THERE’S a conspiracy theory doing the rounds that Liverpool’s owners have secretly known all along that they would be selling Phil Coutinho this summer.
It follows that Liverpool’s care-free £70million level bidding for the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Naby Keita is happening safe in the knowledge that potential deals will be retro funded by the sale of the star Brazilian.
The evidence cited is Fenway Sports Group’s somewhat parsimonious net spending over the past few transfer windows. Liverpool even made a profit on the ins and outs last summer. The previous two years saw Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling leave to fund summer purchasing. That many fans suspect that our American owners are interested only in keep the club ticking over and riding the relentless TV money gravy train, is not an entirely irrational concern.
FSG can, and maybe should, file their own defence against these accusations. They have the opportunity to emphatically do so this summer by securing Keita and van Dijk, while simultaneously resisting Barcelona’s attempts to acquire Coutinho.
The paranoid argument is that FSG don’t intend to hit these targets, that they are luring us into a false sense of belief that they are born-again investors in our project, is a flawed one.
Jürgen Klopp heaved a talented but tired, and often reduced, Liverpool squad over the line and into fourth place last season. It was a mission accomplished, but only just. The manager had been concerned as early as November 2016 that he was short of bodies. He said that he needed wingers ahead of the January transfer window. By the turn of the year Coutinho was injured, Daniel Sturridge was struggling and Sadio Mane was away on international duty. Roberto Firmino, a player used to a winter break, was playing game in, game out.
Towards the end of the campaign both our main Brazilians struggled to get into games at times. Midfielders Adam Lallana and Jordan Henderson went missing with injuries for long spells. Mane’s season ended on April 1 with a knee problem sustained in the derby. At the back, Lucas Leiva saw more game time than he’d envisaged as Joel Matip and Dejan Lovren proved consistently injury prone.
In his end of term summations Klopp conceded that he had been short of players. He noted too that Liverpool would be facing the additional demands of European competition in 2017-18. A squad already lightweight in numbers clearly needed at least as much new quantity as it did additional quality.
Liverpool will lose the deputy left back, and have already lost the most trusted deputy centre back. Lovren and Matip need more than covering. If Liverpool sign van Dijk they will be replenishing the squad as much as improving it.
The departed Lucas and Kevin Stewart also backed up in midfield when resources were diminished. If Keita is signed he brings the midfield level to par as much as he takes the team up a dimension.
Build a case then for Mo Salah being Coutinho’s de facto replacement in the front three, and Liverpool will have spent (if they sign Keita and van Dijk for £140m) a total of £190m while shifting Coutinho for around £110m.
Let’s then assume the rest of the books are near balanced by selling unneeded extras like Mamadou Sakho, Alberto Moreno and Lazar Markovic. If all this happens then FSG will find it hard to resist the accusation that they always intended to sell Coutinho.
The problem with this doomsday prediction (or analysis) is it would mean Liverpool open the forthcoming season with no more quantity in the squad than they finished the previous one with — a season in which the squad was already thin and heading into a new one which requires additional resource for the Champions League.
FSG may be bottom line motivated by default but they aren’t stupid. Nor is Klopp. If the plan was always to sell Coutinho and replace him with Keita then the Liverpool manager was a party to it. And this is where things start to not add up. Literally. Klopp demanded quantity as much as he did quality. Adding Salah, van Dijk, Keita and Andy Robertson is only replacing Coutinho, Lucas, Sakho and Moreno. At best it gives one more first-team option. The manager was looking for four or five more to cope with the workload in 2017-18.
Selling Coutinho doesn’t fund Keita and van Dijk, it creates a further requirement for adding to the squad. If Coutinho goes, Klopp is banging a table for at least two more top attacking players. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has already been earmarked but he has never been intended as a replacement for Coutinho.
Selling our ace Brazilian and selling him now, with just over two weeks until the season starts wouldn’t just represent a loss of quality to the squad, it would represent a planning disaster.
