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Pellegrini and the future

Seems like quite a good time to assess Pellegrini's future imo - before the swings of a few end-of-season results muddies the picture based on our final placing. I’m broadly in favour of a change of coach/manager over the Summer break. It’s not a ‘fire the manager’ situation, I just think weighing up the pros and cons I’d prefer a change. Many will disagree and that’s fine. Obviously the overwhelming likelihood is that the club continues happily with Pellegrini. And the 3-year deal on a rumoured v high wage means it might cost up to £20m just to get out of it after a year. 

So not a decision for the club to take lightly, but my view is that when you’re talking about something so fundamental as the first-team coach, then almost whatever the cost of course-correction the right decision must be taken. Because it affects everything else, can’t really put a price on it. 

My view is that overall this season is, if at all, only a very small improvement on the previous two. Many of the broad indicators (shots for/against, possession) seem to suggest little or no change from previous seasons.There are some red flags in some areas - aerial duels, shots against. Set pieces for/against is a major weakness. The club is bottom three in xG against, suggesting that good fortune may be the prime reason we dodged trouble. These stats tallies with my own observations. Imo the team has shown promise for sure, and some aspects of our attacking have definitely improved, but it so often has seemed entirely hapless on the pitch. Looking through the games there’s only a handful I was genuinely happy with. Put short, I haven’t seen enough from the team to back the coach.

Fundamentally, with this group of players, I think of the three stock Pellegrini team shapes (4-4-2, 4-2-3-1, 4-1-4-1, which he has used exclusively since records of his tactics began) only the last offers enough solidity to function consistently in the current premier league. OPTAs records of starting formation suggests that for only 13 games out of the current 30 Pellegrini has utilised a shape that I think ‘could’ work. So over half the time I’m unhappy - I just can’t back that approach. And whatever the shape, you can’t carry players who are given little responsibility to work backwards and offer cover in defensive phases. The strikers and wingers simply don’t cover diligently enough and I think this comes from the coach.

My read of Pellegrini’s approach is a ‘boom/bust gambling mentality’. Simply sacrifice defensive solidity for attackers and see if it floats. On occasion it will - many more times it won’t. We’ve seen all the evidence of that. Crucially what I think was a fortunate win away at Newcastle parlayed into a good run of results at a crucial time with a favourable set of fixtures. During which imo we played a disfunctional shape and approach but got away with it - that’s the basis for avoiding a relegation scrap this season.

Compare to Allardyce. Allardyce prioritised defensive solidity and physical strength and hoped to snatch enough draws and wins for an acceptable return in terms of points. Turgid to watch, but I can see the logic. It usually works. Pellegrini prioritises attacking flair over solidity - sounds attractive in theory but you are betting everything on those attackers. If it doesn’t work there isn’t much to stop the house of cards collapsing. It relies massively on confidence and momentum.

I’d like to see the third way, which is any flexible or moderate plan that operates between these two extremes. That’s what I’d be looking for from a new first-team coach.

I think a key factor with the current manager is buying into this idea of a ‘big team mentality’. I think it’s an empty concept that sounds good to supporters but means nothing. Of course being confident and comfortable on the pitch is a plus. Yes of course I want us to attack opponents where given opportunity - if only our shooting stats matched that aim. They don’t. For shots per game we are 15th in the table fractionally above Cardiff. xG 14th. Of course, I want us to control the ball more so we can decide the course of a game rather than play reactive football. We just haven’t achieved that. Possession-wise we are 12th in the league, joint with Huddersfield.

Now it would be remiss not to say that the current manager works within a structure I also think isn’t fit for the demands of modern football. And perhaps I’m most disappointed by the lack of progress in this area. But I see Pellegrini as fundamentally an embodiment of these outdated ideals. He seems to have more control over targets and signings than any manager in our recent history, so actually represents imo a further step backwards in terms of modernising our approach with transfers.

It’s effectively just the next iteration of the cult of personality driving the club’s decision-making. The focus on South American flair is actually imo less progressive than Bilic’s pragmatism. And the further we go with it, the bigger the task for whoever follows it. I think we’re already in the situation where the next manager will need to speak Spanish. I consider that a massive limitation for an English club, and might yet prove very troublesome post-Brexit. It works directly counter to homegrown quotas and academy integration.

I think I’m in a minority of West Ham supporters over being disappointed with the club’s Summer window, presumably driven largely by Pellegrini’s targets (through his DoF Husillos). I think of the huge £90m+ outlay, we brought in roughly £50m+ of talent - hugely wasteful. Balbuena obviously a good value signing within that - a carefully measured catch, or a punt? Diop a talent but at an ultra-premium price. Fabianski quite brilliant, but at near-record price for a short-term fix given his age. Anderson for me is the sort of trap player the club must move away from - these mercurial high-ability creative forwards, so prevalent in less frantic leagues, so hard to implement in the premiership.

My view is that the return from these players has been actually highly positive given possible outcomes. Maybe the coaching deserves some credit there. But it betrays the reality that even with those outcomes it still hasn’t translated into much of a positive impact on the pitch. It all adds up to one of the oldest squads in the premiership, with declining resale value, that doesn’t seem to offer more than small pockets of hope for genuine progress in the future. I can’t back the architects of that.

January too, for me, was desperately disappointing. Safe in the league, a great opportunity to rebuild, and the club sits on its hands. I think this is a crucial error and misses an opportunity that it might be years before the club sees again.

Pellegrini and the academy production line? At face value, Rice has delivered, Diangana has been introduced, with a handful of other brief opportunities for younger players. I think it’s a step forward from Bilic and Allardyce who seemed to all but ignore that resource. But Rice was a gift that any manager would have benefitted from. Diangana has stalled, including a weird attempt to play him as a striker. Others have come and gone. Overall I’m disappointed. Most crucially, given a period of calm where young players could be blooded in the team for the club’s long-term benefit, there’s been almost no sign of them. The last few benches have been development-free. I can only conclude that when push comes to shove, the selector again has no interest in our young players and their future.

I want the club to build up and around the talent we produce from the academy. I want a coach who will commit to doing so. Of course a ‘big club mentality’ is to ignore the academy, and bank instead on expensive senior mercenary talent. My guess is the current approach is what a big-club mentality used to be in Pellegrini’s heyday - we actually see big clubs starting to change their approach. Spurs have changed their whole outlook by questioning this received wisdom. So imo we’re playing into a losing strategy. We will not be able to match the spending power of the top clubs. We will be paying over the odds to get the players the better clubs don’t want. We’re emphasising our weakness and ignoring a potential strength.

A counter-argument might be that Pellegrini is a positive factor in a bad structure. But imo it is the duty of an influential leader to question this structure, not to double-down into it. My guess is it suited him massively to exploit it. My read is that Pellegrini wanted to gamble with our budget, gamble with an attacking style, with mercurial attacking players, as a calculated risk to maybe climb back up the career ladder. Had it worked, he’d be back in the mix for a top job. It might still do - we’ll see.

I just don’t think it’s the best thing for West Ham. I don’t think it’s the worst either. I think this period might well be a useful stepping stone for us towards a ball-playing style that can be built on by the next coach. Look forward to seeing that.

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The art of measuring a manager

Are supporters and football pundits good at evaluating other managers? Often I think we're terrible at it.

We seem to horrendously over-estimate short-term results. 11 games ago Ronald Koeman was considered one of the hottest managerial prospects in World football, a sort-of candidate in waiting for the next Barcelona vacancy. Now his reputation seems to be in tatters. Has he changed pretty much overnight, or are we over-estimating short-term results? Is it reasonable to think that actually he's probably somewhere inbetween the management God he was previously assumed to be, and the disaster he is seen as now? Where is he actually on that scale? I have no idea. - that’s the truth.

The thing with managers is that they go in at clubs and have to respond to a huge variety of situations and requirements. Some managers are expected to run the whole squad and the transfer policy, others are just a first-team coach who cannot change an existing infrastructure around them. The circumstances are basically totally different each time. But the way in which these circumstances will be interpreted by others is very polarised - either you get results or you don't. I can understand it in a way - it's a results business as they always say. It's actually quite easy to work out if a manager has ultimately succeeded or failed at a club - what is much more difficult is to work out what their suitability for another job might be, or what their objective state of being is as an individual.

Let's face it, any manager needs luck. They might do things that improve their chances of having good luck or capitalising on it. I think a lot of what managers do is connected to risk assessment - they make decisions that they hope give them a better chance of success, rather than there being an objective right or wrong answer. Sometimes a club is in a position to be high-risk, sometimes not - different managers would suit different levels of risk. There's an awful lot of game theory in managing a club in my opinion - it's a topic that is very complicated and barely understood by many within the sport, let alone outside it. I don’t think we have much of a handle on this area at this stage of the sport’s evolution. There’s so much we don’t know.

Three hot managers in the premiership mid-table right now seem to be David Wagner, Marco Silva and Sean Dyche - all three are said to have been on West Ham’s wishlist for a replacement for Bilic. Here are some random thoughts on them. There are statistical models that suggest Huddersfield and Burnley may have underlying problems with their approach that might catch up with them. If Dyche and Wagner ended up relegated that doesn't mean they've done a bad job of course - we might conclude that's a par for them weighing up the strength of various squads. Silva is very hot right now, but my personal interpretation is that Watford have been an aggressively well-run club for a good few years and it's a good time to be their manager. Silva seems to have escaped criticism for Hull's relegation last season - I’m not quite sure why. Wagner is associated with a high-pressing style from his friend Klopp, but his Huddersfield side have at times seemed hopelessly defensive. Wagner's promotion squad was partly built by Stuart Webber, the sporting director who is now at Norwich. Dyche has been linked with jobs at Everton and West Ham, but his approach is absolutely singular in terms of its focus on defence, which is a style neither of those clubs seem particularly keen on over their history.

I'm just throwing points out in that last paragraph, but I’m trying to illustrate the confusion I feel about evaluating other managers. As a sort of side-project/hobby I have spent a good deal of the last five years trying to work out how to evaluate teams, players, managers. I feel I know how difficult it can be in comparison. There is no single or combinatory statistic that I know of that measures managers effectiveness, because it is so tied into so many other factors at a club. If a goalkeeper saves a shot, you can evaluate that in isolation - you cannot as easily evaluate the coaching that improved the chances of that save, or the likelihood of the tactical decisions that led to the goalkeeper having to face that shot. It's simply very complicated and there are no easy answers.

I think of managers I’ve seen over longer periods from game to game - the West Ham managers of recent decades. How much do I feel I can assess even them? Someone like Roeder had a really good season followed by a bad one (and a major health issue) - I still don’t know quite what I made of him, but I do know he was horrendously undermined on transfers in his second season. Zola also had a good followed by a bad season, but the club was on its knees financially in that period. Allardyce I thought I knew when he joined, but it still really took me 18 months before I felt I really knew what his mode of operation was as a tactician. Bilic had great results at first, but it was many months before my misgivings turned into a more bold negative appraisal. Like every human, managers are a mixed and often contradictory bag.

If I was at a club looking for a new manager, there's a few simpler heuristics you could use to narrow the field a bit, but ultimately I think the only way to really work out who to hire from the shortlist is to really research the candidates and evaluate them in detail. By which I mean I think you need a long interview with them - you need to work out what makes them tick. You need to really look at all the circumstances of their previous record in relation to the situations they found themselves in. You need to look at how much they fit what you want at the club, and whether they fit the squad you've already got. It's as much about what you feel about the state of your club as much as it is the ability of the manager coming in. There's a lot to think about, basically. I think so, anyway.

As a supporter, or a follower of football, or a pundit, there is no access to much of this, and nor is there a chance to have that sort of detailed first-hand experience with each manager. This is why I think most of us defer to very simplistic assessment of the personality and record of managers. I think we should accept that our own opinions on this sort of assessment are going to be very subjective.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I take a lot of opinions about managers with a major pinch of salt. Because to take them seriously it requires a level of trust of who gave that opinion that is hard to justify. There are too many pitfalls in terms of having that opinion. I don't really trust my own opinion about managers, so I'm unlikely to trust anybody else's.

And do I think Moyes is a good manager, or a good fit for West Ham? Hmm maybe..?

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Assessing the Bilic years...

I can remember writing a number of post-mortems in the past 20 years. Of Redknapp, Roeder, Pardew etc. Of relegation seasons. The truth is that likely nobody, even those directly involved will ever quite be sure what exactly went wrong in any period - football is too complicated to ever categorically know. So it is with Bilic. He was at the club and then he was sacked - that we do know.

How did Bilic's first season succeed? Maybe that’s the more important question in a way.

Bilic inherited what was broadly a squad that had blown hot and cold under Allardyce’s limited blueprint, and I remember feeling major trepidation over the changeover to any manager - as we know Allardyce's model is one of discipline and physical hard work rather than technique or inspiration. I felt, and still feel, that any successor to any Allardyce side will experience a culture shock when trying to do anything that isn't what Allardyce did. I mention this because I still think it's an issue at the club. Fact is that Reid and Collins are last-ditch blockers and clearers not ball-players. Kouyate is a blood and thunder midfield beast but not a shrewd positional thinker. Carroll as we all know can be played one way - either you hit him high from distance and early, or you don't bother with him at all. These issues do cast a shadow over Bilic's time at the club - they would cast a shadow over anyone's.

