We are back! But before we get to the mailbag, a friendly reminder: If you'd like your questions to be featured in a future edition, please send an email to ohanlonmailbag@gmail.com or kindly send a tweet directed to @rwohan. Lots of great questions this time -- and every other time. There were too many to get through. Apologies if I didn't get to yours.
Let's get to it.
West Ham bid 50 million plus for [Darwin] Nunez in the January transfer window, who do they target this summer, should it be someone similar to [Michail] Antonio? - Wesley D
My question: Nunez? (And to elaborate: how you see the evolution of the front 3 playing out in the medium term) - GenericFootballTweet
When the general Darwin Nunez/Premier League rumors started swirling a couple of months ago, I actually thought he would be a great fit for West Ham. He was the right age for an aging team outside of the top financial tier: at 22 years old, he could still improve and he could eventually be sent on for a massive profit. And he also tended to flourish in the moments -- fast transitions exploiting the space behind a defense -- that a team like West Ham was adept at creating. Of the 26 goals Nunez scored in the Portuguese league this season, all but a couple of the non-penalty strikes came from these exact situations.
Then, this week, West Ham were quickly priced out of the process, with reports suggesting that both Liverpool and Manchester United were willing to dole out something close to a six-figure transfer fee to acquire the Uruguayan striker. Liverpool look like the favorites, which raises an interesting question: Uh, what the hell is going on?
Since Michael Edwards became the club's sporting director, Liverpool's recruitment has been without peer among Europe's 15 or so biggest clubs. They have a team of physics PhDs working on new ways to value what happens on the field, and more importantly, they both empower and listen to their quants to a degree that no other top teams do. The only real "flop" was the Naby Keita signing, but that's more to do with injury than poor performance. Otherwise, they've built one of the best teams ever by signing a bunch of undervalued wingers who score like strikers and arguably the best left back in the world for $9 million. And the two times they have spent big -- on Virgil van Dijk and Alisson -- both players pretty much immediately were in the conversation for the best players in the world at their positions.
- Transfer window watch: Sadio Mane, Darwin Nunez and more
Signing Nunez would be a departure from that approach. There's no "value" to be had from a signing at that number; the expectation is that the player is one of the best players in the world, even if that typically isn't how it works out. And despite the massive fee, there's a ton of risk in this deal.
The first: strikers who move from the Portuguese league to the Premier League tend to suffer a pretty large drop-off in performance:
We can use a similar approach, swapping out xG for VAEP, to learn something more specific. For example, a young FW moving from the Bundesliga to the EPL *cough* Haaland *cough* might expect their xG/90 rate to drop by 0.07 (22% relative to the median). pic.twitter.com/jL4wFRpAua
— Tony (@TonyElHabr) June 18, 2021
If we throw the Primeira Liga in along with the Big Five, Nunez is the only player to average at least one non-penalty goal per 90 minutes this season. From an underlying perspective, he averaged 0.7 xG per 90: significantly lower, but still sixth among all players. If we crudely apply Tony's numbers (this is not how soccer works, but we'll use it as an estimate), then that would take Nunez down to 0.59 xG per 90. Even still, that would be higher than any non-Liverpool player in the Premier League last year and equal to the club's most recent acquisition, fellow Portugal recruit (from Porto) Luis Diaz.
The other risk, though, goes back to style.
Liverpool have built a dominant team by playing without a true striker. It has made their attack more unpredictable, and it also has allowed them to keep more of the ball because everyone on the field is more involved in possession play. Most of the goals Nunez scored this year came from situations that won't be as common with Liverpool, where space behind the opposition defense is at a premium. He's gonna have to find new ways to consistently score to keep up his production.
And then there's how his presence affects the rest of the team. Nunez is much more of a modern twist on the traditional final-third striker: he gets on the ball a lot in the box, scores goals and creates shots for his teammates. He's also been a really productive dribbler and ball-carrier, but he doesn't touch the ball a ton, loses possession a lot and barely pressed at all in Portugal. The latter will likely be a nonnegotiable for Jurgen Klopp, but you don't just plop Nunez on top of the Liverpool lineup, add his goals and keep everything else from last year.
There are all kinds of knock-on effects from introducing a low-volume type player into the team. Could it make the team weaker in possession? Will that put a further stress on the midfield and defense with a higher volume of transitions to fight back? Will they still create the same number and quality of chances as last year with one fewer player involved in the chance-creation process?
It's a lot of questions for a lot of money.
A couple of other, minor concerns: new sporting director Julian Ward, who officially replaced Edwards at the end of the season but unofficially took over the role a bit earlier, used to work in Portugal, and Nunez would mark the second player in a row the team signed from the same country. There are at least some small whiffs of the kind of "network-based" recruiting -- your guy knows a guy who knows a guy -- that leads most of Europe to being so inefficient in the transfer market. Plus, Klopp spoke glowingly about Nunez after the sides played in the Champions League. Bluntly, coaches typically aren't the greatest scouts and all kinds of biases get introduced when a player performs well against your team. Most notably, if you sign him, he won't get to play in those match patterns ever again because he is now on your team.
