I LOVE magic.
Since I was a young boy I’ve been captivated by someone’s ability to make things disappear or to make something materialise from nowhere. I was always amazed by how even the most hardened of grown ups around me were astounded by these magical moments, which just confirmed in my mind that something wondrous had taken place.
As I got older and started to learn how most magic tricks were done I became less enamoured by someone’s ability to make the Statue of Liberty disappear (spoiler alert: it didn’t), and more interested in the world of psychological magic. Regular readers and listeners will no doubt have heard me mention Derren Brown on numerous occasions, and my fascination with that world led later in my adult life to an interest in all things psychological. It still amazes me to this day that so little credit is given to the power of our brains, especially when our brain is the main thing which separates us from wild animals roaming the planet.
When people in 2018 talk about mental health as being some new thing despite us having been talking about physical health for years simply astounds me. Everyone’s happy to accept that someone’s heart is a bit dodgy after years of smoking, but mention the fact that the most complex part of our bodies is damaged in some way and many people still react with disdain and disbelief. Truly mind boggling.
What now intrigues me most about our powerful operating system, though, is how, if you know enough about it you can hack into your own in order to improve performance and, if you’re very skilled, hack into the minds of others.
It’s again a general ignorance to this magical power available to us all which makes anyone not aware of it vulnerable to being exploited. We see it every day in the world of politics, in the media and in advertising. I still know people who think that they’re immune to the power of advertising yet find themselves inexplicably humming the song from a Dairy Milk advert while they suddenly feel the urge to eat a bar of chocolate.
So, what’s the point in all of this and how does it have anything to do with a football website and podcast?
I’ve realised this week that there’s a great magic trick being played on the entire Premier League which very few people seem to have noticed and, more poignantly, very few people seem to mind.
We’re all being conned and we’re lapping it up because, especially at Liverpool Football Club, we trust the people conning us. It’s an old school confidence trick combined with one of the greatest forms of misdirection you’ll ever see (or, more appropriately, not see).
For those who aren’t as fascinated by the world of psychology and magic as I am, misdirection in this sense is basically the art of making people look elsewhere while you pull off a trick. It’s the reason magicians can take your watch off your arm without you feeling it and pickpockets can steal your wallet from your jeans pocket without you having an inkling that it’s gone.
In its most basic form, it’s shouting “LOOK OVER THERE!” to give you time to run in the opposite direction.
The biggest form of misdirection being used in the Premier League right now, not just by Liverpool but by every other top six side is this:
“EVERYONE LOOK AT MANCHESTER CITY!”
Now that you’re aware of it, let your mind wander to all the times over the past few months when you’ve heard someone from a football club mention Manchester City as a reason for their own club’s shortcomings.
Our own elite manager was doing it in a full-length article at the weekend, which is when the penny dropped for me.
“We can’t possibly compete with Manchester City so we have to do it a different way.”
Don’t believe a word of it.
At the moment, on the pitch, Liverpool Football Club is on course to accumulate 74 points based on its points per game ratio so far this season. Obviously, there are arguments that we should accumulate more than that by finishing the season in a stronger fashion than we started it, but for every argument that can be made that we’ll get better, there’s a counter argument that starts with “we sold Philippe Coutinho and didn’t bring in another player”.
Let’s be generous, though, and say that we’ll hit the 80-point mark this season. Eighty points was never going to be enough to win the league, whether another team had a record breaking start to the season or not. So why is Manchester City in any way relevant to us right now? We’ve played them twice in the league, winning one and losing one. Literally a neutral effect on our league position relative to theirs. We had the same opportunity to buy more players in the summer and the same opportunity to buy more players in January. We chose not to.
Ah — you might say — but Manchester City have an unlimited pot of cash that can be spent accumulating players, which is why they started the season so well.
Perhaps. As has been well reported, they’ve spent just over half a billion pounds on players in 19 months since Pep Guardiola arrived in sunny Manchester. Astounding, you might say. Ruining the game, you might cry.
But so what? So what if Manchester City pays £43million for a player from Monaco? We paid £35m for a lad from Arsenal. They had to replace all of their full backs in one fell swoop because previous managers had allowed their title winners to age together and their legs fall off simultaneously. Yes, you might say, but we wouldn’t have been able to afford to replace those players all at once like they have.
And I’d say, why the fuck not?
Well, you might proclaim from the back, Financial Fair Play and all that.
Ah, the wonderful distraction of FFP. How our owners must wish that it had been enforced in the way that they thought it would when they bought the club. FFP was the perfect excuse. FFP was the magic trick that would allow us to rein in the spending of our rivals while giving us an advantage over everyone else because of our size.
But it hasn’t happened, so it’s time to change the record.
Manchester City have spent more than its entire annual turnover on transfer fees, without any second thought. Why? I’d guess the club is confident that UEFA won’t touch it because it’s too difficult politically to do so. After all, Paris Saint-Germain have been spending money it couldn’t justify by reference to its income and nothing has happened to the Parisian giants. Will UEFA really throw Man City and PSG out of the Champions League or punish them in some other significant way? It’s incredibly unlikely.
And yet, whenever our manager and owners decide that their chosen model is to buy calmly and patiently rather than accumulating world-class players all at once, they can’t help but point at Manchester City and shout “LOOK, THEY’VE GOT MORE MONEY THAN US!”.
However, as our own manager has admitted, for the vast majority of the time it’s irrelevant how much money they have as far as we’re concerned. We don’t care what our neighbours are buying for their garden because we’re looking after our own rockery.
We didn’t want to buy Kyle Walker, so they could have paid £20m or £200m for him and it wouldn’t have made a difference to us.
Remember, the club continues to play this huge red herring of a magic trick despite us having just paid a world-record fee for a defender, paying enough to make sure that the very club that we hold aloft as the reason for everyone else struggling couldn’t take him from under our noses.
We pay £75m for a player one minute, and plead poverty the next.
In the Jürgen Klopp interview that I referenced earlier, Man City’s pursuit of Riyad Mahrez for £60m, allegedly to cover for the injury to Leroy Sane, was referenced, to which Klopp replied “Next level, eh?”.
What amazes me is that no one says “next level of what?”. Are we saying that we can’t afford to pay £60m for an attacker who could help our season when we’ve just sold one of our best attackers for £142m? Really? If so, why and, if not, why does the club keep making these noises?
I’m all about getting into the details and the specifics of any given situation, and this is no different. We say we can’t do what Man City can do, but we don’t need to, do we?
How much extra would it have cost to bring Naby Keita to Anfield in January? £20m? £30m? Whatever the number was we could afford it, but we chose not to spend it. That had nothing to do with Manchester City who, remember, ultimately refused to pay Leicester what they wanted for Mahrez and pulled out of the Alexis Sanchez race, so have their own self-imposed boundaries that they’re not prepared to cross.
Self-imposed being the operative words here. The top six clubs are all just choosing their own self-imposed lines not to be crossed, and those lines aren’t drawn by Manchester City, they’re drawn by the billionaire owners of each club.
In the same interview, Klopp mentioned that Mike Gordon said to him about Man City, “sorry they can do that and we can’t”.
Sorry they can do what? Spend £60m on one footballer? We can and we have. We are just making choices not to do it more regularly. Jürgen himself said in reply: “I know that’s impossible. So I don’t think about how we can compete.”
Think about that for a second. The manager of Liverpool FC saying “I know that’s impossible” when talking about the amount of money the multi-billionaire owners of a club can spend having just sold one of the club’s most prized assets.
What is it exactly that’s impossible? Spending half a billion in 19 months? That’s fine, we don’t need to do that. Is it impossible to spend £60m in one month? No. £100m? No. Is it impossible to make sure that if we let one of our best players leave during a season that is very much alive, that we have a suitable replacement coming in, perhaps a lad we have already bought? No, it’s far from impossible. The bigger question is what is the club willing to do to make things possible.
It’s worth noting that these aren’t the days of a billionaire Russian oligarch having more spending power than everyone else put together and changing the goalposts. This is the era of the top clubs being owned by multi billionaires with different ideas of how much of their wealth they want to invest in this particular toy.
Manchester City’s owners clearly have a wider strategy than most others to build a brand and a worldwide network, but that was a choice made by them as investors. They chose to invest heavily relative to the world of football in order to build a worldwide dynasty. They did so from a position of relative weakness and showed huge ambition and aggression to take the club and its network to where it is today. But they didn’t decide what all of the other clubs should do in reply.
