Rodgers and the Ranatunga Principle

It was a wonderful display of the “Ranatunga Principle” by Brendan Rodgers last night, when he fielded what was effectively a second string Liverpool team at Real Madrid. That they lost only 1-0 shows that it wasn’t that bad a ploy, especially given the more important features coming up ahead.

Firstly, Liverpool have not given up on the Champions League. They have simply prioritised. The group they are is a rather weird one – where one team is significantly superior to the others which are approximately at the same level. It is not inconceivable at all that Real Madrid will win all their six games and get 18 points.

Before the game at Anfield two weeks back the degree of Real Madrid’s superiority over Liverpool wasn’t yet fully established and Rodgers smelt the chances of handing out an upset at home and fielded his strongest team. It backfired spectacularly as Real Madrid hammered Liverpool. The more important result of the night, though, was the unfancied but promising Ludogorets beating Basel at home. It was that result that allowed Rodgers to do what he did yesterday.

Real Madrid’s dominance means that Liverpool, Basel and Ludogorets are effectively playing a 3-team mini league the winner of which will go through to the knockouts (of course the extents of their respective thrashings by Real Madrid will matter if it comes down to goal difference). So far, in this mini group, all games have gone to the “home team”.

Liverpool’s last two games of the season see them take on Basel at home and Ludogorets away, and if they win both of them, they are through to the knockouts. Even if Liverpool had come away with a point in last night’s game, this equation would not have changed significantly (three points last night would have helped but the game at Anfield showed how impossible that was).

Liverpool have had a rather busy fixture list in the last 3 weeks. In the space of three weeks they’ve had to play QPR, Real Madrid, Hull, Swansea, Newcastle, Real Madrid and Chelsea – not an easy fixture list at all, and Liverpool’s poor form in the league has made them take even the Capital One Cup seriously, meaning not too many players could be rotated for the game against Swansea. In the loss to Newcastle on Saturday, the fatigue was evident as Liverpool’s attackers were all anonymous. A rest day was thus in order.

This, combined with the weird nature of the Champions League group that Liverpool are in meant that last night’s game was the “least important” for Liverpool in the current run of fixtures, which permitted them to rest key players and give a run out to the perennial subs. And on the evidence of the 1-0 defeat, it seems it didn’t go too badly. Now if only Liverpool can make use of this rest and beat Chelsea on the weekend!

Postscript

Gerrard came on around three-quarters into last night’s game. I have come to believe that is his best position for the team now. Come on as an “impact substitute” in the second half and play in the “old Gerrard role”.

The Steven Davis Role

The first encounter between Liverpool and Southampton in the 2013-14 English Premier League season happened at Anfield in September, and Southampton won 1-0 with a Dejan Lovren goal from a set piece. So when the two sides met again at St. Mary’s in the latter half of the season, with Liverpool chasing the title, it was known that it would be a tough game for Liverpool.

Southampton dominated the first half, playing a front four of Steven Davis, Adam Lallana, Jay Rodrigues and Rickie Lambert. However, it was Liverpool who scored in that half, and led 1-0 at the break. Here is a picture I found on twitter that was uploaded at half time:

Southampton manager Mauricio Pochettino decided to change things for the second half. He took off his most unspectacular forward player Steven Davis and replaced him with Gaston Ramirez, the promising Uruguayan. Soon, Southampton unravelled and Liverpool completely dominated the second half as they won 3-0.

Now, there is no doubt that Ramirez is more talented than Davis and is definitely a better player in general. However, in the context of the rest of Southampton’s team, Ramirez’s introduction proved to be a disaster and there was little cohesion in their attacking play from the time he came on. Southampton became a disjointed team and went out of the game.

This has led me to define what I have come to call the “Steven Davis role”. It is basically a player who is not individually the best, but provides some kind of a glue that holds the team together. The player’s key skill, rather than looking at it from traditional axes such as passing or shooting or tackling or intercepting, is to change position, and to make sure that the team holds its shape at all times. It is to make sure that any players who are out of position are covered for, and that the attack retains its shape and focus.

Now, it must be remembered that last season Southampton’s attacking play was primarily based on strong movement and interplay between their front four. They had nominal positions defined, but they hardly stuck to those as they moved around in attack. Thus, Lambert who would start upfront would sometimes appear on the wing, with the nominal “number ten” Lallana going forward, for example.