All of that being said, Liverpool, more than any other club, deserve the benefit of the doubt with their recruitment. They know all of this. Much like Manchester City's swift move for Erling Haaland, I think this move suggests Liverpool will change the way they play as much as they'll ask the player to change to fit them. While it might evoke some memories of Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing, pairing a big striker who's great in the air with Trent Alexander-Arnold's right foot could be devastating and create the kind of easier goals -- cross, header, score -- that they could have used in the Champions League final or against Tottenham at Anfield.
If Nunez can develop into a serious presser under Klopp and find ways to score without so much space, then you really will have a world-class player who would easily live up to the reported transfer fee.
When Liverpool have spent, whether big or small, they haven't missed. While the moves for Alisson and Van Dijk were financed at least in part by Philippe Coutinho's move to Barcelona, the Nunez deal would come from the more standard revenue streams. Liverpool have reestablished themselves as one of the best teams in the world, and now they're one of the richest in the world, too. To compete with the other legacy clubs and the state-funded teams such as Manchester City over the long haul, perhaps you need to take some big swings and risk failure, rather than attempting to unearth value in every corner of the market.
Do Liverpool need to bring in a true finisher to elevate their game? - Michael S.
I imagine Michael's question is in regard to the infamous Liverpool stat that was floating around after the Champions League final: three finals played, zero goals scored. Or perhaps he's thinking of its slightly bigger cousin: that Liverpool didn't beat any of the other teams in the Premier League's top four this season.
In regard to No. 1, you just can't overreact to three games even if there's a particular five-letter word attached to the end of all of them.
Across the League Cup, FA Cup and Champions League finals, Liverpool attempted 61 shots, worth 5.7 expected goals.
Now, they didn't finish particularly well in any of these games, which, you know, shocker! According to Stats Perform's post-shot xG model, Liverpool would be expected to score only 4.08 goals based on where their attempts ended up on the goal frame.
Even with the poor finishing, though, it's still four goals that turned into zero. Liverpool outperform their expected-goal totals pretty much every season; they just went cold and ran into some hot keepers at the wrong times, and that's obvious when you look at just the games against the rest of the Premier League's top four. In that six-match mini-league, guess who scored the most goals? Liverpool, with 10, while no other side notched more than eight. And while they didn't beat any of the top four, they also didn't lose to any of the top four.
Liverpool were one of the best teams of the 21st century this past season. Per the Stats Perform database, which goes back to 2011, they produced the sixth-best full-season xG differential of any team in the Big Five leagues. They just happen to, uh, be in the same league as the team with the best full-season xG differential of any team in the Big Five leagues.
Ultimately, Liverpool played every possible game this season. While you could reasonably hope for one or two more bounces to go their way in decisive moments -- if that happens, they win the quadruple -- I don't really think it's reasonable to expect the team to get much better. No modern team without either Lionel Messi or sovereign-wealth funding ever has been.
That, of course, doesn't mean they're not gonna try to do it.
The United States has bought a club in a European league to train their national team for the upcoming World Cup. What league do they choose to play in? Who's their coach? Where do they finish in the league and in the World Cup? - Jonathan P
Before I answer, let's not forget that the USMNT already sort of did this once before. In the years leading up to the 1994 World Cup, there was no recognized first division of professional soccer in America. Major League Soccer didn't launch until 1996, so what the United States Soccer Federation did was essentially pay most of its guys to be full-time national team players. They trained for two years together in Mission Viejo, California, and basically just played as many friendlies as possible since they didn't have to qualify for the tournament. While there were a handful of European-based players, more than half of the final 23-man roster for the 1994 tournament were full-time USMNT players.
Did it work? At the previous tournament in Italy, the U.S. lost all three group-stage matches, scoring two and conceding eight. Four years later, they scored three and conceded three -- for a better goal differential than in 2002, when they made a run to the quarters. They advanced out of the group in 1994 as one of the four best third-place teams. In the round of 16, they got smushed by eventual champions Brazil despite going a man up in the 43rd minute:
Even still, the tournament was a massive success -- not only for soccer in America but also just for the team's preparation process. Can you imagine a team built like that not getting absolutely annihilated in 2022?
Anyway, so if we were to do the 2022 version of this -- use an actual nation's wealth to buy our way into the highest levels of world soccer -- what league would we pick? I think it'd have to be the Premier League, partially because it's the highest level of competition but also because it's the least homogeneous league from a stylistic perspective. You're gonna face a bunch of different tactical plans in Qatar, so you might as well go to a competition that's going to provide the most diverse set of strategic challenges.
As for the coach, I'm going to assume that the club coach does not actually become the national team coach: they coach them in the Premier League, and then hand them off to Gregg Berhalter. And I'm going to assume that we can't afford to just grab Jurgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola because that wouldn't be any fun.