Ironically, we now have Manchester United joining in with the bleating about their “noisy neighbours”. Manchester United, the single richest football club in the world. A club which has just bought the best player from one of their oldest rivals and paid him over £500,000 per week. A club which bought that player from under the noses of Man City because the blue side of Manchester wasn’t prepared to match the salary offered by Man United. A club which paid over £90m last year for a young midfielder with huge potential and paid £75m for a centre forward with doubts about his big-game mentality.
The owners at Arsenal have been singing this tune and pointing at the Etihad with as much passion and vigour as they possibly could for years now. “We’ve paid for a stadium”, “we don’t have their type of money”, “we’re doing it a different way”.
Great, but two of Arsenal’s biggest shareholders are worth $8.1billion and $12.9bn.
Hardly paupers, are they?
We even now have Chelsea complaining that Man City cannot be matched. Whatever happened to the Russian oligarch who ruined the game previously?
I have always supported the current owners of Liverpool FC on the basis that there were mitigating circumstances as to why they didn’t spend more money than they did in the past. There was a mess to clean up when they came in, then a series of managerial disappointments and structural issues within the club. But I wrote an article last summer about how they now seem to have their ideal team in place, both on and off the pitch, so the time for excuses is over.
The manager and owners can tell me that they want to do things differently. They can tell me that there is a plan in place that they think will deliver a Premier League title. They can tell me that they didn’t overpay to get any other players in January because of that plan (despite overpaying to get the centre back we wanted), and they can all risk the rest of this season on that gamble (and make no mistake it is a gamble), but please don’t tell me it’s because we can’t compete with Manchester City.
That’s an absolute red herring that none of us should buy.
Tell us you made a decision to do it in a certain way, but don’t make up nonsense that we don’t have the money to compete. We’ve just sold one of our best players for £142m and the club has increased in value by anything up to £2bn since Fenway Sports Group bought it. I appreciate that the owners provided a loan to build the Main Stand, but what funds have been spent by FSG on players that we see on the pitch? We have the money and, for whatever reason, a decision has been made not to spend it.
That has nothing to do with Manchester City.
We’re all falling for a trick played by a handful of billionaires telling us they’re all skint compared to the bigger billionaire when, in reality, they’re just all making different decisions about how much of their huge sums of money they want to spend on our football clubs that they’re currently playing with for their own personal gain.
Is there an argument that the spending of elite clubs is ruining the game for everyone else? Absolutely, and something should be done about it before it’s too late.
But don’t let any other elite club con you into thinking it’s only Manchester City to blame while simultaneously convincing everyone else that they can’t compete because of a relative lack of funds.
That argument can only ever stack up if and when we are buying players to our absolute financial limits and are outspent by a club with access to more financial resources.
Until then, the limits on us are largely self imposed, and we shouldn’t be complaining about any of our neighbours.
To crib a famous quote:
The greatest trick the multi-billionaire owners of elite Premier League clubs ever pulled was convincing the world they didn’t have enough money.
EDIT: The one key point that has been raised in reply which I should, in hindsight, have covered is one relating to the limitations (both by various rules and good business sense) of not being able to pay more in wages than we do currently, because of our relatively high ratio of wages to turnover, especially in comparison to our rivals.
There are two basic responses to that very valid point:
1. I’m not for a second suggesting that our owners should risk the future financial viability of our football club, or that we need to start competing with Manchester United’s offer to Sanchez (which, interestingly, Man City wouldn’t compete with either). What I am saying is that any financial issues, including salary restraints, do not justify us not buying the few extra players we needed, either in January or previously.
Coutinho and Daniel Sturridge were two of our highest earners (probably our two highest before Virgil van Dijk arrived), and have both now departed, albeit the latter only on a loan for the time being. Keita’s wages must already be budgeted for, so bringing him in wouldn’t have made any difference to our wage to turnover ratio, nor would it have done if we’d brought in another player on the list of targets who I doubt will be commanding Sanchez-type wages.
We should all bear in mind that the likes of Roma’s goalkeeper Alisson are unlikely to be on anywhere near the wages we pay as standard, and the fact that none of our main rivals are currently looking for a goalkeeper means there’s no risk of a bidding war to push those wages beyond what we can afford. Accordingly, a failure to act was through choice, not a lack of affordability in comparison to our rivals.
2. Even if we accept that we can’t match Man City’s wages because their turnover is greater than ours, the next question we have to ask is how is that the case? Based on a quick search of the internet, when Sheikh Mansour bought Man City in 2008, the club’s turnover was around £87m. Our turnover was around £170m when FSG took over in 2010.
From what I can see from recent figures, they’re now at £392m and us at £302m. So, in very rough figures, we’ve increased our turnover by about £18m per year under FSG and Man City have increased by around £33million a year.
So, off the pitch, we’ve been less aggressive than they have as well. I can see little reason or justification for that other than our owners wanted to invest less than Man City’s owners to grow at that rate, which is strange considering that their initial plan was reliant on FFP and how we would be in a strong position if it was enforced, given our global size and appeal.
I accept that FSG took over a club with difficulties which Man City’s owners didn’t have to contend with, but that huge disparity in growth does nothing for me other than demonstrate a vast difference between the two ownership groups in their ambition and willingness to invest more for bigger returns.
Again, supporting the main point of the article, the decisions made by the owners of Liverpool FC were made of their own volition. They are multi billionaires who chose what sums they were willing to risk, and have chosen to grow the club at the rate they have. Any restrictions with regards to turnover are, therefore, also mainly self inflicted.
What constitutes success for Liverpool? We discussed it on our latest “Big Question” show, which you can listen to if you SUBSCRIBE to TAW Player:
“It’s a relative success for Liverpool FC to finish fourth if it then enables us to challenge for trophies in a couple of years with constant access to the Champions league, the players that brings and the money that brings.” 🗣
✍🏼 Subscribe to listen: https://t.co/oFCRQeLGZi pic.twitter.com/x47XKjBRbI
— The Anfield Wrap (@TheAnfieldWrap) 7 February 2018
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What a load of shite
Yes, limits are self imposed. But it would be silly to think that FSG have pockets as deep as the people distributing oil around the world.
I don’t think its pleading poverty. Its just the realisation that there is another team that doesnt even blink at spending 60 million for a player who is largely just someone they would need for 6 weeks.
Yes, we could afford that but not in the same manner. We would be thinking about that player being vital for years to come.
I wonder if Dortmund ever thought to themselves, “Nah, no chance, Bayerns pockets are too deep”?
Thanks for the comments lads.
At no point do I say that our owner’s pockets are as deep as City’s owners, or that they need to be.
They don’t.
The point of the article is that City is a massive distraction that allows the rest of the top 6 an excuse not to spend more.
Cheers,
Paul
I think you’re right and wrong.
On a player by player basis other clubs can and do compete with city. We got van dijk for more than they were prepared to pay as an example. We overpaid on Keitas buy out clause to get it done
Our 2 highest fees bear the record paid by city.
Flip side is city clearly have limits as in mahrez and so do we with lemar.
However where i think rhe comments from clubs come from is that the rest can do it on one or possibly 2 players a season. City can go to the well whenever they need to. That’s the difference…competing at a collective level is hard.
Oh, and I bet sheikh mansoor hasn’t put more than a pound of his own personal wealth in here. It’s state investment money, like John Henry dipping into his investment firm to fund us. No billionaire is stupid enough to throw his own money in. It doesn’t even suit the purpose of abramovich any more.
Rubbish reply have you forgot City pulled out of a deal for a winger the previous week
Mahrez was a lad city wanted in the summer. All the Sane injury did was bring forward second attempt to buy him by 6 months.
A bit like selling coutinho made us try and bring forward Keita.
City baulked at paying 90m for him. They had their figure and stuck to it . A bit like us and Lemar really…..
City spent 56m on a cb essentially for next season but with a bonus for the rest of this one if he settles.
We spend 75m on a cb essentially for next season but with a bonus for the rest of this one if he settles.
Is it really that Different?
I have to agree Keith. I was making a similar point. Over the last 7 years City’s net spend (which is relevant even though people like to use when it when it suits and not use it when it doesn’t) is £48m, £16m, £90m, £60m, £73m, £165m, £117m (all under Sheikh Mansour). It’s £80m a year average. This initial boom is the start of Peps reign and the funding that goes with a new project. But, they couldn’t afford Sanchez much as they wanted him. People talk like it’s the early days of Abramovich or the last days of Rome. It’s not. A quick look beneath the headlines backs that up. I said below, with amortisation over the contract length and FFP assessment being over any 3 year periods teams can have a boom year and still be within the rules. City only need two years of £80m spend and they’ll be well within FFP.
