THE definition of ‘bloodletting’ is: The surgical removal of some of a patient’s blood for therapeutic purposes.
In recent years, Liverpool fans have become familiar with something that most modern clubs are all too familiar with: the practice of managerial bloodletting. Somehow the patient ails, the knives are drawn, and the manager is sacrificed to the Gods of ambition, on the altar of expectation. As a rule, the patient recovers, and the cycle begins anew.
I say ‘recent years’ — in reality we’ve accumulated 25 years of familiarity, on and off, since some point in the 1990s. But in spite of that, it’s still something that doesn’t sit right with us. We’re familiar with it, but it feels wrong somehow. We wrung our hands over Kenny, we wrung our hands over Rafa, and we wrung our hands over Ged… we even wrung our hands a little over Roy Evans and Souness. Our hands have been wrung black and blue. Yet we still elevate and revere our managers, and deep down we yearn to be able to do so. We want to be able to say our managers ‘get us’, and we want to be able to say that we ‘get them’ — that we love them on some level. And when we can’t quite get that feeling, well, it all feels a bit like you’re using your other hand.
It’s a key influence on the development of the club — a key force that operates on it. We want to revere our managers, so managerial bloodletting will never sit right with some. As a result, for the most part, we’ve given our managers the kind of adulation and security of tenure they would never enjoy at other clubs.
But we’re Liverpool FC. We’re entitled to expect to win. First is everything, second is nothing. That expectation periodically propels the club into situations that border on the supernatural, with more regular forays into slightly less axalted magical territory. We win trophies. We expect magic to happen. When it isn’t happening, one of our greatest assets (arguably the greatest of all) is that collectively, we steadfastly refuse to go gentle into that good night. We’re bellicose. We demand winners, and we demand winning football. It’s an increasingly nebulous, contrarian concept given our context, but there it is — it refuses to go away. Rage against the dying of the light? We’ll keep the flame going into eternity, if it’s all the same to you.
Again, that’s a powerful, core influence on how our club is shaped. We have expectations that sit aside from what most would call reality. And we’re lucky – those expectations create a propulsive vacuum into which the club is drawn, forecfully at times, against natural laws of physics and of reason. Very few clubs are able to sustain that, yet with us, it shows no sign of dissipating — not yet any road. But it creates a tension when set alongside our yearning to revere our managers. Its by-product is the emerging sacrificial bloodlust we’ve not yet become accustomed to.
All this is set, of course, against the harsh realities of modern footballing life, and of natural law — what’s become known as ‘Tomkins’ Law’, in fact (after our very own Paul Tomkins, whose analysis on football has helped shape the way we see the modern game).
The law, simply stated, tells us that over time, your level of success will tend to correlate with the ranking of your wage bill. Liverpool’s wage bill? Fifth in the Premier League at the moment, and way off the top for longer than anyone cares to remember. The notion of ‘par’ comes into play, and those with resort to bigger wage spends steal our shiny new penny, pilfer our silverware, and drink our milkshake.
Left to itself, that natural law would pummel our club into supine acceptance of its fate, but oddly, perhaps uniquely in the domestic game, the defiance embodied by the first two forces stands in its way. Do we accept our lot and play to par? No, we demand that we win (or we should). Do we accept that other clubs’ resources will dwarf ours for eternity? No, we demand that we grow stronger, and not only that, we demand that it’s done right — that we manage and reinvest and nurture our resources, and do so in ways that compound and accelerate the growth into the long-term. (Don’t we? I seldom see other clubs calling our owners to account the way we do — not really.) We demand continuity, and consensus-based leadership, and the kind of strategic alignment that ensures resources are never squandered. We demand that every drop of juice is extracted to generate steady improvements in performance on the pitch. The traditional route to that? We demand a repeat of the formula that’s worked in the past — we search for our Shankly, we harness his vision, and we set ourselves to work and to reverence.
But with Tomkins’ Law lurking, and set against the gleaming beacon of our ‘unreasonably reasonable’ expectations (may they never die), that approach will never truly be stable — not any more. How can any manager with a par of fifth ever align the whole club, and implement the kind of lasting vision that his forebears at the club did? To do that would take a steady stream of silverware, and alongside it, a rate of growth of financial muscle that would narrow the competitive gap, and raise par to 4th, and then 3rd, and beyond. Without either or both of those things, it’s inevitable that managerial blood will periodically be spilled on the boardroom carpet.
So how do we insure ourselves against that? How do we narrow the gap long term?
There’s only one free lunch in town, and the menu is simple: A starter of intelligent leadership behind the scenes — a man who signs cheques, and big ones if the circumstances dictate it. The main? A structure behind the scenes that delivers genuine continuity, served in a jus of strategic alignment. The desert? A culture of best practice analysis and continuous refinement. Serve that up and maybe, just maybe, we can drink our own milkshake to wash it all down.
