I do think the centre back situation was a mistake by the club, because even allowing for Fabinho being the 4th option instead of Lovren, we still had two injury prone centre backs in Gomez and Matip.
When you consider that you need around 100 centre backs appearances a season across two positions, you can’t have two injury prone centre backs within the remaining three options.
So we actually had two centre back issue to address, we needed to replace two of them. We arguably sorted one of them by adding a midfielder to release Fab if required. What we should also have done is upgrade Matip or Gomez too.
Money is clearly tight, but it’s for FSG to decide whether and how they wish to preserve the value of their asset.
If the club fails to finish top 4, and goes backwards, the value of LFC will fall. They therefore can allow spending via an injection of capital or debt capital. It’s their choice.
Ultimately my view is that they’ve done a good job, I do think that the 13th in the net spend table is a bit unfair on them because we’ve raised a lot in player sales, and so the gross spending position should be considered too. But I also think they have opted to hold back when they could have added a player here or there that could make the difference.
At the end of the day, my point is just that they’re not totally off the hook in what has happened this season, though I’m happy to put this one down to circumstances and experience.
Why is that a fault??? We have limited means and we have to prioritize. We would have bought a CB too if we could generate some funds (Origi, Wilson, Grujic).
By the way just to point out that despite some of last seasons TV revenue being in this coming seasons accounts and a loss of a 3rd of the seasons match day revenue total revenue has gone up from £533m to £559m as per Deloitte. Costs may have also gone up to account for some of that, we may have to wait as late as June on that. But if they did it certainly wasn’t on players as we spent best part of fuck all that season.
Good job, given the pandemic will have cost us something like £200m by the time it’s done. FSGs insistance on saving for a rainy day might just have saved our arses now we’ve had a torrentially rainy year.
Yeah, but over several years that could have been sorted many times. We bought players in that time. We’ve bought enough players during Klopp’s tenure that if he had wanted to bin off Matip, Gomez and Lovren it would have happened.
Anyway, a predictable problem is getting an injury. Having to play a Merseyside derby with your sixth and seventh choice defenders is not predictable. It’s a freak.
Ridiculous example with De Bruyne. He’s literally the best midfielder in world football. Of course any manager would want him, and they won’t be getting him. He’s also a top red.
I think Klopp has said that he doesn’t like too much squad churn and he likes to build trust and harmony within the squad. He also doesn’t want to go to the market if there are solutions within the squad.
Klopp has also said his ideal summer is to bring in no players and have all his boys in for six weeks of preseason.
This isn’t just philosophy for philosophy’s sake. It intrinsic to how Klopp works. If he is constantly churning players and recycling his squad, that erodes trust and confidence. You say Klopp wouldn’t say no to fucking off Shaqiri, but if Shaqiri gets the boot, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Keita are left thinking ‘shit, am I next?’ what effect does that have on squad harmony.
These things matter, and I find myself saying a lot these day, this isn’t footy manager or FIFA. You can’t just bin off players and stick new players and expect there to be no impact.
This side has been built steadily and carefully, with a couple of pieces added at a time. That’s intentional in my opinion.
All I’m saying here is you think that Liverpool should have spent more money (despite not having any) on the squad. That’s fine. I’m not arguing that. What I think is strange is the idea that this is always down to FSG. We should know enough about Klopp, his methods and his philosophy to know that’s at the very least questionable.
I mean, Klopp’s first window he was offered £35m to sign Alex Texiera, and he was the one who said no, I want to work with the boys I’ve got.
Losing Thiago, Jota, Keita, AOC, Milner, Alisson, TAA and even Tsimikas hasn’t affected us?
Matip was never going to be replaced in the summer, nor was there an urgent need to do so. A replacement for Lovren was highly desired but if the trade-off meant not getting Thiago, the decision to stay with 3 recognized CBs and acquire one of the best midfielders around was more than sensible and justified.
Hoever has made a grand total of 7 appearances in the PL for Wolves. He is 19 years old. If he had stayed, we would have found ourselves in the exact same position that we are now.
Fabinho and Henderson could have easily been injured playing in their natural position as well. In any case, predicting a Liverpool player getting injured this season is like saying that it’s going to rain.
Leicester, West Ham and the bitters have balanced well-functioning teams. Liverpool at this point isn’t balanced or even functioning. If Klopp manages to quickly turn Kabak into a PL level defender and if we get a break injury-wise, we might start looking more like a team. Neither is looking likely at the moment.
You are incorrect. You are confusing the Euro and Sterling revenue figures for the 2019/20 season (total revenue €558.6 million, not £588.6 million).
According to Deloite, total revenue has fallen from £533 million to £489.9 million (€604.7 million to €558.6 million) i.e. an 8% reduction (£43.1 million less, year on year).
It doesn’t help your argument if you get the basic facts wrong.
