Month: May 2017

[Part one, on Chelsea, Tottenham and Man Utd is here] Man City The Pep Guardiola revolution has had a decidedly flat first season. With prior expectations high, anything short of a title was going to be deemed under par and while third place may seem solid enough in a competitive year, City’s results appeared best before Guardiola’s systems had really taken hold. They started fast before hitting something of a wall and meandering through much of the centre of the season, a superficial storyline that mimicked the year before. Kevin de Bruyne hitting the bar from yards out against Chelsea was held up as a key point in both team’s seasons and it pointed clearly the general trajectory each team then took. A mixed bag of signings generally failed to displace the City mainstays; İlkay Gündoğan was injured, briefly fit then injured again, Nolito fitfully sparkled then disappeared, John Stones looked every inch the potential liability he always has done while Gabriel Jesus was promising and Leroy Sane eventually got motoring to good effect. Wonderment at Guardiola fielding centre midfielders as inverted wing backs or more than two full backs while playing a system featuring no orthodox fullback positions now seems like a quaint reflection of more innocent times. The early fascination with every detail of his selection gave way to accepting that he was going to channel Ossie Ardiles with forward heavy line ups and tinker with his extravagantly assembled squad, come what may. Results stayed erratic until very late on, when they motored home. . Generally, they were too easy to score against, but allowed very few shots. No team allowed the shots that it conceded to land on target as easily as City and no team conceded those shots at such a high rate. That all this did not equate with generally solid locations lightly implied that when shooting the opposition were often unpressured, and the miserable mid-season run of Bravo brings exactly that to mind. They outshot every team they played bar one, Tottenham away, their pass completion was higher against every team they played, and they had more of the ball in every match too. Peponomics was installed and much like Arsenal last year, expected goals loved them, but they struggled to turn such dominance into title contending form. Aspects of variance hindered them at key moments but they can analyse the season and see that much of what they did was very good. However, a flawed squad, underbuilt across multiple seasons, had its weaknesses brutally exposed much as it had in previous years, when perhaps Nicolás  Otamendi and a less lean and lumbering Yaya Toure bore the brunt of responsibility. Instead now, Stones and Bravo carried the can. The team had real verve in attack, with the January arrival of Jesus looking to lift it up a gear, but his injury and a slightly flat, though still prolific season from Sergio Agüero meant the team only rarely hit top speed. He scored plenty across all competitions but before a late flurry, only at par in the Premier League, which when held up against the returns of Harry Kane or Diego Costa, who both scored plenty ahead of expectation and when it mattered, reflect exactly what’s needed to power a team late into the season. A goalscorer needs to be on fire, something that Agüero is well capable of achieving, and will need to again. Maybe that's harsh and the real problem was elsewhere with Jesus and Raheem Sterling, with seven league goals apiece, meaning that there was no real backup in goal volume from one player. The continued overlooking of Kelechi Iheanacho was perplexing in this regard. He will represent a solid gamble for someone else should he remain as unwanted as appeared in the latter half of the year. So for Pepalytics season one, what to think? The Champions League demise against Monaco was incredibly tame and he seemed to hint that he felt his players performed within themselves. It still feels like the team needs control and strength in the centre of midfield--Yaya can't be expected to do that forever--while all the full backs have seen better days. Any system will work best when built around Lionel Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta all at their peak. Or when installed on top of the wealthiest club in Germany with gamechangers like Arjen Robben, Thomas Muller, Robert Lewandowski or Franck Ribery in the ranks. Who are Man City’s gamechangers? Can they make enough of a difference to lift Pep's values into genuine contention? Reinforcements will be fascinating and inevitable.  Full backs at least, surely, three years late, will be incoming.   Liverpool Step back from the rollercoaster and what Liverpool achieved last season was against the odds and successful. Sure, this is a club that measures success in trophies and the fantastic early season form led the league title talk to emerge but the bigger picture is that in edging out Arsenal and forcing Man Utd to win a trophy to qualify for the Champions League, Jurgen Klopp’s men have taken a large and well deserved step forward. Pre season, eighth to fourth would have been a fair benchmark for progress, and some of their thrilling attacking play will be remembered and potentially offers a platform for sustained success. That the team was capable of a step forward was well flagged by last season’s metrics, and moreso those confined to the Klopp era. They may have finished eighth but profiled more like a team a coinflip away from the top four, and the deficit wasn’t large. That they had to improve to actually land such a slot indicates the strength of the bigger teams in general. A lot has been made of the variation in results for Liverpool--extremely strong against rivals, but vulnerable against weaker teams. I’m more inclined to suspect that this is a freakish artefact but that Liverpool’s opposition expected goals per shot rate was extremely poor is undeniable. A vulnerability to the second ball on set pieces and an occasionally porous midfield meant that although they allowed few chances, the ones they did were high quality, a problem they shared with Man City. Beyond this,  the true problem with Liverpool’s season stems