FENWAY Sports Group seem to be the hottest topic surrounding Liverpool Football Club at the minute. There are plenty of people who are against them and have a problem with anything that they do. I can kind of see why that would be the case.
We’ve won one trophy since they came to the club, our net spend isn’t huge, and at present we have had a bad run of form that has led to us dropping out of the title race and two cups in a very short period of time. We’ve had a January window where they’ve decided that we can’t spend money and don’t care about improving.
The club is in a rut, they are absentee owners who have no interest in winning and as long as they can spend money on a yacht they aren’t bothered.
There are also plenty of people who are vehemently behind them and will defend pretty much anything that they do. They saved the club from bankruptcy, they’ve backed every manager with money, they’ve gone out and brought in one of the best managers in world football to the club and given him supposed free reign to do exactly what he wants. If the manager wants to buy a player, he’s got the money.
They’re great, they have our best interests at heart and we’re going places.
Two completely different viewpoints of the same situation, with the exact same evidence. How can people hold views as polarised as this when they are both looking at the exact same thing? It is a little bit strange really.
Me? To be honest, I’m somewhere in the middle. I can see their failings and things they’ve got wrong and I can see good things that they do and continue to do. The problem with having a categorical opinion either way for me is that I don’t really know what people are hanging their hat on exactly. Every interpretation of pretty much anything that’s going on at the club is subjective. It isn’t like Tom Hicks and George Gillett who could be criticised for taking £1 million out of the club every nine days to pay off a loan that would line their own pockets over time. There isn’t any hard evidence, just speculation.
Liverpool, England – Tuesday, February 6th, 2007: George Gillett (2nd Left) with his sons Foster (L) and xxxx (R) and co-owner Tom Hicks (2nd from right) with his sons Tom Jnr (L) and Alex (R), on the pitch at Anfield after announcing their take-over of Liverpool Football Club in a deal worth around £470 million. Texan billionaire Hicks, who owns the Dallas Stars ice hockey team and the Texas Rangers baseball team, has teamed up with Montreal Canadiens owner Gillett to put together a joint £450m package to buy out shareholders, service the club’s existing debt and provide funding for the planned new stadium in Stanley Park. (Pic by Dave Kendall/Propaganda)
I could sit here and have an argument with myself against them and then 10 minutes later argue for them. The net spend argument is back and our net spend recently isn’t huge. It basically means that money has come into the club via TV revenue streams or other revenue streams and hasn’t left the club for the benefit of strengthening the squad. On the face of it, that looks a problem.
As with every piece of praise or criticism there’s an obvious rebuttal. If we are able to get £30m for Joe Allen and Jordon Ibe, and we choose to spend it on Sadio Mané then we have strengthened as a side for no financial cost. Why is being able to sell players that we don’t want for good money seen as a problem?
Didn’t like what we did in January? We behaved in the same way as every top club in Europe – I think that, whether there was money or available or not, there was very little chance of us signing anyone because the calibre of player we were after just wouldn’t be for sale.
My main concern with FSG is that they’re a bunch of people who don’t know the subject they’re involved with and are trying to be experts in a subject they know nothing about. I know nothing about how you would go about running a tobacco company and if I decided I was going to buy one then I’d probably not try and get my hands dirty, I’d go out and have a look at finding the best possible people involved with tobacco to come and work for me. That’s how I would expect to get my tobacco business to perform as well as possible.
FSG on the other hand have decided that the best way to go about things is to place Mike Gordon in charge who has decided that he’s going to have a crack, if talk is to be believed, at operating in a Director of Football type of role. If that is the case then we have a Director of Football with precisely no background in football. Sport? Yes. Baseball? Yes. Football? No.
Why are they so insistent that they’re so clever? Jürgen Klopp couldn’t turn up at Fenway Park when the baseball season starts in a few weeks and manage the Red Sox to the World Series so why do FSG think that a man with a background in baseball can turn his hand to football? The answer is that he can’t. People criticise them for being absentee owners – well maybe they should try a bit harder at being absentee owners?
