After a summer-long pursuit, it was confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that United had reached an agreement with Ajax over a fee for Brazil striker Antony. The fee is £81.3million, rising to £85.5m with contract-related add-ons.
The 22-year-old is highly rated and was seen as a "priority" signing for Erik ten Hag. Sources say the club see him as a "significant" addition to United's forward line, with his technical ability and winning mentality viewed as being typical of the players Ten Hag has brought in this summer.
Across the league and Champions League, the 22-year-old registered an impressive 36 goal contributions in the past two seasons. He also completed the most progressive passes of any Eredivisie forward who played at least 20 league games last season and averaged the second most dribbles per 90 (8.4) of any of those players too.
There’ll understandably be a lot of of excitement in the camp about Antony and what he can bring to this new-look United side. However, there’s still a sense that it’s the sort of extortionate high-risk deal that United have been all too guilty of making in the past.
And comments made by a key Liverpool figure last season act as both a warning and reminder that the success of new transfers can come down to the flip of a coin, due to the different variables that can impact it.
Last year, Liverpool’s director of research, Ian Graham, was one of the guest speakers at the StatsBomb conference held at Chelsea ’s Stamford Bridge.
He covered a range of interesting topics, including a theory on player acquisitions, and why there are six reasons a transfer can often fail. For him, a defined ‘failure’ was based on the percentage of minutes played.
If a player failed to play 50 per cent of the available minutes, then that transfer was considered to be a failure, which makes sense. Graham considered the following as key reasons for why a transfer might fail : -
- The player isn't as good as you thought
- The player doesn't fit your style
- The player is played out of position
- The manager doesn't like the player
- The player has injury and/or personal issues
- There's a better player already on the roster
In his opinion, if you're 90 per cent sure that each of those six individual factors won't be an issue, those minor degrees of uncertainty still add up to only a 53 per cent chance (0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9) of the transfer working out.
Of course, when you accept that most transfers don't carry that 90 per cent certainty factor across all six facets, it's pretty easy to understand why so many deals don’t prove to be as successful as clubs often hope.
One way to mitigate this risk is to avoid a substantial initial outlay on a player, given that there’s effectively 50 per cent chance that the move goes on to fail. And if you are to spend big, then you should do so with a much higher degree of certainty that the move will be a success.
In the case of Antony, there’s plenty to indicate he can be a success, but it’s far from a guarantee. He might look to have a high ceiling and has experience already working with Ten Hag.
Yet many talented attackers in the past have failed to translate their skills into the tougher demands of the Premier League. And if he proves not to be a success, then there’ll be questions asked about the club’s decision to invest so heavily in him.
