If there’s a long term appointment in mind, perhaps there is no gardening leave that is required. It might be a simple matter of waiting until their contract expires where they are now, before they come to work for us.
In the meantime, Ward does his work, lines things up, etc. Mike Gordon helps too. I see all that.
But then the way we are going about our business this summer, we appear to have about 8-10 irons in the fire, to one degree or another, in order to land, say, 3-5 players.
In other words, there might be a few twists and turns to navigate.
Now let’s imagine of the 8-10 players we are looking at, 3-4 of them are playing in Germany. Having someone who is an expert in that market, and can adeptly go between one club and another, and has a reputation as a tough negotiator…
We just don’t know the situation, but if it is something like the above, it makes complete sense.
The one thing that triggered all this is Ward not sticking around. On the one hand, it’s only work, so people come and go, and that’s life. But on the other hand, after waiting in line for the job, and being promoted from within and backed to seamlessly take it forward after Edwards, I am disappointed in Ward because he only managed to last for five minutes.
I forget who (maybe @RER ), but someone said they heard it suggested from someone who might reasonably have that information, that our feelings about how well he was managing the promotion had as much to do with his decision as him making it alone. Big pinch of salt required, but it is an alternative worth keeping in mind when trying to make sense of these outcomes
It’s our most important summer for years and we might use it as a trial run for the DOF role. Do a good job and he can stay, that hardly sounds like they’re convinced he’s the right man for the job. Don’t do a good job and he’ll be out on his ear and we’ll start the search again.
Wonder what Edwards is up to these days. He claimed that he needed a change, a new challenge but he hasn’t taken a new role since he left despite being courted by Chelsea and reportedly R. Madrid. What is he waiting for?
FSG should definitely send feelers his way if they haven’t done so by now.
I don’t know the guy, but a quick look on his wikipedia page seems to suggest that he didn’t too bad jobs at the clubs he went to. Aachen, Hannover and Köln seemed to prosper while he was there. But you’ll know better than me.
Then he went to Wolfsburg, but I don’t really know how they have done in the last five years. They’ve been a bit shite, haven’t they?
In any case, all these clubs aren’t top level (sorry mate!), so this link is slightly surprising to say the least.
I don’t see us challenging for the big 2 now as long as these owners are still around, we’ve rode our luck with being able to rebuild with the extortionate fees we’ve managed to take in and relied on recruitment being exemplary… the chances of appointing a once in a lifetime manager after Klopp is slim to none, while the powerhouses plus Villa West Ham Arsenal will continue to outspend us season after season until their on path with us as far as squad depth and strength goes. You’ve got Chelsea City Utd Newcastle who are gonna do what they want when they want. Leaves clubs like us and Spurs fighting for 6th.
People acting like Chelsea haven’t been spending money like it’s going out of fashion just to finish 20 points behind us in mid-table.
Easier said than done, but if we’d been able to replace Keita and Ox last summer with Nunes and an uninjured Arthur, this squad would have comfortably finished 3rd at worst.
Does having unlimited money help? Of course it does, but as Chelsea are showing everybody, there are more important things than that.
None of what we’ve been able to do is based on luck. That is rather simplistic. Its the product of HARD work and forward planning.
We didn’t simply stumble on those transfers or the appointment of JK. And I fully expect us to continue in the same vein- smart football management. But my point was about improving on what we’re doing as the landscape changes…
The issue is never about what others do or plan to do, but what we do; how we improve on what we do…
Personally, I’m not so convinced about Newcastle. They’ve done well this season- fair plays to them. But things also aligned in unexpected ways for them with LFC, CFC, THFC all collapsing. I’m not convinced about their football…But time will tell…
I think they have been extraordinarily lucky, given a quick on-ramp to the status it took City 3 years to achieve (September 2008 to May 2011). They enter this transfer window flush with cash, CL spot in hand, and will likely aim to turn over that squad much faster than Citeh did over the preceding two years. I expect far more sweeping changes in this summer than ManC had in Summer 2011, and that was not a trivial level of change.
At a guess, by this time next year, no outfield starter from that match will be starting regularly.
It could backfire though. Their luck could turn out to become a problem for them (for instance a heightened expectations with the fans leading to over-hastened spending).
We’ll see if they have adjusted their plans to the new surprising situation, but the latter could easily lead to them becoming Chelsea nr. 2 next season if the turnover is too quick and without a clear plan behind it.
I think Newcastle as a club are a different kettle of fish to some of the other oil-based clubs. The do traditionally have a strong local support and one which is pretty wide reaching. They don’t have that many competitors locally. Sunderland is the obvious rival but the next biggest clubs near to them are Middlesborough and Leeds. It would be like us competing with Aston Villa for a fan catchment area.
I doubt you will be seeing swathes of empty seats at St James’s Park. Whether that transfers to success on the pitch is another matter. They appear to have done a good job at shoring things up and have appointed a capable manager - at least for the level that they found themselves in.
What they look like when they start throwing the cash around is another matter. Sir John Hall managed to get them pretty successful in the 1990s. However, he didn’t quite manage to take them over the line and that was with some pretty outrageous spending - Alan Shearer eventually proved his worth but it’s worth remembering that he was a world record signing at the time: Ronaldo money.
The problem with the funny money in the game is that doped teams can pick off all the best players and flood the squad with understudies that are better than most sides first choices. You then have teams that have to rely on going a whole season without injuries, exhaustion and bum luck just to compete.
Quite possibly. John Hall and Jack Walker, who were the football sugar daddies of the time, didn’t have the endless funds of the current sportswashers. Also, I think their motivation was different. Hall still had an eye on building an asset whereas Walker was simply a fan indulging his passion.
“ When it came to the redevelopment of Anfield’s Main Stand in 2014, FSG handed the club an interest-free loan which reflected the fact that such projects are not considered in Financial Fair Play calculations and also allowed for payments to be paused during the pandemic.
However, for the building of a new first-team training ground at Kirkby and expansion of the Anfield Road End of the stadium, they took the unusual route of eschewing long-term financing to instead make use of the club’s £200m revolving credit facility.
It is a call that has since created an unnecessary pressure on cash flow when wiggle room would have been welcome, not least in the form of a desperately needed midfield signing being sanctioned six months ahead of schedule this season.
It also makes a mockery of previous suggestions that Covid was limiting transfer capabilities given that, in the last accounting period, £70m of the balance of this external loan was paid off.
Quite why FSG would choose to create that time-sensitive financial burden rather than increase the size of their loan to the club when the impact of the pandemic was still being felt across world football is difficult to understand.
In fact, that decision appears even more questionable since it has emerged that the owners are open to a sale in which any infrastructure debt, particularly that relating to a cash-making project such as the Anfield Road End expansion, would hardly be seen as an impediment.
It is hard to shake the feeling that this unnecessary urgency placed on debt repayment relates to a desire to either make Liverpool look even more attractive to potential investors or maximize profit on any sale.
And the same goes for FSG’s steadfast refusal to deviate slightly from what is an extreme interpretation of a self-sustaining model even in moments when it is obvious the manager could use some help.”