And key to this system was Davis, who wasn’t particularly talented, but who would move in a way that would balance the attack. If the other three would move left to attack, he would take up a position slightly to the right – not too far away from the attack but providing a kind of counterbalance. He never led attacks himself, but he was always available to support the others’ attacks. And this is what made Southampton dangerous.

Once Davis had gone off, Southampton had no one to play this role. The kind of interplay they had in the first half disappeared. And their attacks became toothless and each attack had only one dimension which was easy to cover even for Liverpool’s normally shaky defence, as they kept a clean sheet.

It was a similar case I saw last night at the Camp Nou, with Barcelona’s Pedro Rodriguez playing in a “Steven Davis” role. Messi started in the middle and Neymar wide on the left. Pedro nominally started on the right. But soon it became clear that he was a kind of a “wide support striker” – his job was to appear in positions that complemented the rest of the attack rather than being in positions where he led the attack (though he did lead one glorious counterattack where he hit the post). It was like a kind of balance that he offered the team, and ensured their attacks had coherence (of course this being Barcelona they had Iniesta and Rakitic just behind to offer more “focal points”).

Last night was the last game of Luis Suarez’s ban, and it will be interesting what Barcelona do with him when he gets back this weekend. The instinct will be to remove Pedro in his favour, but it is not clear if an attack of Messi-Neymar-Suarez will be able to offer the same kind of coherence as an attack of Messi-Neymar-Pedro. That said, Suarez is an extremely intelligent player and showed in his Liverpool days that he is capable of being a “fighter”, so he might as well be played. But that will mean that Neymar will have to occasionally play the Davis/Pedro role, and it is not clear if he is capable of doing that.

We are in for interesting times.

The post has so far focussed on football but it is evident that his kind of a role is necessary in other team situations, including corporate teamwork, also. Sometimes you need that one guy who need not be individually spectacular, but is versatile and mobile enough that he can do several things, fill in for different people and make sure that any team he is part of will be “complete”. And in the absence of one such guy, the team can lose coherence and fail in its task.

Brendan Rodgers makes amends

I had been highly critical of Brendan Rodgers’ handling of Liverpool in the game at Basel in mid-week. There was a flurry of criticism all over the interwebs after that game, and no doubt a lot of it reached Rodgers. And in last night’s win against West Bromwich Albion, he seemed to make some amends.

There were a number of things in last night’s game that showed that Rodgers is again showing some imagination, after having stalled (along with the rest of the team) in recent times. For starters, Philippe Coutinho played deep, almost like a regista (deep-lying playmaker) next to Steven Gerrard. This meant that the two box-to-box midfielders Jordan Henderson and Adam Lallana could actually play box-to-box than being boxed in. This led to much better cohesion in Liverpool’s play.

Then, Rickie Lambert offered something different up front than what the static Mario Balotelli had been offering in recent times. Lambert moved  – more than Balotelli, though nowhere as much as the injured Daniel Sturridge would have – and provided the focal point of attack. His touch and finishing were poor, though, and he still looks nowhere close to the player he was at Southampton. But his presence helped in another way – in that his long-standing understanding with Lallana helped them play a beautiful one-two which ended up in Lallana scoring Liverpool’s opener.

One of the great tactical games of Liverpool I’ve watched (it’s unlikely anyone else will call the tactics of this game “great”, though) was the FA Cup final against Chelsea in 2012, in what turned out to be Kenny Dalglish’s last game in charge of Liverpool in his second coming. At the hour mark, Chelsea led 2-0, and Liverpool had struggled to break past the buses that Chelsea had parked. And that’s when Dalglish introduced Andy Carroll, who had long been out of favour at the club following his GBP35m transfer from Newcastle United.

Carroll is a big guy, and he suddenly offered another route for Liverpool to attack – the first ball would be played by Brad Jones (the reserve goalie) long, and Carroll would invariably get to it, and hold it up – this turned out to be a surefire way of getting past Chelsea’s buses (and Chelsea didn’t know how to react to this change in tactic), and Liverpool pulled one back, and could have had more.