back to May 2016 and their Europa League final defeat to Sevilla. That defeat was a huge fork in the road; a win would have ensured Champions League football, but more importantly a European campaign. The club would not have been able to prepare its squad as it did had it faced European football. Liverpool’s squad depth after the summer of 2016 was simply insufficient, and they failed to remedy that in January 2017. When all were fit, play was scintillating, but as soon as Philippe Coutinho suffered his injury and Sadio Mane departed for AFCON duty, the combination of a fixture pileup and squad weakness quickly told. Liverpool right now perhaps have 14 or 15 definitive first teamers before a steep drop in quality, and then the kids, who Klopp seems reluctant to trust. In truth they probably needed 17 or 18 to get through this season and maintain a high standard throughout, and may need more like 19 or 20 to get through a season with a Champions League campaign glued on. You can’t plan for injuries, but you know they will probably occur, and reliable backups are imperative. Also over multiple seasons, bouncing in and out of European competition plays havoc with sensible recruitment. Tottenham may have fumbled their Champions League run this last season and been lightly mocked for living in the Europa League before, but being involved in European competition year in, year out means that their squad has the depth to combat the fatigue effects that inevitably come with extra fixtures and travel. Liverpool now have to build up again and land straight in the deep end, just as they did after 2013-14. This lack of depth, even with no European schedule, can explain the team’s second half of the season decline in quality. Furthermore Jordan Henderson, Adam Lallana and Sadio Mane all missed chunks at the business end through injury while Daniel Sturridge was variously unused and sidelined. There is talk now of Liverpool moving some of their lesser lights on, In fact, given they probably need four or five first team ready talents to add into the squad, the retention of even a utility type such as Lucas or a back up like Alberto Moreno makes just as much sense. Cast them out and you’ve more slots to fill. That said, Liverpool’s transfer business has been solid in recent years. Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Georginio Wijnaldum and Joel Matip all represent smart talent identification and/or no fear of pushing large fees onto players they trust will fit the club and latterly Klopp’s systems. A couple of early transfers this summer would be a solid look here. So: in review, a good year, with the problems of the season now the challenges of the summer. Liverpool were outsiders of the six teams for the top four, and may well be again, with expectation that Arsenal and Man Utd will contend strongly and the added pressure and workload of a European campaign, but they overcame a wobble this time to secure their spot in the elite. Klopp now needs to find a way to keep them there. Arsenal Eight wins in their last ten, sufficient points to comfortably land in your average top four, an FA Cup final coming up, a deep squad, a legendary manager… what’s not to like at Arsenal? Groundhog Day comes but once a year, every year at the Emirates and said legendary manager now faces the strongest challenge to his autocracy yet after a typically virile end to the season failed to land the usual Champions League qualification. The team found a way to generate more points than last season, but that only tells part of the story. Last year they really should have contrived to build a challenge to Leicester and Tottenham that consisted of more than pipping their North London rivals in the last game. A run of three wins in ten from around halfway killed them off and a similar run of four wins in ten this season, which featured a distinctly vulnerable, and notably bad run in defence, was enough ultimately cost not just a title run but the top four. The biggest disappointment from over here in stats land--and let’s recall Arsenal are well stocked with stats people, so will be well aware of this--is the year on year decline. 2015-16’s side looked like they had benefited from smart advice; the team’s expected goals per shot at both ends was league leading and the volumes were excellent too. They undershot and were better early on, but backed up by Mesut Ozil’s great season, they looked to be the closest team the Premier League had to replicating the shooting efficiency often seen by various Barcelona teams. This year a hot autumn offered a slight sticking plaster to issues that came later and the move from a back four to a back three, which coincided with an upturn in results if not an upturn in underlying performance looked a reaction to the post Christmas slump. Sadly, now we are a long way away from knowing how Arsenal should best line up, and this apparent lack of a cohesive strategy doesn’t get bailed out in the numbers. Year on year, expected goal rates have fallen by a rate only exceeded by Leicester, and when the structure declines, a team is left to rely on variance to succeed, a far less pretty picture than a year ago. Both seasons see a with or without Santi Cazorla narrative easily applied, and even as he approaches his dotage his influence appears key. However, that’s too simple, and Wenger’s strategic transitions appear the biggest driver. Ozil has suffered hugely through lacking a target, and a late season flurry against beach-dwelling opponents hasn’t masked that. Alexis Sanchez has been electric and has benefited from changes more than most, his individual season tallies would have created a greater appreciation had the team itself managed to compete. It does feel as though perhaps the benefit of Sanchez may have hindered the rest of the attacking corps, but as ever things like that are hard to prove. Their impending term in the Europa League offers a line in the sand but also an opportunity. Arsenal are a competent European side, and their style has regularly been more suited to the open play found in European matches rather than the attrition of the Premier League. Perhaps the team is just flawed? Coasting along in comfort, unchallenged by modern ideas or lost in long term malaise? It’s hard. For curiosity’s sake and beyond any “Wenger Out” takes, a new manager would be welcomed just to see what another set of eyes could do with a fairly capable and balanced squad. The possible retention--or not-- of Ozil and Sanchez will likely dominate the summer, with each looking for mega-money but with few mega years left in front of them and a lot of football in their legs. The possible retention--or not--of Arsene Wenger will determine likely whether next season will feel any different.   ______________________ Catch me on twitter here, it's a lot of fun: @jair1970

