Luis Diaz: The latest example to emphasizes the difference between Liverpool and Manchester United
The Colombian forward is just the latest new Anfield arrival to hit the ground running, a testament to how Liverpool handle their recruitment
(Author’s Note: I did the bulk of the work for this piece last week - the week immediately following the League Cup final - but then work happened plus a short weekend trip and I wasn’t able to get it all done until now. So factor that in while you’re reading this).
If the League Cup Final between Liverpool and Chelsea was the first football match you watched in over a year, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Luis Diaz has been a Liverpool player for quite some time. Certainly this was a player who integrated himself into the team during the club’s preseason preparation last summer, there’s just no way he only signed a few weeks ago.
Diaz is just the latest Liverpool signing to walk into Anfield and look like he’s been there for years, as opposed to a club like Manchester United where it typically takes new signings much longer to settle. It speaks to the difference in how Liverpool approach their transfer business and how United do.
Manchester United see the flashy player with the big name. They see the goals and assists and say “oh he scores goals and gets assists therefore if we sign him we’ll get those goals and assists.” Or “he heads ball, makes tackles, and keeps clean sheets, if we sign him we’ll start keeping clean sheets.”
They never bother to ask what is he doing - or what is his team doing - that’s leading to those goals, assists, or clean sheets? They just act.
Liverpool takes a much different approach heavily influenced by data. First they look at their own team and say “what do we need from that position? What does the current player that we have there do, and what do we need that position to do?” They’ll run the numbers on their current player then search for players with similar numbers.
Once they get the returns back on those queries, they compile a shortlist for the football staff to do some old school scouting. From there, they collectively decide on which player they want to target.
The most important part of this process is identifying what role they’re looking for from a certain position followed by what things they need from this role. Thus they prioritize that the player does “x, y, and z” and not worrying as much about how they may not do “a, b, and c.”
You’re never going to find the perfect player. Every player has a weakness. Every player has a “but.” Trent Alexander Arnold is phenomenal going forward but he isn’t the best defensively. Bruno Fernandes creates a lot of chances but he gives the ball away a lot.
Liverpool don’t get scared away from the buts because that’s something they can cover for. Alexander Arnold gives you all these things going forward? So we’ll just have a midfielder cover for him. They’re focused more on the fact that he does the things that they need that position to do.
This system ensures Liverpool are going after a player they need rather than just a flash in the pan that they may want. By targeting players that do the specific things they need, they’re greatly increasing the chances that the signing will not only be a success but fit in seamlessly.
Kostas Tsimikas wasn’t the best left back out there. He wasn’t among the biggest names on the market. Most Premier League fans - hell most Liverpool fans - probably had never heard of him before he came to Anfield. But Liverpool identified him as the most like for like comparison to Andy Robertson. So when Robertson is out and Tsimikas comes in, they hardly miss a beat.
Diogo Jota wasn’t a center forward at Wolves. If you were in the market for a number 9 two summers ago it’s unlikely you would have even considered Jota. This was a man who played behind Raul Jimenez. But Liverpool saw that Jota does the things that they want their number 9 to do. It’s worked out pretty nicely.
Liverpool don’t hit on all their signings but they sure hit on a lot more than they miss.
Now juxtapose that with United.
At Old Trafford the order of the day never seems to get far away from who’s the big name or who can sell the most shirts.
United can never seem to get the whole package together. They may identify a position of need but not necessarily what exactly they need that position to do (ergo what type of player they need to target). They might identify an area that they need to improve in, but analyze it poorly and conclude they need a position that they don’t or a completely different profile a player.
When this is your strategy you end up making more bad signings than good ones. You then try and correct that by spending more money to correct your mistake which tends to also fail. That pattern repeats itself until you’ve spent the 2nd most money in Europe and still have the exact same needs as when you started. Only now you have significantly less money to spend because of FFP constraints.
That’s how you end up with a situation like this.
United decided that they needed “goals.” Rather than look at how goals are scored, they decided to skip to the end of the process to the part where ‘striker puts ball in the net,’ and thus they conclude, ‘let’s sign striker’. Plus, striker sells shirts! It’s a win for everyone.
At first I was going to say “if only they at least spent this recklessly on central midfield over the years then maybe they’d be in a bit better position now” only to realize central midfield has been just as bad!
Just look at who they signed over the last decade!
Marouanne Fellaini, Ander Herrera, Daley Blind, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Morgan Schneiderlin, Paul Pogba, Nemanja Matic, Fred, and then none for the next four years!
What was the thinking behind these guys? Admittedly data analysis was much less prevalent a decade ago but it’s not hard to see the flaws in scouting for all these guys. Fellaini at Everton was at his best playing further forward, almost as a target man second striker. Is that what United needed? David Moyes was his manager there so he should have known and yet at United he used him in a midfield two. If that was what you believed you needed, why sign a guy who wasn’t good there?
