The Owners - FSG

The Albert
3011

Rubbish, it has nothing to do with disagreeing with your your opinion.

The problem is you don’t post an opinion;

If you said “I wish FSG invested more of their own money into the club on players” fine, that’s your view/opinion.

But you don’t, you say things like “Klopp wants investment and FSG are failing him by not putting in their own money”. Which is your own warped version of what is actually happening, it’s not an opinion it’s posting a lie. Even when Klopp is directly quoted countering this you refuse to accept it.

That’s what people keep calling you out over.

Here is a quote directly from you bashing FSG whilst saying Klopp is the root of all our successes;

That could have meant the LB, creative Mid and extra attacker we’d wanted for ages could have come in earlier than they did. The CB reinforcement could have come in earlier than Konate did. The strengthening on the wing that Diaz has represented could have been sooner.

All of these are needs spotted by fans at least a year before they were implemented by the recruitment team and Klopp who clearly agreed with the fans but had to wait for when the deals could be funded.

You have nothing to back up your claim, and you ignore so so many of the variables around transfers. For example;

Was a player available? I.e. Would their club allow him to leave or do they want to leave? Example Thiago, we only signed him because he was refusing to sign a new contract. So this literally disaproves your statement, he was not available to transfer any sooner than when we signed him, both he didn’t want to move and his club didn’t want him to, only when he got into the final 12 months of his contract did the availability change.

Your second point that this was a requirement suggested by fans 12 months before we did anything… Again if you actually read our recruitment strategy (various articles confirm this) we work 2 years in advance, so signing Diaz this window is made possible because we’ve identified him as a player we’d like to sign 2-3 years ago and have been monitoring since. His move is made possible by his fee dropping in half (actually because Spurs did the hardwork of negotiating it down).

I could breakdown so so many of your other statements, but to be honest I have better things to do.

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3012

spock you dont say GIF

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3013

No doubt that they’ll look for someone like that. The problem is that there aren’t many managers around who haven’t their big ego and like things done their way. Think Rafa, a gaffer we both love. He wouldn’t accept to simply be the main cog in an existing machinery. He’d want to change things according to how he sees it. Most managers, good or not, have that big ego. Gerrard would have me worried too, but we aren’t at that stage yet.

The discussion about Pep being groomed as Klopp’s potential successor is an interesting one. He’ll no doubt look to work within the existing structure, as he has contributed to set it up in the first place. In that sense, I’m all for a promotion from within if it makes sense.

But has he what it takes otherwise? Tactically, in terms of motivation and communication with the players, the fans and the media? Does he see a potentially good player when he sees one, and sufficiently clear ideas about what he needs? Does he have Kloppo’s in-match killer instinct? The nose to make the right selection, and the right in-match decisions?

That’s what FSG will have to decide regarding Pep. A tough task.

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3014

I still disagree with that statement very much.

Most of that impression stems from his time at Valencia when the board was signing not just the wrong players, but players in the wrong positions, hence the infamous “I was hoping for a sofa, they’ve brought me a lamp” quote. He wanted a striker, not just any striker, but Samuel Eto’o, pre-Barcelona. Or Inter Milan where he simply wasn’t able to sign anyone he needed to bolster an aging team that had been wrung out by Mourinho.

Give him a competent structure like what we have, then judge him on his decisions. Somehow I think if he had the power of our recruitment team now, he would be a very happy manager (until he remembers what the refereeing decisions against us are like…)

3015

Yes it is. If you ever want to see more cast iron evidence of a man like Klopp being disappointed you really won’t.

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3016

Sorry you’re correct, I’m taking so many pelters over things others also say (but then get polite acknowledgement but then ignored whilst I get arguments and insults) that it can wind me up and make me snappy. I don’t assume other posters are idiots and one thing thats getting used against me is my willingness to admit to not be a subject matter expert. But people aren’t arguing the points they’re arguing my intelligence in some places so i end up carried away and snapping back. Especially at posters who don’t seem to have a clue on the subject matter but troll me over several posts and months over my lack of knowledge on it.

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3017

I looked at this and thought it was quite interesting.

In the period @AnfieldRdDreamer talks about - the summers of 2017 and 2018 - Liverpool spend £343m on eight players: Salah, Solanke, Robertson, Chamberlain, Van Dijk, Keita, Fabinho, Alisson.