OSLO, NORWAY – Monday, August 1, 2011: Liverpool’s owner John W. Henry with Director of Football Strategy Damien Comolli before a preseason friendly match against Valerenga at the Ulleval Stadion. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
I think it’s fair to break the criteria for judgement down in the following ways. Investment in players, achievement on the pitch, performance of the club from a business point of view, the state of the ground and the general happiness you get as a fan.
There are counter-arguments for all of these subjects. It explains the obvious polarities.
In terms of investment in players we have spent a lot of money. In the current side we have a midfielder who isn’t guaranteed a starting spot who cost £25m and in our first choice front line we’ve got a £29m man and a £32m man. Money has been spent. But has enough been spent? Having consulted Transfermarkt, last summer we made a profit of just over £5m. That’s £35m short of the previous season and the last month would suggest that over the course of the last month that we could have used a stronger squad.
And then this is where it gets a bit grey. If the manager is happy with his squad and there’s no-one he feels is available that would fit into this side and be happy with the role that he’s looking for, what do we do? Do we just spend money for the sake of spending money so we can say ‘look, we’ve spent money’? That would be incredibly negligent.
I don’t know, maybe the manager isn’t happy, maybe he would want more but there’s no actual evidence that this is the case. Nor is there actual evidence that he’s happy. Even if he says he’s happy, football managers tell lies on a regular basis so everything they say should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Yet, we have one side highlighting the net spend while the other side say everything is great. How do either side know? I haven’t got a clue and can’t really figure out how anyone has a clue yet people see what they want and take a fully entrenched position.
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND – Thursday, November 4, 2010: Liverpool’s former chairman Martin Broughton, owner John W. Henry and Henry’s wife Linda Pizzuti before the UEFA Europa League Group K Matchday 4 match against SSC Napoli at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Achievement on the pitch would be another one – without the owners doing a single different thing their six and a bit year tenure could have seen us with two League Cups, an FA Cup, a Europa League, and a Premier League title. Yes, the negative side is absolutely right that the actual return is a sole League Cup nearly five years ago but football is a game of such narrow margins that the positive side will tell you that it could have been very different.
We might not have achieved tangible success but any failing they have hasn’t prevented us from going very close on multiple occasions. The ownership couldn’t have stopped Steven Gerrard from falling over and they couldn’t have taken better penalties in last year’s League Cup final. They could, however, have done things that meant these things weren’t the actual turning point.
The club isn’t actually a million miles away from having had a successful period. But at the same time, it wouldn’t have made these owners more likely to actually give us a good level of success from this point forward because that isn’t how football works. After all, if their previous behaviour is a problem for you now, the outcomes of said behaviour should have zero impact on what you think will happen in future. Our achievements are clearly lacking but it isn’t like we’ve been out of the cup in the first round, had no European run and not been very close to a league title.
Both sides of the divide have a very valid point to argue.
The performance of the club from a business point of view is good. Some people are happy to hang their hat on this as a means of telling you that things are good. Personally speaking, I couldn’t care less how the business is performing – the only way to judge this club should be on the performance on the pitch. Which links us back to the last point about the achievements on the pitch. It is after all a football club. Round, and round, and round we go.
The ground is a surprisingly divisive subject. Yes, a new stand has been built and FSG have done more to get more people watching this club than any other owners have, but is it enough? Does a club of this size really not need a bigger ground? We have one selection of people praising them for doing something and one group criticising them for not doing enough. Both are valid, it’s good that they’ve done something and it’ll be very good if they do the Anfield Road. However, I feel that it’s on the low side as a capacity.
Do we not need more than 61,000 seats? We have a season ticket waiting list that isn’t even taking new applications and getting a ticket isn’t easy. There is potentially an entire generation of youngsters in the city of Liverpool who are missing out on getting in to Anfield. We can fix that by building a ground that actually satisfies the demand. If we made 25,000 new season tickets available tomorrow we would sell them. Why is the thinking not bigger?
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND – Saturday, September 10, 2016: The Liverpool club crest on the exterior of the new Main Stand before the FA Premier League match against Leicester City at Anfield. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
The stadium is my biggest personal grounds for contention and on most subjects I can see both arguments to the point where I don’t actually know what to think. I can agree with or argue with basically anyone on most subjects relative to FSG’s stewardship of the club. I cannot, however, fathom why anyone would even consider that the ground is suitable for a club of our size.