When the Watford board didn’t renew Quique Flores’s contract at the end of last season the general reaction was one of criticism and confusion – the team had just overachieved, with the Spanish manager leading the side to a comfortable 13^th place finish without ever really being confronted with relegation in their first season back in the top tier. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, they did the same to Jokanovic – who is now succeeding with Fulham – after he lead the team to the Premier League in 2014-15 despite arriving in October as the club’s fourth manager in the season. Former Napoli boss Walter Mazzarri was the chosen one for the Hornets to rely upon this season but they now sit in 15^th, with two difficult matches to go (Everton and City). So, we get it: the Pozzos (who lead Udinese and Granada besides Watford) like to switch up their staff. However, I decided to go beyond just calling the club a mess – which it effectively is – and try to figure out what happened between these two seasons and look at where to go from here. There has been a huge turnover in personnel and Cathcart, Watson and captain Troy Deeney are the only three outfield players that are still at the club after their promotion season. They approached the English top flight by getting a series of experienced guys like Capoue from Spurs, who has turned out to be one of their most consistent players of the two seasons as an all-rounder in midfield, attacking-midfielder Jurado, who they proceeded to take a 7M€ loss on this past summer after he didn’t get a single goal or assist in over 2000 league minutes and Behrami who was always about an average defensive minded centre-mid and continued to be so. Steven Berghuis had just had an outstanding season with AZ with fantastic output for a winger – 15 G+A in around 1700’ – but as we mention so often the Eredivisie is a tricky league to pick out from and things didn’t work out for him in the Premier League. Neither Prodl nor Britos are outstanding centre-backs by any means but they had top league experience and I’ve seen worse acquisitions considering they arrived on free transfers. While they weren’t high goalscorers under Flores, they were defensively organized – outside the top 5 only Southampton and WBA conceded less goals. Their characteristic counter-attacking style, serving the duo of Deeney and Ighalo and with the highest amount of long balls per match in the league has now changed to a slightly less effective one. Flores managed to guide Watford to survival while integrating a ton of signings in the first team, with recruitment both in the summer and January. To most people his sacking was a shock because, much like me, they didn’t understand what else could they have achieved last season besides their safe run. But if the board wasn’t satisfied with Flores’s job, how will they evaluate his replacement? Again, in all fairness, Watford were never in the mix to go down this season either but the difference in numbers doesn’t show much progress. The problems come mostly from the creative end of the pitch, with a drop in both their Xg per match and in their Xg per shot, which combined with slightly improved defensive numbers lead to a -21 goal difference this season compared to last season’s -10. Watford have been taking slightly fewer shots from slightly worse positions – enough for a difference to be felt though and even more so with the lack of a great goalscoring run like Ighalo had last year. It has been reported that Mazarri fell out with Deeney something that doesn’t help either. Defensively one could even consider them somewhat unlucky, with the Italian manager actually improving their defensive Xg numbers but unable to stop them having the league’s 4^th leakiest defence with 63 goals conceded, 13 more than last. That lack of luck appears to continue as we look at their transfer market approach. Roberto Pereyra came in from Italian champions Juventus as the big signing of the Summer and, while 4 G+A from midfield in 1000’ showed end product the club needed, a knee injury ruled out most of his season. But Watford can’t blame it all on luck. Out of all the other major signings for the season only Kaboul and Janmaat have over 1000’ Premier League minutes. The January loan signings haven’t impressed with Niang contributing to goals in just two matches and seemingly disappearing on all others and Cleverley being okay at best. To look more positively here, the already confirmed purchase of the latter and option to buy Niang could at least be an initial step to revert the cycle on what is an aging squad. And we can’t talk transfers without a mention of the sequence of players that get bounced around the trio of clubs owned by the Pozzos: Udinese, Watford and Granada. Penaranda, Success, Kums, Doucouré, all players with interesting numbers in previous seasons elsewhere that are seemingly bought on one side to be loaned out to one of the others right away without ever really establishing themselves anywhere. Overall there seems to be somewhat of a lack of direction within the club. They are the Premier League side that most lacks a project behind their team, or an identity. Again a change of the direction is needed and while logic might tell us that Walter Mazarri will get improved results if he stays with the team, someone with a grasp of the bigger picture might be able to move the clubin  a positive direction with the funds from back-to-back Premier League survivals backing it up.