But what happened despite these issues was a crazy run of early wins under Bilic, against many of the top sides in the country. I think what is forgotten about that is that this was not only down to Payet, but also Zarate, also known as a mercurial attacking wildcard. Add to that Lanzini's introduction to the league, with Kouyate's lungbusting runs from midfield, and what you have is a wildly unpredictable counter-attacking force. Something about the changing meta in the premiership fit with West Ham (and Leicester's) ability to spring from deep into attack and some indifferent defences among the bigger teams.

In September 2015 this was my assessment - "The big plus is that we're scoring goals. But what worries me is the lack of control - very few matches we have actually really been on top. Against Liverpool we were brilliant, and first half vs Man City we were brilliant - the rest of the time I think we haven't been functioning properly. The side is too top heavy with attacking players who we struggle to feed the ball to because we have no control - I don't think the squad is properly balanced. I think that when the shots stop going in the wheels could really come off - that's my concern."

I think, crucially, it was a lucky run. It was the sort of lucky run you can only get with a manager willing to gamble on attacking football built on fragile foundations. A dour manager would never have even tried it, so if Bilic should be praised for one thing it should be his willingness to take risks!

One thing with Bilic - while I gravely doubt his ability as a tactician, I do not doubt his abilities as a motivator. The team hit the ground running and he was able to marshall that drive over a season. What actually happened was that Payet got injured and Zarate left in January and actually West Ham quickly became a much less dynamic force, but yet with momentum gained they managed to continue to grind out good results albeit in a much less impressive way. While most of the mid-table already had an eye on their Summer holidays, Bilic's West Ham was driving towards an impressive finish and some great memories. But what was it built on? A bit of the defensive organisation left over from Allardyce, some great attacking talent, and Bilic's sheer bravado in putting that on a pitch and challenging it to express itself. West Ham finished 7th but probably came closer to a champions league place than at any time in the premiership era.

But already there were negative issues. Bilic's belief in Antonio as a potential right-back never really saw results on the pitch, the defence was often breached and started to look rather fragile. The midfield mix was incredibly bizarre for so much of that season - often Kouyate would play as the designated DM but frequently make runs ahead of the ball and beyond the striker! Bilic talked about attacking street football and the result might have been occasionally devastating but it was often hard to actually decipher what formation the players were even playing in.

I think what happened since is that teams got used to that approach, saw through it, and the house of cards collapsed. The funny thing about Bilic's stock system is that it can be exploited through the middle or out wide. If you use width then you can double up on flanks where luxury wide players don't always offer protection to full backs. And given Bilic's refusal to play a standard central midfield, you can flood the centre as well. I just don't believe another Premiership team has played as 'open' as Bilic's West Ham in the last two and a half years. Once teams worked that out, the dream was over. And Bilic has simply not offered a convincing alternative to what he initially put out on the pitch - for all his constant tinkering with formations and team selections, the team seems to carry the same basic lack of balance. When he went three at the back the team could keep a clean sheet but had nothing as an attacking force. And everything else has been porous. It's just categorically a dysfunctional unit.

For me, the writing was on the wall in September 2016. A Southampton home defeat was the final straw for me - I simply didn't see an effective way back to any sort of efficiency on the pitch. Where I have to give some backhanded credit to Bilic is that he's battled from that period until today without his team providing any sort of real effectiveness on the pitch, but has got enough results to get through another year with players and supporters and owners broadly onside. In so many crucial games where you might have felt his job was on the line the team came through... just. The Sunderland 1-0. The Burnley 1-0. The Hull 1-0 where they completely battered us. The Palace 3-0. The Huddersfield and Swansea 1-0s this season. It's been an incredible run of tight wins under pressure - that's a happy knack. I think it's weird how this has been interpreted in the media - they ask 'why does Bilic always seem to be under pressure?' but the answer is because he genuinely was under pressure for a long time and managed to successfully fight off those issues for over a year!

The support of Bilic to me is one of the weirdest factors of the whole episode. For me, there have only been a handful of genuinely creditable performances since Summer 2016. It is bemusing how much support Bilic has maintained in this period despite all the poor performances on the field. Was it simply the appealing personality that was such a hit on ITV's football coverage at the 2016 euros? The idea (based on very little in my opinion) that he was 'one of us' ie a West Ham man? Or that the odds were stacked against him because of the move to a new stadium? Or perhaps given the negative criticism of the owners over recent years perhaps he was simply seen as the goodie in the narrative?

I do (contentiously) think a factor that massively helped Bilic stay in the job was the Payet issue. It managed to create a scapegoat for all of West Ham's problems at a time when Bilic was under the most significant pressure. I'm not suggesting Bilic intentionally used it as a diversion, but he did volunteer all the details and aired the dirty laundry in public when other clubs would bury it and solve the issue quietly and efficiently. When the scrutiny should have been heavily on Bilic, it was applied to Payet instead. Of course Payet deserves criticism, but I just don't believe that one aloof player is to blame for all the problems at a club for which the manager should be ultimately responsible. Why was Payet disillusioned? Perhaps it was the awful standard of football we'd played for the previous 5 months?

This season Bilic's luck has finally run out. Playing three away games at the start of the season was obviously a factor. But I must admit that I can't really explain why after a 0-3 defeat at home to Brighton it suddenly seemed like the tipping point where attitudes seemed to wholly change, among fans and media and the owners too. Perhaps if any of those crucial fixtures over the 14 month period had been a 0-3 instead of a 1-0 Bilic might have fallen at any of those points - it's hard to be sure. Certainly we've lost heavily to Liverpool before, and a draw at Palace is not actually that bad a result in the scheme of things. It just suddenly felt like a huge bunch of us just felt it was now time for a change - it's inexplicable really, but I do think that eventually it was just bound to happen.

A lot has been said about the transfer strategy over the last two Summers, and there's no doubt it has been dysfunctional, but I see it less as a cause of Bilic's failure and more of an effect. Yes the 2016 intake was bizarre with multiple players pointlessly bought for the right-wing position that Antonio already inhabits, but I still believe that was a squad capable of much better than what Bilic produced (look at what Zaza and Nordtveit are achieving at other clubs this season). Of course the January intake of Snodgrass and Fonte was incredibly short-sighted, but that doesn't explain Snodgrass's account of the bizarre way he was treated by Bilic. Yes we have ended up with a poor squad, and much of that decision-making is driven by Bilic, but I think the writing was on the wall long before this Summer's poor intake. Whatever your views on the Carvalho transfer, Bilic has had a huge amount of money spent on his squad by the club, and the result is that the squad and the results have got steadily worse - it's simply a losing proposition.

So what went wrong with Bilic? He set up a fragile top-heavy attacking team that was eventually found out. He seemed poor at evaluating his own players and what the team and squad needed to improve it. He seemed very reactionary and rather simplistic in team selection and tactics - if something worked for 5 minutes, he would stick with it until it went wrong. His coaches didn't seem very good at improving players, or working with youth. And over time, his luck simply ran out. I honestly don't believe he's a very good manager at this time - so much of what he's done still seems inexplacable and quite bizarre to me. The regime brought some thrills, but ultimately it just didn't really function very well.

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On balance of attacking and defending...

Okay this piece might well be gobbledy-gook that only really makes sense in my own head. When you're tackling something from what seems like a rational position to one-self, but are actually arguing against what seems like more scientific or mathematical approach, you really set yourself up to look like a bit of an idiot. Maybe that's what I am, but this is what I think on this topic...

The interesting issue I'm wondering about is what the best approach might be for underdogs. What I would consider the orthodox position is laid out in this post, which comes to the conclusion that "For good teams, it is better to be offensive, and for bad teams, it is better to be defensive".

Part of this is largely undisputed. Lower scoring games will be more susceptible to random outcomes between a dominant and inferior team. I don't think this heuristic is really in serious dispute. When a bottom of the table team plays a top of the table team, the bottom of the table team aims to keep it tight and snatch a draw or a win. The massively dominant philosophy among weaker sides is for well-organised defensive teams that try to maximise lower quality and fewer clear-cut chances to their greatest advantage. They are not set up to win every game, indeed you could argue they are set up to lose most games, but they are set up to win enough of the time to survive.

My contention with the article listed above is its interpretation of 'offensive and defensive'. I see a disconnect there between a more scientific approach that simply looks at basic records and judges teams on those results, and what is a more value-based approach that looks at what teams actually try to do on the pitch. Obviously the first approach is more easy to quantify than the second. But also, the former can only be applied in hindsight, whereas the latter is more grounded in what I consider to be the more important realm where decisions must be taken on the ground and without the benefit of such hindsight.

Assuming sample sizes iron out anomalies, if a team scores lots of goals but also lets lots of goals in, they are probably fairly described as an attacking side. But what about a team that scores few goals but lets a lot in - are they defensive? The answer is that they might be. But they might just be an attacking team that is very deficient. And vice versa, a team that only lets a few goals in might be a defensive side, or they might be an attacking side that puts so much pressure on opponents that they drive them back and restrict the chances opponents get to score. The 'balance' of a side is quite a nuanced thing - sometimes attack is the best form of defence. Just as possession and control are often the hallmarks of a defensive side and not an attacking one, it is dangerous to start assuming one factor is indicative of anything.

There is also an assumption that attacking sides end up with very high-scoring matches that are close - 4-3, 3-2 etc. But I suspect that with many attacking sides you will see matches with higher goal difference that reflect approaches that are high-risk but highly successful when they work (4-0, 0-3 etc). After all if attacking approaches were not ever conclusively dominant nobody would ever play them. So in many ways it's really a question of risk - what do you risk by being attacking, and what do you risk missing out on if you are defensive?

The problem as I see it is that human nature tends towards the same heuristics that are assumed - it is simply orthodox thought that good sides attack, bad sides defend. This makes me suspicious. What do we see by examining outcomes in this mindset? - rather unsurprisingly we see a natural extrapolation of that status quo. If your qualification of an attacking side is one that scores a lot and lets in a lot of goals, you will find an endless supply of data that confirms your own bias.

The practical issue with any team looking at their balance between attacking and defence is often one of imperfect knowledge. At the start of the season, how do you know if you're one of the good sides or one of the bad ones? Actually how do you know you're more attacking or more defensive without knowledge of future opponents? And even more importantly how do you transform yourself from a potentially bad side to a potentially good one? To what extent does assuming you are a bad side condemn you to actually be one? Of course if you are a bad side who beat the odds to be a good side, the victor's history will never acknowledge that you were a bad side in the first place.

For emphasis: If you outperform based on an attacking outlook, you become one of the 'good sides' who should always be attacking, if you underperform based on a defensive outlook, you become one of the 'bad sides' who should always be defensive.

From the poker world that I spent many years at the heart of, the same orthodoxy basically existed. An expansive style was considered very dangerous and really rather reckless, except for those who succeeded with it who were labelled the 'elite' or the 'hawks' who were a level above the norm, so able to operate the expansive style. Those of more average ability or below were considered to be most successful with a 'tight' style, with low risks and minor gains befitting their lower ability. Any evidence of deviation from these basic beliefs was considered an outlier usually explainable by luck. Or in my opinion, by an absolute refusal to understand the benefits of risk to any strategy. For a game that at the higher levels is the domain of some incredibly intelligent people, it seemed riddled with erroneous 'groupthink'.

Like poker, I believe the best strategy in football is almost always a mixed strategy. One that tweaks itself towards the strengths of opponents and the situation. There are times when out and out attack is beneficial, others where a defensive outlook may help. And of course in football perhaps most importantly this depends on the playing staff you can bring to a club or produce. If for example your Summer budget can be spent better on attacking strength, an attacking outlook may be better.

A note also on 'random outcomes' - I think this is a bit of a logical trap. As I wrote earlier, it is largely undisputed that in lower-scoring games there's a higher chance of random outcomes. But it does not follow that a weaker side should always focus only on those random outcomes - it is assumed. For a random outcome to be a random outcome, there has to be a better and a worse side - a defensive side reflects this orthodoxy, where an attacking side might redraw what the orthodox view is. So relying on random outcomes is the result of a defensive outlook - if we focus on that we are only ever measuring the success of defensive outlooks and not attacking ones. I agree that attacking sides rely less on random outcomes and more on applying and improving their own skills. But that does not mean that one approach is better or worse.

One more point - even if I thought it were true that a 'bad side' should have a more defensive outlook in any campaign, what must be considered is the benefit of the alternatives that go beyond mere results. Let's say that a promoted side comes into the Premiership with a 20% chance of survival with an attacking style, and a 50% chance of survival with a defensive style. This does not necessarily mean that the defensive style is more beneficial in the longer term. It depends what the attacking style brings in terms of the status of the club, prize money for higher places, ability to attract players and fans, ie how much survival in either model sets you up for sustained success in the future. A heuristic that may or may not be true is that if you build with a defensive model, you struggle to ever progress beyond that coinflip for survival. And if you drop a division, you will need to rediscover an attacking style in order to win at the lower level again.