My only issue is how it would be paid for, given it would have to pay for itself. If we don’t fill it we would run a risk of creating problems for ourselves. But I suspect 50,000 season tickets for eternity would solve the problem. I know plenty of people who wouldn’t really have any interest in going through the rigmarole of getting tickets every week but if they were able to saunter up to the ticket office and buy a season ticket, they’d be there for life.
Lastly, I think a good way of assessing things is the general happiness from a footballing point of view as a fan. It would be hard to stand here and say that you’re unhappy, frustrated yes, but unhappy? Come on that’s a bit daft, isn’t it?
I was happy in 2013-14, I was happy the second half of last season, I was happy for the majority of this season. We haven’t been stuck in a perpetual state of misery since October 2010. And then on the other side, supporters crave the league title. I crave the league title, give me that and I’m happy forever. But whatever view you hold, you can’t say you haven’t enjoyed lots about things that have happened under their tenure — because you clearly have.
What I do know is that plenty have made their mind up about FSG and aren’t for changing. Me? I really don’t know what to think other than that I’d like them to be better. I don’t think any issues we have are created by malice, I just think that there’s a level of incompetence. And that is something that they can fix quite easily.
It’s certainly a lot easier than them selling and us getting someone else in who we would know very little about and having a load of uncertainty. But if you aren’t going to sort yourselves out, find someone who’ll do better. We aren’t a toy.
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Definately think we need a larger capacity. I feel anything between 66-72,000 would be achievable. But of course where Anfield is situated its virtually impossible to reach that number. And the thought of leaving Anfield evokes lots of emotions from all our fans. Certainly now with our blue neighbours discussing an ever increasingly inevitable move from Goodison, I wouldn’t be suprised to see some cheeky one-upmanship from them perhaps having a larger capacity by a couple of thousand just (to p’ss us reds off) to say they have a bigger stadium.
FSG isn’t perfect. In fact they are far from it. The reality is that in many circles they haven’t been given enough credit for doing an admirable job of positioning the club for a long run of success. You may not give a damn about the business side of the club but without a sound financial situation the club can’t expect to excel on the pitch for any length of time. Unless some multi-billionaire wants to buy us as a “toy” and dump loads of money without caring about a return then It’s a must. We can’t afford to buy or keep top players if we are losing money. I agree with many of your points though. FSG should have turned control of the club over to a football man, not a baseball man. It may be that this problem is already fixed. It seems that FSG has given Klopp that authority and Werner’s involvement doesn’t go beyond making sure funds are available to support him. In the past the transfer process was awful. Werner was the tiebreaker on the infamous transfer committee when their was a disagreement with the manager. Now that is solely Klopp’s job. I would agree that further expansion is a must. 54000 seats is better but not near enough. They could probably sell 70000 plus for most games. Eventually this will hamper the competitiveness of the club. All in all they have done well and hiring Klopp will go a long ways to elevating the club back where they belong. The job isn’t done but they are off to a decent start.
Mike Gordon as a Director of Football. What does a DoF do? Is it a generic role across all clubs or are there nuances to it? Because I’ve no idea if he is qualified to do the role – simply because I have no idea what the role is.
Is it contracts, purchase negotiations, running the club budget (yes, these things do exist in football clubs. they aren’t piggy banks with loads of free cash) – these things should be ok, shouldn’t they? . Or will he be involved in recruitment strategies, identifying players – that would be a concern.
Pretty spot on that Phil and especially on the stadium issue. I mean the new standa great but it gives only a couple thousand more then Newcastle and they’re in the fucking championship! It needs sorting!
they said they would rebuild anfield,from inside,one stand done three to go.should built new ground in the park.end off.,am 66,years old,look forward not back get some young kids in the ground,there the future fans.
20,000 tickets per year for kids I believe. £9 each apparently.