  Back in August I kicked off the StatsBomb preview series with an article describing how “six into four won’t go” which looked at the big six clubs and their expectations for the coming season. Each team harboured significant hope of title challenges and comfort within the top four, a desire that could only ever be sated by four of them. We’re now into the last week so this is where we will start to review what happened. I suggested that only Mauricio Pochettino and Jurgen Klopp could realistically land their teams outside the top four and expect to survive, yet Tottenham are safe in second and Liverpool have a home game against Middlesbrough between them and Champions League qualification. I had thought lifting Chelsea from mediocrity back to the summit was a huge task for Antonio Conte (ever shrewd bookies reps had tipped them for the title in seven of thirteen predictions…) I thought Pep Guardiola was nailed on to lift  Man City into the top two, while who could foretell Arsenal landing outside their eternal top four positions? Not me. What fascinates beyond the undeniable facts presented by the league table are the changing structure of the competing teams, and how they have evolved season to season. That’s what will inform predictions next time round (with a healthy skew from transfers) as we go again in 2017-18 with the same deal on the table. Six into four won’t go, even if Jose Mourinho can snout out a fifth slot for his team and pretend he wasn’t really playing all along, and next season will find them all on a level playing field with European fixtures for all. This just might open a small window for a well organised interloper to take a run at the orthodoxy, we shall see. Anyway, what do we know, right now? Chelsea, Tottenham and Man Utd’s destiny is decided, so let’s start with them and part two on the other three teams will land further down the line. Chelsea It’s easy to understand how Chelsea were able to shake off the shackles of their dismal 2015-16 and reclaim their title. No European football was huge, team stability and a lack of injuries helped too, as did the talent in the squad, but none of that should take away from Antonio Conte’s achievement to create the basis not just win the title but pretty much crush the league. Autumn’s win streak was the decisive factor, but to win 28 games (and potentially 30) is a devastating return, particularly in a league with such depth in contending positions. He built a dominant team in Turin and has done the same quickly in London with defense the bedrock. If we get into the stats, we find evidence that Chelsea are one of the best teams in the league but not the decisive aspects that are borne out by the table. Expected goals loves Man City, and puts the rest of the big six--Arsenal apart-- into a fairly narrow band. Specifically for Chelsea, year on year we see small gains in attack but huge gains in defence. The 3-4-3 system got a lot of credit as the decisive change after their back to back defeats against Liverpool and Arsenal, but they were already limiting their opponents shot levels beforehand and by and large did so all season. N’Golo Kante got the wide praise, and players bought the hype that a workaholic defensive midfielder can improve a team of expensive world stars and voted him in as Player of the Year; that the writers did the same was somewhat surprising. Why so? “Italian defensive organisation” was the real star here and the roles David Luiz, Gary Cahill, Nemanja Matic, Cesar Azpilicueta, Marcos Alonso and Victor Moses inhabited contributed every bit as much as the diminutive Frenchman, but just lacked the storyline hook that took Kante over the line. This stability allowed Eden Hazard and Diego Costa to once again direct the team’s attack towards another title ably assisted by a sterling second season from Pedro and from his new “special teams” role, Cesc Fabregas. Part of the disconnect between metrics and their success has been their ability to create and maintain positive game states. They have spent nearly half their time in games in winning positions (last season no team spent more than 37% of time ahead) and if we look at a list of similar teams with such a profile they are familiar: Man City 2011-12 and 2013-14, Man Utd 2011-12 and 2012-13, Liverpool 2013-14 and Chelsea 2014-15. All these teams we know as good teams that ran hot with regard finishing in the seasons noted, and won titles or went close because of it. Time (and Leicester) have demystified Man Utd’s 2012-13 title somewhat and what we see here is the perfect recipe for success: quality plus efficiency and luck. This Chelsea team has a slightly different profile to most of these teams given its reputation for defensive strength, yet they’re still the league’s top scorers, powered by some extremely hot finishing rates. Whichever way you turn, Chelsea’s 2016-17 season had all bases covered. They were an excellent team that made the most of their talent and deserved their title. However, next season will be different. They will not win 13 straight games through the autumn with Champions League fixtures intervening, and the potential loss of Costa could be big. In his three seasons at the club he has fired the basis of two titles through hitting rare form in two pre Christmas spells. He’s unique for a top striker as he has rarely hit large shot volumes yet has reliably converted at a high rate across multiple seasons. The money in China will be good, but Conte’s best bet is to spend every penny they get in return at the very top of the market for another striker. Michy Batshuayi will get game time next season and is a solid forward, but Chelsea need to put the very best at the head of their attack if they are to back up this remarkable season. Tottenham In building on a thrilling 2015-16 and securing a clear “best of the rest” slot behind Chelsea, Mauricio Pochettino deserves almost