In the subsequent years (2019 - Jan 2022) Liverpool have spent 193m on twelve players: Van Den Berg, Elliot, Minamino, Tsimikas, Thiago, Jota, Pitaluga, Davies, Kabak, Gordon, Konate and Diaz.

Some thoughts about this.

It seems quite clear that there was a purposeful, and deliberate investment in 2017-18 with the aim of building the spine of Klopp’s team. If you look at the players bought, there is the keeper, the centre half, the midfield anchor and the star forward, and the creative ball carrier (Keita - although this one hasn’t really worked out) It’s hard to argue that this wasn’t an absolutely stellar transfer period.

Since then the recruitment has still been significant but more steered towards opportunism (Taki, Thiago), young prospects (VdB, Elliot, Pitaluga, Gordon, and you’d put Carvalho here if the paperwork had gone through), and pro-active advance replacement of the previous generation (Jota, Diaz, Konate)

What there isn’t in that selection is the transfers that marked the previous couple of years - the massive signing to plug an obvious hole in the team. The very obvious reason for that is that those holes don’t exist anymore. The team is solid and there just isn’t the need to spend 300-400m on a huge rebuild.

And there are some other things to bear in mind. We’ve got the best pair of starting full backs in the world and we paid £10m for them. Our reserve keeper is one of the best back ups and he cost zilch. Our current first choice partner for Van Dijk cost nothing. The lad we’d been raving about there until injuries set him back cost £3m. Net spend is a useless indicator in this context.

Buying and churning players at the rate some teams do isn’t optimal. It gets you up the net spend table, but it’s also also an indicator that your club is badly run, is unstable, makes poor decisions and wastes a lot of money trying to correct poor decisions and catch up. That’s the trap Everton and Utd are in. Both those clubs would kill to be in our position.

This is is essentially what the club have done. We’ve killed the idea of having to price waste into your transfer plans. We know that we can compete with City and Chelsea, but not if we’re spending half our budget on correcting errors and busted flush signings.

Could we have done more? (Which seems to be @AnfieldRdDreamer’s issue). I am sure we could have. FSG could find ways to raise money, and that’s never been the issue - the question is really whether we want or need to. Whether Klopp wants or needs to, or more accurately whether the football operation - of which Klopp is a key stakeholder- wants or needs to.

Sometimes the decision to do nothing is a proactive decision, if there is logic behind it. I remember quite a few years ago now, fans were pissed of at the club for not signing a right back. There was a kid in the academy that Gerrard had been raving about, but you can’t go into a season with an 18 year old as the back up to Nathaniel Clyne. We know how that story went. We’ve had similar ones with CB (Van Dijk’s over mate. Move on. Johnny Evans is available for 30m) and in recent years Midfield (Jones and Elliot adding depth that we didn’t need to spend big on). We’re might see the same thing again, with fans wanting a forward and a DM as cover, but the club thinking it makes more sense to clear a pathway for the highly rated Morton and Gordon.

And it really should be remembered that the period of time being complained about here, in which we have only spent a measly £193m also coincides with a global pandemic which blew a fuck off big hole in football finances. Yes, I’m aware other teams spent money, but through loans which at the time would have felt fairly risky. They also had more of a need to spend money than we did, and it’s perfectly justifiable for our club to say ‘our team is already great. We can afford to let this ride out a bit’

The upshot is that

And finally, just to go back to @AnfieldRdDreamers comment, a ‘catalyst’ is generally considered to be something used to kickstart a process. If you have to keep adding it, it isn’t really a catalyst.

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3018

I’m trying to follow the posts and the disagreement, but I don’t really get it.

The owners are fine. They have made a few mistakes, but generally they learn from it and improve. They have done what they said they would do. I have never heard them say anything other than the club would live to its means. As the asset grows, so do the means. And then beyond that, all departments seem to be in sync and working together - youth, coaching, scouting, analysis, recruitment… it seems like a very well oiled machine. The coaching facilities have improved and the stadium has improved and grown too, with more on that to come.

Were it not for artificially inflated clubs, this would be an era of true LFC dominance. As it is, we have won the CL and the Prem, and we are at the top table competing for the biggest prizes in the game.