Well you believe wrong. Look beyond the headlines and you’ll see it’s 527 £9 tickets per season all with restricted views.
great call
The correct expression is ‘free rein’, like with a horse, let him do what he wants.
Phil. Part of your analysis above is based on a complete fallacy.
What on earth gives you the idea that Mike Gordon has been acting as some quasi-DoF? He is part of the ownership group (owning more than 10% of LFC) and has clearly been FSG’s point man for LFC, taking the most active involvement in the day to day affairs of the club, but DoF!? LFC has a Liverpool based CEO (a football man) with a Liverpool based Technical Director/DoF (a football man) reporting to him.
You say FSG know nothing about the subject they are involved in. Which owner or ownership group in England do you think knows more about running huge sports clubs/franchises? When it comes to a specific background with football, how may owners of Premier League clubs would qualify by your criteria? Not the owners of any of the other teams in the top 6. How many people or groups of people with the necessary hundreds of millions required to buy one of biggest clubs in the world do you think come with specific expertise in football?
I don’t care about their knowledge of running sports clubs or Franchises. Running a Baseball team isn’t transferrable to football. So tell someone who knows football to run it for you. I’ve no problem with them owning the club, I’ve a problem with them trying to do the football stuff off their own back.
I understand the point you are making Phil. But I really don’t see them trying to do the football bit any more than the Glazers or Stan Kroenke.
They employ people to do the football specific bit, as do the owners of all our rivals.
Spot on, Graeme.
For an institution the size of Liverpool FC to keep operating (not to mention winning trophies), both football experts and financial/business experts (among others) are needed. On the other hand, in order to start winning the league and challenge at the top consistently, the club would need a TOP TOP football expert and a TOP TOP business guru with long term vision to balance the winning with reality check.
Who is there at this moment in the market better football man than Klopp and his team? I can’t see anyone more suited to this role than Klopp. And based on all my readings about FSG (and their team of experts, including Ian Ayer) they are there with the selected group of top top sports owners with winning mentality and track record.
It’s easy to use FSG as punch bag or stress ball whenever result dips. But I look at the long term view for the club.and I have all the reasons to be confident that Klopp and FSG combination will work very well for the Liverpool FC not just for the near future, but for generations to come.
What’s wrong with FSG makes hundreds of millions out of this investment when they decide to exit. But I have no doubt that Liverpool will be left behind as being among the top top challenging clubs by then, no doubt.
I am just a normal lifelong fan and I do not know FSG. But I do know well enough about the large institutions and how long term success is ‘built to last’, and I know how to identify difference between scammers vs ethical investors. All signs point that FSG, together with Klopp, will deliver success to us. Long term.
well said
Well it’s LCC that limit the capacity to 60k and as for filling the ground it wasn’t hard at all getting tickets under BR.
The fact is a lot of folks hold onto the season ticket but don’t go themselves all the time.
What seems to get ignored, the story that doesn’t get told is that in 4 years we saw a genuine title challenging side built, it just happened to get ripped apart immediately.
We lost 2 strikers, Stevie got found out by other teams in his QB role and then we lost (the pace of) sterling.
Basically that team had to be rebuilt while we continue to wait on our mercurial striker to return to a leading role.
That’s the big kahuna that FSG didn’t see coming, that they would have to rebuild a title challenging side immediately it performed, (also while noone was fixing the defence).
And for those screaming net spend, the title challenge was made during the time before the club broke even. They were enduring annual loses.
Net spend is irrelevant by the way. It’s used by fans usually as a stick because they are simple numbers in a field where numbers are used as badly as possibly could be.
What matters is the amount of money released to buy players and what the annual accounts say in terms of profit or loss.
When a fan says they don’t care about business or accounts but then start to go on about net spend you know they are ignorant and can be safely ignored.
Look at the annual accounts or read the Swiss ramble or other stuff out there, it’s not that hard. It took 5 years for the club to break even and in that time the squad was massively refreshed and is being rebooted now in Klopp’s image.
With Europe we will likely require another 7 players this summer to withstand next season’s schedule. Any ‘profit’ the club has made in the 18 months of being in the black will be sorely needed this summer.