as much praise as Conte. In another season, it might have been enough to land a title, but to take Tottenham past the “AVB line” of 72 points and bringing his young team clearly forward was a fitting finale for their last year at Old White Hart Lane. It wasn’t all plain sailing though. Champions League apathy, too many draws and key injuries overshadowed the autumn. The team looked to be a blunt instrument, bombarding the opposition with shots from all angles but rarely offering the guile to get behind teams and genuinely hurt them. Indeed, title talk was well wide of the mark back them, with a top four slot seeming no more than a coin flip either, and their climb into such positions only occurred as the new year ticked in. Pre Christmas, Dele Alli had not hit the heights of 2015-16 either, Victor Wanyama was getting daggers from more critical circles and even Christian Eriksen’s form was under scrutiny. That each has come through the ensuing few months with their reputation shored up and even enhanced reflects just how positively Tottenham’s second half of the season has gone, Europa League blip apart. In particular, Eriksen, continues to exist somewhat under the radar, despite making the whole team tick, moreso this year in the absence of Erik Lamela, who at least shared some of the delicate creative tasks last year. Tottenham continued to shoot more than the rest of the league of course, and from a variety of wild, not-so-wild and genuinely good positions. They landed more shots on target than any other team too and the sheer volume of their artillery even allowed expected goals models to rate them, eventually. In that regard they look fairly similar to their 2015-16 brand, with a small uptick in defence, which was boosted in reality by Hugo Lloris (and Michel Vorm) securing an extremely high save percentage, a league leading 78% but that’s the kind of outlying skew that is unlikely to hold long term. This was the primary difference between the two seasons in metric land: they got the rub this time. Last season had the makings--shots, lots of them-- but none of the special sauce in the conversions. This year they shaved a couple of shots per game off their defensive end, got the breaks at both ends and happily rode the positive variance all the way up to second place. That’s maybe frustrating, and Pochettino knows it, judging by his reluctant acceptance of praise that has come his way. Beyond that, the project is still moving in the right direction--and still ahead of time, by at least a season. The way that the team seems to have learned how to dispatch lesser teams is encouraging. Frustrating post-Europe results have been in decline, as has the fall away in performance on and around the hour mark that was prevalent before. And the squad has grown together--they really know each other well, and the systems their manager employs. Fears of a mass exodus are unfounded. It looks as though Kyle Walker may leave, but the core of the team will stay on into the wandering year at Wembley. And that’s the biggest challenge. Just as Chelsea surely won’t win 13 straight again, it’s unlikely that Tottenham will win nine in a row or go unbeaten at home all year again. What they need to do is return with the same basic plan: dominate territory, dominate the ball, dominate the shot count, try and rotate effectively, don’t worry about European competition too much and get into the mix. Oh, and not to screw up the transfers. Man Utd What a season! Jose Mourinho nailed the transfers, empowered Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba to run his attack, played it safe in all the games you’d expect him to, tried to shake the remnants of Louis van Gaal from his team’s mentality, built a team that effectively dominated weaker league opposition and for what? A Europa League slot? Ah but notsofast. Win the Europa League and six into five comes into view. Neat twist, Jose. Reality is a stark but familiar comedown but the broad take is simple: despite landing outside the top four Mourinho has done a good job. He’s just been pretty strongly shafted by brother variance and a smidgen of his own caution. From a stats perspective, it’s quite easy to forgive what looks like an underwhelming season. No team has improved its expected rates at both ends by such a combined margin year on year, and it has been split fairly equally between attack and defence. The ten home draws have been frustrating and some of the performance boost can be attributed to the team relentlessly battering on a door that never opened during those games. The bigger picture remains that they are still a work in progress, albeit the most expensive half built team ever known. But, coming into what is a hugely pivotal game against Ajax, one cannot help but reflect on a former prioritisation of Europe in the face of league opportunities, one in which Mourinho failed; Chelsea 2013-14’s season. The die had been cast earlier with odd, meek defeats away at Palace and Villa, and there was no way of predicting that Man City would win out with five straight but Chelsea were bang there until very close to the end of that year. Ever the pragmatist, Mourinho put out a weakened side away at Liverpool staring down a five point deficit and played for the steal. That he got it yet proceeded to get knocked out of the Champions League with his first team intact, meant that overall the strategy failed. He ended up with nothing. We once more reach this juncture with all the chips on the European table and none saved for the league. Two points from twelve are his post Zlatan return, and seven points back from fourth, a preferred league finish is long gone. More concerning is that whether by plan or accident, Man Utd haven’t put together a strong attacking performance since Ibrahimovic went down. In fairness, that run includes both legs of their Europa League semi finals and away trips