Originally Posted by
Insidious
Coutinho and the consequent player purchase is about as "Moneyball" as it gets. I totally understand people erring on the side of monitoring what we do under American owners due to the Vampires, but this is a pretty solid way to run things - acquire undervalued asset on the cheap, milk what you can from it, sell at highest possible price, reinvest money into area that needs upgrading.
The next step in the evolution of that process is to "create" the assets rather than acquiring them, as that will save even more money and potentially yield more income. One of the best ways of doing that is to bring through English youth talent (as other clubs pay a premium for it) and if the lads aren't up to OUR level we sell to the West Ham/Crystal Palace types for more than they're worth and use the money to source more undervalued talent we can either use or sell on.
The key of course to making this work is to have the best staff on hand to make the most of it and I would say our Manager, fitness staff, analytics staff and our negotiator for purchases and sales are elite - and credit where due, FSG recruited an elite Manager for precisely this reason - and hopefully will do so again post-Klopp, rather than handing the keys to Stevie "because sentiment" as that would be a HUGE alarm bell.
Also let's not forget that "under-valued" doesn't simply mean "cheap" - we got Alisson and Van Dijk for well below what they are truly "worth" to a side (City would have done better spending £400m on Alisson and Van Dijk than countless full-backs) and have reaped the benefits.
We're now in a situation (not to mention Covid-19 of course) where it's difficult to upgrade the first team in this way as the side is so good that it's tricky to upgrade, plus we will want to upgrade without artificially inflating the market for ourselves and pricing ourselves out of future deals. Take Werner - under normal circumstances Werner was probably more worthy of a £90m or so price tag - now had that been the case and had we bought him, the next time we try to buy a striker, we have to spend, say, £130m, as people are wise to our model and there will be a "Liverpool tax" - so rather than put ourselves in a situation where we can't do business within the profile of our model, we'll look elsewhere. We have bought from relegated clubs for example (Shaqiri, Wijnaldum, Robertson) as they'll be in less of a position to negotiate, whereas if we were trying to buy those players from, say, Spurs, they would have cost much more.
I love what we have achieved with such a low NET spend. It's a massive middle finger to the rest of the Footballing World - particularly Man City, Chelsea and PSG - and I sincerely hope we keep finding creative ways to outwit the enemies - one of which will be producing more Academy talent to either use (saves money on transfers) or sell (generates money for transfers) to maximum effect.
In time too I hope we sell star players at age 31 or 32 for inflated fees after we have enjoyed their prime on our pitch. A 32-year old Salah to Juventus for £90m only for us to buy these £30m top talents, that type of thing.
We'll see how it all plays out, but so far we are doing great. Champion's League and Premier League in the bag, chances of slipping out of the Top Four very slim, sense of threat of our stars being purchased by Barcelona or Real Madrid incredibly low. This is what we always wanted and we are doing it on the cheap and laughing in everyone's faces while we're doing it.
Those damned Scousers again.
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