Following Carroll’s sale to West Ham United, though, Liverpool have lacked this “route two”. Last season especially, when teams proceeded to park buses in front of Liverpool, there was no way to get around them apart from the usual quick-pass-and-move route. And Liverpool suffered.

The coming of Lambert and Balotelli, though, has reopened the “route two”, and it was interesting to see Liverpool take that route several times during the game yesterday. It will be interesting to see when Sturridge comes back if Liverpool might play two up front and play the same route, but it would work better as a Plan B (IMHO).

Coming back to yesterday’s game, Balotelli’s dropping seems to have inspired him and he put in a much better performance than midweek when he came on for Lambert two-thirds into the game. He held the ball up well, acted as a great focal point and tried hard not to be caught offside. Hopefully we’ll see this side of Balotelli more as we go along.

The most interesting thing about last night’s game, though, is that in the last fifteen minutes, Steven Gerrard was back to playing in the old “Gerrard role”, with Lucas having come in to the holding midfield role. Gerrard played his old role well, and created a couple of chances following interplay with Balotelli. It showed that Gerrard is still good at what we’ve known him to be good for, except that he can’t play that way (it’s a very demanding role) for ninety minutes. Given that he’s much better in attack than defence, it’s a good ploy to get in a specialist holding guy (Lucas or Emre Can) for the last part when Liverpool is trying to close out the game.

It was only a very close win, and it came against West Brom, but it was an important three points and showed that Rodgers has started thinking again. Hopefully with the return of all the injured players after the international break, Liverpool can start playing again like they did against Spurs.

Dear Brendan Rodgers

I’m beginning to write this at 64 minutes played in Basel-Liverpool. Basel is leading 1-0, not undeservedly. Liverpool have so far been extremely poor, and deserve to have gone behind. We started well in the first ten minutes, and it seemed like an eminently winnable game, but after the tactical substitution made by Paulo Sousa, we’ve never been in it. Some pertinent observations so far.

  • I understand our need to have wanted to buy a world class striker to replace Luis Suarez. One might have thought the purchase of Mario Balotelli, no doubt a world class striker, was vindicated when Sturridge got injured. But Balotelli just doesn’t suit Liverpool. He is too slow. He just doesn’t move.

    I don’t have the statistics (football statistics are extremely hard to come by, unlike cricket), but we need to look at the number of off sides conceded between last season and this one. Balotelli gives away too many of those. Most of them come about because of his slow movement

  • Raheem Sterling was due a poor game, and we are seeing one now. His touch has been poor all day today. In his defence, he was due one bad day. Except that you had no clue how to handle that.
  • Sousa saw the weakness in Liverpool’s left back zone with Jose Enrique, and thus decided to double up on his right wingers to attack that zone. Now, this ended up pushing Raheem Sterling back, and he has had more defending to do than what he thought would have been his share. That is understandable.

    But then you need to realise that when you double up on one zone, you end up weakening yourself in another. Basel have played almost the entire night without a left back, or anyone on their left side apart from their left winger Hamoudi. They are playing a very lopsided 3-4-3. And you have done nothing so far to exploit that. Markovic has played all evening, but hasn’t been leading attacks down that wing as would be optimal. Manquillo has been leading the attacks there, with Markovic drifting inside. What we needed was Manquillo and Markovic doubling down in that unguarded zone. Haven’t seen that at all.

