Today's transfer nonsense: Vermaelen for Smalling

Let's take a brief break from the World Cup to talk about a transfer rumour involving two players currently playing (or riding the pine) in Brazil.

It has recently been suggested that Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal has decided to bid for Arsenal defender Thomas Vermaelen. The Belgian, who had a fine start to his Arsenal career, is now Arsene Wenger's "emergency defender", used most often when Laurent Koscielny, Per Mertesacker or Kieren Gibbs are unavailable (for Gibbs, read: injured).

At 28 and fending off Jan Vertonghen for his place beside Vincent Kompany at the heart of Belgium's defence, it’s logical to assume that Vermaelen wants first-team football; United certainly have money to burn that may raise his earnings above what the Gunners are willing (or able) to offer.

However, the rumour suggests Vermaelen’s current manager Arsene Wenger wants a return that includes a transfer fee and one of Tom Cleverley or Chris Smalling.

While possible, it’s unlikely that van Gaal would sanction such a move for several reasons. Both Smalling and Cleverley fit into the coach’s modus operandi as young players malleable to his methods; the Englishman is also four years younger than his supposed upgrade. Smalling is also United’s emergency right-back, while both midfielder and defender are English and therefore come at a FFP-induced premium.

While data rarely drives a transfer, especially in the case of Louis van Gaal, let's examine why the numbers don't like a Smalling-for-Vermaelen swap straight up – let alone with a transfer fee involved. Most of the data that follows comes from a pilot project that tracks each player's individual plus/minus throughout the course of the season. How each player’s team performed during those minutes give us an idea of how he compares to his team (and teammates).

Barcelona pay penalty for being smartest guys in the room

The news that Barcelona have been hit with a two-window ban on signing new players for improperly acquiring international players under the age of 18 is a second legal strike against the Catalan giants.

With the book-fudging purchase of Neymar costing the club approximately €90 million and a President, the repeated infraction of FIFA’s policies governing youth transfers suggests the club’s boardroom sees the Blaugrana as above the pesky laws of an admittedly arcane and (mostly) impotent governing body.

The precise nature of the sanctions are yet to become clear; questions remain as to whether deals already completed (such as the purchases of Victor Valdes’ replacement, Marc-Andre ter Stegen, and another “Next Messi”) will in fact be voided. Were this to happen, the club would find itself very much galloping down diarrhea drive without a paddle – or a boat.

This year, the club will lose Valdes and their own personal Heimdall Carles Puyol. Rumours persist as to the eyes Xavi Hernandez makes at MLS, and specifically NYCFC. Thiago Alcantara, perhaps the most exciting prospect to exit La Masia in years, now plays for Bayern Munich. In the event of a Gerard Pique injury, next season’s defensive nucleus could conceivably be the immortal trio of Jose Manuel Pinto, Javier Mascherano (meh, as a central defender) and one of Alexandre Song (ugh) or Marc Bartra (more palatable and infinitely more likely).

Pep Guardiola and his loveable bunch of mosquitos often played the role of the “goodies” in the black and white dramedy of La Liga football – which side was which coming very much down to the conscience of the individual spectator. While beholding to a pattern of play and players who have “always been Barca”, this on-field levity, utterly unapparent in their great domestic rivals, is now to have masked a questionable recruitment policy the club thought would (or could) be overlooked.

They were going to out-Wenger the continent. Illegally – those La Masia graduates weren’t all homegrown, but sapling transplants like Lionel Messi. Primary education matters – if a child is not taught early to read and write, how can they be expected to perform trigonometric calculus?

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All over the footballing world, teams rise and fall – only precious few stay perpetually as true Champions’ League threats. When clubs rise – especially as high as Barca have – questions are usually asked as to the fairness of such a rise: people now regularly and rightly ask how much of its magickal, whimsical appeal football loses when run by stock analysts. While Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain now field two of the more star-studded outfits in the game, there is something unseemly about the nouveau-riche attitudes that have taken them there.