For me, and I’m repeating myself from below, the issue with Liverpool isn’t a lack of a will to spend (although in the very recent past, Klopp has perhaps been over cautious), it’s a lack of commercial revenue. We haven’t fulfilled the potential that is there. The club is in good shape but FSG have to look at themselves in terms of exploiting us. One hopes that when he gets off twitter, Moore can increase it.
Financially its why the CL is so important. Its not just the CL prize money, its increased cash from Standard Chartered, New Balance etc which will almost certainly have CL bonuses included in the deals.
The CL itself might earn us 50m, for example, but the real number could be closer to 100m once everything is factored in and whether we like the financial focus or not, that changes things for us – especially if Arsenal and/or Chelsea start to lose those revenue streams.
Agree. its two fld. increase our cash. Reduce 2 clubs at the same time.
Its also worth noting that the supposed final fee for Keita and Van Dijk both beat Citys highest fee paid.
Exactly mate. To be pedantic, English clubs actually make closer to £80m now for reaching the quarter finals. There’s a pool of tv cash which gets shared out equally among the teams representing each country dependent on how much people want to watch their teams. We’re obviously top and get over £250m of the share. It’s just a shame we have 5 teams in it this year. Then there’s over £2.5m gate receipts per game. That’s £10m for reaching the knockout stages. And, like you said the raised commercial aspect. I’ve never celebrated anything financially but my belief is Liverpool have to grow towards a decade of success. We have to be in the top 4. It’s simple to me.
This piece would be considerably improved by making the basic argument – FSG are less willing than other owners to bankroll the club – and cutting all the shit. Shit like the dozen paragraphs which deliberately confuse spending big on one player and spending big on a whole team. I spent £40 on a fancy restaurant dinner once, doesn’t mean I can spend it every night. If fact, it’s totally irrelevant on what I can afford day to day.
So yeah edit needed, save us all ten minutes wading through distraction (see what I did there?) that contributes nothing to the actual argument.
FSG can’t spend because of FFP and the fact their owner also want to make money from the club. Man City’s turnover is around £100m more than Pool’s with City’s wages their owners currently take nothing from the club. Pool’s wages are running around 69% of turnover, City’s 55%. Meaning with a turnover of £474m they can spend at least £230m without going near the FFP rules. The media is full of what they spent which is actually around £264m but what the media always seem to fail to say is the value of the players they sold. This comes to £93m! Meaning they’ve actually spent £171m and that they can spend a further £93m and still not be touched by FFP. Hence the £60m for Mahrez which was originally earmarked for Sanchez so they clearly wern’t after simply replacing Sane because of injury the first bid went in well before then. To strengthen their squad city will by a left back, winger/attacking mid (was Mahrez) and a defensive mid to deputized for the aging Ferdinandho (Fred?).
I usually really like your contributions Paul, but this one guff sorry. To claim that spending 100 million pounds a year is a trivial expenditure to someone, even with a net worth of 8 billion, is kind of crazy.
I don’t quite get the expectation that owners are there to put money into the club, regardless of how much they have. As long as they are running the club well and aren’t taking money out of the club by paying interest on the loans they took out to buy the club like H&G, then I am okay with that. Partly out of a (admittedly strange) sense of fairness but also partly because I don’t want to be in the situation like Chelsea seem to be in now where the owner starts to show less interest in pumping money in and we find ourselves in trouble.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for your comment.
We obviously disagree that the owners aren’t there to put money into the club. That logically means you’re happy for anyone to own the club as long as they’re not deesytoying it like H&G? I think it’s this attitude among many Liverpool fans that’s stopping more reasonable questioning of the owners taking place.
Fear and a mid-placed gratitude to billionaires who have made a huge profit on their investment now rules among the fan base. Not a great place to be.
Good owners are the ones who manage the club’s finances well and increase revenue streams. It’s not rich oligarchs who–for a short time–put their own money into the club thinking they can buy success in a year or two. Why? Because you can’t buy success in an year or two, not any more. Success has to be built over many years, and the vast majority of rich people don’t have the patience or the peockets for deep investment over 5 or 6 years.
Even Roman Abramovich stopped putting his money into Chelsea a number of years back, and he belonged to the rare oligarch owner who was trying to build something. But Chelsea have had to sell to buy for several transfer windows now, and Abramovich is looking for ways to get his one billion back, you can be sure.
It is the very rare rich owner who sticks with a building effort over the time such a thing requires. Sheikh Mansour is NOT the usual billionaire owner. Abramovich isn’t, either, with his 10 years of spending. Most billionaire owners give their clubs 2 or 3 windows to buy success and then stop the flow of money abruptly. In comparison to this, FSG are a very stable and stabilizing ownership, who have been building and improving the club and have gone out to get the best manager for Liverpool.
Then there is the small matter that this article is picking a fight with Klopp by deliberating misunderstanding his meaning. He never meant, nor has he ever shown the inclination, to declare defeat on the pitch. Klopp sets his team up to beat Man City, as he just did.
We can’t throw money around like Man City can. So what? Man City can’t throw money around like Man Utd can. That doesn’t keep them from beating them on the pitch.
Well said. I find it hard to understand why Klopp felt the need to gamble at all this Jan’, especially if we could have got Keita for the reported 20m euros extra. I know it would’ve maybe taken time to integrate him but it would still surely have given the squad and support, a psychological boost. We may be a way behind the richest clubs but we’re hardly paupers.
20m extra…..like its spare change down the back of the sofa. Even City baulked at 30m extra for Mahrez. We need to start getting a bit more clued up here and stop treating it like some FF side.
Really good look at the situation. Your points about the difference between material limitations and self-imposed limitations are spot on. While 500 000 pounds per week for a 29-year-old possibly already on a slow but terminal decline is wild, it feels like we’ve almost picked this 150 000 number out of a hat and decided we can’t go above it under any circumstances (think Van Dijk might be on a bit more, general point stands etc). I don’t take everything Klopp says in front of a mic at face value, but the comment that rings some alarm bells in my head is that press conference about a year ago where he said something close to “We’d do it differently even if we did have the same money”. Which would suggest to me there’s an ideological side to the thriftiness as much as a practical one. Good read, and one that will be interesting to revisit in June.
VVD is on £180,000 and I dare say Salah will be given improved terms possibly beating that.
Firmino due a new deal too and I’d say his wage will be bumped right up there also.
Firmino gets 85k a goal. If his basic is 70k a week, who cares?
We should!
Because if he finds himself not on par with some of the highest paid players within the club despite being one of the best players he’ll go somewhere he will.
Generally elite footballers want to meet their sporting and financial ambitions over the course of their short careers.
Are we close to matching either?
It’s good to see TAW broaching the topic of FSG spend. I think the situation is even more stark. It’s not just a matter of how much are they prepared to finance the transfer fees, rather where is the money going? The main stand is self funding from executive boxes and increased attendances.
In the past 2-3 years commercial and tv revenues have increased dramatically but our net spend is a rounding error away from zero.
Klopp has been given no funds to improve the squad, he has essentially had to sell to buy. This is not just a matter of competing with Man City, we are not even keeping up with the rest of the division.
Very good article. I believe whole heartedly that FSG chooses not to spend. their net spend every season is enough proof of that. i always say that the owner’s vision is different to our (supporters) vision. They want to increase profits first and then if they win trophies good – otherwise not really an issue for them. They know Liverpool has worldwide fanatical support, so they will always see the revenue pouring in. We as fans though hope and hope and hope but without world class players, it will never happen. Only one of our players is world class (Salah). None of the others are because they have not won anything significant or they are not consistent enough in their dominance. Matip, Lovren, Klavan, Gini, Hendo, the two keepers……sorry but just not good enough to win a title. look at all the teams that have previously won the premier league title (barring of course Leicester), all of them have had minimum two world class players (if not more) at any one time. United at the moment have Sanchez, Pogba, de Gea…..we are nowhere near that in terms of squad quality!
The HOPE is the thing that will kill you. FSG does not care about the supporters hopes….they just dont!
@IMO Your argument about “world class” players doesn’t hold at all.
First of all what do you mean by “World Class players”?