to Man City, Arsenal and Tottenham, but the starkest game on the chart was the 1-1 draw with Swansea. Very different from the 25 to 30 shot 1-1 draws of earlier in the season, this was played out at a flat 12 shots a-piece. Van Gaal-esque. And so Mourinho’s season could be redeemed publicly with a trophy and one that carries a pass into the Champions League. It’s easy to presume that next year should see further consolidation or with added world stars, improvement. Mourinho has unusually used a large squad in this extended season meaning that although a lot of football has been played across four competitions, the minutes have been fairly well apportioned out. The first two seasons of his Chelsea return were characterised by a lack of rotation and where aspects of burnout definitely impacted the team late on, United may not suffer that way going forward. If Mourinho is to see history repeat, signings of the calibre of Fabregas and Costa are required to push the team forward. That worked for him at Chelsea, and Man Utd will surely spend. With the Pogba signing showing that money and paying the agent can override the lure of Champions League football the aim will be to pull in top rank talent once more. That Romelu Lukaku shares an agent with Pogba has been noted. We have yet to see the best of Henrikh Mkhitaryan too, he could well be primed for a huge season next year if given support. With eight titles, three second place finishes and a third across his completed seasons as a manager, this season represents his worst finish to date, and that is following up his role in Chelsea’s mid table finish last year. Has the aura gone? Losing to Ajax would sharpen the criticism in that direction, but next season will tell us a lot more. He finally got the job he craved, and so far hasn’t quite managed to live up to his or Man Utd’s high standards, yet could end up with two trophies. That would be a successful first year for any other manager in any other club, and there’s enough will, good or otherwise, for Jose to go again. Another year outside the top four will simply not pass muster.

Nobody ever said transfers were easy. The potent blend of vast amounts of television money, an army of agents and an industry that has long been prone to inefficiency has meant that plenty of transfers go wrong. They will go awry for human reasons that are impossible to avoid and they will go wrong even when everything looks like it shouldn't.  The Premier League may be slowly starting to think how to make fewer mistakes, but even clubs that appear smart can drop the ball completely and made rash or odd decisions. So here’s a list of deals that didn’t work in the Premier League this last season, for a variety of reasons, but all have one thing in common: they tally up to being a huge waste of money. Often, these deals were easy to criticise from the outset, for others it took time for the lack of sense to become apparent. With fees rising fast and mistakes now costing in the tens of millions, for the most part, it would have been easy enough for you or I to have sat in on the proverbial cheque signing, grabbed the pen and tossed it out of the window. This key role appears to be one that is understaffed in football. Jordon Ibe This is the kind of transfer that lives on the cusp of old football vs new football. Old football watches Jordon Ibe and likes what it sees. He can run, he can beat players, he’s quick, he’s young and he is “promising”. That kind of player is one that many a scout loves, sticks him in the notebook, keeps an eye on him. New football is looking at some numbers and wondering “what gives?” Now it’s tough to come down on a young player but there were red flags here that were visible from a good distance. Firstly, he came through at a huge club in Liverpool, had loan time, spent time in the first team yet at 20 years old they are happy enough to sell him? This is not a Raheem Sterling situation. Looking at his pre-Bournemouth top-flight career, Ibe played nearly 2500 minutes in the Premier League and European competition, scored just two goals and created three assists, from a general shot contribution (shots and key passes) of around three per game. These numbers are very much on the low side for an attacker of any sort, and moreso for one that has gathered up minutes playing for a reasonably high volume shooting side, while getting a good amount of time off the bench. Twenty year old Jordon Ibe did not participate in goals. As a buying club, perhaps you’re okay with this, you think you can find a way of fitting him in, work on these aspects? A cheap bid should do it, right? Couple of million? Alright, five million, times have changed. Au contraire, Bournemouth spent a club record £15million. To spend so much of a budget on a gamble such as Ibe? That is madness. Ibe’s season has not gone to plan. Thirteen league starts all in, but just two since Christmas, including what looks from the outside to be a “prove a point, mate” selection against Liverpool, for which he lasted an hour and created nothing, not even recording one dribble, let alone something useful like a shot. He’s often been sacrificed at half time, or thrown on when the team is getting stuffed, and all the way along 1000-plus minutes, has recorded no goals and no assists. That he has become so peripheral also raises questions about how he is being managed and Eddie Howe could earn some added kudos by finding the key to his record signing. Ibe might still learn, I guess, and his development could move forward, but there is practically no evidence that he will become a Premier League standard player or live up to a big fee. Liverpool already made that call last summer, and for now he is a bust, and one that wasn’t hard to foretell. Claudio Bravo Manchester City could be highlighted in any reflection on last summer’s transfers not least for what they didn’t do rather than