  • Then there is the centre of midfield. The two of Gerrard and Henderson isn’t simply working. Even when playing out from the back, they have consistently been stopped at the halfway line. Ok there is Gerrard and Henderson, but they haven’t had a forward pass to play! Coutinho has been lost in the crowd. And Balotelli, unlike Suarez doesn’t come back to pick the ball there. So how do we go forward from there?
  • Liverpool simply haven’t been picking up the second balls in the middle of the pitch today. They’ve been thoroughly outnumbered in that area – with only Gerrard and Henderson against three central midfielders of Basel. When we demolished Tottenham last December, the key was in our picking up all these second balls and keeping attacks flowing. That’s been sorely missing all day today.
  • Lallana’s introduction was good, but it should have been Sterling who should have come off. He is evidently extremely tired, and nowhere close to his best. We can see that in the two clear chances he’s missed since I started writing this post.
  • Markovic shouldn’t start. He’s not enough of a lone ranger for that. With his pace you should look to him as a super-sub. A plan B to be introduced along with Balotelli and Lambert. I just don’t see him gelling with the rest of the team. And please – someone along with Gerrard and Henderson there. I know Allen and Can are injured, but even someone like Lallana along with Gerrard and Henderson would help. The World Cup showed us how those two together in a 4-2-3-1 are ineffectual. You haven’t learnt from that.
  • It’s been a scrappy game so far, but a great tactical battle. There was one big question that Sousa posed – by putting on Gonzales for Safari, but you have thoroughly failed to answer that. After two moves by Gonzales, you went into a shell, and didn’t attack enough in the newly posed gap. I’m absolutely disappointed with you for that. I expected you of all people to be more tactically sound.
  • The best formation Liverpool has played with the available players this season was in the second half against Everton. With Gerrard-Henderson-Lallana-Coutinho-(not out of form)Sterling-Balotelli. You never even tried that in this game, while I expected you to start that way.
  • The game has ended as I finish this post. We have lost. Deservedly.
  • Maybe a you could use the services of a statistical analyst to help you figure out the gaps in play and how Liverpool should structure themselves given the available players. You can leave me a comment if you think you need one (you surely do!), and I’ll come over to help!

Liverpool FC, this season

For a Liverpool fan, this has easily been the best footballing season since 2008-09. Based on the performance so far, however, I would still rate the 2008-09 performance higher – primarily because Liverpool came back to win several games that season – something they’ve not managed this season. Here are some pertinent observations from the season so far:

  • Aly Cissokho is the new Djimi Traore (for those who don’t remember, he was Liverpool’s left back in the Champions League winning team in 2005. He’s been branded as ‘the worst player ever to win the Champions League’. Among other things he played Crespo onside twice for Milan’s second and third goals in that game)
  • Liverpool against Aston Villa two weekends back reminded me of Liverpool versus Milan in 2005. Back then, Rafa Benitez had dropped holding midfielder Dietmar Hamann and played Xabi Alonso and Steven Gerrard as central midfielders, and they got badly overrun.

    Here, Brendan Rodgers went with a midfield of Jordan Henderson (the new Gerrard, more on that later) and Gerrard (now a wannabe Alonso), and they got similarly overrun. The only time Liverpool looked threatening was when Lucas Leiva was on the pitch for 20 minutes of the second half

  • When Kenny Dalglish bought Henderson in 2011, it seemed like the Liverpool team had too many “Gerrards”. There was Gerrard himself, there was Alberto Aquilani (remember?) and there was Raul Meireles (yet another player in the traditional “Gerrard role”) when Henderson came in. And Jonjo Shelvey was coming up the ranks.

    Two and a half years hence, Henderson has established himself as the Number One Gerrard, ahead of Gerrard himself, who now plays more like the 4 he wears for his country than the 8 he wears for his club. Meireles and Aquilani were sold soon after Henderson arrived, Shelvey went last season (a mistake IMHO. He should’ve been loaned out) and Gerrard has moved back.

