Originally Posted by
Insidious
Of course I want us to improve Steveo, but that's a general point.
We currently have a side that can compete for the League and can compete for the Champion's League, having had two 90+ point League seasons and 2 Champion's League finals in 3 years. If we "stand still" on the pitch next season, we probably go deep in Europe and probably compete for the Title. That's good going.
It's not about not wanting us to improve if we can (though it is difficult to improve on being a record-breaking side Honestly) so much as wanting to be sensible about our path forwards for the long-term sustainability for the club. I'm going to use a couple of entirely fictional/hypothetical examples here, so bear with, but imagine for talk's sake we did purchase Fekir and Pepe and there was little to no quantifiable progress (still finished with a 90+ points finish, still competitive in Europe) and then Klopp/analytics staff find an area of the pitch where a difference can be made (let's say there is a midfielder out there that analytics suggest has the defensive prowess of Mascherano, attacking prowess of Gerrard and is a good fit for the system, plus is 23 so has years in the tank) and the Hierarchy say "nah, you spunked £125m only recently and we want to have money in the tank as a buffer against future unforeseen circumstances, money for agents for contracts, money for wages, money Yadda Yadda, so no, sorry" - we would be pretty gutted.
I want improvement, but I want intelligence and a sense of efficiency about it, so that should we identify someone that can truly advance the side in the way that the arrivals of Alisson and Van Dijk did, that we can do it there. There's little point for example (in a regular season where there's no Covid so there isn't a match every 3 days*) in having a Pepe or a Sancho sitting on the bench on £140,000k per week wages when they are being used in rotation akin to Origi. There is however value (speculating massively!) in being shrewd with cash, selling a 30-year old Salah and using that cash plus some we have had in reserve for bringing in an Mbappe level talent. Not that I think we would do that as we culturally don't buy "superstars" but you get the premise.
The game interests me much more than the financial side of things, but there's no getting away from the finance stuff really, it's a part of the sport and has been since '92 and has only gotten more prominent since Abramovich's arrival, then that of Sheikh Mansour and then that of FFP - can't be ignored really. Doesn't detract from my love of the game and doesn't mean I don't want to see us get better, but it's hard to get better than our current level.
We have cover in almost every position and we try to get the balance right in terms of giving Youth a chance. If your strength in depth is too strong you waste a lot of talent whilst simultaneously putting up major obstacles for those Youths wanting to get into the first team, which would be a shame when we are going to be creating talents like Trent, Jones, Brewster via our set-up. It's a massive juggling act and I think we're doing a pretty good job, especially given that our system is the Star and we don't "need" £100m+ players just now.
Where would you see us improve?
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