Does Something Need To Change?

Well, wasn’t that a massive anti-climax?

Deadline Day is usually always a bit exciting, even if your team doesn’t sign anybody but what transpired on January 31^st this year was nothing short of a washout.  And that goes triple, if you’re a Liverpool fan.

I excitedly told my brother-in-law on Friday evening, ‘we’ve signed him!’, in reference to the Ukrainian international Yevhen Konoplyanka that the Reds had made their primary target as we approached the end of the January window.

There had been mentions of the deal having fallen through but out of the blue suddenly it looked as if Liverpool had finally stepped up to the mark and matched his clubs’ desires.

But, as I’m sure you’re all aware, the minutes ticked by and nothing was made official and as the clock struck 11pm, it seemed like something had gone terribly wrong. ‘They’ve got until 1am’, Sky Sports News told us but not even the extra 2 hours grace to finalize all the intricacies was enough for Ian Ayre and Liverpool’s own ‘transfer committee’.

The main thing that arose from yet another debacle was that something needs to change.

Many will point the finger at Ian Ayre and the profile we’re presented of him doesn’t do him any favours, nor does the fact that he takes the lead when potential signings are targeted so it stands to reason that Ayre will bear the brunt of the blame, and perhaps rightly so?

Then again, there are still those that simply do not trust FSG, after having been burned too severely already from previous American owners.  It has often seemed that FSG are reluctant to go in for the big signing, to splash the cash on that big name that could push the team forward straight away, rather than constantly and consistently bringing in youngsters.

But you only have to look at the players they’ve given us so far, and the backing they’ve given to both the previous and current manager to see that they’re not afraid of spending when they see genuine talent before them.

So who else is there, the manager? From what I can gather, Rodgers has little to do with the actual ‘back-end’ of the transfers, the negotiations and contracts and fees, he simply identifies targets and lets his team do the rest.

Maybe there’s some faceless men and women behind the scenes that are simply incompetent, or maybe we just struck it very unlucky in the last 2 windows.  Who knows?

What we all know, and I’m sure the clubs as a whole can appreciate, is that next time we cannot allow ourselves to left to look this amateurish again.  It’s happened in the summer, when both Spurs and Chelsea each ‘gazumped’ us to first-choice targets and it’s happened again in this window with Salah.

While Liverpool’s committee sits and contemplates, other clubs are acting and making moves; we’re simply too slow to act.  I can only imagine that that is why Dnipro’s owner inevitably decided to not sign off on his player joining us – if that is even the truth – and why we’re left looking red-faced.

We have a bare bones squad to work with at the moment but hopefully we’ll see some light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of players returning, soon.  We’re in a healthy, strong position in the league and should we defeat West Brom today, we’ll pull 4 points ahead of 5^th placed Everton, 9 clear of last season’s Champions and potentially even close the gap on Chelsea, so all is not lost.

Should we fail in the race for 4^th though, then it will be hard to not look back at this window and feel that some members of the clubs staff badly let us down and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some big changes and maybe that is exactly what needs to happen if we’re to keep up the pace going forward.