  • With Liverpool gifting West Brom a goal after not playing out properly from the back, one of the two monkeys on Liverpool’s back has bitten.  Simon Mignolet is nowhere as good as Pepe Reina as a distributor (though he’s much much better as a shot stopper), and the Toure-Skrtel partnership has always looked vulnerable playing out from the back. This was bound to happen and it’s good it happened. They’ll be more careful playing out from the back henceforth.
  • The other monkey on Liverpool’s back waiting to bite is Skrtel at set pieces. His natural strategy this season has been to grab the opponent’s tallest player. So far referees have overlooked it, and a penalty is waiting to be conceded. Hope that happens such that Liverpool don’t drop points on account of it
  • A big issue with Aly Cissokho at left back is that when he ventures forward (typically with little success), he doesn’t track back quickly enough and leaves Liverpool short of support in case the opponent breaks on a counterattack. Hence in the game against West Brom it was pleasing to see Daniel Sturridge having moved back into a left back position to cover when Cissokho got isolated on one of his ventures forward.
  • Once Jon Flanagan is fit enough to last 90 minutes (he isn’t yet, it seems), Cissokho should be dropped, Flanagan should go to left back and Kelly should play at right back. Cissokho is an abomination.
  • Liverpool’s injury list currently reads: Right back: Glen Johnson, Centre backs: Mamadou Sakho and Daniel Agger, Left back: Jose Enrique, Holding midfield: Lucas Leiva.  Another central midfielder Joe Allen recently came off that list. Gerrard, Sturridge and Coutinho have also been injured at some point in time this season.
  • The most joyous thing about watching Liverpool in 2008-09 was their comebacks. They came back from a goal down to beat Manchester United 2-1 at Old Trafford (I still remember that Ryan Babel strike that settled that game). Then came back from 2-0 down to beat Manchester City 3-2, and repeated that effort against Wigan. They almost repeated it against Hull but could only draw 2-2. Apart from the Villa game, such comebacks have been absent this season. And Liverpool have let leads slip way too many times.
  • I’m not saying anything about the Suarez-Sturridge partnership up front – the results are there to see. One thing I’ll say, though, is that I don’t like the “SAS” acronym – simply because the “A” stands for “and”. Now if only Iago Aspas could magically improve next season and become the A in SAS..
  • I have this tracker going all season that tries to predict where Liverpool will end up. This is based on quality of opposition faced. Liverpool have been a consistent fifth according to this tracker. Look at the MS Score here.

Trading and liquidity

Every time there is some activity in the football transfer market, you are likely to hear one of two things. Either a particular player was “a steal” or the buyer “overpaid”. You seldom hear that a player was bought or sold at a “fair price”. What drives this?

Note that the issue is not perception – if you look at the transfer dealings, you are likely to find that the general opinion of whether the transfer fee was too high or too low is in most cases fairly accurate. Even if it is not accurate at the time of the transfer, it gets borne out in the subsequent year or two after sale.

Two weeks back I took a class in introductory economics for a bunch of people who hope to get elected to the Bangalore Municipal Council (BBMP). Teaching them about demand and supply, and trade, I mentioned that in any voluntary trade, both the buyer and the seller are “winners”. For example, if Liverpool sold Fernando Torres to Chelsea for GBP 50 million, it means two things: One, the value that Liverpool placed on the future contribution of Torres to the club was less than GBP 50 million. Two, the value that Chelsea placed on the future contribution of Torres was more than GBP 50 million. If either of the above conditions were not true, the deal would not have happened.

So why is it that football transfers usually end up costing too much or too little? The answer lies in “liquidity”. Liquidity is a concept that is normally used in financial markets as a measure of the depth of the market. It measures how many people are willing to buy and sell a particular commodity at a particular point in time. The theory is that the greater the number of buyers and sellers for a particular commodity, the better is the price discovery. I’ve said this several times before – it is unfortunate that the concept of liquidity doesn’t find as much traction in mainstream economics literature.

Coming back to football – why is it that players are typically either undervalued or over valued? Because players are unique, and that makes the market illiquid. Let us go back to the deal that took Torres to Chelsea. Let us say that the value Chelsea placed on his future services was GBP 50 million, and the value that Liverpool placed on his future services was GBP 35 million (numbers pulled out of thin air). Given that Liverpool owned him, this deal could have taken place at any value between these two numbers (note that at any price between 35 and 50 million, both Liverpool and Chelsea would be willing to trade)! So why did the deal take place at one end of the spectrum?

It was a consequence of how badly the two clubs wanted to do the deal. While Torres had lost form and hadn’t been performing in the 2010-11 season, Liverpool were quite happy holding on to him – they were not desperate to do the deal. Even when offered an amount higher than their valuation of the player, they sensed Chelsea’s desperation in doing the deal. So Liverpool’s game here was to hold on long enough until they knew Chelsea had bid an amount they were unlikely to improve on, and then they sold.

Sometimes fans like to sing something like “there is only one Fernando Torres” (typically when he scores). And that is the precise reason that Liverpool was able to get a premium on his sale. There was a certain kind of player whom Chelsea desperately wanted to buy, and Torres was the one who fit the bill perfectly. Given the lack of comparables, and the desperation of the buyer, it became a seller’s market and Liverpool were able to profit from it.