what they did. With four aging full-backs in residence, and a slew of senior players on contracts deep into their dotage, obvious problems ahead of Pep Guardiola’s arrival were not solved. They did need centre back cover, and £50m worth of unpolished Stones arrived while the attack was bolstered by Leroy Sané and Gabriel Jesus--expensive young toys aplenty. These deals may well prove very good, but didn't immediately get to the core of City's problems. A broken İlkay Gündoğan for £25m also arrived without a receipt, and Nolito started well before drifting off into the ether but the goalkeeper saga probably represented the worst bit of business of the lot. It isn’t about how good Claudio Bravo has been in his career, or even about how well he has performed in a Manchester City shirt (which hasn’t been good at all: he’s saved 55% of the shots he has faced, the lowest of any keeper in the league this season to play 15 or more games, and sufficiently low to be notable).  The crux to why this deal was bad was the price and the age. City’s rear guard is already chock full of over-30s and the old idea that goalkeepers don’t decline like outfielders perhaps doesn’t carry as much weight as it once did. The modern game is ever faster and reactions fade. For every Gianluigi Buffon thriving into his late 30s we find an Iker Casillas type who has hit the wall harder than a Cristiano free kick. Buying a 33 year old goalkeeper is instantly a risk; moreso when you throw £17m at them. City look like they will pay the price for their knee-jerk signing, as another keeper is surely fairly high on their summer wish list. Lucas Pérez Spanish C and B teams, Ukraine, Greece and then a hot couple of years as the main goal getter for a relegation threatened La Liga side are not the general career path for an Arsenal forward. Then again, nor is non-league football, playing with an electronic tag or racial abuse in a casino, but that didn’t stop the early summer bids going in. Already well blessed with attacking talent, it appeared that Arsene Wenger and/or his team had identified a role to buy for; once Jamie Vardy was missed, a Vardy type seemed on the menu. So they turned to Lucas Pérez. Two weeks after signing for Arsenal he turned 28 years old. This was not a signing for the future. Yet what future Perez has at the club already appears in doubt. Having started just two Premier League games and one Champions League game and played around 400 minutes in those competitions, he can hardly be said to have had much of an opportunity to make an impact. When he has featured he’s looked a tidy player--and has seven goals littered around cup appearances and his sporadic league and European outings--but has simply not found favour, even as the team's form careered into the bin. The curiosity is why they signed him, only not to use him? Arsenal have as smart a unit of analysts as any team around. If they signed off on him, he must have shown up exceedingly well somewhere, and one hopes beyond his headline numbers. If Wenger went with his own gut feeling or took other advice, then how could he identify and sign a player who he would then routinely ignore? Perhaps £17m is small change for Arsenal, but regardless, the signing has been almost entirely pointless beyond the enrichment of Pérez and his long term security. That is not to cast an aspersion on him but it will likely be his last (only?) big contract, and a black mark against Arsenal’s generally sound recent recruitment. Moussa Sissoko and Georges-Kévin Nkoudou Vincent Janssen gets a pass here despite a tough year because he’s young, but mainly because it was possible to create an argument that he might have been a good signing prior to his arrival. No such case exists for Moussa Sissoko or Georges-Kévin Nkoudou. It has been tough to break into Tottenham’s first team this season, but on paper, you might expect a £30m French international signing--no, not N’Golo Kante--to knock hard on the door and look to make an impact. Sissoko, has not managed to do this. An ironic season highlight was his shepherding the ball near the corner flag as Tottenham eked out a 1-0 victory over Crystal Palace last week, it represented a rare tangible benefit to his being on the pitch. The main problem with the Sissoko signing isn’t so much that he has failed to have any impact--he hasn’t, having started just ten games in all competitions--it is that it was entirely foreseeable. As the transfer window came to a close last summer, Newcastle fans couldn’t hide their glee that Everton and Tottenham appeared to be battling for their erratic midfielder. Buoyed by an apparently successful Euros (one wonders how he made that squad given France’s depth of talent) and despite having just participated in relegation, he was in demand. But why? During his three and a half years at Newcastle he averaged around two goals and four assists per season and was rarely creative. He had an engine, sure and he could run with the ball, a bit, but nothing about him suggested he had anywhere near enough end product to justify such an elevated fee. Add in that he was 27, significantly older than Tottenham’s generally youthful transfer focus and everything about the deal made no sense. For those who expected little, he has not disappointed. And the fee! Daniel Levy came through for his manager here, but may not again, at least not like this. Having arrived for £9m from Marseille, N’Koudou could not be easily quantified either. He has made just six substitute appearances in the league for a combined 47 minutes. Is he for the future? It seems unlikely. He’s quick but that’s about it. Like Sissoko, nothing in his stats from his time at his former club suggested that he was a player that could fit in or thrive at a top six Premier League club, and sure enough, he hasn’t. Tottenham have made great strides in recent years and often found gems in the transfer