Given his success with a relatively untalented Italy side at Euro 2016, I think I'd have to go with Antonio Conte, who is liable to quit his current job at any moment. Frankly, if you could pick one person on the planet to manage the USMNT full time right now, he'd probably be the choice. His ability to immediately organize a team, create patterns and just win lots of games is unmatched.
- Who is the USMNT's G.O.A.T.? The players make their pick
- - Hajducky: How faith, fortitude drive USMNT's Zimmerman
- Carlisle: USMNT's De La Torre has transfer agreement
Thomas Tuchel's tactical ideas are too complex for international soccer, and I'm not sure the USMNT has the talent for what he's after. Jesse Marsch is intriguing; could he teach the team to press and then hand them off to Berhalter and hope it all carried over? Most national teams don't or can't press because it requires an incredible amount of teamwide coordination, so it would be a leg up for the Americans if they were able to do it.
Graham Potter, meanwhile, seems to be playing a version of soccer that Berhalter would love, with its emphasis on possession control, and I think Potter could implement it with a roster of Americans only. I'm just not convinced it's the best way to make a run at the World Cup. So, let's just not overcomplicate this. Conte is the pick.
Now, where would they finish in the league and at the World Cup? Well, according to Transfermarkt data, the current USMNT roster has an estimated market value of $231.17 million. That makes the U.S. national team the 26th most valuable in the world, and it would make them the ... 17th-most valuable Premier League team. Throw in the Conte effect and I think he maybe could get them up to 13th or so, right around where Aston Villa finished this season. They're in the tier of teams just above the ones worried about relegation.
As for the World Cup, the U.S. currently have somewhere around the 18th-best odds of winning the tournament. With the ability to play a league season together and be coached by Antonio Conte, I'd raise that to, say, the 15th-best odds. Put another way, they're slight underdogs to get out of the group right now, but in this alternate reality, I'd put them as more likely to make the knockout round than not. They'd also be more likely to win in the round of 15, quarters, etc., than before, but they wouldn't be favored in any of those games unless they nabbed a favorable draw.
As this question and answer show, coaching and cohesion really matter, but not as much as simply having better players.
Could a team of all English right-backs win the World Cup? - Alex Q
Hell no.
But let me rephrase: How far could a team of all English right-backs go in the World Cup?
I'm reading this as if the right-backs are representing the Three Lions, not that all right-sided fullbacks defected, formed their own breakaway republic and had said breakaway republic recognized by both the U.N. and FIFA in time for the World Cup, which it qualified for after Wales decided to drop out thanks to an adductor injury Gareth Bale suffered from picking his ball out of the hole at No. 7 at Pebble Beach.
Here's our roster, which coincidentally just doubles as the 23 most valuable English right-backs according to Transfermarkt numbers:
DEFENDERS (23): Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), Reece James (Chelsea), Aaron Wan-Bissaka (Manchester United), Kyle Walker (Manchester City), Tino Livramento (Southampton), Max Aarons (Norwich), Kieran Trippier (Newcastle), Kyle Walker-Peters (Southampton), James Justin (Leicester), Ben Johnson (West Ham), Djed Spence (Middlesbrough), James Tavernier (Rangers), Darnell Furlong (West Brom), Jayden Bogle (Sheffield United), Ethan Laird (Manchester United), Jonjoe Kenny (Everton), Luke Ayling (Leeds), Jack Stacey (Bournemouth), Cody Drameh (Leeds), James Bree (Luton), Nathaniel Clyne (Crystal Palace), Joel Ward (Crystal Palace), Matthew Lowton (Burnley)
I'm building this team around TAA and James. The former is our No. 10, the latter our No. 9. Beyond that? I don't know, man. I'm tempted to just play a 3-5-2, which is ridiculous: a team of all right-backs without any fullbacks, but we also don't have any players who play all of the positions that allow modern teams to play modern full-backs. So screw it: we're going 3-5-2, with TAA behind James up top.
There's unfortunately just no world where we don't give up a lot of shots, so I'm playing Walker in goal: he's a Champions League-seasoned keeper, and his ability to play out from the back will give us a leg up on the competition. Across the back three, we'll go with Lowton, Wan-Bissaka and Ayling. I don't feel good about that at all, but seeing Wan-Bissaka in a back three could be interesting ... I guess? Throw Livramento at right wing-back and KWP at left wing-back. They play for the same team, so there's some symmetry there, or something.
In the midfield, we're going with a trio of Justin, Ward and Trippier: one ball-winner, one guy who sort of looks like a midfielder if you squint hard enough that you black out and enter a new dimension, and one passer. Then, it's the superstars up top.
Combined, this squad's valuations on Transfermarkt come to $387.2m, which would make them the 12th-most valuable team at the World Cup, after Croatia and ahead of Denmark. But c'mon, this team would be terrible. No one would be able to score; we wouldn't be able to control possession; and we'd have the worst keeper in the tournament.
Other than all that, though? The team would be great.