So, that's a bunch of thoughts on what conceptually is a very complicated subject I think, maybe an unknowable one. It's one of those subjects where the benefits of clear thinking and an understanding of the pitfalls of unclear thinking are everything. That's what makes it interesting.

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Allardyce’s Survival Blueprint - a blueprint for failure?

Worth considering this infographic, which was shown during a discussion on Sky Sports last night. Obviously this is not all of Allardyce's 'wisdom', it is what was cobbled together when he turned up at the studio as a talking point. So given those limitations it's worth looking at, not only as a sign of Allardyce's style, but generally as positive heuristics for any side looking to be successful. Where does 'survival' end and 'success' begin, and are they based on the same heuristics? There's a weird implicit tone to these points when associated with Allardyce though - are they 'healthy' or are they in service to an outdated model? It clearly is a model for survival, but is it the only model? And what is it ultimately good for?

Clean Sheets

Clean sheets are obviously important at any level of football. Probably impossible to ever achieve anything without them. But what Allardyce really means here is a focus on defensive organisation over attacking style. Now you could look at the top end of the prem and wonder if Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal or Man Utd really prize defensive organisation over attacking style - I don't think they do. So is it a survival mantra? Well possibly not, because I'm not even sure it's the only way - you could technically survive by cavalier attacking approaches or anywhere inbetween. I think Harry Redknapp is more of a model of the more opposite cavalier approach - throw players forward to get goals, and hope to win enough to cope with the defensive fallout. The cavalier approach feels more dangerous as an approach, but is it?

And when a goalscoring approach works, do we even notice it? Maybe we just assume they were a better side. We tend to notice when attrition and clean sheets make a team survive, but not when goals scored achieve the same goal. Not a clear example, but Swansea let in more goals then either Boro or Sunderland last season, but scored around 50% more goals. Bournemouth were also a high-scoring weak defence model last season. I contend that an attacking approach may be a better model for survival, but we tend to misinterpret it when it works.

Don't lose possession in your own half

Obviously no team and no player wants to do this - it can be fatal. But there is nevertheless a huge leap from that truism to saying '...so we try to minimise possession in our own half'. To me that would be the equivalent of saying 'People die in plane accidents, so I never fly anywhere'. It is not necessarily wrong, but may well be an absurd overreaction. You could extrapolate other ludicrous heuristics from similar surface-level observations - 'teams lose possession when a pass is intercepted, they should never pass', 'Corners rarely lead to a goal, so we should just refuse to take them' etc. The other implicit reaction to this is to wonder if the upshot of Allardyce's style is to say 'In order not to lose possession in our own half, we kick it up the field in order to lose possession as far away from our goal as possible'. It almost makes a kind of sense but is so reductive to be absurd.

Isn't a better solution to this issue to teach technique, practice the kind of passing patterns that take the ball from your own half to the opponent's half? Because while losing possession in your own half is a danger, working the ball forward to have possession in the opponent's half is rather useful. Tied into this is Allardyce's dour pragmatism - he assumes his players are awful, so his blueprint is to rely on their actual ability as little as possible. So keeping possession in your own half is out because it relies on abilities that Allardyce doesn't value or rely on.

Again I'm pondering whether the implicit lessons really play out in reality. Bournemouth, Swansea and Southampton are clearly sides that have established themselves in the premiership based on possession football, clearly flouting the implications of Allardyce's survival blueprint. Some would argue those clubs are by design more healthy as a result and have a proper philosophy and approach that seems to be replicated each season and is not based on attrition and physical strength alone. Their survival blueprint involved little of Allardyce's pragmatism.

Play the first pass forward

This is perhaps the most interesting of Allardyce's points, because it is not quite so immediately self-evident to be broadly true. As a precept I can see a lot of value in it - whether you're a possession side or a direct one, surely you want each player to first look for the pass forward. Where the problems come is if there isn't a forward pass available. One gets the sense that Allardyce's approach is to say 'play it anyway' - ie play a forward ball with a very low chance of success regardless.

I think tied into this is another of Allardyce's beliefs that it's worth doing something with a very low chance of success, because it will still succeed enough to be useful. No team can really play a long ball strategy without some belief in this - you know that a long ball up the field will mostly gift possession to the opposition, there is absolutely no doubt in the statistics there - what you are banking on is the lower percentage of times that it does work. And of course it's appealing in other ways - if it fails, you aren't 'losing possession in your own half' which in theory improves your chances of a clean sheet.

Except it doesn't imo. I can see the theory, but it doesn't work imo. The trouble is that if the opposition have the ball a whole lot more than you do when your 'clear the defences' strategy plays out, the truth is they have a lot more chances to bring the ball forward and break down your defence. So either you have to have a much better defence than their attack, or get lucky. Again if you get lucky a small proportion of the time it's a recipe for survival. But it is not a good habit. It is entirely reductive, and also takes responsibility out of your hands - 'we're playing a dour losing style, but gambling that you're not good enough to exploit it'. Of course teams work ever harder to break down opposition defences, and the standards are going up all the time, so I would argue there's a ticking clock on this whole philosophy - while it continues to work enough of the time it survives, but there will come a time where there is enough attacking talent throughout the league that it will almost always fail. Whereas alternative blueprints that might rely on possession and passing movements and inspiration will always have a chance - the capacity for inspiration cannot run out, the capacity to spoil it might.

Win knock-downs and transitions

What Allardyce really means here is that when the ball is loose and up for grabs, he wants to try and win it. Nothing wrong with that at all. But I suppose tied into that is his reliance on loose balls - he means when the ball bounces off the forward in the attacking half, or when a defender blocks or clears the ball in the defensive half. He wants to win that ball because his approach creates plenty of those situations. A possession side would not need to worry so much about that because the theory is that it's in possession not scrapping for loose balls. 'We play scrappily on purpose, but fight harder to recover from it'. In some ways it's a problem you've created.

I also wonder how well it sits with more modern concepts like the high press, where your team works to actually win the ball high up the field. Surely Allardyce would see the value in this - it wins the ball in the opponents half, where more of those first forward passes might be in a more dangerous area, and where winning that loose ball is all the more important. But he never plays it. It could be that the better extrapolation of his philosophy has completely passed him by.

Set-pieces

Absolutely no doubt that these are of massive importance to all teams - the numbers simply prove that a massive proportion of goals are scored and conceded through set-pieces. I suppose the issue is what proportion of training time to invest in them - surely the answer is some, but it must be noted that set-piece training might well have little crossover into training that benefits other areas of the game. You could train relentlessly on your organisation at set-pieces but that might turn you into a side that relies on set-pieces rather than abilities in open play. This is all well and good but it has a ceiling - how much of your success can you really enjoy through set-pieces? I think it would be astonishingly high if it was half.

So again this is a survival topic and not a success one. Set-pieces might get you enough goals to keep you up. But they have a ceiling. They are not going to do anything else for you. They could be a part of a more successful recipe, but they cannot provide it on their own. It's probably a maths problem in the end - how much benefit does 1 hour of training bring per week - is it a worthwhile investment. Other training improves players and that benefit might last for the rest of their careers and is exponential in a way that set-pieces are not.

Exploit the opposition's weakness

This is a basic point that surely applies at all levels. There are very few teams that don't take some notice of the opposition's tactics. I think it's probably more of a question at the higher level, where there's some question of whether for example Wenger's Arsenal are flexible enough to deal with different opponents.

Quality in the final third

I think this is a crucial tentpole of Allardyce's approach, that really undermines the whole thing. I think it's fair to say that he feels he can cobble together a defence because he knows what he's doing there, but in the attacking third he wants to buy success or just have it. There's a question mark over whether he believes this because it's true or simply because it covers his blindspot as a coach. Certainly it's a model I recognise from West Ham, where all his defensive signings were relatively cheap and solid, and his attacking signings were high and rather profligate (Nolan, Carroll, Downing, Valencia). What it really means is that he wants to buy goals for the chances he creates, and the rest he deals with through discipline. But really that’s not ultimately a model - it’s just a method for deferring responsibility to the cheque-book, ‘to survive we have to buy good players’.

In this Allardyce is not alone - there seems to be a pervading belief in football that ability in the final third is mysterious and a product of the sort of inspiration that many aren't quite sure how to coach and everyone wants to buy. The natural finisher. The mercurial talent. You can work out a repeatable set of training exercises for defenders or a goalkeeper and just repeat them and measure the results. But for a forward how do you do the same? It's not as easy, and the results might be as misleading as they are useful. You can't train penalties etc. So what Allardyce wants his clubs to do is to spend money to try and buy it instead. If you think of Allardyce's approach as an expression of rather limited logic that nevertheless is understandable and at least based on a set of (reductive imo) theories, it is quite easy to understand why the holistic understanding of the attacking mindset might be beyond him.

But this notion of inspiration or ability-based results also runs against all the other components of this survival blueprint. The blueprint is designed to avoid the notion of ability or inspiration. You don't need ability to boot the ball upfield, or stand in the right place at a set-piece, or be strong. It's as if Allardyce understands he needs ability, but wants to have as little of it as possible in order to make a system work. But he's wrong - ability and inspiration matters in defence and midfield too, and improving it has a knock-on effect through players’ all-round game and the team's and then the club’s. This is why the clubs Allardyce works at have largely gone backwards after he goes - because he hasn't trained them how to actually improve, he's only trained them how to exist to a very limited survival blueprint.

That ultimately is the problem with the survival blueprint - it can only deliver survival, and not always that. It's the equivalent of sticking your thumb in a leaking pipe - it can be effective but it does not solve anything. It is also not the only possible method, though it is certainly the most recognisably dull. Allardyce has built his career on it, and while pundits rally around to endorse it it will survive. But I think it’s a very limited and conservative and unhealthy approach for any club.

[rat-foot]

West Ham, Bilic, Sullivan & the future...

Most West Ham fans now seem united in the view that 'something' is wrong at our club. But I think many of us might differ on exactly what that something is.

Surely most West Ham fans have twigged by now that Bilic might not be the man to take West Ham forward. The problem is that just replacing him with the next results-oriented pragmatist will simply not solve any of the issues that hold the club back. Sorry Benitez, Pardew etc. We do not need just 'another one of those'. Even if the club had started this season with three away wins, the fundamental issues that continually hold the club back would not have changed. Similarly it's easy to look at Zabaleta's struggles with pacey opponentes or the isolation of Hernandez up front or that silly elbow from Arnautovic and judge them 'poor signings', but that would be hindsight talking. Of course I absolutely believe each of them were indeed poor signings, but that should be judged not by results but by the flawed policy with which they were bought.

So in the light of what really determines success and failure, I contend that Bilic is a bit of a side-issue. As is the current argument over whether the club came close to buying Carvalho or not, or the teething problems of the stadium. Whether Bilic and his players succeed or fail in any run of games, I contend he and they are the result of a continuing curse of really poor decision-making. I'm not saying they're blameless (they aren't), I'm saying there's a bigger picture.

In short, I think the two biggest issues at the club are a lack of basic plan to progress, and a lack of an infrastructure to deliver them. So basically the two main ingredients for success :). West Ham need the things that most other successful clubs are using to make progress in the modern game - an accountable and professional management structure, technical scouting and analytics, a proper recruitment department for both players and staff. And of course modern facilities. But what the club also needs is a plan - something more than 'we want to be successful' or 'we want to make money' or 'we want to fill the ground'. A set of policies, principles, values that inform every decision the club makes and makes sure all the various parts of it are pulling in the right direction - to make every component part of the club aware of the whole.

One tiny example of the disjointedness at the heart of the club - West Ham cannot play Andy Carroll as the focal point of a target man dominated attack, yet have its youth teams playing pass and move attacking football - the two just don't gel together, you're producing young players in a system that the senior team doesn't currently accommodate. That simple argument to me is so self-evidently obvious and true, yet I wonder if anyone at the club ever considered it? Now you might say it's just not that relevant to anything much, and that these two issues can co-exist to some extent, and that it's not really that important to our current poor results, but imo it and issues like it are utterly symptomatic of everything the club has been doing for many years - the right hand simply does not know what the left hand is doing. Put together as a whole, none of it really makes much, if any, sense. We don't know where we're going or how to get there.

The club desperately needs a technical director or Director of Football to oversee all the departments of the club, to ensure that they are properly functioning and all pulling in the same direction and working in tandem.

Related to this, the idea of the current coach dictating the transfer policy is simply outdated and an anachronism in the modern game. The simply truth is that, however we might want to hang onto our history, and memories of long-term managers like the head of the West Ham family, modern coaches in reality come and go these days. Good ones get poached, bad ones get booted out. You simply cannot afford to lurch from one policy to the next as each manager comes and goes - you build absolutely nothing that way, as we have proven. The club needs one plan and it needs to come from above the coach.