Barcelona has competed at the most elite of levels with a squad of guys who’ve played together for many years, through the club’s academy and reserve squads. However, some of these kids – including the “Korean Messi” – were rather more adopted than whelped. While this isn’t quite as uncouth as flashing great wads of cash, it may actually be more subversive in robbing grassroots football of its youthful optimism.

Graphic: Transfer window MADNESS!!

The summer transfer window really is quite long.  Like, over 90 days long.  

But clubs still tend to make purchases late.  For some, like Arsenal, this was an absolute gift because Mesut Özil is better than others the club may have bought earlier.  However for other slackers - stand up, Ed Woodward and David Moyes - the laissez-faire posture displayed over the warmer months left them £4 million out of pocket and the proud owners of the gangliest gangler who ever did gangle.

The graph below charts British player movement by date.  Over the course of the 2013 offseason, there were 156 paid (or undisclosed) transfers and 182 loan deals, while 125 players moved clubs for no fee.  Most activity occurred at months' end - particularly July (when standard contracts expire) and August (when the movement window expires).  

A typical day in the transfer window saw five transactions (or, about 1% of the total) with the busiest days other than Deadline day recording seventeen moves.  On the final day of the movement window, 12% of all paid/undisclosed transfers were finalized, as were nearly 19% of all loan deals.  This number is half that of the end of the Winter transfer window, when nearly 24% of 284 all deals were completed on January 31.

Jim White loves it.

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United's laughable window ends with Fellaini serendipity

So one or both of Ed Woodward and David Moyes screwed up.  This much is certain.  

Entreaties to Cesc Fabregas, Luka Modric, Ander Herrera, Mesut Özil and Juan Mata went thoroughly and brutally unfulfilled.  The club is – rightfully – embarrassed by three months of low-ball bids and beat-poet serenades below player balconies that hit all the wrong notes. 

And now, as it emerges that the three men previously dubbed “impostors” who attempted to negotiate Herrera’s buyout clause in fact had legitimate United connections.  The best-known and perhaps most powerful club in Britain painted itself as indecisive, frugal and badly lacking the impetus offered by the departed leadership. 

Formerly, desir’d fillies entered the United stable after being entranced by mere nudges and winks.  In the quarter leading up to September 2^nd, the Red Devils struck out at an astonishing rate.  This left David Moyes attempting to spin a wasted summer – hardly his strength – thus finding himself exactly the situation the club hoped to avoid by acquiring one or two truly world-class players.   

However, the club’s administrative incompetence may have a serendipitous side-effect.

Marouane Fellaini was always the player Moyes was most likely to end up with.  The pair’s past relationship at Everton, his desire to play Champions League football and status as a fallback for misfiring bids for wantastays like Fabregas made him most likely to cross the Old Trafford threshold.  That he cost 4 million more than he would have a month ago … well, that’s unfortunate, but Fellaini is obviously a player of quality.  However, questions persist if he’s a quote-unquote United player.

Such concerns are answered with relative ease: he may not have a typically polished United skill set* but compensates by being the most unique midfielder in Europe.  No other central player has his combination of versatility, physical stature and ability to influence games across the entire park.  While he may not scythe balls through defences like Modric or Mata, Fellaini’s style offers defences the Catch-22 of matching him in the air or on the carpet.  It’s unlikely many teams could blunt both simultaneously.

Man U fans would certainly have preferred Johnny Kills or Özil professing undying loyalty while holding aloft a red scarf – and why not, considering they’re two of the best ten players in the world?  (According to the Guardian, the Afro-ed One ranks number 60, the sixteenth best player in England and the only one outside this year’s title contenders).  Supporters may mourn, but while Mata, Fabregas or Özil might have professed more so-called intent, Fellaini presents defences with a completely singular problem.

