that a player who made our attack so unpredictable had a release clause in his contract, which Brighton somehow found out about (I’m sure his agent had nothing to do with it, of course).

But it’s not just about sour grapes, honest! It’s that, while Rutter is an excellent dribbler and imaginative passer (and a totally likable lad), he is at least one season of regular Championship starts away from being a top-level player. He loves to show the ball to defenders then take it away, but wiser defenders will spot that early. His shooting is nowhere near Premier League level yet, either.

Beyond all of that is the fee. Even in the la-la land of today’s market, if Brighton want to eventually make a profit our of Georginio, they can only realistically sell him to the likes of Chelsea, the Manchesters, PSG or Real Madrid. That’s highly restrictive, and he would have to come on a lot if any of those clubs are to be tempted (ok, maybe not in Chelsea’s case).

So when the likes of Brighton start to do daft deals, alarm bells should really sound. The transfer bubble is about to burst, and I can see happening very, very soon.
Simon Harrow

READ: Chelsea are summer’s biggest spenders but Brighton are about to take over

Bye-bye Garth
“I enjoyed reading the BBC Team of the Week.”

My goodness I didn’t think I’d say that again. Well done Troy Deeney for:

– Choosing a realistic 11 that fits the formation
– Picking no defenders that scored!
– Not using your media space for a rant
– Calling Salah ‘double-hard” for his new hairdo

Bit of analysis, common sense and a touch of humour. Who knew that’s all we needed!
Graeme, Glasgow