The signing of Wataru Endo has been met with some negative responses from fans, so where do Liverpool stand in this transfer window arms race?
TURBULENT times, chefs.
Liverpool’s transfer mayhem has resembled the kitchen of a Chicago sandwich bar, more than a slick footballing operation being spearheaded by middle aged men in blazers and Converse.
I am, of course, cross referencing FX’s hit TV series The Bear, here. Replicating the reality of a turbulent workplace with chaotic management from reality to fiction is the epitome of going from the frying pan to the fire.
But the kids have a new take, a new take on faith. And we all need our escape routes.
One of the show’s key props is the cigarette, used to facilitate conversations and negotiations by Jeremy Allen-White, who plays lead character Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto.
That cooks who work in highly pressured kitchens may enjoy the increasingly outdated habit of cigarette smoking is no shock. Kitchen diaries of 20-hour days, filled with relentlessly choking deadlines and little thanks, take their toll.
Watching The Bear doesn’t scream “I want to become a chef and take up smoking 40-a-day” in the same way Jorg Schmadtke’s travails make the role of Premier League Sporting Director an increasingly unappetising endeavour.
But the journey of the cigarette is an interesting one. Despite ludicrous marketing campaigns which date back to the 1940s and include images of GP’s lighting up to pacify health fears, the industry has never really had to do any heavy lifting when it comes to advertising.
All the cool kids smoked. You couldn’t see your favourite movie star on TV without a cigarette. If The Beatles could play instruments and sing with one in their hands or mouth during the 1960s, they would have.
Now and rightly so, smoking is an increasingly unfashionable concept. Its devastation to health has dawned on people, many too late. Duty rates on tobacco makes them less financially enticing, also. But there’s something else.
Smoking has stopped being cool. Nobody wants to smoke on screen or otherwise. You are a pariah to those around you. In a nutshell, society and people power has shunned it.
Correlation can be found in reality transfer and fictional kitchen chaos.
Questions are arising around the economic foolery which is only increasing football’s sense of being out of touch with what’s real.
Britain and the British, in particular, has a fantastic knack for abstaining from concepts and conversations it decides it can’t impact or those perceived to not impact upon it.
In a football sense, we’re much the same. We assume that governance around fair spending doesn’t work, so what can realistically be expected of the masses? And after all, why should we?
“It’s not my money being spent so it doesn’t impact me.”
Let’s gloss over the obvious price of match tickets, TV subscriptions and kits for a moment. We see transfers as Football Manager economics. Something we monopolise through numbers alone. No consequences, highest number wins. First past the post.
The only way you get Romeo Lavia or Moises Caicedo is to have the deepest pockets. If you sign a player from Stuttgart for under £20million in Wataru Endo then he’s already a failure based solely on the pittance of outlay given.
Football is reaping the economy it has sewn since 1992. From Saudi Arabia to Todd Boehly’s amortised Blues, the football world is now fracking for oil in an increasingly arid world.
All of this is without mentioning the type of footballers, people and role models we’re creating.
It shouldn’t be cool. We shouldn’t be advocating it. Inhaling it into our lungs from the tip to our lip should be rejected. We, the collective we, should find the concept of this level of transactional and individual wealth uncouth, absurd and very much not for us.
People stop smoking for their health and sense of self preservation. While there are many Liverpool supporters who have viewed the last two weeks as detrimental to their wellbeing, this, of course, isn’t the same.
But how many people do you know who have walked away from football with money being in some way the primary factor? From relatability to cost of engagement, it’s there.
How this would look is unclear. Staging some form of protest for spending money, as delicious as it sounds, is entirely at odds with current football culture.
It would have to be gradual. There would likely be patches involved where we wean ourselves off, one ludicrous fee at a time.
Maybe algorithms and influencers will hipster-ise about being Brighton instead of a Chelsea. Perhaps the real emergence and “winners of the transfer market” will be those who unearth talent at a fraction of cost and create a world where the lowest number wins.
Because winning is important. It’s still everything. Chelsea will likely win more than Brighton, but they still should be the Trump to our Jacinda.
The adage is that to win, our clubs need ambition. Yet they need to spend the most to quantify that ambition to win.
I don’t believe that we’ve reached a point of no return. Transfer windows are becoming increasingly unrealistic endeavours, but the game plays out for nine months and we are reunited with the raw materials of sporting competition.
Liverpool shot their Caicedo shot. If it had come off, a large proportion of our fanbase would have been pacified for a minute. When the team next lost, the new narrative of not spending enough on a defender would have emerged. It’s a false economy. A losing hand whatever happens.
Chelsea wins in the eyes of many with Caicedo and Lavia. But what happens to a midfield with a trio of eight-year contracts if they aren’t winning games of football? What happens now that you’ve engulfed supporters in a haze of transfer-induced vape?
We love the exciting nature of what transfers are and the endless possibilities they represent. That doesn’t mean that supporters should prop up an increasingly unhealthy aspect of this industry.
This isn’t a call to arms. It’s not a plan to televise the revolution. Perhaps I’m engaging in too many pressurised concepts.
Maybe if I can’t stand the heat I should get out of the kitchen.
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“He can take the ball with speed through the midfield.”
“In the last three seasons, he made 33 games out of 34 games in the Bundesliga. He’s totally fit and I would be very confident that you don’t have to worry about his age.”
🗣 Journalist & Stuttgart fan @platschinho pic.twitter.com/sFt7SvTOwl
— The Anfield Wrap (@TheAnfieldWrap) August 17, 2023
Out with Chelsea, I’m not sure that that many fans are totally unhinged and sitting in front of screens waiting for £80-100m signings to pop up every other day!
Certainly for the vast majority of Liverpool fans who are feeling a little uncomfortable with the last 9-12 months at the club, it is more a case of wondering what has happened to targeting specific players that fit a particular skill-set compatible with areas that the team needs strengthening and making steady and quiet progress towards getting them.
This summer we have managed to get in two players that fit that bill – both achieved through release clauses.
After that, we seem to have had our brains scrambled as much as Henderson and Fabinho by the Saudi approaches!
We were under no pressure to sign off on those moves before organising incoming players; certainly Henderson was never going to down tools like a Caceido or Mitrovic over pre-season.
A verbal thumbs up to both players, buyers and agents with a commitment from all to keep quiet while we buzzed about in the background with a “hidden hand” in negotiations was the way this would have went 24 months ago…
Nowadays, we seem overly transfixed by single target players, showing our hand early and seemingly incapable of walking away at the right moment.
We have panicked on Caceido, apparently swallowing a load of BS from his agent after approaching 24 hours before launching a record bid.
We have continued to dally with Southampton over Lavia, when it was clear their valuation was far, far higher than ours and led ourselves a merry dance ending with a bid beyond the previous “buy it now” price and a player thinking that we didn’t rate him enough to take his chances against 800 other players vying for a starting slot in his position at Chelsea!!
Our recruitment dept is decimated by resignations, we had more than 6 months notice on Ward leaving and still seem no closer of replacing him properly; and we appear willing to mortgage the next 5-6 seasons on players for a manager that finishes in 24 months, has almost no record of building a “second generation” at a club and has had his greatest success working in partnership with a strong Sporting Director leading on recruitment in Edwards and Zorc.
This is not the smart business of FSG v.1 – that struck fast to land Klopp, recruited smartly from the level below elite tier and developed players to the pinnacle and that could land a target for 30% lower than their rivals for similar signings.
It is little to do with increasing market spending – that comes with increasing revenues across the board; but appears rooted in intransigence and, a little, arrogance on the part of the senior leadership team running the day to day….