-
The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...
Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports
Have you heard the term clickbait?
I'm not saying Moneyball was wrong...but it wasn't right. The club still hasn't won anything and still plays in a shit stadium. Literally. 5 times a season the toilets overflow.
I'm a huge stats guy, statistics can shed light on areas of sports that otherwise slip between the cracks that get papered over with myth. And its certainly important to look for market inefficiencies as a club. But at the end of the day, the oldest law of economics applies...something is worth what someone else will pay for it. And that transaction is complicated in football by the fact that both clubs and the player are going to have to agree to the transfer. So it means fuck all, really, if Spam will pay £16.5m if the player won't agree to play for them...he's still worth the £15m we're offering.
Fuck Billy Beane, really, fuck him.
I'm a huge stats guy, statistics can shed light on areas of sports that otherwise slip between the cracks that get papered over with myth. And its certainly important to look for market inefficiencies as a club. But at the end of the day, the oldest law of economics applies...something is worth what someone else will pay for it. And that transaction is complicated in football by the fact that both clubs and the player are going to have to agree to the transfer. So it means fuck all, really, if Spam will pay £16.5m if the player won't agree to play for them...he's still worth the £15m we're offering.
Fuck Billy Beane, really, fuck him.
Mate you really have to go outside a bit
I can't like this enough. Money all and stats can only take you so far. Oakland has shown this by being epic failures for years. I almost feel sorry for their fans (but I don't...fuck Oakland)
Long time lurker, first time poster. Just wanted to defend Billy Beane a little bit. Moneyball isn't about guaranteeing success, it's about increasing the odds of success over an extended period. Beane saw the measure of his method's success with Oakland in the number of victories they achieved per $ spent in the regular season. But once they got to the playoffs the method meant jack because there were too few games for chance not to play an overwhelming role (like cup games in football, I guess). Hence why Oakland's successes in the early 00s never translated into a World Series.
As for their more recent failures... well, I don't watch much baseball so I won't answer that. But Moneyball is about identifying value in the market that everyone else is ignoring, or undervaluing (like on-base as opposed to hitting percentage). That's a hell of a lot easier if you're the only one playing moneyball, which in baseball is obviously no longer the case.
Football's a different sport and the principles obviously apply differently (if at all), but it seems smart to try to quantify the value of your assets. We'd have been apoplectic if we thought Levy had sold a player for less than he was worth, and no doubt there are, say, Sporting CP fans who look at Dier and the £4m he cost us and go red with fury. I don't begrudge AZ holding out for a few extra quid, but what would piss me off is if we didn't have a similarly firm valuation of what we thought the player was worth. I'd imagine we almost certainly do - the question is whether the number AZ are asking for goes the wrong side of that line or not. If it doesn't then we need to fucking pony it up and get it done ASAFP; not fanny about trying to penny-pinch on a price we already feel is acceptable.
But then who knows with this man
Janssen is trying to force a move. He is angry at AZ's position in this transfer. As a Dutchman I think the offer Spurs made is already more then he is worth. He only played 1 season at the highest level in the Eredivisie and we all know the Eredivisie is nothing compared to the Premier League. Look at Memphis Depay, he was by far the best player in the Eredivisie when Man United bought him.
Now he is doing a Bale (move to Madrid) and the boots on the other foot we say his club are being moody.
Only Real Madrid and Barca are immune to player power.
Long time lurker, first time poster. Just wanted to defend Billy Beane a little bit. Moneyball isn't about guaranteeing success, it's about increasing the odds of success over an extended period. Beane saw the measure of his method's success with Oakland in the number of victories they achieved per $ spent in the regular season. But once they got to the playoffs the method meant jack because there were too few games for chance not to play an overwhelming role (like cup games in football, I guess). Hence why Oakland's successes in the early 00s never translated into a World Series.
As for their more recent failures... well, I don't watch much baseball so I won't answer that. But Moneyball is about identifying value in the market that everyone else is ignoring, or undervaluing (like on-base as opposed to hitting percentage). That's a hell of a lot easier if you're the only one playing moneyball, which in baseball is obviously no longer the case.
Football's a different sport and the principles obviously apply differently (if at all), but it seems smart to try to quantify the value of your assets. We'd have been apoplectic if we thought Levy had sold a player for less than he was worth, and no doubt there are, say, Sporting CP fans who look at Dier and the £4m he cost us and go red with fury. I don't begrudge AZ holding out for a few extra quid, but what would piss me off is if we didn't have a similarly firm valuation of what we thought the player was worth. I'd imagine we almost certainly do - the question is whether the number AZ are asking for goes the wrong side of that line or not. If it doesn't then we need to fucking pony it up and get it done ASAFP; not fanny about trying to penny-pinch on a price we already feel is acceptable.
But then who knows with this man
The A's got into the playoffs only a handful of times during the moneyball era. For a good stretch they barely floated at .500. Almost every season they would trade away their best players to get prospects. Imagine being a fan of their team knowing that half of your starting lineup was brand new. its a nice concept and great to watch on a Hollywood movie but it doesn't work. The only reason Beane hasn't been fired is because the A's owners are cheap bastards and he saved them a ton of money by justifying not spending a shit load on free agents. He should have been fired years ago.
Hard to judge, Suarez, Van Nistleroy etc where all successes in the prem. every transfer to some degree outside of the perm is a gamble but he does look very good.
Conjecture - unless you have anything other than blind assumption that he has refused to train, play, or has been seen prancing around London in a pink t-shirt.
You are an extremely negative and unbearable person.
Sure, but the constant trading of key players - at least as the book paints it - is not part of the moneyball strategy itself but rather the reality of Oakland's situation, in the context of which moneyball is applied (so at the beginning of the book Oakland have had to sell Jason Giambi to the much richer Yankees, and have to work out how to replace him). I take your point that it hasn't always worked.
Moneyball clearly isn't the be-all-and-end-all of sports management, obviously, but I think it does make sense to try to assess which skills might be over-valued in the market (being English, maybe?) vs those that might be under-valued (personality, perhaps? That seems almost to be the most impressive aspect of Spurs' recruitment recently - they're all great people as well as good players and I think we're reaping the benefits of that on the pitch).
Oh right. I assume you are an extremely positive and desirable individual. Don't worry though because I am more interested in your analysis on football matters.