What should that plan be? Well I think what it should be based upon is absolutely self-evident, and that is a massive advantage that West Ham has - it can draw on the best of its great history. The academy of football, bringing through young hungry players and seeing them blossom in the team - we have a wonderful resource to inspire us, yet somehow we choose to ignore it?!! Take our great strength, our great history, and build upon it - a team of technically gifted young players, to entertain the supporters, and take the club forward on those principles. The advantages to this seem so obvious to me - it's cheap, youths are low wage, they fill the homegrown quota, and if they succeed they're worth a lot too!

Of course that has to be supplemented by a coherent transfer policy, which I consider to currently be at rock bottom in terms of effectiveness. For whatever reason the club seems to have settled on a policy of buying declining older players at high prices and high wages - of all the options open to the club this surely seems like the most expensive and least fruitful approach available, I have absolutely no idea how the thought processes went that led us to such depths. Of course clubs need some experience as well as the energy of youth. And also supplementing the many gaps in what we produce from the academy is simply a practical requirement. Obviously many times principles have to come second to practical considerations. But somewhere along the way any principles seem to have been abandoned - what we've ended up with is a pointless machine that throws money at mercenaries in a truly wasteful, ineffective manner.

The levels of knowledge at the club about the market seem at face value to be horrifically poor. This really bugs me, because it's one area where I actually believe I, with no CV to speak of, could still run a much better recruitment department than (I believe) the club currently has - hire some young analysts, build a database, explore the statistics and readily available footage of the game and grow some genuine knowledge about players around the world. Compared to the cost of even one player to the club, such a department would pay for itself at a fraction of the price and revolutionise the process of finding genuinely talented under-priced players to join the club. Personally I am convinced that West Ham need to get off the worthless conveyor belt of mercenary talent that it seems to have willingly joined. That process serves agents and overpaid veteran players far more than it serves the clubs who have to pay through the nose to use it. I believe this Summer is the perfect example of that.

And for that matter, supporters also need to cure themselves of this absurd reliance on gossip and info on the spending of ready cash on glamour signings. Ludicrous as it sounds, I think many West Ham fans would be much more happy if Hart cost £25m on a long contract rather than a £2m loan, ie the more money the club wastes for longer the happier the fans seem to be, regardless of whether it destroys the club's finances or not. Spending levels get wrongly conflated with levels of ambition. It is of course far more ambitious to eschew an overpriced signing and promote a youth. As you can probably guess I think up to £40m on a defensive midfielder would be a horrendous waste of money, and a terrible deal for the club. If we ever want to succeed, we must spend our money much more wisely.

If all of this sounds like I am blaming Sullivan and not Bilic for the troubles at the club, I absolutely am not. While I accept Sullivan oversees the almighty mess at the club currently, and I have plenty of criticisms of his decisions over the years, I do believe he has the best interests of the club at heart and in simple terms he and Gold have largely funded the push to get us where we are, no matter how supporters try to pretend otherwise. Owners are not always football visionaries, nor do they need to be imo. I think what Sullivan needs desperately is guidance, and not from the yes men coterie of agents and lackeys he seems to surround himself with.

And of course in the short term the problems on the field are Bilic's responsibility. Rightly or wrongly the club have backed him in the transfer market, it seems all the signings are bought for his template. I think his 'street football' brand of cavalier formless attacking has been easily worked out by opponents now and is utterly ineffective without a world-class Payet to bail him out, and actually also in turn help to create the defensive deficiencies that have plagued the team.

Maybe Bilic limps on, maybe he is replaced by a short-term fix, but at some point the club simply have to face the issues that repeatedly hold us back. Until that happens we go nowhere imo, except maybe backwards.

[rat-foot]

Some notes on the Summer window...

The Summer is over. It's time to take stock. I obsess over this subject, and in full disclosure I'm working on a long term business idea connected to the subject. But that doesn't mean I can't offer some speculative conclusions based on the actions of Premiership clubs. (Does any other football exist?).

When I checked the state of play about a month ago I was shocked how many signings were skewing younger, ie under 25. But now looking at the end results that trend seems to have all but disappeared. I think the conclusion I draw is that the players most clubs went for early were the 25s and under they really wanted, but by the end of the window most were settling for older players for a short term hit. Llorente to Spurs at 32 is really the ultimate version of this - it's £12m for basically a sub for what will probably end up being one season.

The question of what one season of a player is really worth to a club is something clubs must obsess over. For Arsenal one season of Sanchez with a chance of getting him to sign a new deal is apparently £60m. Yet the same club decided Oxlade-Chamberlain was worth less than £35m in the same circumstance. Llorente as a Spurs sub is £12m.

I think a number of big clubs have had to face head on the fundamental question with the modern market - how do you spend money to improve? The answer is not as obvious as many think. I think all of Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd want to spend big, they just can't. Or rather they want to spend big but they don't want to spend crazy like PSG. Other than Lukaku, I do not see a signing that fundamentally and definitively improves these clubs squads. Part of the problem is that they already have such good squads it is damned hard to find improvements - that problem exists even in mid-table these days.

I think Arsenal and Spurs are quite interesting cases. Both could actually spend a whole lot more but presumably have decided not to. I think the reason is quite simple - the outlay actually doesn't bring much guarantee of anything. Both could spend £250m and still not guarantee top four. The sensible policy is to do what they've done - refresh where they can, consolidate, turn a profit in the market, and wait for a better opportunity. I contend that both squads could win the league this season, but both have accepted at this stage that they probably won't. That won't appease their fans very much but is a very sensible approach.

As every quant worth a damn has expressed, Man City are heavy favourites for the title this season, and probably were even before they invested heavily to sort out attacking full backs. This all comes with a caveat - this is very likely the last season of full effectiveness of a great number of their core players - Silve, Toure, Kompany, Fernandinho, Otamendi, Aguero. I think even if they do win the title they will not win the next without major surgery, and we might look back on this period and judge them fatally too slow to regenerate their squad.

Liverpool seem an odd case to me. The lack of a transfer blow-out to accompany Klopp's cult of personality is really quite commendable, and from the outside it looks like Klopp himself is very much the driver of that. But I wonder if that's driven by realism or simply by a stubborn desire to recreate his Dortmund success. On paper they should be sixth, their defence does not excite, but who would bet against Klopp outperforming again?

I'm taken by how flat the spending is in the rest of the league, given all the crowing about this new TV deal and how it would transform things. I think the only definitely noticeable change is that clubs are much more willing to hang onto their better players, but that isn't necessarily a positive change. To me it's lead to a lot of treading water policies where clubs just try to stick not twist, which leads to a less interesting set of teams and also no real change in overall status. The only noticeable change of policy I can detect is at Stoke who ran a profit and seem to be trying to regenerate their squad - they look like they've succeeded so far.

There are exceptions. I don't really understand Everton's outlay - I'm not sure what they're really aiming to achieve other than to consolidate 7th place. Watford and West Brom have spent quite heavily, and I've been impressed with Watford on the field so far this season and have them 8th. West Brom I just don't get at all, but maybe that's just my irrational hatred of the Pulis/Allardyce axis - I don't see why you would spend anything at all with those managers, just challenge them to stay up again and save a few quid!

And maybe it's just the obvious bias that creeps in when teams start poorly, but I'm at a complete loss with a few clubs approaches. I'll leave West Ham alone here because I plan to write a piece specifically on them. Many assessments of Palace claim that the problems there are due to a change of culture at the club, but I think the issues there are the same ones that plagued them before - the results of a bunch of aimless purchases, pragmatists as managers, who built nothing at the club. I have criticised Bournemouth since they were promoted based on a huge financial gamble - it's a house of cards club in my opinion, trying to spend their way to progress when actually what they have of any value was built internally on peanuts anyway.

What bores me is that I don't see a variation of approach among premiership clubs - pretty much all of them are working off a premise of total fear of getting it wrong, rather than genuinely creative attempts to get it right. Okay I get it the pressure is huge at all levels. The most interesting intakes are Huddersfield and Brighton, but even then I can kind of rationalise their policies as risky low-priced gambles that they can get away with if they drop a level. To me it all seems like an enduring status quo that a club with genuine vision could massively capitalise on.

So in conclusion I'd class clubs Summer dealings in these categories...

WELL RUN AND SENSIBLE - Spurs, Southampton, Arsenal, Chelsea, Stoke, Liverpool.

INTERESTING PUNTS - Watford, Huddersfield, Brighton.

SOLID BUT UNINSPIRING - Swansea, Newcastle, Burnley, Leicester.

RATHER AIMLESS OVERSPENDS - Everton, West Brom, Bournemouth.

JUST A SHIT-TON OF MONEY - Man Utd, Man City

OMNI-SHAMBLES - West Ham, Crystal Palace.

Okay. I plan to write a companion piece on the signings I really like this Summer. And then another piece on WHU's crisis.

[rat-foot]

Fag Packet strategies - WHU squad 2017

Approaching last Summer I was able to write an itemised list of valuations for the West Ham squad and for it to make some sort of logical sense. I realise now that this was because so many players were near the top of their value - working out how much someone is worth at their best is not too tricky imo. Heady days.

This year that approach feels all but impossible. This is a squad full of players on the slide, with very mixed records statistically, who are hard to assess and almost impossible to judge in the market. All that I can see is a bunch of heuristics, a set of principles that I think could be followed to negotiate what could be one of the trickiest and most crucial transfer window's of West Ham's history.

Here are some early notes on that subject - all subject to change of course.

Let me rate the West Ham squad quickly. Lanzini is the MVP quite clearly. The next band is of players who are still high-quality but with slight reservations - Antonio, Kouyate, Obiang. The third band is players of previous high-repute who are on the slide and for whom valuation of both ability and market value is difficult - Cresswell, Reid, Ogbonna, Adrian, Ayew, Snodgrass, Valencia, Feghouli, Nordtveit. The fourth band is of players who really aren't very good (or can't stay fit) but with whom the club are probably lumbered - Randolph, Fonte, Collins, Noble, Carroll, Sakho.

The one plus I see in the current west ham squad is that there are plenty of young players with potential. The big criticism of the club is how few of these have been developed or advanced over the past 12 months. Masuaku looks like a first-choice left-back and one of the few I would consider unsellable this Summer. Fernandes is similar as a midfielder, Fletcher criminally underused for such a promising forward. Byram has had a rocky road but is still young enough to back. There are plenty of possibles and some probables coming from the youth ranks - Burke (long overdue a run), Oxford, Quina, Cullen, Martines. Of course the dream is that all these players come through and fill the gaps created by sweeping away the rotten apples in the senior squad.

So for me the dream squad next season is as follows; two new keepers, Masuaku + backup left back, 3 new centre-backs + Oxford/Burke, a right back + Byram, Obiang + a defensive midfield backup, Kouyate, Noble, Lanzini, Fernandes + a senior central midfielder, Antonio + 2 new wingers, 2 new strikers + Fletcher. But it's not a dream - that simply will not be the squad next season, nowhere near, and arguably it would be way too much change at one time. At the same time, given the incredibly poor performances this season it feels like no change can be enough.

The trouble with decision-making in this position is that almost every option is sub-optimal. For Adrian the option is to release on a free, or sign up on the two year option that exists in his contract - neither are particularly appealing decisions given his poor form and demotion this season. It's a bit like the investor whose stock is sliding - how often should they sell early and how often should they ride out the storm. Of course they have to judge where stock value is likely to improve, and where it is simply hopeless. Unfortunately those are the sort of decision where blind hope tends to get overvalued - I think realistically the best decision is likely to be to sell the majority of times.

So here's some possible decisions.

- Goalkeeper. Randolph is worthless sadly. Adrian might be worth something but is out of contract. Least worst decision - let Adrian go, demote Randolph to reserve, bring in a first choice goalkeeper. Expensive decision. -£10m.

- Centre-back. Realistically Collins and Fonte are worth nothing and probably hard to shift. Least worst solution - sell Reid and Ogbonna just to try and freshen it up. Maybe make Kouyate a first-choice centre-back. Definitely bring Burke into the picture next season, maybe Oxford too. You could make these changes and at least come out in profit. +20m.

- Left-back. Awkward, because Masuaku probably deserves the senior slot on his performances. Cresswell has struggled but is probably still worth a good amount in the market. Least worst option - sell Cresswell, and buy a developing back-up to Masuaku. A calculated risk that should turn a profit at least. +15m.

- Right-back. There's a clear mandate for a senior right-back, given that Byram hasn't been trusted enough this season and hasn't developed into a clear first-choice. Do you sell Byram at this stage, or maybe convert him to a winger? If so, he needs replacing. Expensive options all round. -10m.