Fowler, Torres, Suarez, Gerrard, Kuyt, Agger, Reina, Alonso, Mascherano, Coutinho, Sturridge, etc, to me were world class. We did not win a single Premier League Title with them. FSG were not owners all of those years.
We lost the CL quarter final against Chelsea team in 2009 4-4. We had world class team that night playing too. We didn’t go through. They too were not good enough to win the title.
So what’s your point Sash? We don’t need world class players?
We did win trophies with those players though including a Champions League.
@Alan I was responding to IMO’s reference to league titles and winning a title.
I know what you were trying to do. Ignore his valid points and take the conversation down a logical cul de sac.
We’ve tried seven years of doing it on the cheap and our trophy haul in that time is testament to its success. If we keep on repeating the same approach we will forever stagnate.
Tell you what Alan. Give us a suggestion of how it should be done instead of (and I’m making assumptions here) being part of a group who have unrealistic aspirations. I’m happy to debate any points you raise.
how much profit do we make a year? How much free cash is sitting in the bank when the annual financial report comes out? Do you see 100m, 150m just sitting there?
If you don’t, and you only see buttons, then the club spends what it has, and cant do more – unless you want the owners to put big money in which, frankly, no club owners do – not directly anyway. City do it through moody commercial deals, but Chelsea and United? The owners don’t use their own cash. Abramovich stopped years ago, and the Glazers never have.
Well that might be even viable as an idea if FSG had gained revenue from LFC. The annual accounts show that FSG haven’t had a penny out of Liverpool since they took over.
So “profit first” cannot be the aim, because they haven’t taken any.
We are geared for profit. Attaining 4th with the cheapest sqaud possible, selling players on when it is profitable to do so. Not competing in non profitable competition. I gave up winning the League 20 years ago. My advice is do yourself a favour, take each game as it comes and forget winning. It’s about the money. Only the money
Football clubs these days are ran as a business, businesses are about profit, the most successful businesses usually win the trophies. Sad reality but reality nonetheless, enough reason for anyone to give up hope of a league title.
We don’t have the luxury of billionaire owners, so yes we do have to balance the books, but look how far we’ve progressed since FSG saved us from the brink of liquidation. We are moving forward slowly, not fast enough for my liking, or most fans liking for that matter, but we are improving.
It’s very hard to hold onto your best players when you’re a club like ours, players come here to prove themselves, the show that they can cut it at the highest level, we sign ambitious players. Why is it a surprise to anyone that after a few trophy-less years they decide to move on.
The squad we have now is good enough to compete for silverware for the foreseeable, with one or two more additions I would hope we win a major trophy. Who could have said that when FSG took over?
What about this part of the interview? Doesn’t look like Klopp’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes here.
‘In the long term, did Man City have a one per cent influence on the results which led to the 19-point gap between us? No. Only us. We could have won games. With a little more luck we would be closer and could have made more pressure but we didn’t. That’s OK. Only if you compare are you not happy’.
Hi Danny,
It’s a piece about Man City being used as a distraction, which already ran to over 3,000 words, so I can’t cover everything.
It’s also not a criticism of Klopp, and I agree with that statement (as I said in the article when mentioning how little direct impact they have on us).
I do take issue, though, with constant references to needing more good luck without acknowledging all the good luck we’ve had (Benteke missing a sitter at home to Palace when it was 0-0 springs to mind).
I doubt Klopp would have objected if the owners insisted on paying what it took to get Keita in during January. But they chose not to pay whatever the price was.
Paul,
City didn’t choose to pay what Sanchez or Mahrez needed to get it done. How do you know they refused to pay? Or that RB Leipzig simply refused to sell? Are you confusing this with Lemar?
Firstly, I think you and Mike are now far and away writing the best articles on here, or should I say, the ones that appeal to me most.
I agree with this article but another side of me questions some of the fundamentals. All teams are complying with FFP but some are bending the rules slightly but mostly the landscape has changed. There’s more money in the game now. FFP worked to reduce the overall debt of clubs and now it’s relaxed because club can afford their spend. If we have a quick look at the top 6 this is my opinion on it.
City
City are the ones in the Prem who are perhaps bending the rules and where your assertion that ‘owners ambition’ is most correct. The £400m, 10 year, sponsorship with Etihad Airways the most dubious when you look at the relationships involved. They’re all owned by the Abu Dhabi govt which have different arms of investment. But, Abu Dhabi is where the money is. It evens props up Dubai which is skint in comparison. City are part Chinese owned too. There’s definitely a will to make City a huge global brand and that will is backed up by cash.
They’re not wholly irresponsible though. They’ve increased capacity and massively increased ticket prices. They made £391m in the last accounts and when you consider the revenue streams such as over £50m gate receipts, over £150m tv money bearing in mind British clubs are now getting £50/£60m just from CL tv money if they reach the quarters. Their commercial revenue is high (£60m more than us but still £60m behind Utd but they’ve got better deals than us (like I said, from their friends). In the last 5 years they’ve spent £560m net (£115m a year average) Now, if over half of that has come in the last 2 years then they only have to slow down to £80m a year for the next 2 years then with the transfer fees being amortised over 5 years (or contract length) then they’d be well within the boundaries of FFP. I don’t think they’re breaking it. Their wages are recorded as 50% of income but unlike us they only include players. They can still spend £100m a year easily.
Utd
Utd are just a huge corporate machine but they stay in the realms too due to their huge commercial revenue. I speak to people who run Utd and they’ve introduced a new policy. When I laughed about Pogba they said it was intentional to inflate the market due to the new influx of tv money. Sanchez has showed their thinking. Their new policy is superstars (as in the most expensive) and youth. They’re getting rid of the middle level now of players like Blind, Carrick, Herrera etc. Point being, even as the richest club they have to have a trade off. It’s not unlimited cash.
Chelsea
They’re run much better now. They make £30m more than us a year and that is pretty much shown in their net spend. Abramovic does loan them to cover their shortfalls still but I’d argue it’s a different ball game for them. Sometimes in life, you have to speculate to keep your wealth. You have to be a prominent figure to stay out of jail or stay alive. It’s worth the investment.
Spurs
Joe Lewis is minted. He’s twice as much as Henry yet he doesn’t put a penny in to Spurs. He’s a cockney too. He’s never there and just leaves it all to Levy. Their net spend over the past decade is peanuts. Far less than us.
Arsenal
They’re certainly not bending FFP. They made £3m profit from their £350m. They spent what they earned.
Liverpool
I’m under the impression they didn’t give us the loan for the stadium but did get the loan from a bank on our behalf to save us 4% a year interest. Prior to Klopp they put all the revenue money back into transfers which was only £30m in the early days and even that put us in debt. With Klopp and the new money I think that policy still exists and the £215m we committed to transfers in the summer suggests that is still the case. Our hesitance comes from the belief we have £100m a year now to spend and can’t afford to get it wrong on a £40m player. I’m sure in meetings it’s been suggested that fucked our progress in the past and there’s a determination to avoid that. Where FSG have fallen short is in the commercial aspect. They had a chance to extend the Annie Road and won’t, choosing Kirby instead. All fine but it could have been done with the will. Our kit deal was laughed at by some in the boards of other clubs. We sold ourselves short. If the idea was to enhance the ‘brand’ then it hasn’t been as successful as the potential suggests it could be.
Conclusion
I don’t think it’s a case of ‘the will to succeed’ as you make out. There’s a vicious circle where success makes you money and money makes you successful. We’re still edging into that circle. The others are established. I knew LFC were gonna spend over £200m this season but the Coutinho sale has made it look like it’s bullshit. It’s not. We have £250m to spend this summer and that accounts for our much higher wage bill. We’ll spend close to it but who can say if Salah will suddenly go for £140m too. If he does we won’t look to spend his money that same month. We’ll be cautious again. I think FSG sanction all the money for sales but with a caveat of be cautious and Klopp naturally thinks the same. We’re doing our thing. Other clubs are doing theirs. No one is going over the top mad though. It’s just based on revenue.
Excellent post Robin. Really interesting and makes a lot of sense, especially where our own spending is concerned.
City also only record basic pay in their accounts – Aguero is 160k for example, when in reality he gets around 250k – If I recall correctly as bonuses and player commercial rights payments are lodged with a separate entity and so not included.
Its simply very smart accounting.
Some good but unfortunately not original points made about the club’s status quo.
Points ignored by the author:
– that he himself was probably jumping for joy when Klopp signed on for LFC.