So we have seen here that when the buyer is more desperate to do the deal than the seller, the deal takes place at the higher end of the “value spectrum” (I just made up that phrase at this moment). It can go the other way also. When Liverpool sold Torres, they (rather unwisely) invested most of it buying a player called Andy Carroll from Newcastle United. Carroll turned out to be a dud – he was increasingly injury prone, and when a new manager Brendan Rodgers came in, he found him to be not suitable for the style of football Liverpool wanted to play.

The presence of Carroll in the squad, however, would put pressure on the manager to play him – largely a consequence of the fee that had been paid to purchase him. To this end, Rodgers decided that it was better to cut his losses and remove Carroll from the squad, rather than play a suboptimal brand of football just so that Carroll was played. Rodgers correctly decided that the money that had been spent in buying Carroll was a “sunk cost”.

Now, in his year and a half since his arrival at Liverpool, Carroll had done much to convince people that he was overvalued. His injuries and lack of form meant that clubs were unwilling to value him highly, and given Liverpool’s determination to sell, it was a seller’s market. The GBP 15 million that Liverpool extracted from West Ham for the sale was perhaps exactly the value that Liverpool had placed on Carroll.

To summarize – you sell if the price is higher than your valuation. You buy if the price is lower than your valuation. The buyer’s and seller’s valuations together determine the “value spectrum” along which a sale can be done. Presence of comparable commodities means that people can go for substitutes, and so that shrinks the value spectrum. In case of footballers with few comparables, there are no factors compressing the value spectrum, and the full extent of it is available.

In a large number of cases, one of the buyer and seller is much more desperate to do a particular deal than the other. And that pushes the price of the deal to one of the edges of the value spectrum. Hence people end up either significantly underpaying or significantly overpaying for footballers.

Big forward, little forward

When most teams play a front two, it comprises of a small quick guy (called the Number Ten) and a big guy (called the Number Nine). The convention is that when the team is defending, one of these two stays up ahead (just beating the off-side mark, wherever the opposition defence line is), while the other tracks back in order to help out with the defence. The worldwide convention in this regard is for the Number Nine to stay up front in anticipation of an attack while the Number Ten drops back to defend.

Liverpool, of late, however, have played differently. Their Number Ten (figuratively, since he wears seven on his back) Luis Suarez is the one usually left alone upfront when the team is defending, while the number Nine Andy Carroll tracks back to help out in defence.

The logic of this policy is two-fold. One, an additional big player coming back to defend means greater ability to win defensive headers within the box (think of it in terms of winning rebounds in basketball). Secondly, Liverpool under Dalglish have preferred a pass-the-ball-out-of-defence method rather than clearances. This means that when the offence breaks and a counterattack is to be launched, the ball is more likely to be played along the ground to the forward rather than up in the air. And Suarez is the more likely of the pair of forwards more likely to make use of that.

So what is the concept behind the conventional wisdom of leaving Nine upfront with Ten dropping back into defence? The typical strategy in English football is to clear the ball out of defence rather than passing it out, and the big number nine is well positioned to receive it upfront. The big nines usually also have the ability to ‘hold up’ the ball, to allow his team-mates to join him. The number ten, being quick, is able to quickly join the number nine in attack.

The other factor behind leaving the number nine upfront is that they are usually one-dimensional players, with the only abilities being to win headers and hold up the ball. They are either no good in defence, or have big strikers’ egos that prevents from joining defence effectively. Number tens, on the other hand are more skilled all-round and are more likely to come of use in defence.

In this sense, Carroll is not bad at defence, and more importantly he is young and out of form, which makes it easy for Dalglish to force him to track back while defending. So far, it seems to be working.

Library Membership

While on a long lonely walk today (ironically, immediately after watching Liverpool play) I saw this library not too far from my house. It was called Just Books, I think, but I’m not sure of the name. With my British Council Library membership due for renewal in a couple of months, and doubts about whether I want to renew it (the library is too far, and I’ve stopped getting excited by the collection there), I’m considering membership to this library.

I took a look at the books today, and there were two major turnoffs. One was a section labeled “non-fiction” (whatever that is supposed to mean!). I don’t remember the other one right now – but I do remember having one other turn off while I was there. Apart from that, though, the collection seems good, which makes me think I should take membership there.