market. However, Victor Wanyama apart--a player already known to the manager-- the summer of 2016 was a car crash. If anything changed in the player selection process there, it might be advisable to change it again. Ahmed Musa In recent seasons, Salomón Rondón is about the closest thing the Premier League has to a successful signing out of the Russian League. Otherwise, it hasn’t been a very fertile hunting ground. By now, you might expect that knowledge to have permeated slightly further than it has but Leicester, ever creative in their recruitment, cocked a snook at such an idea and splashed out £17m of their summer budget on Ahmed Musa. He has now made two league starts since Christmas, both 3-0 home defeats (to Man Utd and Chelsea) in which he lasted a half and 71 minutes respectively and beyond that he’s played 41 minutes since February. Neither Claudio Ranieri or Craig Shakespeare appear to have found faith in the Nigerian attacker and he is starting to look very much like an expensive mistake. A percentage call would have been to pass; all transfers involve risk, but it's important to get an idea about league strength when evaluating future signings, in particular ones that clock in at this kind of fee. Islam Slimani narrowly missed the cut here, but his record of actually scoring saved the easy criticism of his club forking out a huge £35m on a striker who turns 29 this June. He has also missed time for injury but Leicester have struggled to nail down their forward line this season, so much so that they have often found well over £50m in transfer fees warming their bench. Strength in depth, or the folly of wealth? Team awards: West Ham Manuel Lanzini’s contract became officially permanent at some point within or after the 2015-16 season. This was a good idea. Subsequent summer transfer dealings were less so. West Ham may have long since waved goodbye to Harry Redknapp, but the tendency to do a bit of transfer business has not left them. Ten players arrived in the summer of 2016, for a variety of fees, some on loan, some permanent. Around £40m was invested on these players, who arrived from such varied locations as Uruguay, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Greece, England and Wales. One can only presume West Ham have an excellent scouting network to be able to cover the globe so broadly, as the players acquired rarely stood out in the numbers. Indeed Donald Trump would be impressed with such committed deal making. Sadly, this extensive preparation has not proven a successful blend, with the ten new players logging just 58 league starts between them. By January, post-Brexit, the hatches had been battened down and recruitment brought intra-league with Robert Snodgrass (29 years old and 30 soon) arriving for £10m on a three and a half year deal and José Fonte, a sprightly 33 years old and a European Champion no less, signing on for two and half years and an £8m fee. Eek. Swansea Leroy Fer is the... Relegator Hull Hull arrived in the Premier League and spent £13m on Ryan Mason and then bought nobody else. Metaphorically this was the equivalent of drunk guy climbing into the rhino pen at his local zoo armed with a can of lager and an urge for a fight. The Premier League, a couple of early blips apart, duly mowed them down. One manager change and a cartload of January loan signings later, they might just sneak survival. It will be no thanks to their summer transfer strategy. Sunderland So bad was Sunderland’s recruitment that an entire article could have been conceived using just players they acquired. While at Everton, David Moyes had a reputation as a man who had an extensive knowledge of players and was skilled in recruitment. David Moyes reputation as Sunderland manager is that of a guy who has no knowledge of players beyond those he has already worked with and that he is extremely unskilled in recruitment. It’s a stark transition. Sunderland spent money too. Launching most of your budget on a goal shy central midfielder is pure Moyes and the £17m capture of Didier Ndong echoed the failed “Fellaini gambit” from his Man Utd tenure. That deal ate most of the budget yet is possibly one of the better ones--Ndong at least has future value in the market. Doubling Chelsea’s money on Papy Djilobodji was a little perplexing but meant Younes Kaboul was replaced. That’s the money spent, but what else? Paddy McNair, Donald Love and Adnan Januzaj arrived from the depths of Man Utd’s reserves and may have had better seasons had they stayed there. The ghost of Steven Pienaar and free agent Victor Anichebe formed the first wave of throwback Everton signings, while by January Darron Gibson and Bryan Oviedo found the opportunity to get the band back together too much to resist. Joleon Lescott, a bad signing last year for a truly dismal Aston Villa team, rounded out the fab five and played half an hour all in. Perhaps money became tight but what was left wasn’t well spent. Moyes’ desire to bring in trusted guys who presumably were thought able to “do a job” echoed everything bad in modern recruitment. The overall malaise hasn’t been confined to just this season, but the cumulative effect of years of incoherent policy and endless changes meant that a season of abject greyness, the like of which only Moyes could produce, rooted the team firmly at the bottom of the table. His retained presence is a localised cartoon cloud that continues to precipitate. Overall, the Premier League is awash with cash, but not always awash with sound judgement. Pray that your club is doing the right things and not just indulging their manager's follies or buying off agent lists. There are still huge benefits to be gained by just putting together a sound process, and as we have seen, even big clubs aren't necessarily on top of it. Spend your money wisely owners, for these are the good times.   _________________________________   @jair1970