Klopp’s past record does not indicate that he is a big spender compared to Pep (or Mourinho, Ancelotti, etc) and has a less than glamorous plan that probably doesn’t include “keeping up with the Joneses”. So this was already set from the beginning, why not wait for it to reach a realistic point in time where we can actually gauge the progress/failure.
– how many games (even with Coutinho) that we did not win before beating Man City 4-3 and why we didn’t win those matches.
We weren’t playing Barcelona or Madrid. We Lost 2 (6 points lost) Drew 8 (16 points dropped). FSG’s spending habits has nothing to do with the matches that we clearly had the quality to win, but instead threw away for whatever reasons. For me Klopp was figuring things out then as he is now.
– 2013/14 title winning challenge that saw FSG supporting Rodgers in his acquisition of players that Rodgers thought were good enough for the first team, aka Coutinho and Sturridge.
We lost the title not off the field, but on the the field to Man City.
– the fact that Man City have not been winning the EPL Titles nearly every year (like Bayern or PSG) with their assumed open-check book policy, unlike Man United under Ferguson.
– Man united American ownership and their publicly traded status that have different outlook to spending, etc
– no mention of the facts of what has actually been discussed or agreed to between Klopp and FSG when he signed on or at any time during transfer windows. None of us know so it is just (pointless) conjecture
– the financial bubble all these inflated price hikes and purchases may be causing.
Perhaps why even Chelsea feels it is not wise to just go out and buy players whenever they feel like it. They however did not say “never” to buying players in their target price range
FSG are not perfect and never have been. They are like most business owners in it to make a profit. Klopp is in it to do what he thinks is best for the long term of the club, but in his own way.
We are still in a fighting chance to make top 4, that will bring in revenue, along with this season’s CL, needed to continue building the team and club, based on Klopp’s deal with the owners, whatever that is.
– No points on how to make a club successful other than to look at Man City and copy them,
Very much in keeping with today’s young impatient generation that seem to think that derivative efforts pay off long term.
I suggest that to make it easier on yourselves, if you want to keep up with the Joneses, then go join the Joneses.
The harder path is what Klopp has signed on to take according to what we have witnessed so far.
Be patient and stay positive.
Hi Sash,
Thanks for your comment. I think you’ve missed the entire point of the article, which is simply this:
FSG and Klopp clearly have a way of doing things which they choose to do, which has nothing to do with City having more money. If they wanted to spend more they could. The same point applies to the rest of the top 6 clubs, so everyone should stop blaming City for their lack of success on or off the pitch. It’s a red herring that everyone’s lapping up.
Thanks,
Paul
P.s. I’m not young and I’m not impatient. I’m just pointing out a huge act of misdirection being played by big clubs owned by billionaires. I like Klopp and FSG, although I do think more could be done to calmly demand more from our owners. Most Liverpool fans seem to be in a place that makes them so grateful to have both that they won’t criticise anything.
@ Paul Hi Paul, finally a writer who takes the time to respond to his fans’ comments.
Thanks. I do enjoy reading your articles, Rob G’s and Neil’s too, as you guys help me keep my head on despite the negativity, and do provide thought-provoking articles.
You’re right in that Man City’s success this season has caused many including me at one point to turn to them as a blueprint. So some of the points you’ve outline were leaning towards a red herring for me.
However I wasn’t sure about all your references to Klopp’s words that you excised out from certain interviews and without references (links) to the context of what was actually asked and the manner in which he responded made it difficult for me to fully understand your points. It somehow felt unfair to Klopp (and in turn for FSG).
Hence why I was throwing out what I thought could support (why for me) it was a red herring, that lead up to Man City’s success and Liverpool’s progress that has ebbed and flowed in a positive direction.
Examples of references:
***
Our own elite manager was doing it in a full-length article at the weekend, which is when the penny dropped for me.
“We can’t possibly compete with Manchester City so we have to do it a different way.”
Don’t believe a word of it.
—-
In the same interview, Klopp mentioned that Mike Gordon said to him about Man City, “sorry they can do that and we can’t”.
***
I don’t have the time to always watch his interviews which would provide context and maybe solidify your points for me.
Btw, thanks for confirming your age. I wasn’t having a go at you Paul. It’s just often I read articles or headlines that come off as pandering to the likes of the younger generation for popularity or clicks, etc and made an error of judgement on your article. Sorry about that.
Thanks again for writing Paul and keep up the good work on TAW.
Neil
No problem mate, here’s a link to the article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-5348547/Liverpool-boss-Jurgen-Klopp-matching-moneybags-Man-City.html
Mate, you realise that a billion is only a thousand million, right? So we spend 500 million in 18 months, that means that our possibly only single billionaire owner is no longer a billionaire. So we can’t spend at that level. Its ludicrous to suggest that each club has exactly the same amount of cash at its disposal. Also to think that each owner only has their football club to think about, without worrying about their other assets.
Mate, I literally say in the article that we don’t need to spend half a billion more. Another red herring being lapped up by lots of people because everyone points at City as an excuse for not buying any player.
I don’t understand this sentence: “It still amazes me to this day that so little credit is given to the power of our brains, especially when our brain is the main thing which separates us from wild animals roaming the planet.” — Who is not giving the power of our brains any credit? Where?
But the question you’re asking in the article is a good question, though I feel the answer is found through a knowledge of accounting rather than psychology… Not sure how an opinion piece is helpful here. Maybe a closer look at the numbers, or any league rules we need to abide by that we don’t know about, and less of the casual “FFP isn’t really a thing”, would have resulted in a much better article.
In fairness Amy, the whole Liverpool fan base aren’t giving the fact we have a powerful brain any credit, not to mention the Brexiteers. We should all consider using it once in a while. I often light fires at my allotment to show my dog that I’m superior to him.
Hi Amy,
Thanks for the comment.
Most people I know and encounter on a daily basis have very little idea how powerful their own brain is. For example, they will continually refer to themselves as a smoker but fail to understand that’s why they can’t quit.
A simple change in mindset can create miracles (which I’ve witnessed and experienced), yet very few people know or believe that.
Hopefully that makes more sense.
Cheers,
Paul
Ah I see. So it’s just the people you interact with? And it was just a very verbose way of saying we’re all too stupid and you’re much cleverer and here to show us the way? Doesn’t seem very generous, but who am I to argue. In general though, “a simple change in mindset” isn’t the way the mind works, because not only is the mind very powerful but it’s also very complex, and you’re making the mistake of equating power with good things. Minds can be a powerful destructive force, for example, that prevents people from making “a simple change in mindset” on a daily basis however hard they tried. But then the way you bring up your interest in psychology (so you must have read the studies?), and then bring up mental health, tells me you already know this, regardless of what your personal experience is. All this to say this was why I was sidetracked by that sentence. GrkStav’s comment about needing an editor was good feedback I think.
My point again is that you ask a very good question that is unfortunately lost in the way you’ve answered it. I did learn a lot from Robin’s and KM1806’s comments on here though, and so I’m glad you asked the question at all.
I’m not sure where this attack is coming from Amy, I was just trying to clarify something you asked about my article. I don’t think I’m any cleverer than anyone else, but I do know that most people I know (even many far more intelligent than me) have no interest in psychology at any level.
On the general point, you are among a group of people who seem to think I’m a professional journalist who should be kept at bay by my editors. I’m not. I’m a football fan writing opinion pieces for a football website. It’s fine that you and others think they’re too long or crap or anything else, but it’s pretty arrogant to think they should be edited to suit your wishes. I’ve received a number of compliments and positive comments on the piece, and won’t be changing my style any time soon. I’m sure there are lots of other fans writing about LFC whose style you will prefer, so you can just avoid my articles in the future and save yourself getting annoyed unnecessarily.
Cheers,
Paul
Wasn’t an attack, and I’m not annoyed! Not sure why you’re seeing it that way. And nowhere did I say you should be kept at bay by your editors. It was friendly feedback because your article was difficult to follow. And that sentence especially as you’ve explained it implied we should look at things your way and only your way, and what’s stopping us from “changing our mindset” is that we don’t know as much as you, that we’re not as bright as you. I’m the one on the attack though? Disagreeing with your point of view is being on the attack? Good grief.
Have a good night Paul. I do enjoy reading your articles.
Wasn’t an attack??
You’re not annoyed??
You sure do come across that way.
