Originally Posted by
Insidious
Not personally enraged, no.
From very early doors they laid out how they were going to run things. They have stuck with that. It'd be like getting a Hyundai i20 because you know it's a sensible wee car for city living and 10 years later being annoyed that it doesn't perform like a Subaru Impreza.
I always said before they came that I would love to see us win without a Sugar Daddy or Sheikh and we managed to do so in the end - enormous majority of the credit to Klopp and the playing staff (goes without saying) but we showed it was indeed possible. Shit, had the illegitimate entity that used to be the football club known as Man City we would have acquired 3 League titles under Klopp rather than one, yet you'll find about 50 times more content on shifting our owners than on booting blatant cheaters out of the League.
In the spirit of the "your team against" threads with emphasis on the "your" I guess the question is are there things that I would change about how we run things? Of course there are some.
- There are players I'd have accepted a smaller fee for with a view to getting them on the books and reinvesting. I'll never understand why we didn't take the potential £25m for Ox and Phillips and use it towards a mid rather than holding out for £30m and wasting £10m on loaning an injury-riddled player in Arthur.
- There are lads who I would have sold as/when it became clear we weren't tying them down to a contract, such as Can, Wijnaldum and Firmino - and I'd have reinvested the funds appropriately.
- I wouldn't have recruited rehab staff from an Arsenal regime that was always associated with injured players. Seemed a madness to me that.
- I'd probably have kept all transfers in the 20-25 age range so that we preserved resale value for those times we felt an offer was right, as opposed to, say, buying Thiago - much as I love watching him. Which, I must emphasise, is not the same as saying I'd always want us to sell players - Alisson, Van Dijk, Robertson, Trent, Firmino, Mane, Salah for example all stayed for longer than the 3 and a half seasons we got from Torres and Suarez respectively and most of them are still here - we keep most of our "stars" these days which is welcomed.
- I'd aim to sort the appropriate lawyers/relevant staff to ensure that we don't have work permit issues, as we never seem to buy directly from South America like other clubs - and I would be taking some calculated risks on lads from there rather than waiting for them to join (for example) the Portuguese League and buying them at double or triple the price we could have had them for. With that money saved, you then have extra for those times where you do need to pay the Home-grown/British tax.
- I'd somewhat alter our wage structure as we seem to be "punished" (in effect) for winning things due to our incentivised contracts - there has to be a way we can slightly adjust that so that when we do win the League or Champion's League, we can invest to stay on top, akin to what Man United did under Fergie.
As an aside, I also dislike financial doping in general. Which begs a question - for those who say that the owners should "just pump money in" - how much is an "okay" amount and how much is just "well, if you can't beat them, join them?" as I would hate for us to be run like Man United or Chelsea.
We're frugal, sure. I'd say that myself. I'd personally rather we worked even more efficiently within our model first before worrying about anything else. Football is in a war of escalation - if we start smacking down £90m fees then Man City or whoever else will just throw down £110m and I think getting involved in a dick-measuring contest is lunacy, especially when a few of our posters seem to have personally seen John Henry's in their spare time.
Some of the above is just ball-park suggestions from someone who doesn't work in football. We could definitely make tweaks, much as I like our overall principles. When they leave, the club will be in a stable financial position, with a decent core of players to work with and an increased stadium. I'm happy with that - if that means I lack ambition in the eyes of some people I have never met, so be it. Maybe those eyes are tainted by witnessing Liverpool win relentlessly in the 70s and 80s - I never witnessed that. I only knew a Liverpool side that would never win the League and finally got a solitary Champion's League in the bag after 15-16 years of me having an interest in the club from a small age - so maybe my World view is tainted by that perspective.
Anyway - enraged? No, absolutely not.
Entertaining the possibility that the wider footballing world is changing at an alarming rate that we may not be able to compete with? Entirely plausible - Newcastle and Man City are here, Chelsea spend like drunks, Arsenal have finally pushed the "Go" button and Man United have always spent big while I've been following footie. So I understand some folks having concerns.
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