- Defensive midfield. Not enough focus on this position, which is very often utilised as a dedicated role in our most frequent formation (4-1-4-1). Noble cannot play it, Kouyate can fill in, Obiang has done fine but I suspect it isn't his best position. Nordtveit has hardly played it. It's a key role because having a good option here allows Lanzini to express himself going forward. Again I think a clear mandate for a senior player is there - another expensive option. -15m

- Central midfield. Realistically Noble isn't going anywhere, but is seriously on the wane on the face of it, and always had his limitations. It's unclear if Kouyate is really a central midfielder, but we miss his engine when he doesn't play. Lanzini is a sometimes central and sometimes out wide player. Fernandes has massive potential but hasn't been played enough. So there are massive question marks here. There's not quite the mandate for a new senior signing, because Fernandes and Lanzini have to be in our midfield next season. I wonder if the best way to unpick this would be to cash in on a sellable asset - either Kouyate or Obiang (or both). I like both of them but I think it would clean up the options and give Lanzini and Fernandes the clear run because those are the players we want to gamble on. It depends who goes, how close Cullen is to being ready, and where Lanzini plays, but I think there's space for one more developing option in that area. On basis of selling Obaing and brining in a young player +15m.

- Wide right. What a mess. Feghouli has to go - talented but not reliable enough. Ayew I feel none the wiser after watching him for years - what is he? Snodgrass is an option but not a first-11 player for me. Antonio has played so many roles but I think this is his best most natural position. But do you actually sell Antonio at the height of his value? He is a talismanic attacking force but he is also a blunt instrument - he doesn't have an off switch and it's very cavalier. Whichever flank he plays on that full back tends to be under immense pressure. My gut feeling is to sell him and Ayew. That means a signing. So next season it's new signing + Snodgrass as backup. The benefit of course is selling three pretty decent players. +20m overall?

- Wide left. We don't seem to have a single natural option, so for me there's a clear mandate for a signing here. I have seen absolutely no indication that the club is even thinking about this role. It's pretty weird. Yes Lanzini can play the role really quite effectively - against tougher opposition I think it's the best way to play him in order to pack the centre. Maybe it should be his main role - that would tidy up the options in central midfield. Otherwise again I think it's a case for a senior signing to come in. So I would opt with going for Lanzini and bringing in a reserve. -5m.

- Forward. I'm working on the basis that the club plays one up front, but occasionally two late in matches. Three players needed then, the most junior of which should be Fletcher. The dream is to shift out Carroll and Sakho and Valencia in one Summer window. But it was the dream last Summer as well, and arguably even the Summer before that. I think Carroll and Sakho are so unreliable it's at the point where even if they remain at the club next season, they should not be considered part of the senior squad. So for me, two strikers need to come in - one senior, one developing from the bench. -25m

Okay that's my first thoughts. So summing up so far...

IN: First choice keeper, reserve left-back, first choice right back, first choice defensive midfielder, first choice right-wing, first choice striker, reserve striker, reserve left-winger.

OUT: Cresswell, Reid, Obiang, Antonio, Carroll, Sakho, Valencia, Feghouli. Ayew.

RELEASED: Adrian, Arbeloa, Tore, Calleri.

KEEP: Randolph, Fonte, Collins, Kouyate, Nordtveit, Masuaku, Byram, Snodgrass, Noble, Fernandes, Lanzini, Fletcher.

That would be a first-team squad of 20 I think. Workable. Buying five first-choice players is not easy.

Obviously this is not a plan drawn in stone. In reality flexibility is key. A player earmarked for sale will pick up an injury. A player you want to keep will want to leave. It must be said that my plan here would involve selling off a selection of what the club might consider crown jewels, so it would need a fair amount of bravery to pull off. But I think if we did there's be a fresher squad with the opportunity to grow and with a bunch of new players for fans to be excited about. Yes please. According to my very very speculative maths you could do all that and be in profit and have the money for that training complex that is decades overdue to actually make these players better!!! I feel better already :).

What I might do is check in on these thoughts when the window actually opens, and see how different the situation feels in a couple of months.

[rat-foot]

The death of the manager

I think most fans and many football people are obsessed with the idea of the football manager, which I have previously likened to a sort of cult figure. The statesmanlike presence in interviews, the leader of a group of men, the maker of tough decisions, the wheeler-dealer in the transfer market. And there is no doubt that there are a set of skills that make someone more likely to be successful as a manager.

I just don't think ultimately a manager is very important.

The manager is a used car salesman. Their aim is to sell the idea that they offer the best deal, that you want what they have to offer. The customers are not only the fans, but also the players and the other staff and the board. The manager survives as long as they are able to command the faith of those groups – lose the fans, or the players, or the board, and your days are probably numbered. And like any structure built on faith, the actual quality of the construction is not the point, the only point is that people believe in it.

Of course in the old days the manager was everything – they were organising the kit and buying players and hiring and firing and basically making clubs run. Some modern managers still aspire to this role. And actually I have less problem with the manager who simply sits above and hires the coaches and sits statesmanlike at the top of the pyramid making the place tick. The trouble is that even that super-efficient administrative type manager might need switching out every season or so. Rebuilding an entire pyramid (or a house of cards) every season is really asking for trouble.

That is why the only lasting structure that I can see working at clubs is one where responsibility is spread or simply administered separately from the head coach or manager. So each new manager doesn't have to rebuild a club, because the structure is already there.

I'm not saying that every new coach isn't to some extent building faith and selling a vision. Guardiola and Klopp and Conte are doing that – it's important. But I think ultimately once the smoke clears there has to be more there than just the artifice.

Two managers I see struggling with this are Ranieri and Bilic. Both are charismatic, there's a sense of sparkly mystique about them in interviews, the idea that they actually know a whole lot more than they're letting on. Both are struggling massively to replicate their successful seasons a second time around. To be fair to both, they overachieved massively with their players last season – I'm not suggesting for a second that they don't deserve credit for that. As used car salesmen they have done a brilliant job and got their bonus. But ultimately as a long-term prospect both are extremely limited - pragmatism can only get you so far.

I think if we're trying to assess the health of an approach, we have to ignore a lot of what the managers sell. We actually have to look under the hood and see what's in the engine. Of course it's not always that easy – interpreting the actual health of a club is a skill in itself, and I think that's the reason that 'managers' continue to be employed and consulted. I think club owners are as susceptible to this issue as fans and pundits are. How do you tell if your manager is spinning a yarn or riding good fortune, or whether they're actually improving the lot of the club in a way that might be felt for the long term not just the current run.

This is where tools like analytics can come in useful, though the way in which quality and improvement are measured and displayed are still in the stages of being refined. There may never be an ultimate answer from the figures. Just as a 'football eye' will always play a part in decisions over player recruitment no matter what the numbers say. There will always be a human element to this.

I think public presentation and perception of actual 'quality' in football clubs is almost absurdly over-simplified and misleading. It's likely that a fan's only access to scientific value in terms of football teams might be a possession statistic (and the strange implication that the higher possession equals the better team) – it's not the worst of the bad metrics, but it doesn't really tell very much. From what I can tell, actually most fans and pundits and those within football all agree on is that numbers are not to be trusted. So much for science!

A practical question I often ask myself about a club is who is improving within the system. It's amazing to me how few in the media or even in football seem to ask this simple question. Even if you ignore qualitative values to express the answers to this, it seems to me a really worthwhile thing to think about. At West Ham under Allardyce for example, it was hard to really pinpoint which players actually improved under that manager over 4 years – that's surely not a good sign! Yet there was shock that West Ham should seek a change of manager!!? Allardyce was clearly a good manager, a supreme pragmatist, but he didn't improve the club – that's my subjective opinion, but I've thought about it a lot and it does illustrate the difference between a manager and a coach, a club surviving under a pragmatist or a club actually building solid progress.

One thing the current rise of the super-coaches in the Premiership illustrates very well is how much players can improve, even over a short space of time. The Raheem Sterling pre and post Guardiola says it all. Now of course it could be a mis-read – maybe Sterling is just maturing now and hitting his stride, and of course every manager would want super-expensive top talents to try and improve. And of course those coaches need to employ a system to exploit the improvements of players.

The wider question of club or coach philosophy also seems to be widely ignored. It seems to me at least. I think many of us seem inclined to doubt or reject even the attempt to operate to a plan, as if there's something heretical about trying to organise beyond magic sponges and shouting in the dressing room. When it was revealed that West Ham had an internal document that was a 'project' for how to improve the club, it was ridiculed and taken as evidence that the club had lost its way and succumbed to trendy posturing. But Southampton reorganised around a similar document and nobody is laughing at that now!

It seems to be enough for many of us to know coaching is going on and staff and players are training somewhere – exactly what they're training towards doesn't seem to be of interest. Again we end up at the idea of the manager – they might be flogging the players for attempting a backheel, but as long as we have faith in the manager that's okay. Or we want the manager to simply reflect our own views about football rather than challenge them – as long as he's saying 'if in doubt, kick it out' to defenders we're happy enough. Or that he's 'one of us'. Looking at the broader picture I think something has happened to our culture where actual meaning or direction is rejected – we've gone from communicating ideas through drama and 'art' to wall to wall television where the ideas are 'who is the best celebrity dancer/chef?'.

Maybe that's it – maybe I have as much faith in a manager leading a club as I do in Simon Cowell as a judge of talent.

[rat-foot]

4 years with Sam Allardyce

England have appointed Sam Allardyce their new manager. I am utterly dumbfounded at the news. Allardyce was recently the manager of my club West Ham for four years, so I feel I know his managerial style and methods better than most.

When Allardyce was appointed at West Ham, there was a temptation to engage the usual platitudes that seem to have grown since the days where he was renowned for attritional direct football with Bolton. The idea that actually his teams play more football than they are given credit. That he is a master of sports science and experimental modern methods. That he always gets results, and that his teams are hard to beat. After four years of seeing what he did as a club manager I came to doubt all of those assumptions.

Allardyce is prone to bringing up Jay Jay Okocha. As an example of the sort of flair players he employed at Bolton. It's true that Okocha did play at Bolton, as did Djorkaeff. Big Sam is prone to repeating a lot of things, and is renowned as a constant self-promoter. He admits it himself, as he says his aim in management is to stay in the job - this means talking himself up. He says his teams are not long ball teams. He says he is one of the best coaches around. He mentions how clever he was to buy a veteran Gary Speed and get the most out of him. He brags that his teams will never lose a two-goal lead. Some of these facts are true.

Allardyce does not play long ball football, it is true. But at West Ham, like all the other clubs he's managed, he has employed a very direct attritional style of direct football based largely on the philosophy of Charles Hughes, the largely discredited FA technical director charged with promoting regressive tactics that may have poisoned a generation of English players and coaches. It is not long-ball football as straight balls up the pitch are not constant. But any way you want to describe a direct approach he employs it. Long through balls with a low success rate from central midfield. Deep early crosses. What he does not do is play possession football - the possession stats of his teams are consistently among the lowest in the premiership. Okay possession means nothing. But it's more than that - he does not play ball to feet through midfield. He doesn't favour a compact style in any area other than defending the penalty area. He does not encourage his teams to attack as a unit. He does not control matches. He says that if his players were better he would, but who knows if that is true?

I think Allardyce wants to not play a direct attritional style of football - he thinks he can take the best of that style and apply it at any level. I'm sure he told the FA panel the same. At various stages of his tenure at West Ham he tried to mix up tactics and styles to achieve this - he experimented with an aggressive 4-4-2 in the championship, tried a 3-5-2 sweeper system, used split strikers and a midfield diamond in his last season at the club. I've no doubt that Allardyce knows a lot about tactics. And credit to him, he adapted his approach to accomodate Jermain Defoe at Sunderland - I wouldn't have thought he could adapt to playing without a target man. But he is a clever man and a good tactician - he found a way to make it work. But they were not a good team. He took Sunderland from the relegation zone to survive by two points - is that good enough in 7 months. Is that an England manager in waiting?

Every time he experimented at West Ham he eventually ended up back at the same style. A very direct 4-5-1 / 4-1-4-1 with a target striker. I got the sense of a manager desperately trying to make something else work for him, and consistently failing to achieve it. Yes he says he can play any way, but my feeling is this is a man who has started believing his own bullshit. He cannot play any way - he can only play his way.

This is why I'm amused that Allardyce is being talked up in terms of being able to deal with the England press and fans - I think he will be hopeless at it. He absolutely bristles at any criticism - quite simply none is allowed when he is around. He takes every question mark as an attack on himself, and the massive chip on his shoulder about the style of play that he favours is like a constant burden. I think it only takes a short dose of Allardyce media appearances before the whole thing becomes transparent and really quite tragic and bizarre.

There is a lot of talk of the advanced methods being used by Allardyce behind the scenes - as he has consistently said he is a leader in the field who are we to doubt that. But actual evidence of it is very scarce. Only one West Ham player definitely improved over his four years at the club - combative stopper Winston Reid. His West Ham didn't play in a way where anything other than fitness and commitment was required. Ball players like Tomkins and Noble floundered. His version of Noble flitted around in defensive midfield knocking the ball off to central defenders to hit long - Bilic's version actually saw Noble playing in the opposition half and looking finally like the player he could be. The club also suffered strings of injuries under Allardyce, particularly among the players he likes to exploit by putting their bodies on the line match after match - the central defenders (Reid, Collins and Tomkins all suffered with injury issues) and strikers (Carroll and Cole basically walking wounded throughout). It's my opinion that his actual approach has a glaring weakness as the pace of the game continues to increase - it simply asks too much of human beings. What I don't see is the scientific method of testing and refining an approach - I see a set of assumptions that Allardyce made as a younger man and simply continues to use.