Fair enough I was angry and made a mistake, didn’t realise the figures were in different currencies. So we lost a 3rd of match day revenue and some of the TV money will show in next year’s accounts? A loss of £43.1m obviously seems like a catastrophic figure to most of us but with that in mind it’s not as scary as some have been going on about. The year before had profits of around that figure and included spending of a much higher level. We might not even be operating at a loss for the financial year.
The shortfall is going to be a lot more than £43.1m. That was just the loss of revenue from a partially affected season, this season’s been significantly negatively affected throughout.
There’s absolutely no chance that we avoid an operating loss for this season. No chance at all imo.
Well I wasn’t actually talking this season yet anyway. There were claims last seasons figures would be hundreds of millions in losses and I wasn’t responded to very civilly for pointing out we didn’t know that and we could even break even yet. Revenue has dropped down £43m depending on running costs compared to the year before we will see where we lie. But I wouldn’t expect the losses to be the same or more than the £43m Revenue dropped by. The previous year we bought far more players and posted a profit of around that.
This year (which won’t be known till March next year) is almost certainly a loss. But there are a few things that mean it may not be as bad as feared. Some TV revenue from last season will be in this seasons for one and the Nike deal for another may have a positive impact. We will have to wait and see.
Me guessing. Partly if we lost circa 50m for 0.25 of a disrupted season, so a whole year of this is going to be £50m x4.
I know it fag packet maths, but we’ll have to wait and see what this ends up costing us.
I also read somewhere that match revenue for a season is about £150m. Obviously this season will now play out without fans in, so that’s down the swanny.
Match revenue is about £100m. Revenue dropped down £43m that season. That includes a chunk of TV revenue now going to be in next seasons accounts due to the delay of the restart. There will also be an unknown increase in revenue due to the Nike deal in that deal. A real pessimistic take is that next season will be down £100m but that’s not the same as a loss.
Based upon 2018/19 expenses (and assuming cost of sales at 75% of 2018/19 level) and Detloite’s projected turnover, I anticipate, for the season 2019/20 an operating loss of c. £46 million; player trading should deliver c. £30 million profit, resulting in a loss before tax of c. £16 million.
This season turnover will be further reduced as the PL’s £330 million media rebate kicks in together with the loss of $466 million from the lost Chinese broadcasting deal, and we go a full season without match revenue (worth £84 million in 2018/19). In a very best case scenario I estimate this will further reduce our turnover by at least £64 million. I have no idea what impact there will be on commercial revenues but I don’t expect it to be positive!
All of which could result in an operating loss of c. £90 million (assuming another substantial reduction in cost of sales). After a profit on player trading of about £25 million, this will deliver a best case pre-tax loss of c. £65 million. (my worst case scenario c. £100 million loss)
In terms of cash at bank and in hand, we won’t have any, and unless we substantially increased our availability from the bank back in January 2020, our line of credit from that will be pretty much exhausted too.
In short, we will be brassic. Let’s hope Mr Henry can find something down the back of the sofa.
Hmm it’s nice to see a well thought out, well researched take on it.
I would limit my responses to just a couple though and I hope you don’t see it as disrespectful as you’re clearly more knowledgeable on this than me.
1 I think commercial revenue, especially for this current season, will be a much higher increase than your post seems to suggest.
2 I think our costs will be a lot lower than your post suggested too. Mainly when it comes to player trading payments. Our big two years of incomings were 2017/18 (around £157m) and 2018/19 (around £164m). Most of those deals will have been on payment schedules over around 3 years (seems to be our normal structure). In terms of cashflow most of the bonuses in those deals would have been triggered and paid and most of the payments too. Since then we’ve added payment structure deals for a total of around £85m which will be the ones coming off the cashflow now won’t they? And £75m of that was negotiated and structured to mainly come out even further stretched out than usual with the payments even further into the future than normal.
3 We act and talk about the club making a loss like a catastrophe. I don’t see it that way. It can be allowed under the FFP rules and covered by the owners. The owners have not put anywhere near as much revenue into the club as its current valuation. If they need to open up cash reserves I’m sure they can and will. How much cash reserves did they have before buying the club? That was an unplanned situation just like this.
4 The previous two seasons we ran at profits of over £160m combined. It seems like FSG are getting it both ways these days to my uneducated mind. If we run at profit it’s “well done that was nice” and no more is heard about it. If we are threatened with running at a loss its “oh dear God that can’t possibly happen we can’t possibly allow that”! And the whole time their commodity (us) just gets more and more fat and worth more and more without further investment from them.
Agreed here @Lowton_Red. Reading through Mo Chatra’s financial breakdown a few weeks ago, his net results arrived similar in a conclusion: we would likely have to sell a significant piece this summer if we have any desire to spend on new players.
It’s why I’m amused at all these recent ‘links’ to Liverpool for various players. Or when the headline reads, ‘Liverpool planing £56m swoop for (insert name here).’