Cynics wouldn’t put such incompetence past Liverpool’s back of house team, but the suspicions of Machiavellian plotting just don’t wash.
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I was waiting for you to come to a conclusion there Rob but you didn’t seem to – unless it was the rhetorical one you referred to earlier in the piece and you didn’t want to say it – that FSG knew what they were doing all along?
eerrr…they haven’t actually done anything all along yet. Its pretty obvious why the Keita deal and the Van Dijk one are dragging out….and its nothing to do with selling Coutinho – as much as this piece’s author might like it to be. if it was it would have been the topic on the gutter shows for weeks rather than the last few days.
Its kinda mad how social media twists the mind of even the most level headed person.
FSG are not a crowd of idiots. Their management of the Red Sox indicates such. They want to win, and win big. I always thought Klopp was their choice for LFC even when Rogers came in, but wasn’t available. That Klopp resigned and took a ‘sabbatical’ to me, gave them an opportunity to progress to their first choice. Conspitorial, yes, but logical as Rogers thought, having the job he had made it, wrong. Following this trend, Klopp was always going to be backed to the hilt. No signings in January, because what he wanted was not available. Unfortunate with injuries gave opportunities for fringe players and progressive kids to step in and enhance their development, or shop windowing, though not ideal, managed. Now we look at who he is after, and senior players back fit, we seem to have an abundance of riches. If we get the players good, if we don’t, we should fancy our chances in all completions with what we have, nothing to do with FSG not funding the club. Do not think anyone we have is going anywhere unless Klopp wants them to.
“If we get the players good, if we don’t, we should fancy our chances in all completions with what we have, nothing to do with FSG not funding the club”
How can anyone “fancy our chances” when we have acquired ONE first team regular player and only managed to scrape 4th last season despite having no other competition for the most part.
FSG will have been here a decade in a couple of seasons and have won fuck all.
I couldn’t agree more. When FSG rescued us from the horrible duo Hicks/Gillet back in 2010, I was slightly optimistic about the future. And you can’t deny we are a better club now than we were back then (just look the new Anfield for a start). But on the pitch, I simply don’t have the same feeiling. I was hoping to see us building on that great 2013/2014 season, but in fact we haven’t much progressed since. No regular CL football, no trophy’s in our magnificant cabinet, no battles for the league title, missing out on great transfers most of the time… Selling Coutinho this summer will mean we ‘ve sold our three most valuable players three summers in a row. Sound like a lack of ambition to me…
Both the optics and the reality of his absence on the pitch would be a disaster for us. It’s just a no-go. He signed a contract in January, FFS. If Neymar goes to PSG then obviously the pressure would crank up, but I think that is very far from a done deal. In all likelihood both Neymar and Phil will be staying put and we’ll be reheating these arguments in a year’s time. By then, ideally, we’ll be PL and CL champions, and at the very least, back in the CL for the following season, with a decent kitty to try and bag a replacement. Unless Woodburn is the second coming. Which would be nice.
On a related point, the splurging this summer is unlikely to be repeated again. This is surely the last of the TV megabucks. Look at what Sky Sports are doing. The internet is eating into the purse and there will be some retrenchment. Given that we made a profit last summer, haven’t spent any money the last two January windows and had modest net spend the summers before that, we’re due a big one. Spend now on VVD and Keita et al and save later.
One final point: if I was FSG and I’d bought LFC with one eye on financial fair play evening up the playing pitch, I’d be pretty disgusted looking at City potentially spunking almost £400m in one window.
isn’t one of the main arguments for Coutinho wanting to join Barcelona is that his mate Neymar is there? Sell Neymar to PSG and that’s one less reason.
