For years we've heard how it takes months for players (even very good ones) to adapt to the English game. The players that have come in over the summer (Michu, Hazard, Kagawa, Carzarlo) and last winter (Jela, Cisse, Pog) have hit the ground running and looked star turns. Is the 'time to adapt' mantra now outdated and why do people think the transfers coming in have done so well.
Soccernomics, Section 1, Chapter 2 - point 8 of the advice section) the best time to buy a player is in his early twenties - e.g. top clubs are now buying players effectively (e.g. Hazard - successful dribbles are now a valued statistic in the Premiership and players with that type of talent are being bought - e.g. Victor Moses had the most amount of successful dribbles in the league last year - as opposed to players that can get down the wing and cross it) and also point 12) help your players relocate. Clubs now employ relocation consultants to help overseas players fit in and acclimatise in new countries - that way all they have to worry about is the football (e.g. when Drogba came to Chelsea he barely spoke English and was living in a hotel for 6 months and his first season wasn't as good as subsequent seasons etc).
the players seem to be coming from more physical and faster paced Leagues these days- Germany, France, etc. and as Potter pointed out the Prem. teams seem to be spending time behind the scenes helping them adapt I would also temper this discussion by mentioning that the pitches are still in pretty good shape and have not cut up yet- several players seems to suffer as the weather changes and the pitches are not as friendly. Overall the clubs have made advancements on the pithces as well which probably helps with the adjustment period as well.
- out of interest do you have any thoughts on any players in particular with regard to the above? With some of the data about (e.g. see my linear weights thread for what I am thinking about in terms of data) it would be easy to correlate that to performance (and then a club would have good reasoning to be spending more on ground maintenance if affected a certain variable, that ultimately affected the number of goals scored). I know this is going way off topic but.........
Even David Silva took a whole season to adopt to the Premier league. we can not be too stricted with those new players from other leagues. especiall for shinji kagawa, the defend in German is not that aggressive as well as in Premier leagues. For kagawa, he need more time to adopt.