2015 Transitive Ratings pre-conference title games

The Hunt for Red Klopptober

Guess at LFC's Starting XI vs. Stoke Aug. 9

CFB 2015 Team Ratings Implied by Vegas Odds

LFC 2014-2015 WOWY Table

Liverpool 2013-2014: How many points was Luis Suarez worth?

After the debacle that was the 2014-2015 season most would probably say 'more than you can count.' Although it's easy to point to the loss of Suarez as the main reason for LFC's decline this season, the fitness issues of Sturridge and probably some plain old bad luck were also responsible for a lot of it. Being analytically driven as I am, I actually set out to estimate his value using a framework that could hold up to a moderate amount of scrutiny. 

Estimating Suarez's value to LFC during that season is an endeavor fraught with difficulties, but the approach boils down to the following four points:

1. Estimate LFC's true talent* differential with and without Suarez (use the last 3 seasons)

2. Take 2013-2014 talent level with Suarez and apply the differential to estimate LFC 2013-2014 without

3. Estimate all other teams' talent in the 2013-2014 season without Suarez (i.e. remove games where they played LFC with Suarez in the lineup)

4. Re-simulate all of LFC's games where Suarez played to estimate where they likely would have finished

*Goals For/Against Talent = Observed results - luck; calculated by regressing observed goals for/against results toward the league average

Using this framework, I estimated without Suarez LFC would have finished on 69 points (an additional 59 points in the final 33 games Suarez had originally played in), which results in Suarez being worth about 15 points to LFC last season (15 = 84 total actual points - 10 actual points acquired without Suarez - 59 estimated points over the final 33 games he had played in). This result is very rigidly defined since it assumes many things, among them:

1) the talent differential remains consistent in 2013-2014 as it did over the average of the prior 3 seasons including 2013-2014;

2) Suarez was replaced with LFC's talent on hand used within the first 5 games as opposed to the squad being replenished using other funds (perhaps secured from his transfer to a non-EPL team**)

3) LFC not taking decisive action in the transfer market to replace him if they were without him for the remainder of the season due to injury or further suspension.

**I qualify this with non-EPL team because if he had gone to an EPL team, Arsenal for example, then their talent estimate for this endeavor would have changed substantially and required another set of assumptions or caveat

All that being said, based on the smell-test as they say, 69 points without Suarez - he of 31 league goals and 12 assists - seems reasonable to me. The original cocktail napkin estimate I did was around 9-10 points added, so this more rigorous method being somewhat close gave me additional comfort in the method. Though LFC only make the Champion's League ~29% of the time without Suarez using this approach, they are a far cry from Gus Poyet's proclamation of mid-table mediocrity.

Below is what the league table is estimated to look like under the above stated assumptions: