Everyone’s an Expert. Except me.

The recent signing (or near signing) of Shane Long has led to something of a disagreement on the various forums devoted to Southampton FC.  Some people believe we have way overspent on a player who is no better than the players we already had.  Others believe he is a great signing.  Most hold an opinion somewhere in the middle.  My opinion is somewhat different:  I have no idea.

As an American who grew up playing very little soccer and rarely watching football played at the highest level I never developed the ability to judge football talent in the way that citizens of virtually every other country in the world did.  I have spent the last four years watching BPL and Champions League football on TV.  I have averaged watching about five games a week during that time.  I can understand and make judgments about what is happening on the field far better today that I could four years ago, but I am hardly an expert, especially when compared to the typical reader of this blog—the vast majority of whom come from the UK.  On the other hand, I suspect that very few readers of this blog would be as qualified as I to judge the ability of a left tackle in American football or the strike zone judgment of a batter in baseball.  And yet I am hardly an expert at either task.

In 1978, my team, the San Francisco 49ers, was the worst team in the NFL with a 2-14 record.  The team fired the general manager Joe Thomas and most of the coaching staff and hired Bill Walsh who would eventually be voted into the Football Hall of Fame as a coach.  Yet, in 1979 the 49ers were, once again, the worst team in football with a 2-14 record.  Had Walsh been a BPL manager he would have been fired.  Had the 49ers been a BPL team, they would have been relegated.  However, any American football fan who watched the 1979 49ers could see that they were a much improved team with much greater potential.  In 1980, they went 6-10.  In 1981, they went 13-3—the best record in the league—and won the Superbowl. Another 17 years of quality performances followed, including four more Superbowl wins.  While comparable progress is impossible in the BPL, the reasons for the 49er’s improvement apply to any sports team.  When competent people replace less competent people things usually get better.

On the other hand, as poor a job as Joe Thomas did for the 49ers, he was far more of an expert than I.  That didn’t stop me from second guessing his decisions—such as trading for an old O.J. Simpson with bad knees—but I was better at second guessing things after they didn’t work out than before.  The same is true with the current situation at Southampton.

Most of the readers of this blog are far more qualified that I to second guess—in football terms—what has happened this summer.  (I would maintain that I am better qualified than most to talk about some legal issues, Financial Fair Play issues, and, should they come up, evolutionary biology issues.)  But few of you, if any, are more qualified than Ronald Koeman or Les Reed to judge the quality and potential of football players.  Admittedly, many of you are probably more qualified than Ralph Krueger to make such judgments but we are told he is not involved in football decisions so that shouldn’t be an issue.

Thus, Adam Lallana may turn out to be an overpriced slug who just had his career year or he may be the creative force in England’s surprise Euro 2016 championship.  Luke Shaw might turn out to be better than Ashley Cole and start at left back for England for the next decade plus or he might end up with numerous nagging injuries playing behind Marcos Rojo for the next three years.  We simply cannot reliably predict the future and most of us lack the expertise to make reliable judgments on the likely future.

This is not a call for unlimited trust in the board or our team’s summer transfer dealings.  The outgoing traffic and rumors of additional outgoing traffic is and was, I am told, unprecedented.  This is not a normal situation in which unbridled trust is an appropriate response.  On the other hand, it is a situation which is so unusual that it cannot reasonably be compared to anything that has happened before.  Is it really harder for a team to gel with eight to ten new players than with three to five new players?  Who knows?  It doesn’t happen often enough to judge—especially when the incoming new players are purchased by a team with money and not cheap desperation signings to fill holes.  In other words, the only reasonable response is to wait and see.  Confidence is not appropriate.  Neither is pessimism.  Which attitude you hold says more about you than what is actually happening.

Of course, this won’t stop me from trying to analyze and evaluate what has happened.  The chance to do that with an audience of interested people is why I started the blog.  But I will try to do my analysis based upon the most reliable and objective information that I, as an outside, can obtain.  When there are numbers to analyze I will use them because I know what to do with numbers.  When there are just subjective opinions and feelings, I might use them to inspire an article, but unless the opinions can be traced back to a source with some apparent level of knowledge and/or expertise, I will not rely upon them.

Finally, I was going to do some sort of analysis of our incoming and outgoing transfer activity thus far, but, after spending an hour or two researching and writing it, I concluded that I had nothing interesting  to say--yet.  I will wait for new information.