Liverpool, Comolli and His Sabermetrics: Why It Is a Blessing, Not a Blight

The appointment of Damien Comolli, as the director of football strategy in Liverpool Football Club should be rather inquisitive then the sceptical; that John Henry does not trust Roy Hodgson when it comes to recruitment of new players.

Comolli is very good friends with Billy Beane, the GM and minority stake holder of American baseball team Oakland A's, but famously known for using his Sabermetrics principles to successfully run his team in cost a effective way.

John Henry and Damien Comolli are the devotees of sabermetrics. By appointing Comolli, Henry has stamped his intentions of bringing the sabermetrics principles to the English giants, Liverpool.

So the discernible questions would be how does this sabermetrics work and what does it bring to the club?

Well, sabermetrics, basically, use statistical analysis to analyze baseball records and make determinations about players' performances. Sabermetrics digs deep into the raw data and issues of games and measures a player's success in the team.

In a nutshell, sabermetrics will likely replace the traditional "eye" of the manager or a scout's "gut feelings" about a player with statistics in the transfer market.

Statistics are being used in football too, but to an extent only. Not all variables are considered when deciding if the player is truly good or not. 

For example, a striker who has been playing below par, terribly, for most of the game, say until 89th minute, with no shots on goal and a lesser percentage of "completed passes" and then he suddenly scores a goal in 90th minute will look same statistically in terms of goals scored per match to the striker who has been playing immensely good all the way in the game, with 90 percent successfull passes and who scored one goal, too.

That's where sabermetrics comes into act. It defines and considers every possible variables available in the game and measures how good a player is objectively! 

Sabermetrics' central principle is to reject the traditional methods of assessing the player's potential and replacing that by a more empirical gauges.

Once it is done, sabermetrics will identify those undervalued players and will suggest to the management, leading the club to decide to buy him or not.

The fascinating thing about sabermetrics principles is that it also analyses the level at which the players being assessed are playing at. It will be possible to stand out at a certain skill level when players are playing in a league where standards are low overall and then using those data and stats to compare or predict with players playing in a league where the overall standard of play is more competent.

Football, traditionally, has looked down its nose at statistically-obsessed American sports, where individual judgements have been replaced by the high-end graduates of computers and crunching numbers.

Football is a sports which comprise of many many variables. If you think of sabermetrics in football, it will record, measure and analyze the data such as "touch," "passes," "completed passes," "strikes," "tackles," "fouls," etc. However some might argue that statisticians in football do these data analyses now as well so what's the difference?

Sabermetrics will come to act when considering unknown variables in football.

It will be of profuse use in set pieces, for instance. In a free kick from 29 yards, Steven Gerrard would have already decided where to aim, low or high, left or right of the goal keeper, based on the sabermetrics used against Petr Cech's past fumbles in the similar situations.

After a long period of time a pattern emerges based on which sabermetrics had told the manager, prior to the game, which side of the goal keeper shows better percentage of beating him. On the other side a goalkeeper could also benefit from it by selecting which side the player will more likely shoot.

Take a typical penalty kick scene. Sabermetrics show Rooney scores 30 percent of penalty kicks in bottom right corner, 40 percent in bottom left, 10 percent in top left, 12 percent in top right and eight percent he shoots straight in the centre of the net. 

Pepe Reina could use all those numbers in deciding where MORE likely he will shoot. Of course this may not work, but at least he has a certain data to back up his decision rather then solely diving to one side blindly in a hope that Rooney will shoot there.

It may blow away some one's mind to find out how deep sabermetrics could dig in, in order to get the results we want.  

Let's say the normal statistics in football show Frank Lampard as top passer of the ball where he is just making simple passes. What sabermetrics could come up with will be the percentage of successful passes of Lampard that carry a greater risks of being intercepted are lower than those of normal passes.

This analysis might be useful or used once in a game only, but what that means is it could change the course of the game. Continuous use of this might win you a league!

Finally, sabermetrics combined with John Henry and Comolli will at least ensure that the club will never spend Millions on players like Christian Poulsen who is 30 years of age. It will definitely stop the dud transfers and would be better then the inflated transfer prices.

On the flip side of the coin, it would be madness to simply envision this and use sabermetrics as the sole tool to analyse and purchase players in transfers.

The beautiful game of football also consists of variables which are difficult to consider in sabermetrics. Such as players fitness, injuries, their confidence level and bad refereeing decisions. Perhaps that's the reason why it will be intriguing to see what unfolds in future. 

A concept or a program could be used which is a comprehensive version of a risk analysis software. A concept where statistics could be run and simulated in real time environment and probabilities of a player being success vs. failure could be measured then the results being forwarded to the management of the club to decide upon the player: be it scouting and purchase or simply team selection and tactics.

Liverpool have got a gem in Comolli who Tottenham Hotspur would be crying out loud for in near future. As Comolli started using sabermetrics in 2006 and some of the fruits of his laborious work are Gareth Bale, Dimitar Berbatov, Luka Modric and Benoit Assou-Ekotto.

What Spurs could not spot is Liverpool's to take now.

Whether Roy Hodgson can get used to Comolli and his sabermetrics or not is a minor question, Roy Hodgson will remain in charge of the club for many years or not being the major one.