I am happy with that, and I don’t want another owner, especially if that means an artificially inflated or sports washing sort of thing.

The specific example of Klopp wanting a defender last winter is reasonable enough to talk about. We had very bad luck in the one position with big injuries. Klopp wanted to strengthen. We got a loan deal late in the window to help see us through, while also making do with the players we had. As it happened, we discovered that Phillips and Williams had more about them than most imagined. The team overcame significant adversity, regrouped, and finished third. That’s what happened. We can easily talk about what could have happened that didn’t happen, but there’s no end to that. We finished third in a dog turd of an unusual, fan-less season.

From the owner perspective, the central defender business was in a covid environment where anticipated income was taking a big hit. Could they have personally funded a central defender? Of course they could, but it’s always easy for people to say what other people should do with their money! And besides, it would have been against how they have run the club, and how they said they would run the club. As a fan I’d have liked to have seen an exception made, but it wasn’t, and I’m not crying about it. We finished third, then bought Konate and people returned from injury.

Most jobs and workplaces have constraints that come with the job. Klopp is a world class operator and he knows this. The example of not signing a central defender, for a decent sum, earlier in the window, is legitimate to cite, but then so is the fact that it came during a unique set of circumstances. It is also legitimate to point out the numerous ways Klopp has been backed in building his team.

To be honest, I don’t know what all the fuss is about between good reds on here!

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3019

“I know they are with us. I know they want to support us.”

“We have to improve with this squad, that’s my job. Not sitting here being disappointed or frustrated with some decisions, i’m not, i’m not.”

“We know what we would do in an ideal world but the world is not ideal”

If the cast iron evidence you speak of is literally him saying almost word for word the exact opposite of what you suggest then I don’t know what else can be said at this point.

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3021

1 You’re ignoring half the interview and the interpretation of the journalist who was in the room with Klopp when this was being said to take specific phrases to back up your own preset opinion.

2 The bit you’ve quoted is still Klopp saying theres no point crying and complaining over a decision made by others and he needed to just get on with it and work with what he has. I don’t think its saying what you think at all.

3 This bit above turned out to be a lie as the accounts came out 14 months later showing we had voluntarily paid off a credit of something like £50m early during that financial year. We had the capacity to use up to £50m on signing fees, wages and initial payments of fees on players that winter or the summer before. A decision was made to pay that off instead leaving Klopp to get on with it.

3022

Thank you for a well thought out, in depth post. I also appreciate the belated admission that FSG could have done more (don’t forget their value during the pandemic actually increased by a 3rd and they received more investment than they’ve ever actually spent on us including buying us). Thats all I’ve been arguing, that they could and how they could.

Where me and you will be best to respectfully agree to disagree is the level of it being Klopps choice vs restriction imposed on him that he is accepting of. Its still the best financial backing he’s ever had and he’s likely never to be forced to sell a player he wants to keep (flip side being he is never going to want to keep a player who has his heart set on leaving).

In most ways these owners are as good as they get. But they do seem to have taken their foot off the gas since we won the CL. Yes we built a foundation during that time you reference and we didn’t need that level to continue, although importantly we were financially stable whilst doing it so could if we paid loans off slower. But to go from that level to nothing for a year was jarring.

Something realistic could have been Jota and Tsimikas or alternatives coming in a year early. Konate or alternative come in along with Thiago. Diaz or an alternative and a CM coming in this summer.

That is realistic spending on players/positions we knew as fans needed looking at at those points and Klopp eventually was able to recruit for so I think that showed the fans were correct.

That would have been still without FSG investing into the stadium etc. like they could, just a bit more pragmatism to paying finance off so quickly and accepting maybe £5m in interest being “lost” each year.

3023

This is reaching.

Also, what £5m interest each year?

3024

To be fair, I don’t think I have ever suggested that FSG couldn’t do more. For one thing they could load debt onto the club to fund signings if they so wished.

My position has always been…

a) I don’t think they should
b) I don’t think Klopp necessarily wants more
c) I think if Klopp did need more backing, it would be found for him.
d) there are a whole range of good footballing reasons not to go to the market to solve short term needs - like the effect on youth development, Klopp’s preference for a tight squad, and the effects on team morale from too much recruitment etc

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3025

You are arguing that an interview in which a man states he is not disappointed is “cast iron evidence” that he was disappointed and then say I’m ignoring things to back up my point.

