Being Liverpool Manager

Earlier this evening Liverpool Football Club announced that Brendan Rodgers has had his contract terminated. The full announcement is here.

"At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters." Bill Shankly

I've been watching Liverpool since the early 70s. I stood on the Kop and watched the end of the Shankly era and the beginning of the Paisley era. I watched the best team in the world defeat all before them. This was the time when, to paraphrase Shankly, the bond between fan, team and manager was strongest. I grew up giving the manager my full support and I was richly rewarded. Support for the Liverpool manager is in my DNA. At least it was until Roy Hodgson. I was uneasy with that appointment and I was carrying a metaphorical pitch-fork by the end. I'm saddened that Brendan Rodgers has been sacked. He is a talented coach who gave his all to the cause.

Inspiring Transfers

Tuning The Red Ferrari?

Image: Ferrari F40 by Günter Hentschel, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

The summer transfer window is now closed so let's take a look at Liverpool's transfer activity for the last 5 seasons using the data from lfchistory.net. FSG purchased Liverpool in October 2010, so this period covers all the seasons under the control of John Henry and Tom Werner.

This summer's activity has seen purchases of £86M*, sales of £70.4M giving a total net spend of £15.6M. Liverpool's average transfer net spend since the summer of 2011 is £24.7M per season. This average net spend figure is a useful, though limited, measure of the change to the baseline squad per season. Depending on your point of view, you can think of the net spend as some fine-tuning to the red Ferrari or the next set of parts for the kit car.

*This includes an estimated fee of £6M for Danny Ings, with the actual fee still to be agreed by a tribunal.

This article was first published here on lfchistory.net on 2nd September 2015.

The Elite Strikers

Can Christian Benteke Join Liverpool's Elite Strikers?

"I know Liverpool is a big story. They’ve won league titles and the Champions League five times..." Christian Benteke.

Image from @bentekechris20

A warm welcome to Christian Benteke. All Liverpool fans hope that Christian will join the elite group of Liverpool strikers that have scored 20 or more league goals in a season.

Liverpool have been blessed with some great goal scorers. Even 'God' played up front. However, as you will see, it is a big challenge to join the elite strikers.

This article was also published here on lfchistory.net on 27th July 2015.

A Striking Trio

Barcelona's Treble Top

Congratulations to Barcelona (especially Luis Suarez) on winning the treble of La Liga, Copa del Rey and UEFA Champions league in 2014-15. Barca's front line of Messi, Neymar and Suarez have been hailed as the best ever striking trio. In La Liga the trio scored 81 goals, with Messi scoring 43, Neymar 22 and Suarez 16.

This got me thinking: who were Liverpool's best ever striking trio in the league? I analysed the data from lfchistory.net to find the total goals by a striking trio in a top level league season. The graph shows a summary, with the top 10 scores highlighted.

 And the winner is (drum roll)…

From Rafa To Rodgers

LFC Data Analysis of Seasons 2004-05 to 2014-15

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."  Benjamin Disraeli

This post describes Liverpool Football Club's premier league performance in seasons 2004-05 to 2014-15 with graphs generated from publicly available data. The seasons cover 11 years, from Rafael Benitez' first match of season 2004-05 in August 2004 to Brendan Rodgers' final match of season 2014-15 in May 2015.

Hopefully the graphs and narrative will make you think about the highs and lows. It's hard for any Liverpool fan to look back over these 11 premier league seasons without some trauma. Just think about Istanbul if it get too difficult ;-).

The analysis also places Rodgers' performance in context. It remains to be seen if he will survive the run of poor results in the final quarter of 2014-15, culminating in the Stoke debacle.

In his final season in 2014-15 Steven Gerrard was Liverpool's top league scorer with 9 goals. This is equal to the lowest ever total by a top scoring Liverpool striker since Liverpool were founded in 1892. Steven joins 2 other top scoring strikers with 9 league goals: Milan Baros in 2004-05 and Jack Cox in 1903-04.

Whoever is in charge next season it is clear that Liverpool must do what they should have done in the summer of 2014 following Suarez' departure - take a risk and invest in a quality striker.

This article was first published on 26th May 2015. It was also published here on lfchistory.net on 3rd June 2015.

Premier League 2014-15 Football Match Analysis

Premier League 2014-15 Football Match Analysis (prem)

The prem notebook demonstrates the power of IPython Notebook, python, pandas and matplotlib to analyse a data set. The data set I am using is the English premiership league 2014-15 football match results as of 27th April 2015.

Game of Life

Game of Life (gol)

gol is a simple python (with pygame) implementation of famous scouser John Horton Conway's cellular automaton known as 'Game of Life' or 'Life'.

This blog post has moved to Terry's Musings: Game of Life.