With that in mind, thank God we have business minds at the helm of the club that were prepared to see us lose money for 5 years while we rebuilt (and made a title challenge) but now provide us with the means to support a top class manager in this financially doped game.
Maybe that title challenge could have been sustained if they’d invested the Suarez money into a decent striker. My apologies, they did, they bought Mario. It’s naive to think FSG built a near title winning team. 4 of the players you mention had combined fee of £20m (Gerrard, Coutinho, Sterling and Sturridge) and 2 of them weren’t signed while the current owners were in charge. Hardly building a title challenging team. The truth is, without Suarez turning into one of the best players in the world it would have been the same 6th, 7th and 8th finish as every other year.
Not sure what a kahuna is but if FSG were unfortunate that Sturridge got injured and they had no back up for him then it’s pathetic management. Remind me why we lost the pace of Sterling? I thought it was because we stalled on offering an exciting young talent and one of the better players in the Prem for the previous season more than 30k a week. Did we have a replacement for Gerrard once he was ‘found out’? You mention no one was fixing the defence. Sounds to me they’ve been neglectful all over the pitch. Appalling ownership really. Oh yeah, but we made a profit in 13/14. Great stuff. I’ll sleep easy now.
“thank God we have business minds at the helm of the club that were prepared to see us lose money for 5 years while we rebuilt”. We had an operating profit in those years. There was legacy debt for stadium consultations and paying people off but the debt wasn’t a choice they made to rebuild.
You mention LCC limit the capacity to 60k. So where’s the 60k capacity? They don’t care enough to do it is the answer. It doesn’t bring them profit.
How can you say net spend is irrelevant? If you sell half your players they have to be replaced. Due to last summer’s positive net spend we have over £40m sitting in the bank and you could argue we are 1 £40m player away from challenging for the league. As it is we’ll be lucky to get top 4. Very ambitious.
Your very statement as described below is perhaps is the very problem, Those who have issues with FSG underdtand that’s their only interest, the balance sheet, and their get out value from as Henry stated himself, a steal…”Dont you get it, really” or perhaps an owner with plans of walking away with circa 750 million pounds that will never see LFC benefit from is seemingly ok…
“The performance of the club from a business point of view is good. Some people are happy to hang their hat on this as a means of telling you that things are good. Personally speaking, I couldn’t care less how the business is performing – the only way to judge this club should be on the performance on the pitch.”
Like Blackburn, Leeds, Rangers and to a lesser extent, Portsmouth?
You should very much care about how our club performs financially.
You’re wasting your breath with a lot of these so called fans. Self entitled moaners must of then.
It’s called a debate. Is that a problem or would you just like everyone to agree with you?
I’d argue all the ticket price hikes have been done out of malice considering the obscene money from the telly rights even compared to 5 years ago. One good league finish in five full seasons, one minor cup with a few lost finals and one pathetic, humiliating Champions League campaign. Getting Klopp in doesn’t mean they can take the piss pricing out fans. Get better or fuck off.
Phil, like everyone I’ve seen your comments on things over the past year. Probably looking at things from my own world view I think you’re quite balanced and fair. I tend to suffer from mood swings, haha but in general I feel I can relate to your thinking on things.
Just a quick note, polarisation is my buzz word at the minute. Whether it’s FSG, Brexit or Trump we seem to have lost all reason. I could, but I won’t, make a case both for Brexit and against even though I’m pro Europe. It seems people have been asked to nail their colours to the mast. Racist or snow flake (as they now say). There is a middle ground. I feel it’s the same for FSG. Out of interest and aimed more at FSG than a political statement, I feel Europe is good but needs reforming.
The point of above was to try to convey I’m not one for polarisation as such. I’ve always thought FSG are ok but this week something changed. Some TAW subscribers may know the point I’m going to make because I made it on the fb page whilst drunk and aggressive but woke up in the night and deleted it. I’ll be honest, much as I find it pathetic I nearly came to blows in the pub on Monday. A city fan was giving it – LFC are inconsequential to us. We don’t even look at you in the table. You’re a joke of a club etc etc. My natural reaction was to slate City but I left feeling like he’d won the debate over owners.