I dispute that Allardyce teams are hard to beat - if they were they wouldn't get beaten so much. What his teams are capable of is reducing a match to a state where player skill is not a factor, a sort of reduction process whereby one of his teams will end up winning enough through sheer attrition to get by. It is anti-football, that's exactly what it is, and with limited aims Allardyce has proven that it works. But in many cases only just - his Bolton scraped survival before establishing themselves with a better squad, his West Ham did the same in 2014, his Sunderland side just repeated the feat. If you can't be good, be lucky! That sounds cruel and unkind, but I honestly think it's true. In the lottery of relegation scraps, he’s been the lucky winner, and on the back of those coin-tosses ends up a credible England management choice.

Now I suppose there's a question of what England may want - maybe a reducer is what they want. Cards on the table, I have written before that I feel that England's recent performances were very encouraging except vs Iceland, so I simply don't believe that Allardyce's pragmatic method of defensive no-lose football is required. But there are some who think England are in such a pit (despite succeeding at all youth levels currently) that Allardyce is a remedy to something. This is exactly how many West Ham fans felt in 2011, and in some remedial sense they may have been right.

But the biggest problem with Allardyce is where does his approach go? I get that his England will be organised and well prepared. I just don't get what the endgame is with an Allardyce England team - we might labour our way to knockout football and hope we catch sides set up to express themselves on a poor day? It might be that that is what England pundits and fans think they want, but in my experience the reality of it will sour that desire. Be careful what you wish for...

[rat-foot]

Back of the envelope...

I’m enjoying the beginning of Richard Whittall’s series on building a simple algorithm for football scouting. He talks about basing the idea on the concept of creating something equivalent to notes on the back of an envelope, inspired by something Daniel Kahnemann said about how a straightforward and relatively simple approach to problem solving is often close to or equal to the most complicated systems.

It feels to me that this is an important issue for the world of football, or with any sports or games in which the objective truth is to some extent unknowable. How any problem in this field is solved is rather important, because all performance in any sport or game actually boils down to is a set of actions that the players undertake on some sort of strategic basis.

I come from the world of poker, which consumed many of my thoughts for 15 years plus. In that game, which is essentially turn-based, the power of rational thought processes is basically all. But what it also shares with football is broader ‘macro’ questions about where to sit down and play, managing of finances, even broader lifestyle questions, and the basic fundamentals of how to decide to think.

My feeling is that there actually isn’t, in most practical applications in sport, any alternative to ‘back of the envelope’ thinking. In poker this means that any decision on what to do in the middle of a hand, with limited time available to delve into any deep system of thought, the only option is to revert to the sort o heuristics and thought processes that amount to ‘back of the envelope’ thinking. What are the chances I’m beat here? How much of my remaining chips do I want to risk here? What are the variable outcomes of each decision I could make?

So the battle in poker, and I think in most applications of thought in gaming (including sports) is not whether or not you use ‘back of the envelope’ thinking, but what envelope you use :).

Applying to football I think the same is true. Imagine you’re an analyst at some football club, and have spent years working on your algorithm for producing perfect transfers. You still will have to take the results of that algorithm to decision-makers and describe in understandable terms the ways in which it can persuade them that the right decision can be made. So however complex the initial work, it has to be transferred to the back of an envelope at some point for progress to be made. People have to trust the system.

And there are theoretical weaknesses to using complex work in this way. I think in so many cases the enemy of clear thinking is an assumption that you have cracked or solved an unknowable problem. An algorithm might spit out a result you struggle to justify - it makes fault checking and tweaks to any system incredibly difficult to identify and solve. It also risks the situation where you’re inventing back-of-the-envelope justifications to back up a certain result in a slightly cynical and unhealthy way.

Earlier in the Summer I wrote my ‘fag packet’ valuations of the West Ham squad, as if I was offering a disclaimer for the inaccuracies of my thinking. But after thinking about that excuse, it struck me that actually whatever system I use to come up with opinions, it actually won’t amount to much more than ‘fag-packet’ opinions anyway. I could look at and interpret all sorts of statistical data to back up those opinions, but I’m not sure the actual conclusion will be any more trustworthy.

The problem, as always, is that we’re surrounded by other people’s opinions. Who knows best? Does an algorithm offer any actual solution, or just another opinion? I know that a lot of rubbish is said about football, and that’s probably as true among decision-makers at clubs as it is in the media and at the pub. What interests me about spheres where objective truth just doesn’t exist is that it offers a level of theoretical power to every individual approach. I could offer ‘back of the envelope’ improvements in brain surgery technique and rightly be labelled an unscientific kook, but in football I might be as right or as wrong as the next pundit, who’s to say?

[rat-foot]

What makes a squad?

Rudimentary question. I just wanted to look at what amount of players clubs allot in a squad for different positions. This is obviously something of a changing meta - with two strikers slipping out of fashion the need for strikers was less, with the reliance on energetic full-backs maybe the demand for them is currently higher.

Here's Man City's senior squad last season - 2 keepers, 4 centre-backs, 4 full backs, 4 centre midfielders, 5 attacking midfielders, 2 strikers. (I haven't included Iheanacho who broke through, or the other fringe players)

Arsenal: 2 keepers, 4 centre-backs (including 20yo Chambers) , 4 full backs, 7 centre midfielders, 6 attacking midfielders, 2 strikers.

Chelsea: 3 keepers, 4 centre-backs, 3 full backs, 4 centre mid, 5 attacking mid, 3 forwards.

I've edited each of these for clarity. Some squads were tweaked mid-season and I've tried to blend those line-ups into one overall average. Obviously it's more difficult to pigeon-hole midfielders who often these days fall into more flexible attacking roles. I used these three big clubs because they are the most likely to be able to decide the make-up of their squad, but also because they tend towards smaller squads because of the difficulties of the homegrown rule. What I'm interested in is what a club actually needs, and this is what I think.

2 keepers is standard. This is not to say any club won't have a third option available, whether a youth or a very senior player. Man City drew a bit of media interest for offering Richard Wright another year contract at 37 - his homegrown status probably made that a decision with little actual downside for squad implications. The logic of having two keepers is just fairly obvious I think.

4 centre-backs seems standard, but having 3 is an interesting consideration. Allardyce at West Ham used only 3 centre-backs, on the basis that he could always loan in a 4th and as a consequence could free up resources to use elsewhere. Of course it might well depend on your setup - Allardyce wanted defenders who simply blocked shots and sat deep, but few progressive clubs would accept such limited players as Collins and (debatably) Reid. I think Arsenal have what seems like logically the best set-up to me - senior choices Koscielny and Mertesacker, a younger developing choice in Gabriel, and a youth in Chambers. I think the idea of having 4 senior options at centre-back is overkill.

It's interesting to look at the Euros, or at Conte joining Chelsea, and wonder whether this situation might change if 3 at the back becomes a thing. But I'm not sure it would make all that much difference - a player like Ivanovic might be happier on the side of a three man defence as he is(n't) at right back. Also noting Bielsa uses full-backs in his three-man setups.

4 full backs seems like the current meta, where many formations rely on the energy of full-backs providing width in attack. I'm not entirely convinced by this, and it would surely depend on the ambitions of the club involved. Chelsea have less full-backs and one of those is really a converted centre-back in Ivanovic. If they went three at the back I suspect they might try to use wingers as wing-backs. Spurs are well known for being very effective users of 4 full backs. There's also a fair bit of evidence of clubs using wingers as full-backs to guarantee more attacking threat - Schlupp at Leicester, Antonio at West Ham.

4 central midfielders. This seems to make sense almost whatever the formation. Many clubs use three in central midfield, but one or two of those are often attackers filling in. The idea of having three outright central or defensive midfielders would seem very pedestrian and a horses for courses choice not a regular one. I do think there’s a strong case for considering a sitting defensive midfielder as a specialist role worthy of its own personnel, but it’s hard to define who fits that role from the outside looking in.

5+ attacking midfielders. This is obviously where most clubs need flexibility. Even clubs that adhere to a straightforward 4-4-2 usually use attackers behind a frontman, and few wingers stick to the byline. Thinking about most formations I think having 6 options for what might be 3 attacking midfield roles seems like the safest option. But obviously many players double up roles, especially these days strikers who can play a wider attacking midfield role.

2+ strikers. This is the most interesting part of this I think - while fans and clubs often seem to clamour for strikers (just look at the scramble this Summer!) it seems pretty clear to me that a club will have to justify having more than two senior strikers. Even if clubs are going to transition more often to two players up front, it's very likely that one of them will be in a withdrawn role, so it has to be proven that a striker will offer a better option than a more all-purpose attacker. If my club West Ham for example were to decide to have two up front, the temptation would be huge to make one of them Payet in a free role.

So this is 21 players, 4 below the 25 squad limit currently operating in the Premiership. But even then it doesn't really take into account the flexibility that players can offer who operate well in multiple roles. I think you could reduce this requirement by at least a couple of players through canny squad management.

Why is this of interest? Because I think it enables us to pinpoint potential errors of squad management. One example - I think in Tomkins, Collins, Reid and Ogbonna West Ham spent a season with an unbalanced squad with valuable senior players picking up big wages but unlikely to play or be happy in the circumstances. I think Chelsea for a while had 4 senior strikers - this may have been an understandable reaction to Costa's struggles, I think it's good evidence of why having that many is unworkable - Pato, Falcao nor Remy could have been happy rotating around in the background and struggling to flourish from uneven cameos in matches.

I think clubs may well use this sort of templating to look at competitors and potential purchasers. Knowing how desperate a club are for a player in a certain position could affect a potential price of either a purchase or a sale - knowing this is useful surely? It could even affect what you bid for an unconnected player, in the knowledge that one potential competitor for the signing is well-stocked in that position.

And most obviously, it creates heuristics and rules of thumb for clubs to use in working out where they can trim their squad, or where they could take a risk on a sale or a purchase.

[rat-foot]

How to buy a striker?

I'm based in London, so I tend to get bombarded by news of the Premiership, where it's plain to see that 90%+ of the teams in the league are looking for strikers in the Summer window. It makes me wonder if there are some aphorisms or rules of thumb that might make sense in terms of trying to buy a striker.

The best targets have scored less goals. This is a certain interpretation of 'best' - obviously strikers are in most cases judged by goals. That's why this is theoretical. The best target is a great striker who hasn't scored many recently, because they'll be cheaper and the striker will be more available or maybe agreeable to a move. If you were to pick your next guaranteed 20-goal a season striker, you'd rather they were cheap and available, rather than expensive and unavailable.

Extrapolating from this rather counter-intuitive idea, it might be said that to some extent clubs look in entirely the worst places trying to buy a striker. Theoretically.

Of course, this all rather depends on how well strikers can be judged on their goal haul. If goals scored were always a perfect reflection of their ability to score goals, then you could simply rule out low scorers and concentrate on those with the highest ratios. This is something of an open question - we know things like qualifying goals to the standard of the opposition, hence a lot of Premiership clubs are spending their Summer's trying to weigh up the standard of the Eredivisie because of the availability of the strikers there. It's more a case of qualifying everything a player does, and strikers are surely more dependent than any other position on the pitch on the supply to them. A striker may be simply a recipient of the good form of the team they play in.

Do goals mean anything? I don't think there's a definitive answer to that. They could mean something but they could also mean nothing. But clubs are driven by fear. There looks like nothing worse than blowing money on a striker with a poor scoring record, to discover that they bring that poor scoring record with them. Why did the club buy such a striker? That's the fear that dominates decision making I think. It exists in all positions, but is acute for strikers because of that relationship to one single stat, goals scored. Clubs should not be driven by fear of course, but perhaps that's just unreasonable - better to say that the players clubs fear to buy will generally be cheaper to buy.

Related to this, many strikers' form is judged on sub appearances. It just tends to be true that strikers tend to be more likely to be used from the bench, when a team is chasing a game. Or simply because of the benefit of having a fresh player up front in the last 20 minutes, as opposed to a fresh player in another position that doesn't have a key impact on games. Strikers are often brought on out of position as well, stuck on the wing in the hope that if a chance comes they will finish it. I think this can lead to a lot of very unreliably statistics about strikers.

It should also be said the inverse is probably true - strikers are more likely to not finish games they start.

In Premiership terms, physique has been a massive limiter on strikers. I qualify this by saying that this meta might be changing - certainly Jermain Defoe had one of his most potent seasons playing as a lone striker at Sunderland. But generally speaking it's simply true that a striker without a strong physical presence has generally struggled in the league. This seems obvious to point out, but it amazes me how often this rather simple rule of thumb is ignored with incoming strikers who simply never had much chance of making it. West Ham have been through a slew of them without ever seeming to learn from the mistake - Baldock, Maynard, Wellington Silva, Zarate, Valencia, Sakho.

