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General Transfer Rumour Discussion Thread

DublinSpur said:
Obviously I may have picked it up wrong (and I can't be ars'd to go back over multiple threads), but I'm pretty sure GB has said that he's happy to see Dembele leave and does not see a new CM as a necessity because Mason and Bentaleb, Pritchard and Alli are sufficient for that position this season. Even excluding the "lack of experience" issue, that leaves us with sod-all injury cover which is plain reckless.
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Yes, it's perfectly apparent that GB isn't a fan of Dembele. And I agree with you that, if we were to sell him, we would need to bring in added experience.

But I don't believe that GB was basing his opinion entirely on his faith in algorithms (or Mitchell's faith in algorithms, for that matter). And that was the accusation to which I was responding.
 
indianspur said:
i dont know how Bill Nick coped without algorithms telling him who to buy and select ;)
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He didn't need his players on carefully managed, individual diets and training programmes either; he didn't need 21st century training, medical and rehabilitation facilities; or global scouting teams; or detailed video analysis of the next opposition........

But I'll wager that he would be making full use of all of the above, and algorithms, were he alive and managing today. He was no Luddite.
 
Yiddo said:
Like I said earlier, there is no way anyone can predict for sure if a player is going to be a success in a team. It's all guess work.
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No one has claimed that they can predict for sure, it is about making more informed decisions which should make them more likely to be correct
 
Paris Saint-Germain have offered Galatasaray 10 million euros for Brazilian defender Alex Telles, Turkish media reported on Sunday.

PSG had initially offered eight million euros but then raised it to 10 million, making a deal possible in principle although no contract has yet been signed, the Haberturk newspaper reported.

Just seen this on sky sports , might Chirches be off to Turkish side now ?? I'd say good chance he is next out if thT deal goes ahead , isn't he in talks with them ?
 
DublinSpur said:
Pritchard has played a total of 7 minutes of football above Championship level in his entire career. You're not seriously comparing him with Dembele on those terms, are you?

I get you're a fan of Pritchard (I didn't watch Brentford last season so I don't have an opinion one way or the other). But dismissing Dembele because he didn't start many games last season, while at the same time championing a guy who has never started a single one in his life (at the level we're talking about) is odd.

For the record though; Dembele played 1841 minutes last season. That's more than 20 full games across all competitions. It's also a fair bit more than Paulinho (1387 minutes / 15+ matches) or Capoue (1282 minutes / 14+ matches) or Stambouli (1440 minutes / 16 matches). We've lost those three from midfield already this summer (assuming the stories about Stambouli are true). Plus we also need to make up for Lennon's 587 minutes* (6+ matches) and the 3 matches that Sandro and Holtby played early in the season.

Just because none of those players finished the season in the first team doesn't mean the time they did spend on the pitch can be conveniently ignored. So between Paulinho, Capoue, Stambouli, Sandro, Lennon and Holtby, we're losing guys that played 56 full matches between them.

I am mystified by anyone who can confidently state that two youngsters (Pritchard and Alli) - both of whom are untried at premier league level (let alone "challenging for top four" level) - are absolutely ready to handle 56 matches in a season between them, at the quality we need them to be. On top of that, you seem positively eager to lose Dembele also; leaving Pritchard and Alli having to bear the weight of 76 full matches between them.

I'm all for giving the youth a chance. It's working for us. But what you're suggesting is just reckless. It'll only take one of either Alli or Pritchard to fail to handle the pressure (or for Mason's level to drop) and we can pretty much say goodbye to the entire season. It's one thing to give the youth a chance; it's another thing to send them out there with no experienced leadership and little backup... and demand they succeed under the brightest spotlight in world sport.

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* I'm including Lennon in this because there's a lot of folks seem to think Pritchard would spend some time at least on the right wing if he were to be part of the first team.
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Excellent post Dublin. Please note all those that want just youth and no experience. That strategy is a strategy but not one to get us top 4 anytime soon imo.
 
milo said:
No one has claimed that they can predict for sure, it is about making more informed decisions which should make them more likely to be correct
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The danger, if you care to view it in those terms, of using the sort of reductive analysis people are talking about is that it will always tend to produce very similar results grouped around certain attractors. Nearly all new car bodies look like characterless Euro-bubbles nowadays for a reason. I worry slightly that the same thing will have happened to football in some number of years (probably greater than 5 and less than 20) if the algorithmic approach continues to dominate people's thinking, and that it'll become boring.
 
A lot of websites and newspapers suggesting we're after Javier Hernandez now.

I actually think he'd make a decent signing, though I'm not sure he's "highest paid player at the club" material.
 
mudshark said:
The danger, if you care to view it in those terms, of using the sort of reductive analysis people are talking about is that it will always tend to produce very similar results grouped around certain attractors. Nearly all new car bodies look like characterless Euro-bubbles nowadays for a reason. I worry slightly that the same thing will have happened to football in some number of years (probably greater than 5 and less than 20) if the algorithmic approach continues to dominate people's thinking, and that it'll become boring.
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+1. Where does the intangible " flair" fit into algowhatsits? Will all future footballers morph into the robotic apparent perfect specimen? The beautiful game of Waddle, Ginola, Marsh, Bowles etc would be dead and a large part of entertainment in football would surely die too.
 
DublinSpur said:
Many moons ago when I was working in industrial systems design and optimisation we used a whole bunch of algorithms and analytic tools to predict potential future requirements and developments. It helped us allocate limited resources to the correct areas in the production-distribution network.

However it's not a magic bullet, and nobody who works with future trends / behaviour / developments believes it is (nobody sane anyway). I've never met Mr. Mitchell, but I guarantee he does not claim his system is 100% accurate... infallible. If he does then he's a fricking idiot. And anyone who blithely assumes his predictions will be 100% accurate and - as a result - fails to build contingency and back-ups into our team and preparation is just as idiotic.

And personally I don't think Pochettino is an idiot.
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Indeed.
They are a tool and a valuable factor in the whole sphere of transfer selections.
With inherent limitations.
And predicting how well a player will settle is one of them.
 
Savic is on his way to Atletico and Suarez is off in the other direction. With another name off the list, who else is there? I'm worried this means we will get desperate and pay stupid money for McCarthy.
 
JerusalemMan said:
Algorithms. You use that word as though it is some magic bullet, a solve-all miracle.
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It's how pretty much everything that is cutting edge in the world is working at now.

Marketing, healthcare, transport, finance, journalism - all rely heavily on big data and algorithms now
 
Cochise said:
Savic is on his way to Atletico and Suarez is off in the other direction. With another name off the list, who else is there? I'm worried this means we will get desperate and pay stupid money for McCarthy.
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Can't see us bidding enough for them to sell him personally and he really isn't worth that kind of money
 
Gutter Boy said:
It's how pretty much everything that is cutting edge in the world is working at now.

Marketing, healthcare, transport, finance, journalism - all rely heavily on big data and algorithms now
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I largely agree with you but it does sometimes sound like you think that Mitchell has a magic football signing machine. I think that the reality is a lot more mundane and hard work.
 
Gutter Boy said:
It's how pretty much everything that is cutting edge in the world is working at now.

Marketing, healthcare, transport, finance, journalism - all rely heavily on big data and algorithms now
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Don't forget the work at Bletchley Park, cracking the Enigma code to help win WW2
 
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