Or to put it another, less laboured way: if conditions dictate that managerial bloodletting is inevitable, and if those conditions will only dissipate when we’ve narrowed the financial gap, we have no alternative but to commit to the Directorate of Football structure, and to steel ourselves for more managerial sacrifice along the way.
If it means retaining our mental expectations, it’ll have been worth it.
Listen: TAW Unwrapped: The Manager Question
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda-Photo/PA Images
Too many plastics voting, they’ll push anyone in front of the bus…..Your piece sounds like a drunken roman orgy with extra food, you could have made your point in one line……The more money you throw at it the higher you go. Don’t agree with you, very short sighted.
Look at Man City no CL yet, Real Madrid how long did it take them, Chelsea? it takes 3-5 years with a core squad to compete with the best, we are just building a core squad, we have not got one yet, the summer should fix that, so we will have to wait 3-5 years, do your research and take the blinkers off, ‘cos you are on the wrong side with the plastics.
It’s year number 3. Who is the core of our squad? Henderson? The Little Magician? Sterling? What about CB and GK? Is Migs the man for the long term? Who are we going to get in during the summer?
Is this aimed at me? Cos I’m kind of saying how to break that law.
The wagebill argument again…..super. Maybe our wagebill also prevented us from finishing ahead of those financial bohemmoths Basle and Ludogorets in the most important club competition in the world. Ludogorets. Wagebill about a 200th of what we pay.
Perhaps our wagebill stopped us from progressing against Besiktas? After all they pay some of their players about 16k a week. But then they were put in their place by the outrageously wealthy……Club Brugge in the next round. Who were then beaten by….FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk. Now in the semi final. Fancy checking out how much they pay their players?
Ah but these are cup competitions Chris. What about the leagues? Ok.
Lyon are level with PSG in France. PSV are 12 points clear of Ajax in Holland. Krasnodar are 2nd in Russia ahead of all the Moscow clubs.
Im only looking top tier here & im only looking this season. Go and look at all divisions in all countries for the past 20 years. Its bollocks to think that 9 times out of 10 the club with the higher wagebill prevails.
You’re looking at it the wrong way, We’re one of the top ten richest clubs in Europe but only 5th in England. What does that tell you?
Your relentlessly abrasive attitude still stinks Chris, but I agree with your general point. I’m not saying Tomkins’ arguments are wrong because over the course of about a decade or whatever City, Chelsea, United and Arsenal’s stronger finances will win out more often than not over 38 games plus cups and Europe. What I don’t like is defeatism just because we all came out of Rafa’s (and more pertinently, H&G’s) time here being able to do all the footy maths/’soccernomics’.
If you happen to support Ludogorets and don’t think you can give Liverpool two tight games in a Champions League group or you support Liverpool and don’t think we can go 3 points better than last season and win the title some year soon, you may as well jack it all in and mess about with your calculator full time because you’re taking up space.
The problem is, mate, you’ve failed to acknowledge that we play in the English Premier League and a little more research will have shown you that there’s almost a perfect correlation over the past 10 years.
There are very few easy rides in European football these days. It’s pretty simple to me, without strikers you can’t win games in Europe, in the same way it makes it almost impossible to beat the teams with better strikers in the league. Strikers cost money though. Our 4 strikers combined cost less than £45m. There’s been numerous games where having a decent finisher would have got us something more out the game. The season could have been much different. Chelsea in the semi of the League Cup, the Villa second half on Sunday. Besiktas away, Basel home.
You can get away with it in other areas of the pitch but you can’t up front. We can’t expect to break into the top 4 and conquer Europe with the strikers we’ve got – and that would apply if Rafa was manager. Our history is littered with brilliant strikers and we’ve been successful as a result. Name me a season we’ve had worse strikers than what’s been on the field this season.
** Just in case you try to be smart, as per, I know Sturridge played Besiktas away but he wasn’t mentally ready.
robin crimes:
I feel dirty!! I agree with you on this. ;-) Of course we probably differ on how to fix it.
“Rafa Rafael Rafa Rafael Rafa Rafael Rafael Benitez”
The correlation between finances and league success (although indeed highlighted and explained by Paul Tomkins) does not relate to ‘Tomkin’s Law’, which actually states that only 40% of transers succeed (more supposed ‘defeatist’ rubbish, AKA facts). Apart from that, a great article.
Rafael Benitez ‘got us.’ Still does. I was peeved when Chelsea gave him a job and happy that they didn’t love him. Because he was ‘us’. That’s why. I will be mightily pissed off if he comes back to Emgland, and more pissed off if he comes to the Northwest and it isn’t to us. I don’t agree with chopping and changing the manager all the time, and gne last change was one too many. But this time pragmatism should prevail. Liverpool FC should not engage trainee managers unless they’ve been tutored by people who knew what they were doing – eg, Kenny under Bobby P and Joe F.
An erratum by the way – Tomkins Law – it’s actually from Soccernomics – serves me right for belting this out in my lunch hour.
And my spelling of dessert is wrong (ta Col).