Related to the previous point, beware the big striker who actually doesn't rely on physique. Another blacklist of players have come to the Premiership with a big physique, only for it to be painfully obvious that they have no experience of using it. Many tall strikers in leagues around Europe actually aren't required to hang in the air for crosses or long balls, or wrestle defenders for possession, because styles differ. And I think the reality is it might take years to remould a striker to fit a more physically demanding style - some might never manage to adapt.

There's a mystery around scoring and strikers which seems to bear little relation to reality. Strikers rely on technique and composure to strike a ball at the goal consistently well - pretending it is a 'natural' or 'unteachable' ability is destructive imo. Rid yourself of the superstitions around scoring, and you might be open to buying players in the knowledge that what they lack you can train.

Hmm have I worked out how to buy a striker? Not really. But I think I dispute what I see as the driving factors of most clubs when they're looking for players to buy. I think a football eye and a strong rational and statistical basis is a good baseline, but actually reading between the lines and spotting the unlikely successes is where true success comes from in recruitment terms. I think.

[rat-foot]

On Hodgson and England...

Roy Hodgson has quit the England job in disgrace after a quite awful performance against Iceland. But I can't help thinking that a lot of the decisions he was criticised for were quite sensible, and in fact the team played very well in some respects leading up to the Iceland defeat.

Rooney in midfield has a very rational explanation imo. Hodgson rightly saw that England's two form players and potential matchwinners were forwards - Kane and Vardy. He had to react to that - he would have been incompetent not to. He tried a diamond formation that was utterly disastrous in a warm-up game against Portugal, so clearly couldn't accommodate all of those players at once. His best answer was Rooney in midfield - I think it's a good solution. If Rooney had played poorly in the group stages he could amend that approach, but Rooney was among our best players in the first two games - very efficient but with the potential to be brilliant. And this is Rooney who really has under-delivered in big tournaments since 2004 - getting him playing well seemed like a masterstroke to me. Yes, against tougher opponents Rooney would have been under more pressure, and it might have necessitated a change of role or personnel, which we can only guess at now.

England's shape, the 4-3-3, seems very much in line with what a lot of nations have been doing and seemed a good fit to the players available. Hodgson didn't have or didn't want out and out wingers, hence a more narrow line-up very much equivalent to what other major nations have been doing in the tournament. It also partially mirrored what Spurs have done in the Premier League this season, and with five of their players in our first eleven this also seems like a sensible approach.

Personally I feel the media, pundits and fans in England are still utterly poisoned with the obsession with England's past, and particularly the attritional untactical methods of the 70s and 80s. Hence you hear a lot of calls for 'wingers to run with the ball' and 'get it in the box' and 'why not 4-4-2' in line with what really is an out-dated, discredited culture. Unfortunately it's the culture most English pundits and players were brought up in - football as it was meant to be played, except we found out throughout the past 20 years that really it doesn't work very well against more nuanced approaches. For this reason I think a lot of the criticism of Hodgson is stuck in the past.

Are there fair criticisms of Hodgson? Of course. The lack of set-piece takers was an issue that could have been solved with the inclusion of Baines - I don't think Bertrand or Rose, decent as they are, are good enough to risk exacerbating the issue over set-pieces. I doubt it was Hodgson's fault but it is his responsibility when the team concedes via such an obvious set-piece as the Icelandic long throw. The plain fact is that Vardy, Alli and Kane failed to deliver goals, and Hodgson takes responsibility (though I'm not sure there's a lot he could do about it).

Some of England's play in the group stage really was excellent imo. A pattern of play that works, controlling the ball for long periods, mounting pressure on opponents, with very few chances conceded - this may seem rudimentary stuff for admirers of Germany and Spain, but England have honestly laboured for decades trying to aspire to this sort of control. There should have been more praise for those performances in England, as I believe there was elsewhere on the continent. I honestly don't think there's the intelligence in English observers to tell when a team is playing well.

What went wrong? The last-minute goal against Russia clearly massively affected the side - they treated a lucky equaliser as a kick in the teeth, and the rot set in. Chances were snatched at by an inexperienced side, and control of possession ended more often in stalemate than the desired result. I think a more experienced side might have had a better perspective - 'we're playing well, we're controlling the matches, the goals will come'. But against Iceland under the pressure of that two-goal turnaround (the long throw, the Hart mistake) the brains just went, and the inexperience and lack of leadership became a massive negative influence. Saddest to see was by the end of the match the players were simply lumping the ball towards the box, as if the old Charles Hughes mantra had been there suppressed all along, and under the greatest pressure the players reverted to what they knew, what the poisonous nature of English coaching cannot seem to ever escape from.

Did England underachieve? No, in my opinion. In the group stage performances they overachieved in terms of play, underachieved in front of goal of course. An unexpected loss probably saw England drop a match earlier than what might be considered a par, but then again who is to claim that Iceland or the other teams who went further didn't deserve it on their performances? I think if you had to rank the underlying quality in the squads, England are somewhere in the lower reaches of a European top 10. Finishing 9th-16th with some positives (Dier, Walker, the general youth of the side) is about where we are.

Why does this matter? Because I worry that after Hodgson England takes another lurch in an entirely different direction, and the continuity is lost. If you read the media, you'd think England need a charismatic person who's going to go back to basics (ie 4-4-2, a direct approach, balls in the box, big strikers heading the ball). While this may be great news for Andy Carroll, I think it would be a write-off for genuine chances of building the next generation of players who can actually dominate international matches and win stuff in the future.

[rat-foot]

Thoughts on transfer strategies...

Given the evening out of finances, I think transfer strategy is more to the fore that at any time in the past, and actually also becomes directly comparable between 20 clubs who can actually compete to some extent in the same markets for the same players. Wages are still a massive disparity of course, along with turnovers. But still let's look at the 17 prem clubs who stayed up and their strategies to get an idea of the character of the different approaches to a similar issue.

Chelsea

Chelsea's fairly simple strategy has been to buy the best, both for the first team and among the younger ranks where they have been perhaps the busiest club in World football for several years now. It has to be said that youth approach has yet to yield tangible success.

- Predatory transfers. Both Fabregas and Pedro were transfer swoops apparently made under the nose of close competitors. There's probably been an element of game theory applied to what Chelsea probably felt was a very small group of competitors, so that stealing a player from either Arsenal or Man Utd was seen to yield extra benefits. We can now doubt whether that approach is viable.

- A focus it seems on young South American talent, with three of Chelsea's 9 signings last season coming from the Brazilian leagues (Kenedy, Nathan, and the loan of Pato).

- There has to be a question of whether a change in emphasis is justified. Clearly Chelsea struggled to buy enough players of the quality they desired, and likewise failed to develop their young charges to make an impression on the first team (Courtois the major exception). For a team with such investment in younger players, it's noticable how little success they've had backing up the established players struggling for form.

- The big question might be simply how much they bend their strategies to back the new manager Conte.

Man City

Man City went big on two young attacking players last Summer (Sterling, De Bruyne), maybe signalling a change in strategy from their previous focus on established world stars of all ages. The development of Iheanacho also significant in their attempts to re-focus on a younger attacking core. But maybe it's just coincidental that these three came into the side at the same time, as much of Man City's business must surely be funnelled towards the usual desire to attract star names. Starting with Guardiola who will surely command a bunch of new signings to feed his star status as a manager. It might be the case that long-term strategy goes out of the window while they attempt to re-establish as the Premiership's premier team.

Arsenal

As is constantly discussed, Wenger's policy at Arsenal evolves at a snail's pace, though it is also fair to say it consistently runs at 'nearly' dominant mode. Clearly the tweak in recent years was to complement Wenger's all-seeing eye for players to develop with actual world stars, the issue being how many of those would be available for a club with such a frugal record in the transfer market. I frankly don't see anything changing, with all eyes on whether they grab a world-class forward to complement their attacking talent.

Man Utd

Clearly the plan last season was to use Schweinsteiger to marshall a bunch of younger players to success - I'm one who believes they actually got closer to that than some critics would concede. It's also definitely true that they wanted to buy some of the biggest players in the world but were knocked back time and time again - Martial though clearly a top talent was clearly something of a last-minute option rather than plan A.

The question is whether the strategy changes entirely. Will the 14 players who Van Gaal debuted simply sink into the reserves? It doesn't seem Mourinho's style or his remit to rely on youth.

I think with Mourinho they try again for top quality. Ronaldo. Maybe Benzema. Top players who Mourinho has used before.

Tottenham Hotspur

- Ironically their only big signing last season was a flop, Son from Leverkusen.

- I think Spurs continue their long-term project, relying on a superior eye for talent they can develop, along with a formidable ability to engineer good value in their dealings. What I've noticed is that they'll tend to be linked to young players making their name, but once the hype is established their interest tends to disappear. They want to swoop before the hype is established as they did with Dier and Alli.

- The alternative strategy after just missing the league title would be to bet big. And it should be noted that Pochettino has grabbed more say in transfers along with his new contract. But it might be that this strategy isn't even available given the massive competition for top players this Summer.

- Their focus in terms of signings is obviously youth and technique, rather than simply form. They've also been masters in generating funds for even their unwanted players, so re-sale value clearly a consideration. It has worked superbly for them in the medium term, so they'll surely just want to continue that.

Liverpool

As noted, their transfer strategy has been all over the place in recent years, for whatever reason. One of the most disappointing failures of this era has been how they've failed to capitalise on what is clearly an expertise at finding top talents under 20.

With two targets already secured from Germany, clearly Klopp is either running or overseeing the transfer strategy now. It may be the case that any plan is better than the scattershot approach that seemed to be in place in recent years.

Southampton

One of the more interesting strategies, there are definite patterns of focus in their dealings. And given their success with them, it's astonishing that other clubs aren't copying them. Notably four players from the Eredivisie (Martina, Pelle, Clasie, Tadic), three terrific signings from Celtic (Wanyama, Forster, Van Dijk) and other signings from what would be called 'B' leagues (Mane from Austria, Cedric from Portugal). It may be that after getting burned with Osvaldo from a big league, they've decided to find their value from the bigger fish in the smaller ponds.

- It's worth considering the logic of what they do, because clearly many of their signings go through many checks and balances of analysis with a 30-strong recruitment team. For example, their £11m signing of Shane Long seemed outlandish 18 months ago, but give how prices are right now it's fair to say they were well ahead of the curve in terms of anticipating the state of the market and the paucity of domestic supply.

- The club does face the same problem as bigger clubs, in terms of the next step up in achievement being at odds with their policy of developing youth and buying value players to develop. It could be that they get stuck in a no-man's land between the two ambitions serving neither.

Swansea

Another fascinating case, Swansea seem to buy a bunch of unusual players from off the beaten path. Given that their survival is still built largely on a bunch of the players they first found Premiership success with, it's hard to guage whether their signings are really making the grade. Eder from Portugal has not.

I think they're a good case of putting pragmatism above hubris and thinking outside the box. Nobody much was looking at Jack Cork from Southampton, but they've found the core of their midfield by being prepared to look at a reject of a mid-table side. Their signing of Emnes from championship Middlesbrough almost defies belief, but though it hasn't really worked out I admire the attempt to justify a signing from an unfashionable source.

Stoke

In attracting Afellay, Shaqiri and Imbula within 12 months to join Bojan and Arnautovic on the books, Stoke have proven that they're probably willing to offer wages and incentives to compete for high-profile signings. I expect them to continue this approach.

There is a house of cards possibility I think with their squad, that may be as capable of collapse as Newcastle's stars proved this season.

Also worth noting I don't think they've paid a fee for a domestic transfer in the past two seasons.

Crystal Palace

Real pragmatism to their signings. Cabaye who Pardew knew, Wickham a very known quantity, Sako a player almost completely in the mould of their other attacking players Bolasie and Zaha. It also makes their strategy quite dull to contemplate. Whoever they sign, we will understand why they're signing them and what they expect them to do.

Everton

As their strategy seemed entirely driven by Martinez, it will be fascinating to see what changes. I have no idea what they're going to do this Summer, and one of the biggest issues is surely the impending departure of Lukaku. I'll be honest, I think sacking Martinez now (whether he's a good or bad manager) is a terrible error that leaves a vacuum at the club.

West Ham United

Very open with their strategy, owner David Sullivan is going to continue his work as de facto director of football bringing players to the club. Their transfers have been so successful over the past two Summers since Allardyce lost control, that Sullivan is justified to believe this will continue. But in some ways their approach is very scattershot - I doubt there was any plan how Payet or Lanzini were to be accomodated in the hustle and bustle of the premiership, or how the tiny Ecuadorian Valencia would cope with the physical demands of the league.

The strategy seems to be driven primarily by headline statistics. Payet bought off his assists record in France, Valencia off his scoting record in Mexico, Cresswell off his crossing stats in the championship. It's often quite easy to pinpoint the headline figure that has drawn West Ham's interest. They are open about looking for strikers this Summer, and have simply been linked with any player with a high number in the goals column. I would describe their approach as entirely form-driven - players with good records are sought, actual ability to improve or maintain it is not so obviously measured or sought.