Has no one listened and taken on board FSG’s original values and ethos for LFC which still has not changed!? Their original transfer policy was to buy young players that could be developed and would have a respectable “re-sale value”. Words out of their own mouths. Coutinho will be sold if not this summer 101% next, not just because FSG recognise the numbers behind the players but also Coutinho will want to go (who wouldn’t want to play for Barca if you had the talent). We all know we don’t keep players that don’t want to play for us. I’d be delighted to be proved wrong but we are not a winning club because we do not have a winning mentality and haven’t had it for as long as I can remember. There are 3 teams more desperate to win the title and honours than us and put all their resources into it (everyone knows who they are). We cannot compete with them and will not be able to compete with them in the short or long term… unless…. Klopp is our only trump card.
Why do you think we were in talks with Mbappe… £100Mil for an 18 year old!? Everyone can see injuries barring he is the real deal and 100mil at 18 means how much when he is 21/22 ? We are run by American’s who are billionaires for a reason. They can smell money a pond away.
Barca will probably end up with Dybala. Like when they ended up with Rivaldo.
Another example of how Coutinho is like our modern day McManaman.
I blame myself for developing interest in club fanning. The time I would have spent doing something productive, shaping a good future for myself I spend it following Liverpool. I have always trusted Klopp and Liverpool’s future, seeing that with the likes of Couthino, Firmino, Mane and some other talented and developing players that the club just need to add a few to and with such a good coach the sky will be the limit only to have come to realise that Liverpool have no ambition and that I av been waisting time, risking my life developing and promotinh another selfish “wise man”.
“The previous two years saw Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling leave to fund summer purchasing.”
No they didn’t. They left because they wanted to move on. As with Keita where you think Leipzig keeping an unhappy player is counter productive for them – we sold. The fact the money ended up funding spending is neither here nor there. Its not the reason they were sold. See Torres and Alonso too.
I think by quantity Jürgen Klopp meant he wanted near enough 2 players for every position that met required standard and by shifting out the “shit” and unwanted and bringing in VVD/Keita keeping Can adding Ox and then maybe a surprise in someone like Pulisic or Isco with the Coutinho money then sure we’d all get on board with that..
“Hello Southampton Chairman.Everybody knows that you have a player we want and he wants to join us but we can’t ask you about him directly. So…are there any players you have who might be available? Not naming names but we need a big, dead good defender and we have lots of money,as much as you want. And can we also have your scouting department while we’re at it ?”
Surely Neymar will stay at Barcelona after he gets the pay rise he wants?
Is the reason that Liverpool have not reported Barca for blatant tapping up because they don’t want to be accused of hypocrisy, or are they secretly encouraging the approach?
If we did manage to play the season with van Dyk, Keita, Henderson ,Phil , Bobby , Mane and Mo we’d probably smash most teams out of sight within 20 minutes and could then put some kids on. (Except at Bournemouth,of course.) Squad depth sorted!
I’ve been saying for a couple of years that they need to poach Southampton’s scouts. Let’s cut out the middleman.
we cherry pick the best..like they do from Celtic. Maybe we put a word in with brendan
If coutinho goes it will be the final declaration that FSG have zero interest in winning. They are sucking the asset dry whilst treading water in 4-7 place in a lucrative league. At least I won’t worry about top four next year – why worry if all I’m doing is showing concern for FSGs wallet? Couldn’t care less about that
Ok – but since they have said he is not for sale? And since they have never taken a penny out of the club in salary or dividend, and have provided repeated assurances that all revenues will be reinvested in the club, you can’t really say they are sucking it dry can you.
Of course he can.
FSG will cash in when they sell. Especially since they bought the club for a song.
Is this not obvious to you?
I was one of the many on social media stoking the coals about this conspiracy theory. As much as I respect the team at TAW, and especially Rob, I don’t agree that we can just toss this FSG theory aside so quickly. LFC are a better club with FSG considering the previous crowd but let’s face it, the bar wasn’t particularly high to start with. Expanding Anfield was imperative, not a nice to have.
We know that Coutinho came to LFC during the 2013 winter window for the bargain price of just 8.5M from Inter.
