I’m not angry at FSG. I’m angry at the game allowing this to happen.
Liverpool are one of the biggest clubs in the world. Something like 4th or 5th biggest. We should not have a problem buying Jude Bellingham. The problem is that money in football has got to such ridiculous levels that a club the size of Liverpool cannot compete.
Fans rant about FSG being stingy and not putting in the cash, but why should they? Why should they throw cash at a sport that is eating itself? Liverpool should be able to comfortably compete, but the cost of competing at the top of the game now exceeds the means of even the biggest clubs. That can’t be right. It isn’t sustainable and it makes a mockery of the competition.
Maybe instead of hashtags and petitions, maybe fans could direct their anger at FIFA and UEFA for allowing this to happen.
I wonder how many people actually watched this video and listened to Jürgen. He was ranting precisely about how there’s this obsession with whatever transfers one can make, and speculation about how much money can be spent.
Whereas he wants to focus on getting the transfers he needs done behind closed doors, and getting work done and improvements out on the training ground.
I genuinely feel sometimes a lot of people who profess their love for Jürgen don’t actually love who he is. They would very much prefer a Mourinho or a Guardiola.
EDIT: By the way, he’s also pretty clear that the team we already have is significantly underperforming, and that they can (and should) be better than this.
This is been the crux of my ‘back the manager’ ranting for ages.
When people say ‘back the manager’ they mean make him spend for money. Actually backing the manager would mean backing him to work the way he wants to work.
I for-see a tumultuous summer. Planes over Anfield at the start of next season? Wouldn’t surprise me.
We had it so good for a glorious period, memories like goldfish some of our fans.
Klopp can stay forever for me, even if he starts eating babies but I hear knives being sharpened for everybody at the club. Will we take the slippery slope to oil money? Big months ahead and they won’t be full of a drunken joyous German.
…and really limited applicability because of how different the mechanisms to build a team are. Maybe some comparison to baseball, but hockey is just so different - the draft is definitive.
Jurgen Klopp on having a pick of clubs who could afford spending: “But this is 𝗠𝗬 𝗖𝗟𝗨𝗕. Nothing. You want to suggest I quit here and wait for the next top job? Really? This is MY CLUB”
There is a potentially interesting parallel in baseball. For years the Sox were always highly competitive in their salaries and always right at the top of the total spending. But recently overall spending in that league hit an inflection point and the Sox have not kept up. There has long been an understanding among the league’s biggest clubs that despite the lack of official salary cap, there was an upper limit of spending beyond which the economics of the league didnt work, and they seemed to set that at 200M and had an unofficial understanding to not exceed it. This increase in spending has largely been driven by one new owner, who came in and just started giving contracts left right and center, and in very short order smashed that ceiling. But once he did that, every player is then negotiating at a different level and lots of clubs have found themselves having to spend more to land the players they think they need. Notably, the Sox have not kept up and have gone in a couple of years from among the biggest spenders to a middle of the pack team in total spending. What is not yet clear is whether this is an absolute choice to simply not keep up, or a strategic short term strategy to offload salary so they can rebuild their roster in a more cost effective way in this new salary era.
Yes, I would definitely say there is more of a parallel there - and one that gets to the same questions about what FSG does if the model they are comfortable with is no longer viable. Red Sox fans are not happy these days, somewhat like LFC fans would be if we had two more seasons like this one and started realizing this is the new norm.
It should not be about owner models not being viable. Owners pumping money in can’t be just an alternative model.
Henry could pump 100m of his own money in this summer. What then? Another 100 next year? And anything FSG do put in is just going to be dwarfed by the oil clubs anyway.
That’s not a broken ownership model. It’s a broken sport.
Should not be perhaps, but it is where the sport is (more so than baseball). The era where if you were smart you might be able to beat City’s money has shifted. The European Super League idea was unpopular with fans, not least Liverpool fans, but in the end it was a realistic acknowledgement of the forces shaping the game at the highest level. Refuse to adapt to them, and a club finds itself no longer at that level - and it is more costly to get there than stay there.
I cannot see FSG sticking around for much longer unless the regulatory changes develop real teeth.
… and at the freaking PL as well, who are every little bit as guilty as FIFA and UEFA. They could have avoided the mess of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia destroying football in this country, and they could also have had a good look at Abramovic before allowing him to buy Chelsea. But they just saw the big cash coming in, nothing else. Shame on them.
Remember when petrol could never, ever go above £1 a litre? Housing market inflation was unsustainable? Yeah, those ideas were flat out wrong. Football will keep going further into financial insanity. We can King Kanute all we want but the wind is only ever going to blow one way.
The custodians of the game have proven themselves unfit for purpose. Almost a last throw of the dice is waiting to see what happens to Man City with the 100+ charges over them.
Perhaps if Man City whack Bayern by another three in the second leg, it will add to a sense of injustice among footballing royalty.
Big clubs. Well run clubs. Rich clubs. Used to competing at the top, because they built it up over many years, and have huge fan bases, and a legitimate global footprint.
Clubs like that are now being flicked aside.
If the custodians of the game can’t run it better, the clubs need to do something and come together. Ultimately they have the power, if they will realize it.
Don’t see much of a chance as long as you have a significant amount of fanbases of clubs who apparently couldn’t care less and can’t wait for the next oil prince to come.