The bottom line is ALL City fans love the Sheikh Mansour. He’s taken them from obscurity to league winners. They will win the CL in the next decade. What he’s done to North East Manchester is incredible. Their income is over £100m more than ours (this is a club who no one supports). They have the highest wage bill, the new academy, womens football, cheap season tickets etc, etc. Now, I’ve always used FFP as a means to defend FSG but the bottom line is City want to succeed to the extent they’re prepared to look for ways to bend the rules. The stadium and fan base has different variables to ours but never the less, they haven’t gone to the absolute max they can get away with charging. Remember when the tv money came in and most of ours went up? The bottom line is this – the City fans in the pub said we love our owners. They’ve taken us to places we couldn’t have dreamed of. Yours are just in it for the money. You win nothing and really, your goal is top 4 while ours is winning stuff. I vehemently denied that, again nearly coming to blows but is it completely wrong? I suppose my main gripe is the Annie Road. There’s no profit in it so…….
I’m all for FSG making profit if it’s as they initially said, mutually beneficial i.e. the club is successful so worth more but at the end of the day how far are they prepared to go to bring us success. The stadium loan is safe. It comes back to them in 5 years. Fact. Absolutely no risk. The interview of Henry in New York a couple of months ago subconsciously tells us all we need to know about the relationship between us, the fans, and them. ‘There’s an issue with ticket pricing in England’, re the Annie Road development.
I’m starting to think there’s a mentality among our fans, and i will it, primarily among the American ones, of being grateful. If you criticise you’re ungrateful. Well, whatever happens, they’re already on to make about £800m and it’s all been absolutely risk free. They haven’t put their neck on the line. If I had £300m I’d have happily bought LFC knowing what I knew then. I don’t think we need to be grateful for anything. Self interest drives them. Maybe self interest drives Sheikh Mansour but success at any cost is his goal. Just a point to end on, I said to the City fan (and my best mate, who’s also a City fan) when we win the league we can know in our hearts we’ve done it the right way. They couldn’t breathe for laughing. They told me about the time Aguero scored the winner v QPR and how they didn’t think once about the owners. Only about how they were going to celebrate for the next 3 months. I want us to have more ambition now. There are ways, FFP or not. You just have to want it enough. Do they?
You don’t want the owners to have more ambition, you want them to have more money.
Well, it’s fair to say that any business doesn’t show ambition by just talking about it. It usually involves investment. But, you’re wrong, I know the connotation of what you’re saying, I’ve seen your comment above. My guess is you’re too detached from actually watching Premier league football live to understand. I’m not talking about sugar daddy money.
It’s The club could can afford £75m spread over 7 years. That’s £11m a year. If they added a 5k seats in the Annie Road (that’s the stand opposite the Kop) and charged £45 over 18 league games it’s over £4m a season revenue. Add another £1m minimum for cup games, increased merchandise, food and beer sales and the club would only need to subsidise it by less than £6m a year. In 7 years the club would make an extra £5m a season. More people would be able to go and watch and inadvertently, the team may get more points. For them, their asset would be worth a lot more as a going concern. As infrastructure isn’t included in FFP it wouldn’t affect transfers. You get a loan. It wouldn’t cost the owners a penny out of their own pockets. That’s what I mean by ambition. As a side note, the new main stand will be paid off with LFC’s money over 5 years and will increase their ‘asset’ by close to £200m and that’s why they’ve done it.
Then there’s transfers / wages. The club has a set amount to spend depending on what the club makes. No outside money would be required. Imagine, insteading of spending £20m on Markovic, or £7m on Ilori, Aspas, Alberto or Coates we’d said, tell you what let’s give this prodigy Dele Alli the extra few grand he wants a week. Or, let’s not buy Markovic, let’s spend an extra £5m a year on wages over 4 years and offer our main transfer target an extra £100k a week to try and entice them. That’s ambition. It’s all the clubs own money, they only decide how it’s spent and their way has yielded 6th, 7th and 8th place finishes in all but 1 of their seasons which is below par in every statistical analysis there is. It’s a risk free (no high earners on the books) strategy that isn’t working. Good players win things. Average ones rarely do.