Heaven forbid his arrival masks the serious flaws United displayed throughout the window; the club acted not like a global power but like a desperate teen late on prom night.  A list of targets for the January anti-bonanza must be created to ensure their most coveted player arrives to ensure United keeps its reputation as a destination club.

Despite its disappointing conclusion, the success or failure of Manchester United’s transfer window should not be assessed according to the presence (or absence) of statement signings, buts whether the club actually improved their squad.  It shouldn’t matter if Fellaini was option A, B or J – only that his purchase makes United more dangerous and complete, which he does. 

While Fabregas was a good option A, Marouane Fellaini is one hell of an option C.

*Ashley Young has that polished skillset but continually refuses to influence matches in any perceivable way.

Short pitch: Sessegnon sale highlights new Sunderland

A fee has been agreed for the transfer of Sunderland forward Stephane Sessegnon to Qatari club Al Jaish.  The deal completes a hasty exit from the Stadium of Light for the Benin international, who has been probably the most influential Mackem of the past two seasons – the player was arrested for drink-driving only hours before the transaction was announced.

Questions must be raised about how and why the forward was sold, especially considering Paolo Di Canio’s strident desire to keep him; the fact that the deal was announced so quickly after the infraction only heightens suspicion that a deal was already in place.

After a second key forward swaps Northeast for Middle East in two years (and the third high-profile striker departs in three-plus years) the Black Cats now rely on new guy Jozy Altidore, the young Connor Wickham, a rehabilitating Steven Fletcher and the disappointing Ji Dong-Won.

With Sessegnon departs most of Martin O’Neill’s influence at Sunderland.  Though the move doesn’t seem to be of Di Canio’s design, his men are now obviously the centerpiece of the club’s new direction.  Owner Ellis Short seems to have bought in to Di Canio’s demanding and ultra-professional message and backed him by creating a lineup of hardened, regimented players – the only question now is about the talent level.  

2012-13 looms as something of a referendum comparing players of exuberant if sometimes wayward talent with those of unflinching professionalism.

Gareth Bale transfer to Real Madrid exposes disparity

As the narrative of Gareth Bale’s transfer to Real Madrid careens towards its end pages, we look back on its lifespan with the typical, ho-hum shrug of fulfilled prediction that accompanies such uncomplicated, Cartlandian prose. 

This tricky situation evolved in exactly the same manner as every other protracted move: larger club unsettles smaller club’s player, player decides he likes the money lifestyle at larger club, player agitates for transfer without asking for it directly, smaller club holds out for larger fee, deal is eventually done. 

Most “poaching” goes down this way, unless the smaller club is either a) really small, where incoming funds are gratefully and quickly redistributed or b) in the habit of iron-cladding it’s player contracts for many future years.  In this case, Spurs are neither.

The key step in the above sequence involves the player deliberately acting unprofessionally in order to orchestrate the move.  Last week, footballer-turned-pundit Robbie Savage wrote an article on the BBC website about the techniques footballers use to engineer a move away from their current club.  Wandering eyes have surveyed the landscape and decided that other pastures are a more pleasant shade of green, for reasons of money, money opportunity or money boredom.

The tactics are true and time-honoured because they’re effective.  Savage knows, because as he writes, he used some of them himself.  First internal and then external opinions tootle about “needing a change of scenery” or wanting “a different paycheque challenge”.  Eventually, the player generally gets their way, simply by becoming a distraction.

The biggest surprise of this story hasn’t been that Spurs Chairman Daniel Levy is holding out until deadline day seeking the best deal, nor that Real Madrid are seeking the Premiership’s best player, nor even the frankly diabolical fee mooted.  It’s that the player acting so unprofessionally is Gareth Bale.

Bale is by all accounts a simple and peaceful man; someone Harry Redknapp gleefully described as thinking of “a trip abroad” as visiting home in Cardiff.  Since arriving on the scene as a big-money youngster from the vaunted Southampton youth academy, his personal journey has been littered with troughs and peaks public enough to justify his position as one of the most marketable respected and relatable footballers in the British Isles. 