I found a lot of books there that I’ve read, or want to read, but wouldn’t borrow because I already own them. Now, I don’t know how to interpret this. The positive way of looking at it is that given that I like a lot of books that are there, they’re more likely to get other books of “my kind”, too. The negative way of looking at it is that I already own all the interesting books there that I want to read, so the membership wouldn’t add much value to me. The clincher, I guess, is about the frequency with which they update their collection. If they are going to buy new books on a regular basis, then I guess this will work out for me.

The other thing I liked about the library is that it has multiple copies of a lot of books. I think that is always a good thing, for you wouldn’t want to wait forever for someone to read that book that you want to read. They follow the netflix pricing model, where you pay a fixed fee (Rs 150) per month and there are no late fees. So by taking longer with a book, you are essentially denying yourself bang for the buck that you’re going to be paying them regularly (In the past I’ve “bailed out” of a library membership that followed this model. I didn’t go for a while, and then realized that the amount due was so high that I didn’t mind losing the deposit I’d placed there and I never bothered returning the books I’d “borrowed” from there).

And do any of you use Justbooks already? Do you like it? What are the odds that you go to the library and find nothing that you want to read?

Why is Ten Sports sitting on so many rights?

I wanted to stay up last night. I wanted to stay up and watch the WI-Eng match till the very end. Waking up this morning and checking the scorecard, it seems like it was a really good match. And Fidel Edwards seems to have become a last-day-shutdown specialist. This is the second time this series he’s hung on. And he’d done so once before against India at ARG.

There was another reason I wanted to stay up last night. I wanted to watch Liverpool play Real Madrid. I woke up this morning and saw that it was an amazing game, too. Looking through the Guardian Football site (btw, Advani seems to be advertising heavily on that site; it’s a pity he never advertises here on my site) I noticed that Chelski-Juve was also a strong game, despite the result. Another reason I would’ve wanted to stay up last night. For the record, I slept at 12:10. Tea-time in the Test match, and before either of the football games had started.

Ten Sports seems to have bitten off more than it can chew. It seems to own the rights to telecast too many different things. I think I have raised this point once earlier, but it pzzles me as to what Ten Sports is trying to achieve by getting rights to telecast so many things, most of which are happening at the same time. For example, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been unable to watch the first hour of WI-Eng even if I’d wanted to, because it was overlapping with the last hour of SA-Aus, which was being telecast at the same time.

The reason I slept off early last night was because I didn’t have the option to watch what I wanted. All the three games that I’d’ve been reasonably interested in were supposed to be on Ten Sports (Zee Sports doesn’t count since Tata Sky doesn’t offer that), and I  realized that I’d be forced to watch what the guys at the Taj Entertainment Network would want me to watch. Denied the option to choose what I wanted to watch, I went to bed.

It puzzles me that Ten Sports isn’t subletting its contracts. Devoid of anything decent to show, I suppose that ESPN or NEO would’ve only been too happy to acquire the rights to telecast last night’s Liv-Real game by paying a fee to Ten Sports. And it would’ve unlocked value at the hands of the remote-holder. Ten Sports need not let go of the rights to show all the games. All they need to do is to sell the “out of money options” – the rights to the game which they won’t be able to telecast anyway.

Now, the problem will be if accounting for all costs, no options are out of money. For example, you know you won’t be able to show Liv-Real. But you think that the loss of brand equity of your channel would exceed the money you’d gain by selling this option to another willing channel. The viewers are the only losers at this game, but I don’t know what can be done. After all, viewers  are way too dispersed in order for them to take any kind of action.

Extending this question, what can a sports body do to prevent a bidder from acquiring rights to telecast and then mess up the telecast (or not telecast it at all) ? After all, the sports body is out there to make as much money as possible from the TV rights, and they need to ensure significant investment into broadcasting by the broadcasters, so the “i’ll give rights to only those channels that are in the interest of the people” model won’t work.

One option would be to sell the rights to two channels in each market. But given that broadcast is a natural monopoly, the sports body will not be able to make as much by selling to two bidders as it can by selling to one bidder. Is there any other solution that you can think of? If yes, unleash.