Thank you Michael for weighing in, but I wish you didn’t feel the need to explain to me how I’m feeling and what my intentions were. I’m not responsible for how you interpret my comments and the emotions you attach to them, and would like to stress again that just because someone disagrees with your point of view you shouldn’t take it as a personal affront.
I do not have to be taken, step by step, through the author’s entire thought-process in order to be able to understand his main argument. While Paul is eloquent, he’s in dire need of an editor, someone who will not be afraid to cross out entire paragraphs, etc.
Each to there own mate but Paul’s thought process is what makes his articles good. There are hundreds, pisssibly millions of articles out there devoid of any personal aspect and just reporting on half baked facts. We shouldn’t discourage this type of article. Cheers.
Thanks Robin.
Hi GrkStav,
Comments like yours are always the ones that surprise me most. If you want brevity why not just put “this is too long” rather than explaining your point?
It’s not compulsory to read what I write, and my style won’t change any time soon.
Cheers,
Paul
@Paul
I think GrkStav has a point regarding editing. I don’t know if you have the opportunity to work with an editor at TAW, but there are certain aspects I think might need a second pair of eyes to further develop your article(s) – one of them I have outlined in my previous comment to you.
Don’t publications, online and print, including Tabloids, have editors that work with the writers not just on topics, but the technical aspects of it too? Some of the most brilliant writers also had a stance but their editors, whom they trusted, I think pushed them to excel further with their points.
Articles being too long or short don’t always have a bearing on style. Yes Hemmingway had his style, but he seemed to have benefited from his editor Maxwell Perkins.
I’m not a writer by profession, but I have contributed to an online blog here in Philadelphia. It’s one of the biggest and most successful ones https://www.theartblog.org/author/neilm/ and speaking from experience.
I had to work with two editors at times, and while my style of writing is more academic I had to significantly scale back on what I thought worked and what didn’t based on the editors’ critique without effecting my style. My style is very direct if you read through my articles, but not always long or short. It was certainly a privilege and learning experience for me to have worked with experienced writers and understand a thing or two from the editor’s perspective. It isn’t easy for sure.
“It’s not compulsory to read what I write, and my style won’t change any time soon.”
I think your style won’t change Paul, and but you might have the benefit of improving further if you so choose to.
Bit of a lazy argument. The reality is, there’s a huge gulf in the wealth of FSG and owners like City, PSG, and even United to an extent. To us, anyone with a net worth of over 1B is insanely rich, but to a guy like Sheikh Mansour, John Henry is little fish. Mansour’s net worth is almost 40B and multiples more if you count his family fortunes. PSG is owned by Qatar Investment Authority that manages over 300B in assets. John Henry’s net worth is 2.5B.
Mansour bought City as a passion project, but Henry bought Liverpool as an investment. Big difference here.
FFP is also a non-starter. As long as owners can inject their own money to balance the books, it’s pointless.
Just a quick point on your Edit and turnover growth. The biggest difference by far is Man City’s participation in the Chamoions league and our lack of qualification. I believe CL qualification is worth around £60m a year.
Money is clearly an advantage. It’s no coincidence the clubs with the biggest financial resources win the lion share of the major trophies. In the 80s it was Liverpool who paid the biggest wages. John Barnes was signed on £8k per week which was about £100k a year more than the highest earner in the league at the time.
Through missed opportunities or mismanagement depending how kindly the David Moores era is viewed LFC slipped back in commercial terms compared to our rivals, particularly Man U.
The odds are now against us winning the league given there are 3 teams with considerably more financial strength but thankfully sport is not simply an accounting exercise and there is another way. Spurs have come close with less resources and Leicester did it albeit a freak maybe never to be repeated. Expectations that we ‘should be winning the league’ as a matter of course are no longer realistic in this context and I think that is what Klopp is driving at. FSG ar not the worst owners in the world but they cannot strike the sort of rule bending spoNsorship deals Robin’s post refers to so we are always going to be struggling to keep up if even Abramovich is throwing in the towel at trying to compete financially.
Simple game? In the meantime, Klopp is clearly getting a lot of things right and the FSG/Klopp model needs time to come to fruition unless there is appetite amongst theta base for a mass protest to get rid of FSG ( and therefore Klopp as they clearly seem to have a strong relationship) which I don’t think there is. Time to nail our colours to the mast for the season run in with plenty still to play for. Second in the league is possible (as is 6th) and no one will want to play us in the CL. Let’s get behind these lads!
If in 2 or 3 seasons we are treading water or worse it will be time for a rethink, but not now.
The reason City have increased their commercials is the very crux of the issue. Mansour doesn’t write cheques from his own pocket. He has companies like Etihad signing sponsorship deals to fund City. This was the very reason they got on the radar for FFP in the first place as the commercials, like at PSG, looked to be outside of reasonable market range.
Correct. It’s part of a much bigger and more complex picture too. The real aim of the owners of City is not the interest or development of City (as could probably be argued with all owners) but Abu Dhabi. They’re going through economic changes and they’ve had to consider a more long term sustainable future without oil. Sport is a vehicle both them and Dubai have chosen to promote the emirates. Would you do business with an investment arm of Abu Dhabi? I’d choose them over anyone. They’ve showed they have the will to succeed, the finance to back it up and the ability to make it happen. They’re also good at marketing too. Ok, Dubai is not Abu Dhabi but they’ve managed to convince the world they have money when they don’t. They’ve sold Dubai as a place of wealth when it’s certainly not. If Abu Dhabi pulled it’s wealth it would collapse. Most owners are interested in dollar signs. Abramovic has political reasons for owning Chelsea and Mansour has political reasons for owning City. It complicates judging what needs to be done to compete with them
@KM @ Robin both of you have made very good points.
Having lived in those cities I can back this up as the seeds for this were laid when Dubai’s flamboyant young Sheikh took too many risks in the last decade and made a financial mess, that conservatives were never in support of, but maintained their quiet stance.
City’s owners are absolutely in this for financial gain. Without doubt. This is part of the game to generate revenues away from oil – mainly through generating interest in Abu Dhabi as a destination of choice.
If Paul and others don’t see that, and the fact Mansoor isn’t splashing his own cash, therefore making City absolutely no different to any other billionaire owner, then that’s their business.
The key thing is City are part of a plan for a kingdom – the stakes are higher.
I think everyone has missed the point of this article. The author isn’t advocating matching City’s spend, he’s asking why we can’t do a bit more than what we are doing.
Our net spend has been very, very low year on year. I’m all for patience, and i’m all for a plan, but when does this plan come into fruition? Klopps been here practically three years, our revenues and income has never been better and yet we still have the old sell to buy scenario. Now no one can tell me we don’t have that in place – just look at the way we do business. in fact at times we are so keen to get the dead weight or the unwanted off our books, we’ve even sacrificed ourselves and gone without (think the Andy Carroll fiasco and currently Coutinho).
What I don’t understand is if we are taking 6-12 months to wait upon specific players, we are running a massive risk of what happened this January. We finally get in a piece of the puzzle only to lose another. Players won’t wait to see what happens in the future, their career is too short.
I want to know why, say the likes OF Pulisic and Lemar for example, are going to be any more available or cheaper in the summer? Can anyone tell me? If anything it may be more disruptive with a World Cup on. So why don’t we make our moves, throw some money at his major targets and get them in?
The author is clearly stating that the club use City as an excuse – and they do – however Klopp and the Owners could and are quite capable of going that bit further building the squad than what they have done, I just don’t know why.
Thanks Ant, absolutely spot on. I was starting to wonder if what I’d written actually made any sense!
In fairness Paul. I don’t think people have missed your overall point. People enjoy reading these articles but the comments are not necessarily about the points in the article. It’s always been that way. It just acts as a catalyst for debate. In this case you’ve mentioned FSG and so the people waiting to pounce have pounced. You’ve mentioned City and FFP and that’s another strand to debate. Everyone is disappointed by the lack of activity in January but we don’t know the full circumstances. When the meltdown is as fierce as it was in January there’s pressure on the club to say something, anything. We won’t really know until May and probably August whether we were smart or stupid. My view is we have to trust Klopp. We’re closer to success now than we have been for years. We’re finally on par with our rivals and one major push in the summer could be the decisive factor in us getting success. People say we can’t afford not to strengthen. I’d say we can’t afford to get it wrong again.
Ant you are the man pure and simple
The comments to this excellent piece are mainly depressing.
How much more evidence do people need that FSG are a sham?!
Eight fuckin years!
Eight years of selling our best players.