Personal reports lend credence to the idea of a professional and soft-spoken family man with a Rolls-Royce engine and a piledriver where his left foot should be. 

So why, suddenly, would this man begin to exaggerate injury reports and not arrive for training?  The answer is simple: the lure of Real Madrid – and all that accompanies – is enough to compromise a man’s principles.  Which, when the player is by all accounts so … nice, is such a shame.  Gareth Bale really wants this move and obviously feels he deserves it – either because of what he’s given to Spurs in the past or because of what he can achieve in La Liga’s future.  But should this desire mean he leaves part of the attitude that earned him such success behind, even temporarily?

A Catch-22 is inherent when signing long term contracts: the lifespan of professional athletes is short enough even without the risk of serious injury so long-term financial security is understandably desirable.  What other leverage did Bale have?  He played the only card available to him, that of the disaffected star.  With Levy characteristically content to let the transaction drag in order to leverage best price, and Real Madrid able to move on to players anew, the player is patently the party with the most to lose. How is this fair?

It’s not too long a bow to draw to suggest that Bale is desperate for the move simply because the hand he played is so antithetical to his supposed character.

If nothing else, the episode rams home the concrete nature of media politics in the game of transfers; it is cynical, media-driven and the entity with the most at risk throughout the situation is also the party with the least control. The result?  Gareth Bale acting jarringly out of type.

When the going gets tough, Luis Suarez gets out

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Those sounds you hear emanating from Liverpool aren’t Billy Ocean’s 1985 hit*, but of Luis Suarez’s discontent.  The going’s gotten tough – and now he wants out.

The Liverpool forward – who came within a suspension of claiming the 2012-13 Premier League Golden Boot – has this week repeated his statements that he wants to leave England due to the biased nature of the Football Association and the pervasive English media. 

Amongst Suarez’s body of “proof” is the eight game ban levied upon him for making racially-charged comments to Patrice Evra when “England’s own” John Terry received a four match sanction for similar actions.  While he has a point – racial abuse is racial abuse – Luis Suarez’s situation is entirely of his own manufacture.  For him to want out now is a disrespectful to his manager, club and supporters.

Ignoring for a moment his Dutch ban for biting and the histrionics surrounding his World Cup Quarter Final handball, Suarez has repeatedly shown a willingness to operate outside the spirit of the game.  This is nothing special – you’d venture to say that most players if presented with the opportunity would embrace an advantage – but what makes Suarez’s case “special” is the public nature in which these incidents occur.

Luis Suarez, startling talent though he is, behaves badly in perhaps the most public place on Earth – an English football pitch.  It is this willingness to work so visibly outside the spirit of the game that have earned him the scrutiny he now disdains. 

Without doing the rap sheet thing again, his recent interviews in Uruguay have shown a remarkable ability to apply reason to recidivism.  Those interviews neglect to mention, however, that each indiscretion has been under his control, the result of his decisions. 

Sometimes Suarez happens upon a point of some reason – in this case that the footballing public has been unable to judge him solely on his footballing ability.  This of course is true, but simply because the player has made a judgment of independent football talent impossible because of the circus of malfeasance in which he so readily engages.  After three years of constant, tiring uproar, there is now no separation between his play and his on-field persona, warts and all.

Throughout his time on Merseyside, the Kop – and his managers – have supported him.  He has become one of the league’s best players and one of its handful of truly influential players.  For him to want out – ostensibly to Real Madrid – after having such a large and vocal supporter base back him so often reflects very poorly on him.

When faced with a sticky situation of our own design, few in life have the option to bolt and therefore we must live with our decisions.  Most realize that if our actions put us into awkward circumstance, we must make the best of it: either to make it right, or to cope (and hopefully flourish) from prior choices.  For that to happen though, there must be an awareness of how one arrives at their current position – discernment Luis Suarez apparently lacks.

*I will take any excuse to link to a Billy Ocean music video.