What did Schweinsteiger do that United said “we need that?” Or was he just really good at Bayern Munich back in the day and now he was available? What attributes was Schneiderlin signed for or did you just need a “central midfielder” and he had a good year the year before?
Not all these guys were bad signings but it’s telling that despite making signings in central midfield in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, it was still a position of need every single year. Even worse is that it’s been a position of need that’s been neglected for the last three years.
There never seems to be a plan.
Everything is reactionary and based on results. Occasionally that will still yield you some good finds. Bruno Fernandes ticked the boxes of ‘gets goals and assists’ but also ticked the boxes of the underlying things United needed so he’s worked. Alex Telles got goals and assists, but his lack of contributing to buildup play, or being able to do any of the same things Luke Shaw does, leaves you wondering whether they saw anything in him besides the nice set piece deliveries.
You can see the logic behind the Jadon Sancho signing. United needed creativity from out wide. They weren’t getting that on the right side nor was Marcus Rashford providing creativity when he was on the left. Sancho had all the underlying numbers of shot-creation, progressiveness, the ability to successfully get the ball into the box, while still maintaining somewhat of a goalscoring threat that was exactly what the club needed on the pitch. However Sancho is also the big name star who will sell shirts and has the goals and assists - totals that exceeded his underlying numbers1.
Sancho was the perfect United signing because he was the perfect marriage of commercial star power with exactly the type of profile United needed on the pitch. Is it possible that the football side just got lucky in this regard as United moved for yet another shirt mover? Possibly?
The results based view of ‘just sign the right (good) player and he’ll solve the problem’ is not just held by the club but very much by their fans as well. Here’s a tweet I came across last week.
And here’s another one with a very similar sentiment from this week.
As I said last week, if you thought this team was good enough to be competing for the title then that was a poor analysis on your part. I get that the media and former players were hyping United as title contenders as well but it’s all based on the same flawed analysis that basically boils down to this:
United finish second last season
United sign Jadon Sancho, he adds goals and assists - good!
United sign Raphael Varane, a great centerback, therefore they won’t concede goals! Very good
United sign Cristiano Ronaldo, he scores goals! very good
All three are very good therefore United are certainly better now, which means they’ll improve and what is improvement on 2nd place? There’s only one more place to go so clearly they should be competing for a title!
It’s entirely results based logic that never even did the slightest surface based analysis like asking “why did United finish 2nd? How did they get the results they got? What did they do well? What didn’t they do well? What areas do they need to improve on in order to help those areas overall?”
It’s not surprising coming from fans who live for banter and are always going to lap up the big names. You would however expect the club to be smarter than that but it seemed like this was the basis for their summer signings as well. Only making matters worse, their logic seemed to conflict.
Somewhere along the way2 United decided that their backline and defense was a massive problem. This was a team that conceded 1.18 goals per game last season and a non-penalty xGA of 1.013.
Those aren’t great, but those numbers include the first three matches of the season when everything was out of whack and United conceded 12 goals in three games. Strip those matches out and suddenly it looks a little different, 0.97 goals per game on 0.95 NPxGA.
Set pieces were their Achilles heel. Open play was a different story, United finished tied for second in open play goals against. Set pieces are more of a coaching issue than just “buy better centerback” but of course that’s what United chose to do.
In came Varane in a move that The Athletic’s Carl Anka described best when he said, “Varane makes United’s back line individually better, but overall doesn’t really make the team any better.”
On the pitch there’s no doubting Varane’s quality. When he’s been on the pitch United’s xGA drops by 0.6 and they’re conceding over a goal less per 90 (0.70-1.83) then when he’s missing.
Unfortunately it’s not exactly translating to results. United are winning 1.71 points per match when Varane starts and 1.64 in matches he doesn’t. That 0.07 difference is just a mere 2.66 points a season, not even a full win, and the 1.71 points per match is still lower than the 1.95 PPM United had last season and even the 1.74 they achieved in 2019-204!
Perhaps centerback wasn’t the problem!
Despite going after a centerback, United seemed to look at their campaign last season and decide they lost their title charge thanks to too many 0-0 draws with their rivals. You can see the logic there, score more goals, turn those 0-0 draws into 1-0 or 2-0 wins and you’ll be much better off.
The problem is they didn’t look at “why did we get those 0-0 draws?” Were we creating a ton of chances but not finishing? Or were we playing on our heels, defending, and only creating a few chances to grab a win?
Again, just some very surface level analysis will show us that last season United finished second in the league in goals scored (third in non-penalty goals), but they were fifth in non-penalty xG, sixth in shots, eighth in xG per shot, but third in npG-xG.
That right there tells you they were pretty good at finishing, possibly a little too good and on the verge of a little lucky but the real problem was creating chances and quality chances at that.