Eight years of replacing them with cheap alternatives (that one or two worked out is irrelevant, the likes of Suarez in 2010 were massive risks. We have NEVER replaced like-with-like in terms of transfer fee, player’s caliber and standing in the game, wages, etc etc)
Eight years of signing players exclusively from crap, or at best, mediocre teams (and thus getting a mediocre mindset and not the mindset of proven winners)
Eight years of only spending when we lose players and therefore never adding to the squad, merely replacing.
Eight years of refusing to sign players over the age of 25 who may not have a profitable sell-on value (but will undoubtedly improve us over the term of the players contract)
Eight years of selling to buy.
Eight years of negligible net spend.
Eight years of mediocrity (one Suarez-inspired season aside)
This argument of ‘we can’t compete with City’ is laughable bollox. The only way we can’t compete with City is if the two of us are going for the same player and, like the last two poker players at the table, we keep upping the ante till the other blinks. Do people really think that would happen??!! Seriously?!
“Okay, we bid 100m”
“Right, we bid 200m”
“400m”
“500m”
……
“Right then, 1.8bn all in. That’s the entire value of our club”
“Aha! We get him because our wealth is 30bn”
Honestly, are people suggesting this? Cos this is the only way I can see City’s (or any other club for that matter) superior wealth coming into play. Every club has a cut-off point (see City and Sanchez / Mahrez), it’s just a matter of ambition.
As Paul mentions, we don’t need to spend 100m each on 15 players. We just need to spend big on a few glaring problem positions (GK, defensive Mid, Goalscorer (yes we need a goalscorer, someone who will turn a decent, hopeful ball into a great pass ala Kane, Ageuro, Sanchez, etc etc. Salah will be a known quantity next season so opponents will devise plans to deal with his ghosting runs into the box)
I’m all for patience, but sorry, eight fuckin years of the exact same patterns (as above) is clear evidence of a clear consistent strategy. And it’s a strategy of penny-pinching, book-balancing, unambitious mediocrity.
It’s no coincidence that our most fallen period for trophies since the Second World War has occurred under these owners.
Yet still they have huge swathes of support on here. Bizarre!
Brilliantly put mate. I don’t understand our fanbase’s mindset. FSG our not our friends, FSG don’t love the city or the sport. Its a business, one they want to run just above the line to keep profits and value ticking over.
They never turn up to the games, talk about us passionately, have a pretty poor footballing framework in place that simply relies on Klopps ability to get the best out of his pool of players and thats it. Great at closing deals and sponsorships though, like the oil one the other day. I mean where does this money go?
Answer me this. Why do you want them at our games. Why do you want them anywhere near anything to do with LFC. We have a CEO for that and we have a manager and his team for the football side of things. They’re not great at closing deals either. Where have you got that from?
Football isn’t about men in suits so why do you want them there? Do you think we might play better if they’re there? The further away the better.
Its called buy in. If you are not invested in the winning, then the footballing side suffers. Being at the games, talking about your ownership, nagging the fanbase shows you are arsed. Being hundreds of miles away on another continent keeping quiet isn’t. They didn’t even turn up for Dalglish’s unveiling of the stand, but were in London a few days alter over Premier League cash.
Trust me it matters.
You’ve been led to believe it matters. I’m sorry but I don’t trust you and I won’t take your word for it. I don’t want to see them at all. They mean nothing to me. Klopp and Moore are in contact daily and that’s all that matters. John Henry is just an owner. He makes high level business strategies. Gordon then relates that. I’m really not arsed about seeing them. My company is owned by Iranians. Never met them and never want to. The world is run by venture capitalists now. They’re not like us. It’s not as important as you’ve been led to believe. You need the people fronting it to have the vision and drive. Not some old grey man in a suit in the U.S.
Do you know how many times Sheikh Mansour has turned up to watch City at the Etihad? Once in 9 years of ownership.
You’re living in dreamland pal, the type of owners you’re talking about are few and far between.
“FSG our not our friends” – what do you mean by this, they aren’t down the pub before the match buying everyone a bevvy
“FSG don’t love the city or the sport” – No, FSG took a gamble on a club that was about to go into liquidation. They knew nothing about football or the city at the time but since they’ve arrived they’ve donated $94m thought the charitable arm of their organisation to causes in Liverpool and England. Mike Gordon comes to lot of the games. What more do you realistically expect?
“Its a business” – And that’s a fact. Football is a business now and it’s actually about time Liverpool realised this. Not making the most commercially of our success in the 80s, 90s, and 00s is what has crippled this club, not FSG.
“have a pretty poor footballing framework in place” – Harmonizing the youth structure, bringing in top scouts and youth coaches, bringing in the best manager we could realistically get, redeveloping Anfield, redeveloping Kirkby, having an actual transfer strategy that tries to learn from previous mistakes.
Listen, I’m desperate for success as much as you mate but I accept that it’s not going to happen overnight. Yes it’s frustrating but if you honestly believe that the club are moving backwards or standing still then I would have to disagree.
As I said before, look at the state of the club when FSG took over. Those were dark dark days, but for the first time in ages the future actually looks bright. Yes, there have been mistakes along the way, and yes we could have got there quicker if we didn’t consistently sell our best players. But honestly, we’re a club that hasn’t won a trophy in 6 years, we haven’t won a significant one in nearly 12 years, why would any top players want to stay here? It’s a vicious circle but we’re slowly improving and I feel like success for the first time in ages is right around the corner.
It’s easy to moan and complain and point the finger, but what does it achieve, nothing.
No one supports the owners. What people don’t like is unrealistic approaches. Books have to be balanced. What’s the alternative? They had a policy when they came in of cheap foreign imports. It failed and they adapted it to Premier League proven players around the £25m mark (at the time that was close to the top end of the market). Then the tv money came in and we went from only ever having 2 players on more than over £100k a week to now having 7 plus 2 that have left. In 2010, City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Utd were miles and miles ahead of us in every respect. Now, they’re financially ahead of us but we’ve closed the gap hugely in all other areas and we’re continuing to progress.
This was never going to be a quick fix. This is the state of play as I see it. Carry on as we are and achieve our goals, i.e I think we’ll win the league within the next 3 years or have protests, bring the club to it’s knees with turmoil and have to start again.
What is it you want from your new owners? Are you aware of any that have showed an interest?
It’s like that saying, I want a 20 inch knob and 20 million pound. It sounds great but it’s a futile dream.
Have you tried one of them vacuum pumps?
Tried everything mate.
The only person who saw through them was Dalglish yes he had a poor season in the end and won a shitty cup but he told them what the Liverpool way was and they didn’t like it and fired him yes I’m hopping Klopp does well but everything he does fits into FSG’s model hook line and sinker after losing us the EUFA cup we kept Moreno out of Klopps stubbornness and FSG’S delight when a little effort brought us Robbo Lord knows how many Robbo s we’ve lost as a result of our Not making a little bit more effort
Kenny was brought in to save us from Hodgson, it wasn’t supposed to be the long term fix, hence only giving him a 2 year contract. It was well known before the FA Cup final that he would be replaced in the summer because we’d been so inconsistent in the league.
This horse music of claiming he ‘told them what the Liverpool way was’ and then they fired him is pure revisionism to suit a narrative. You’d swear you had some sort of agenda mate.
God forbid the owners who saved us from liquidation, under who we nearly won the league, the people who appointed Klopp, the people who stopped settling for 2nd or 3rd rate players, the ones who got us back into the champions league, who expanded the main stand, are expanding Kirkby, will extend Annie Rd., god forbid they settle for slow and steady progress just because people like you hate the fact that we haven’t won a trophy in god knows how long.
We’ll get there eventually mate, there aren’t any shortcuts unless you’ve oil backing you
the biggest period without trophies was 1947 to 1962
I take the central argument, but only to a point. One variable is Klopp’s obvious and probably Wenger-like distaste for mega fees, or for de facto “chequebook management”. Yeah, be spent over the odds on VVD, but the fact he waited for him proved he saw something in him he didn’t feel he’d find elsewhere. He went to Blackpool with him, for God’s sake! Likewise Keita. Likewise the fact he gave Mignolet numerous chances and is now doing likewise with Karius. Let’s be honest, these transfer fees are obscene. The wages being paid are outrageous. Pep has always been a monied manager, Jose is the definitive chequebook boss. Klopp isn’t. He doesn’t want to be. Maybe this dovetails neatly with FSG’s financial reticence, but I do believe it’s a factor. I remember years ago a seasoned LFC observer writing how his dream was for LFC to be like a Scouse Ajax – self-sufficient, self-perpetuating, powerful but not grubby; a genuinely Marquee European name. I still love Ajax, but look how they’ve slipped in the new European game? If we’re not diving headfirst into mega-splurging, I say ok. I still want us to win the lot, and the City reference is a red herring in some ways, but we’re not quite back at the “want Dani Alves, get J Pennant” era. We do have money – doesn’t mean we should spend all of it.