West Brom

Following a string of foreign flops, there's a big domestic focus to transfers under Pulis. Rather like Pardew he trades on signings delivering solid knowable results rather than a portfolio of signings representing acceptable risk. The question is what gambles might they take to try and infuse their forward line post-Berahino. My guess - they'll buy a target man, maybe Gestede.

Leicester City

A club in an odd place. Clearly Ranieri has more power after his heroics, but also some of the recruitment staff have been poached by other clubs, so I'm not sure where this leaves their transfer strategy. It's never quite been made clear who believed in Vardy and Mahrez and why they were brought to the club, to the extent that they seem like happy accidents rather than a triumph of recruitment.

Interesting to consider price in terms of their signings - all seem to hover around the £5m mark and little higher. I'm a big fan of spreading risk over a number of players, and that may be one of the bigger triumphs of the approach - Inler may have failed at £5m, but N'Kante more than made up for that at a similar price. They're currently linked with a £23m bid for Musa, so the approach may have been altered somewhat!

Sunderland

I know Allardyce's approach well, and it's a mix of styles. While I rate him excellent at spotting cheap-ish options to add solidity and grit to a side, he's had a pretty terrible record with his big signings throughout his career honestly. It's as if he's desperate to prove himself in the big time, but just cannot catch a break when he tries to do so. I've no doubt this Summer he will look to be ambitious in the market with big signings, after all Sunderland want change more than they want solidity in a way. But it's in free transfers and cheap acquisitions that Allardyce will make his mark.  - He will buy a big striker this Summer, absolutely no doubt about that.

Bournemouth

Bournemouth's expensive, ambitious approach has been mainly domestic-based. It could be that they're simply operating in a market that they know, and their willingness to trust championship players seems to have worked so far despite some terrible injuries last season.

I do wonder if they might feel they've hit an impasse where it's not exactly clear what they need to do to improve their position. They have a bunch of spirited domestic players, but perhaps they might feel that unpredictable attacking players from foreign shores might offer that x factor that they would need to halt the late slide last season.

What seems to be surprising everyone but shouldn't be is their spending. This is a club really gambling on success, and given its track record in the past couple of years that will surely continue. It should be noted their capacity to simply go bust as a club must be ridiculously high!

Watford

A club that seem to dance to their own tune, partly due to the strange synergies with Granada and Udinese through the Pozzi ownership. It's odd that there are no rumours at all about their star strikers Deeney and Ighalo - it's as if other clubs just realise they aren't going to get them so don't even bother.

Their signings are hard to predict - many of them I hadn't heard of at all. Purchasing players from unusual places obviously brings benefits in terms of getting value for signings.

Worth noting that approximately 18 players came into the club over the past year. One of their greatest strengths is theoretically using Udinese etc to ease the pressures of squad organisation. If a player goes wrong they know they have at least one destination for them. It does give them license to try stuff in the market, and the more risks you take the more the chances of a direct hit like Ighalo.

[rat-foot]

Are young players ‘discovered’?

Note: I have no background in youth coaching, nor experience of it. I am mulling a set of theories around my head and wondering if there's a logical answer to the conundrum.

Young players who turn out to be big successes are often described as being discovered, either in the transfer market or by the managers that give them their chance in the first team. The implication is that these are players who had greatness inside them that was waiting to be found.

There are plenty of reasons to dispute this myth. One is the continuing discussion around talent, which suggests that development is strongly based on nurture rather than being 'born with a gift' - I see it as a natural development of logical thought in a godless society that we should question this. Another is the plain existence of major confirmation bias in even looking at this issue - there's simply a huge temptation to assume that those who succeed were the ones with the ability and the ones who didn't lacked it. It leads to a school of thought where every player kind of ends up where they deserved to be - 'they found their level'.

The irony being that of course, if every young player is destined to either be or not be a success, then what does it matter who discovers or ignores them, or indeed what the quality of their training or development is. Although there is an accompanying set of myths here - one is the super-talented player who wasted their talent, the other is the low-talent player who made it simply through hard graft. While plenty of players definitely fit these two templates, underlying biases need to be assumed to accept their existence - that the ability to work hard is not a measurable talent, or that talent occurred in the first place without work being done to develop it. Again, there are grounds to dispute either stereotype.

The other implication of the belief around young players is that clubs make absolutely massive mistakes with players all the time. Young players who are simply never destined to make it are being given contracts. Is this really likely to be true across the board? I don't think so.

Another questionable theory is the one that experience of first-team or competitive football makes a player. At a basic level this is true - no great of the game can exist without actually playing the game. Where the grey area is is around loans to give first-team football to a player, a system that I have been dubious towards for many years. The question being whether a player learns more in a competitive game than they do by training - it seems to me that most modern thought suggests the latter is key, the former less so. A player who just trains has a chance of improving, a player who only plays matches but doesn't train stands zero chance. Yet players are loaned to play matches, while the quality of the training they will receive on loan is often hard to assess. One rule of thumb I might suggest is for clubs to only loan players to clubs whose training is of a sufficient quality - this strongly favours the B team system in Spain over the loan system in England.

If the truth is that young players rely entirely on coaching and development to become great players, then a huge number of them are being failed by the system. While I can't prove this to be the case, I think logic supports a strong implication that this is true. Where I'm interested in this is that it seems to me that opportunities must be being missed.

What I'm left with is a renewed enthusiasm for the idea that coaching is key to development. I don't believe that great talents are 'discovered' or created through giving chances in the team (though that is clearly necessary). They are developed either by experts, or by players canny enough to learn how to develop themselves. We cannot assume the latter, so the demands for high-quality coaching almost outweigh the demand for 'young talent' for them to teach.

[rat-foot]

Possible WHU strategy for the Summer

Following on from my valuations of the WHU squad, here's what I'd do with it this Summer. Obviously this is a layman's view, and subject to change, as all Summer plans should be. My view is that next season is a consolidation season - it's incredibly unlikely the club will be fighting for an outside chance of Europe as they were this season. There's no way that Liverpool or Man Utd or Man City or Chelsea don't improve significantly next season. The club should be realistic about this.

OUTS / SALES

Tomkins - As I highlighted, I consider this a reluctant sale. And since saying so, the club have also made it clear they're looking for a sale, though for a cut-price £7m. I say that they should be valuing him at £15m and taking £10m - this is a homegrown player of proven premiership class coming into the peak of his career. Verdict: SELL for £10m.

Obiang - A young player I rate highly, but clearly his face doesn't quite fit and there needs to be some sort of regeneration of the midfield group. With Nordtveit coming in I don't see him being first choice at DM, so there's a risk he just festers on the bench at the club. I would rather cash in while his value is still relatively high and look for value in the market to replace him. Verdict: SELL for £10m.

O'Brien - Leaving on a free.

Song - Leaving after a loan spell, with WHU seemingly not acting on an option to buy. Again his face doesn't fit, and while I think he's a fine player he'd clearly be a major investment that doesn't seem quite worthwhile. In a different regime I think you might be making him the anchor of your midfield, but Bilic seems to run things differently.

Valencia - The club have made it very clear they want him to go, and I would argue they've wasted a year because it was very obvious last Summer that he wasn't delivering on his potential. What might have been a £10m sale now becomes a cut-price deal. Verdict: SELL at £6m plus.

Carroll - I admit he is very unlikely to want to leave, and WHU seem to have little desire to sell, but I think WHU should abandon this project while they can. It's not that he isn't capable and occasionally unplayable, but the knock-on effect on the way the team operates is corrosive imo. We've turned from a creative attacking team to a team that relies on crossing for a big man. It is not the way forward. He is very hard to value honestly - big wages and an injury record make it difficult, but we should try. Sell for £5m+.

Sakho - This is a jobbing mid-ability player who has made the absolute most of what he has on the field, and on that basis I wouldn't be upset if he stayed. But off-the-field issues persist, and the fact is that when not in streaky goalscoring form he really is frustrating to watch. Again I think he should have been cashed in on last Summer when his value was high - now we face trying to get rid when the question marks over his ability are more obvious. Sell for £7m+.

Cresswell - Now this is the controversial one, but I think his value in the market might be so high that it justifies a sale. I think the club should be putting out feelers in the market to just find out how much the big clubs might be willing to pay. Cresswell has done great here, and is perhaps unlucky not to trouble the England squad, but he is also replaceable on a budget. If Man City offered £30m or something ludicrous like that, the sale really suits both parties imo. Sell for £25m+.

Collins - The big man is approaching the end, and because we have talent coming through in the position, and because Nordtveit now joins Kouyate in terms of offering cover at the back, I think it's an opportunity to look at the squad in pre-season and wonder if we need Collins anymore. If he stays, no biggie, but it's something I would look at.

Speigel / Henry - Two youngish players who nevertheless command a non-homegrown place in the squad currently. The squeeze is on this sort of player, and I think the sensible thing to do if they aren't ready to feature in the matchday squad is to move both on.

INS / PURCHASES

So we know about Lanzini and Nordtveit coming in. Worth bearing in mind that if all the sales above happened we'd be 2 short of the 8-man homegrown quota.

An experienced right-back. The club has a young option in Byram, and an emergency option in Antonio, but it seems like the current meta is to have more energetic full-backs and rotate them (especially if Europe is a consideration). Again the club seems to recognise this and is linked with 6 or 7 French-based right-backs. I think £5m seems like a reasonable budget for this.

A young left-back. We need the equivalent of a Byram for the left side. It might be that Page or Hendrie can offer that option from the youth ranks, but barring that we need cover and competition for Cresswell. It needs to be better than just a gamble on a youth with zero experience, so you'd need a reasonable £5m budget for it I think. Someone like Charlie Taylor at Leeds please.

A young midfielder. I don't know how close Cullen is to making the step up, but that's the first option to think about. But I also think that that Lanzini is currently a 'sometimes-played-central' midfielder who I'd count as half a spot. So in a 3-man central midfield that includes one anchor man, I think we need another more attacking/all-round option. I'd be budgeting around £5-7m for a player with potential and physical attributes that could be developed. I suppose if there's a lack of obvious targets you'd have to look at whether it's better to just keep Obiang for another year.

A first-choice striker. I appreciate this costs money, but I am strongly against 'betting-the-farm' overpriced strikers. The market is insane right now as everybody wants guaranteed goals, it's an awful time to be in the market. But our current bunch simply aren't good enough. On this basis I slightly favour a more short-term outlook looking at perhaps the older end of the market, normally a place I wouldn't want us to look. But targets the likes of Demba Ba or Graziano Pelle offer enough to see us through, while not forcing us to risk everything in a seller's market. Signings like this will not excite the fans, but I'm worried about the club getting stuck on the strikers they can't get (like Lacazette) and ending up with an overpriced one that isn't worth a similar outlay. I'd be looking somewhere in the £10m bracket, far cheaper than the club are currently considering.

A game-changing striking option. Here I'm looking for a younger pacier option, with enough physically to not just get out-muscled in a tough league. The club have been remiss in ignoring the physical demands of the league too often, and must take that into account. That's why I think the championship is quite a decent market to look at - there's hustle and bustle there, and I think there's a good recent record of players making the step up. Hernandez at Hull? Oliveira from Benfica who was on loan there? Again I'd be looking at the £8-10m bracket.

I think a Premiership club needs two strikers, and youth to cover. I note the club have already bought Martinez in from Spain at 18 years old. That sort of player seems like a very clever signing to me. We need players to develop, who might occasionally fill in for a game. I also think the club could look at other options up front - Payet has played there and it would mask his defensive limitations and age catching up with him, and Antonio also has a strong claim as a battering ram option up front.

A winger/attacking midfielder. Moses is returning to Chelsea, so there's a gap in the squad here. We have Antonio, Payet and Lanzini for the wide spots. So I'm not sure a new signing could expect to start every game, so again I'm thinking about a younger player to compete and develop maybe from the bench. Again the £8-10m bracket.

Conclusion

£47m spend. £38m sold. And with the wildcard of looking at Cresswell's value in the market (he would obviously need replacing too). This would actually be a very profitable Summer for WHU, with the majority of the enormous TV deal not being required.

The question of what to do with all that spare money is utterly obvious. A new training complex is so long overdue it is absolutely absurd. West Ham need a centre for excellence to provide the academy for which it bases its entire identity. And which has been so sorely lacking in recent years. It's time to build something for the club's future, not for today's short-term demands. That would be progress that no £20m mercenary striker could bring - a genuine investment rather than a sticking plaster!

I also think the club needs to be flexible. Actually the only players I definitely wouldn't sell are Kouyate and Noble. I can see a situation where even selling Payet is to the club's advantage. And sometimes opportunities arise to get a player at well below their value that maybe isn't the sort of target you were looking for. By being vigilant for these opportunities is imo the best way to move the club generally forward over the medium-term. Grabbing desperately at overpriced name players in the transfer market is really not the way to go, and any measures we can take to avoid that in the future would be very wise indeed.