They weren’t playing so many 0-0 draws because they were being so wasteful in front of goal - ala their recent nil nil draw vs Watford - but because they weren’t giving themselves enough quality chances to score goals and win those games.
They responded by signing a striker who at this point of his career doesn’t help out in buildup, doesn’t create chances, and isn’t an efficient finisher either. But he’s scored goals throughout his career, surely he’ll continue to score goals for us and then we’ll win! And he has a name! He’ll sell shirts! And because he had a big name and scores goals it was automatically assumed United were automatically better and thus poor expectations were set.
They seemed to forget the part that a striker who needs service to score goals won’t be able to score goals if he’s not getting that service, and they didn’t do nearly enough to add that creativity into the team.
A data team could have really helped this summer. They could have pointed out that United had the goal scoring but needed more creativity in their team. They could have looked at the profile of Ronaldo and said “he adds to us in these areas but since he doesn’t do these other things we could actually be creating fewer chances, unless we add them in somewhere else, therefore we would need to make additional moves.” Or simply, we’re not moving the ball to our creative players efficiently, we need our midfield to do that more therefore we need to sign a certain profile of midfielder. This is surface level stuff.
But United don’t do things like that. They keep going for the one player will fix it all method and then act surprised when they keep falling flat on their face. It’s nice that they are (seemingly) finally recognizing how badly they need help in midfield, but the same thing is currently happening, spend the money on Declan Rice and that’ll do the trick! Spoiler alert, it won’t.5
Luis Diaz is just the latest unflashy name to join Liverpool. A list that includes the relegated with Hull Andy Robertson and Chelsea reject Mohamed Salah. Those labels get thrown out about a lot of players and it scares fans away. Liverpool couldn’t care less about them, they signed those players anyway and it’s worked out quite well for them6.
A lot of fans don’t like the new way of doing things. Football isn’t played on spreadsheets and their eyes work perfectly fine for knowing who’s good and who isn’t. But if the new way wasn’t successful no one would be doing things that way and it certainly wouldn’t be rising in popularity. Liverpool embraced data early on and they’re now reaping the rewards of that decision.
Manchester United never want to accept that Liverpool are better than them at something but living in denial will only serve to prolong the problem. The longer United live in denial about how much they need to learn from Liverpool and emulate it themselves, the longer they’ll stay behind Liverpool on the pitch.
We should make clear that while Sancho was over-achieving against his underlying numbers, his underlying numbers were still mind bogglingly high
Probably when they were offered a famous Real Madrid defender who even as a defender had the power to sell shirts
Per FBref via Statsbomb
We’re not talking about Maguire here but if you want to bring up the numbers just know United’s best centerback pairing this season has been Maguire-Varane and it’s not even particularly close.
Don’t get me wrong. Declan Rice would be a great component to a successful midfield, but Rice on his own is not the answer for United’s midfield. Plus a Rice-McTominay pivot would be laughably bad
It’s actually incredibly unfortunate timing that they came along at the exact same time as Pep’s City, otherwise they’d have far more trophies.
Luis Diaz: The latest example to emphasizes the difference between Liverpool and Manchester United
Really nice article Pauly as always. I would say though, Manchester united not only have made poor signings but also made questionable extension to players in the hopes to retain value to add to the overall bloated wage structure. Extending players like Mata, Bailly, Jones, Matic and Axel to name a few who are not first team starters by now is just why?...
The signings we made for the current season weren’t entirely bad aside from cr7. Varane was okay to add as a better first choice depth for centre back. Reason for this is Maguire was superman playing in almost every league and cup game since joining which caught up to him by the end and he couldn’t play in Europa final and Euros. Axel and Bailly were not fit enough to be backups. We also had to try and limit Victor’s game time as well because he had a back injury if I recall. All this to say that going into yet another full season with these centre back choices wasn’t going to be wise if the entire plan was to hope that Maguire would be bullet proof again after coming back from an injury. Varane was very opportunistic considering the price we got for him up front.
I mainly hope that the club can find some sort of structure that works for them and is streamlined. If it involves deep data science like what Liverpool do, then great. But it must be a process that is subjective and not something that will be interfered with by the glazers or whoever is above John Murtough now. Also, we should totally stop trying to go for players that Man City "Might" buy all because of pride at preventing them getting a player. Totally hasn't slowed them down at all. In fact, some cases, it has helped to get a better player...
On the bright side we have a new shiny data science department set up earlier on in the season if I recall that may or may not be listened to (Probably not for now since we are so all in on Declan Rice). Ralf will advise the club after his interim role that we may or may not listen to.
Does Manchester United even have a vision what they need their players to do? I don't think United have two players that could be used in a same way. For example Dalot and AWB or Shaw and Telles are totally different player profiles and work differently in a match.