If this is where we are then you’re past reasonable debate. I wish you good luck repeating the same nonsense over and over again in the hope that it becomes true. Don’t be disappointed when it doesn’t though.

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3026

[quote=“AnfieldRdDreamer, post:3022, topic:116”]
In most ways these owners are as good as they get. But they do seem to have taken their foot off the gas since we won the CL. Yes we built a foundation during that time you reference and we didn’t need that level to continue, although importantly we were financially stable whilst doing it so could if we paid loans off slower. But to go from that level to nothing for a year was jarring. [/quote]

I think the spending since winning the CL is exactly what you’d expect from a club that think their squad is complete in terms of overhaul, and now it’s just a case of tinkering and refreshing. Spending 192m in three years on a team that has no clear and obvious holes in it is hardly small potatoes.

There are a lot of ‘alternatives’ there.

I mentioned how Liverpool, while hardly being paupers, need to get signings right. The biggest difference between us a city, is they can write off a £50m player if it doesn’t work. We can’t.

I think that has led us to our recruitment culture where we go incredibly deep on profiling players. Not just there skills and data (don’t we employ a particle physicist in the analysis department) but on character, background, motivation, hunger etc. As well as the situation with their club - would they sell, what would it take etc.

Put it this way. I think Liverpool keep tabs on lots of players. Probably all of them, being realistic. But very, very, few end up being under serious consideration. When we are at the point of actively wanting to sign someone, I don’t think alternatives are really on the table.

That’s probably why we don’t make many mistakes. When we’re in for a lad the level of diligence that has been done is probably extraordinary.

What I think we don’t do is work our way down some sort of list with the intention of just getting someone in. We know who we want and we get them, and we’ll wait if necessary.

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3027

No he doesn’t, he says theres no point acting disappointed.

3028

We only paid £2m interest on our debts last year, I said MAYBE as I was trying to come up with a reasonable guess on how much EXTRA per year we would pay in interest if we paid off the stadium loans etc slower than we have.

3029

Course not, he only explicitly states that.

But believe whatever you want, you’re beyond being worth the effort now.

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3030

And this is one reason why we keep butting heads. You’ve limited your possibilities to one extreme, negative, option. FSG don’t have to load us with debt. Its not fantasy its real life nearly all clubs operate with a revolving level of debt its normal and its not bad business. We’ve done it the whole time under FSG. That opens up options on how fast you pay that debt off. In recent years our accounts have shown us paying that debt off far faster than was initially expected and interest levels far lower presumably tied to that. With such savvy businessmen owning us i wouldn’t think something that fundamental would be happening except by choice. I mean don’t get me wrong ten years from now we will be in a cracking situation with all the stadium work complete and paid for and debt free. If we can continue competing and keep our revenues high the whole time.

3031

In @AnfieldRdDreamer’s defence Klopp did seem a bit bristling in that interview, although it was nowhere near the strop it’s being painted to be.

My take on this is as follows.

Firstly, I’m not ruling out the fact that there might have been a bit of games going on here. At that time Liverpool did not have a centre back, we obviously needed to do something, and we were clearly in a weak negotiating position as a result. I wouldn’t be surprised if Klopp’s ‘annoyance’ and the clubs poverty was a bit of an act to help us not get screwed. The end of that window was that we got a lad on loan we’d (apparently) been quoted £40m for four months earlier.

That might be a bit of a stretch, so here is the story I would personal believe.

I think Klopp was just having a rough time. I think it was around the time he lost his mum (?) and couldn’t go home, he was under a lot of pressure and he’d seen a lot of his lads get serious injuries. I think the plan was always that Konate was the one they wanted, but they couldn’t get him until the following year. When all the centre backs went down, Klopp had a panic and want to get someone in and the recruitment team/FSG wanted to stick to the Konate plan, but would try and get a loan signing/cheapie in place. Klopp under a fair bit of stress and struggling with some personal stuff went a bit OTT in the presser, but Edwards managed to sort out Kabak at the end of the window, which gave Klopp a little bit of space to regroup, and more importantly get back behind the Konate plan.

Just my speculation, but ffs who has never had a disagreement at work?

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