I’m convinced that what is happening among our fan base, you included, is that you feel sorry for the owners and it manifests itself in ‘being grateful’. Well, feel sorry for me instead. I’ve supported LFC all my life and love everything about the club (except 80% of it’s fans). I spend a good percentage of my annual income on LFC and I don’t have any excess cash. I go to bed at night worrying about when LFC will win the league. Henry didn’t even know the club 6 years ago. Henry and his men are set to make over £1b from our malaise. He owns yachts and can afford anything in the world. When he goes to bed at night Linda comes in and rides him. Who’s the winner here? They need to be more ambitious. Success is well within our grasp. It just needs a bit more commitment.
That is a great comment, Robin.
Hedge fund owners with no previous interest in football do not buy football clubs for love. Nothing wrong with that, provided they bring us the success we crave at the same time as they make themselves yet more money. Unfortunately they are also clever enough to know that they can make loads of money out of Liverpool without taking the risk of spending huge sums on the most expensive players and trying to actually win the premier league. And they found the perfect manager too who is both pretty successful and doesn’t seem overly fussed with spending big. I bet they can’t believe their luck.
The only fly in the ointment for them must be those pesky Liverpool supporters who don’t leave them alone and are constantly moaning about the lack of real success on the pitch. I say to all those supporters – keep badgering them, don’t let up. If the owners have the best interests of the club at heart, then they have nothing to worry about. But if they don’t, well the one thing they won’t like, and which may affect the value of their investment and potential for a future sale at a top price, is a downright hostile fanbase. I’m not saying we should be hostile now, but they need to understand we are watching them and will do our utmost to hold them to account.
I hope I’m very wrong and being very unfair. I will be the first to hold my hands up if that’s the case. But it’s for them to prove that to us, not for us to just act as their cheerleaders as some on here and other sites would have you believe.
There is something that doesn’t seem quite right about them, In my opinion. Maybe it’s just that they are American and don’t understand football. Maybe it’s the stuff about it being a “steal”. Yes there are counter arguments about them going for Klopp but a) Klopp is a bit of a romantic and may have bought into the idea of the history and reawakening a big club more than he bought into the owners and 2) even if they had to pay him a big salary they would have loved his talk about not spending big On players just for the sake of it. They must be terrified of a Mourinho type.
Also, some of the people writing passionate and overly zealous defences of them on this site and others do make me feel a little suspicious, I must say. ..
Anyhow this is admittedly all idle speculation but hardly surprising when they hardly utter a word about the club or its direction. Maybe those will improve with the new CEO.
Which club has the CEO or MD coming out and talking about the club rather than the manager?
Don’t care about other clubs, only looking at ours and how it should be run.
Maybe THAT will improve I meant. Multi billion dollar company Apple may be, but writing a blooming message on an iPhone is still such an arse.
Where exactly do you feel that Mike Gordon is going to fall short as a Director of Football? As the position seems to vary from club to club, assuming the role is going to consist of what a general manager does in baseball seems short sighted. Comparing it to Klopp going to the Red Sox to coach the team to what Gordon will do as Director of Football doesn’t seem a like for like comparison at all. While he was/is heavily involved in the transfer committee that’s the only thing I can judge him on and there have definitely been positives and negatives since our “famed committee” was established, but he wasn’t the only person in control of those moves.
If memory serves, when we wanted Rodgers FSG were also looking to bring in a Director of Football, with the lead candidate being a certain Louis van Gaal. I’m guessing this is the type of candidate you’re looking for in a DoF?
When it comes to the stadium FSG have improved from Hicks and Gilette, but that’s not saying much. Seating needs to improve to compete in the modern era of football, and if they think anything under 60,000 is acceptable, then they should leave simply on that stance. Their slogan last year on the website was particularly embarrassing (I can’t remember specifically what it said, but essentially turning fans into customers), and as owners I feel this is where they fall the shortest. It shouldn’t take a walkout for them to realize the pulse of their fan base. Time will tell if FSG are going to continue to invest in the club, but not lose sight of what makes the club great.