Who knows what really goes on behind closed doors at Football Clubs. It’s not so much about conspiracy theories as much as it is about questioning motives. Nobody on here knows for sure what the men with the cheque books are doing. What we do know is there’s a theory about what possibly drives FSG financial policy. They made a movie about it. Remember Moneyball? Moneyball doesn’t only apply to the policy for acquisition. It applies to player sales too. As a reminder of what Moneyball is about:
“The Moneyball thesis is simple: Using statistical analysis, small-market teams can compete by buying assets that are undervalued by other teams and selling ones that are overvalued by other teams.”
That definition comes from some article I found, written in 2011 and mostly discusses baseball. Despite the context and the age of the article, I truly believe it still applies.
Coutinho represents stock. When does that particular stock peak in value? I’d guess 2017/18 and 2018/19. What happens next season? TV money might reduce, affecting the market negatively and thus reducing the potential sale value of that particular stock. To FSG’s men in charge of fiscal policy, the potential offer from Barcelona this season might well represent maximum profit and thus the optimum time to sell their most profitable stock. I’d imagine they have sophisticated systems and algorithms to predict these things and right now, I think Coutinho has triggered a few alarms that it’s time to sell… you know, to ensure maximum profit.
The problem as I see it, is Klopp. As those alarms are getting louder and louder, he’s digging in his heels saying “Hell no, not without a replacement… and I’ll choose…” Coutinho is then mysteriously said to be moving to a deeper more central role and suddenly we enter the Keita debacle to sign a midfielder we don’t actually need.
Unless, that is, we need a central playmaker who’s able to step up to contribute key passes. Keita would certainly be a great option going forward should we lose Coutinho. He’s certainly a better passer than both Gini and Emre comparing positively to Coutinho in pass stats on Squawka. Forward passes and successful passes are on par with Phil, but he lacks what Phil delights us with most often. Shots on target.
Yes, it’s all a theory but not an entirely ridiculous one that’s said to make “no sense”.
It’s certainly a theory. In the same way “US faked the moon landings” and “Prince Phillip had Princess Diana murdered” are theories.
The club is merely an asset to FSG and will be sold when conditions are right. This is why the club is run on a tight shoestring and not to win or seriously compete.
I don’t think you are interested in the realities of football finance, and the realities of LFC’s finance on particular.
Money out has to be matched against money in. LFC had 4th highest salary costs in the last available accounts and posted a loss. That is not a club being run on a shoestring.
Don’t know about a conspiracy theory but if Couts dreams of Barca then let him go, just not this season. It’s to late in the day for planning a replacement. Next summer we can bring in a player of similar quality and integrate them into the squad.
Standard FSG PR tactic…divert fans attention from the fact we have only signed one player for the first XI by spreading rumours we are selling a player.
Coutinho isn’t Barca calibre.
It’s frustrating to see a squad that was short in numbers last season by fans and even Klopp’s own admission not be bolstered to the level it requires, it is essentially the same squad that fell short when injuries kicked in. Whilst i’m not sweating gushes of fluid at the thought of we haven’t spent the money we could spend, i’m a bit concerned that Klopp likes his targets to be sorted before or during the early part of pre season. So that they can get into the flow of his style and bond with the lads etc. I do not buy that FSG were always looking to sell Phillipe as the club has taken a huge step to get back into the Champions League and then to turn around and sell our best player, that sounds crazy. Also i’m sure Klopp having been at Dortmund watching his best players leave to Munich would not want to be part of a similar system where he builds up a club only to see his best players leave. There has been some bumbling this summer sure VVD and Keita we seem to of not read the messages coming from Southampton and Red Bull regarding those players, the Southampton thing is baffling as we have done so much business with them that you’d think we could just approach the club and open a dialogue with them rather then sneaking around behind their backs. This season has to be an improvement on 4th and dare i say it a cup win. Liverpool needs something to cling to being it a cup win or a proper stab at a league challenge.