I think Klopp may have had that view a few years ago, but I get the feeling this has changed now that he’s experienced the realities of the league, and has a better understanding of what it would take to win it. Just going by all the quotes I’ve read, I think Mike Gordon plays a much bigger role than Klopp in deciding who comes in and who leaves when it comes to fees and wages.
BOLLOCKS. People forget Citeh last season. Chelsea being unstoppable. If city loses a few on the trot, draw a few, whatever. We are in contention. If Klopp can make a few additions in the midfield and bring in a keeper, no one can say we don’t have a chance of the league next season. We have a manager who can build and possibly for the first time, the owners trust him on transfers.
There is another issue here. FSG’s model is clear, and it is to build a sporting beast that can rival the Patriots or similar as an earner. Then they sell a small share and make a profit of vast proportions. I point out that if they dot that there won’t be many LFC supporters who mind a bit, because if LFC is that much of a beast it will be top of the European food chain.
The issue is how they are doing it. They are avoiding FFP, but more to the point they are carefully minimising the club’s debt. Look for example at Chelsea, who owe Abramovic north of a billion pounds. None of that is happening here.
Yes, City’s revenue has grown faster than ours, but that is because when FSG took over we had negative revenue. You mentioned this yourself, then avoided the obvious implications. There was a lot that needed to be done and they did it without loading debt on the club – that means it went slower, but the only alternative, surely, would have been gifts to the club and that is going to skirt FFP problems – and to be fair, PSG are finding that FFP has teeth, which you also didn’t mention.
Here is the state of play. The club’s finances are hugely improved and that improvement is accelerating, the club’s performances on the pitch range from frustrating to utterly thrilling, but also on an upward tangent, and money has been made available to the manager in excess of what he has used. Klopp has spent money carefully – that’s the product of his history as much as his present situation – but he is producing a team that can beat anybody on its day and is visibly getting better by the month.
Your complaint in essence, is not that the project isn’t going well – to be fair only an idiot would claim that – but that with the addition of more cash they could make it go faster. I’m not sure that’s true – it may be, but there are risks, one or two of which (about debt) I mentioned. But what I am sure of is this:It IS going well, we are emerging from a dark tunnel a quarter of a century long. If it’s not fast enough for you say so – but what about also cheering on a wonderful growth? You don’t mention how fart we have come and how soon we will be where we want to be, and you should be celebrating that.
Very confused article for me.
FSG are a fund who have never hidden that they operate the club as a business rather than a toy. Not amazing owners but far from the worst either. Would I want Sheikh Mansour as owner with us buying everything in sight until we inevitably achieve success? Whilst tempting, no. It would all be a bit hollow for me. I pay very little attention to, and have close to zero respect for, City as a result – whole “project” leaves me cold. And I think that matters. Having said all that, I do think LFC should have maybe pushed more in last window but we don’t know what prices were being quoted and whether worthwhile.
Am I the only person who doesn’t accept City’s revenues as genuine third party revenue? How can a club with little historic following and a relatively modest stadium with cheap ticket prices (that it can’t fill for big games) generate more revenue than LFC? LFC is run pretty well, from a commercial perspective (some would say too well at times), these days.
City are owned by a country. That country has an endless pot of money. That country wants to spend money because it helps launder their image in the west. Thus it’s in that country’s best interest to spend as much as possible to make that goal achievable.
Liverpool are owned by a group of very wealthy men. They are unwilling to spend their own fortunes in the belief that it’s in the club’s best interest, and of course theirs, to be self-sustainable. This is the model pursued, barring sheikhs and Russian billionaires who all have very specific political reasons why they spend their own money, by the majority of clubs in top flight football.
That isn’t making an ‘excuse’, it’s simply acknowledging the differences in ownership and the reasons people (or countries) buy football clubs. City are a political weapon. Liverpool are a commercial enterprise.
Liverpool spent 75 million on Van Dijk for the single reason mentioned and reiterated many times by Klopp last summer and in January, that Van Dijk was the club’s one and only target for that position. Their practice in the last few windows has clearly, and publicly, been to spend big on specific targets in the knowledge they can’t spend speculatively on multiple targets. Thus Van Dijk isn’t an example of the club’s untapped spending potential but rather a demonstration of the club spending big when they absolutely need to.
Liverpool didn’t spend in January because the manager, clearly and publicly, stated that only the right signings would help Liverpool. He’s saying this not to nullify the fans at the owner’s bidding but to point to what the club have already, clearly and publicly, practiced. To wait on the right players who will genuinely help Liverpool long term knowing, that any ‘stop-gap’ signing only furthers the risk of setting them back. Liverpool are trying to be, whether fans like it or not, as efficient in the market as possible. Anyone can point to a conspiracy theory or suggest it points to a lack of ambition, but the reality is football is an industry and you have to be as intelligent with how you use your money. It’s the boring non passionate, non-anecdotal reality.
So with all that being said, I’d suggest the real red herring argument is the one made in this article.
Sorry Paul, I think you are bringing out the odd red herring yourself.
FFP remains a thing and it stops owners injecting cash to pay players salaries and transfers fees. To compete at the top end the club has to grow its revenue. There are no short cuts available. (Unless you are an owner who can direct another part of your empire to strike a massive sponsorship deal with your club.)
You talk about billionaire owners, as if they have nothing better to do than pile any spare cash they have in to the club. John Henry’s net worth is $2.5 billion according to Forbes. Most of that is already invested in sports teams and other long term assets. His net worth would drop pretty quickly if he was in the habit of pumping money in to Liverpool and The Red Sox to buy new players.
We should be happy that FFP exists and helps cement Liverpool’s position as one of the richest clubs. If billionaire owners could simply pump whatever funds they wanted in to clubs, we would run the risk of seeing some of smaller clubs do what City were able to do years ago, and make it an even bigger challenge for us to get top 4 and win the title. We might have billionaire owners, but so do many of the clubs in the Premier League. The owners of Southampton, Leicester, Arsenal, Spurs, Stoke, West Brom, Wolves, Man U, Chelsea and Man City all have higher net worth than John Henry. Even Mike Ashley is worth a comparable amount, with Farhad Moshiri not too far behind.
Excellent article, very well written.
In response to Vondaspucci, I can assure you, any success we have, is far from hollow.
Look at ManU,look at Chelsea.Now turn your head sharply to the right and look at Leicester!
See what I did there?
Don’t worry I’ll give you all your watches back next time I see you!
Wow! I can’t believe I devoted 10 minutes to reading this article and a few of the initial comments.
Never mind the glaring problems with the argument itself, this piece is in dire need of a professional editor to clear out the needless guff. For example, the opening 5 paragraphs should probably be scrapped in their entirety.
Not TAW’s best output, to say the least.
City have been impressive off the field with their growth – but how much of their £198m of commercial revenue (taken from Deloitte’s money league) is from legitimate deals? How much do they get from Etihad for their shirt sponsor and stadium name sponsor? And how much is that inflated due to the fact it is all from the same family?
We get approx £138m from commercial deals. Bar selling the naming rights to Anfield – which the majority of our fan base would detest – I am not sure how else we grow? We haven’t got the equivalent of a Etihad airways to back us up.
1) FSG have shattered their transfer record several times already under Klopp’s current reign.
Before that the club’s record transfer fee (for Carroll) maintained for 6 years! Shows that with Klopp in charge the owners trust and back him financially.
2) Throwing money at problems does not simply make us win silverware, especially at Liverpool.
3) Klopp is willing to wait for the players he wants and the owners already proved that they wont hesitate to spend big to eventually get Klopp his prime targets.
4) We are 3rd in the table in February with 51 pts, on a trajectory to finish with 74pts-78pts. With a bit of luck here and there, maybe above 80pts.
We are facing our first knockout games in the CL since 10 years. 10!
5) Even with all jigsaw pieces in place, you are still never guaranteed to win silverware.
Appreciate the thought-process though, Paul!