Should Liverpool have a change of ownership? Just how have FSG performed as stewards of our great club? There has been a lot of talk on social media of getting FSG out of LFC, based primarily on a lack of trophies, and other various debacles.
Let’s start with the bad:
- Raise of ticket prices…£77!
- One league cup in seven years after a pledge of ‘We’re here to win’
- The transfer committee
- Losing Suarez / gaining Ballotelli
- Not enough squad depth
- Failing to sign the top targets this summer / the Virgil Van Dijk debacle.
- Being here to only make money.
- Being absentee landlords
Ok that should do for now. Let’s address them:
Raise of ticket prices: The ticket price raise was unprecedented and unsavoury. But they listened, acknowledged and backed down. Unusual in these times, to be so flexible and understanding. Some see it as chaotic, I see it as receptive, and part of their learning curve.
One League Cup in seven years: A barren spell of success, yes. But in that time we have been winners of the League Cup, runners up once, and twice in the semi-finals. Once runners up in the FA cup, and once in the semis. Runners up in the Europa league. We also came the closest we’ve ever come to winning the Premier League, in what as we all know, should have been a victory, barring our everlasting bad luck. Just imagine how FSG (and Brendan Rodgers for that matter) would have been viewed had we not capitulated in such spectacular fashion, had Steven Gerrard not fallen from grace, had Jordan Henderson not been sent off. FSG and Brendan Rodgers would have been heroes immortalised.
So we have almost won a lot of things. (That’s seven good cup runs, including one victory, and three more finals, and basically winning the Premier League (live in the alternate reality with me please). But with our recent mentality / players / managers we have fallen short repeatedly. However, it’s not like we repeatedly failed to make a mark in anything – the players / managers just fell at the final hurdles a lot, and it’s unfortunate. We’ve had some great times, great runs, and so many almosts, despite numbers not being on the board. Not to mention with the manic finances of the Premier League these days things have become much more difficult. In the 90s and 00s, in the era of the Big Four, you had to be doing something spectacularly wrong to not make the Champions League. Nowadays you can do things spectacularly right and still not make it, given the fierce competition.
The doomed transfer committee: It didn’t work very well did it? It seemed like a sound business model – have a team of experts including the manager, and vote on what players to sign, eliminating the potential errors of a single man. But it didn’t quite work, with some questionable buys causing headaches for poor old Brendan. But as with all things FSG they learn and adapt. The most important skill you have to have to be able to succeed is the ability to learn from your mistakes. It’s an absolute given that there will be mistakes, nothing in this world is without them – it’s human nature. FSG didn’t get to the top in baseball by not listening and learning. And now its gone…to a degree, to the manager gets what he wants… Within reason, in fact almost without reason, but still, other clubs still have to say yes and we can’t control that.
Losing Suarez / gaining Ballotelli: They sold Suarez yes, but they did sign him in the first place. And they sold him for a good fee after getting another year from him, and spared many professional footballers rabies as a result. Balotelli had his flaws, yes, but he was an understandable gamble after losing Suarez and failing to get Sanchez. (The guy wanted to live in London – what can you do? (How’s that working out for you Alexis??)) Balotelli was worth a punt at £16m, and in a way, a respectably brave gamble. I’d bluff on that hand in poker too. No, it didn’t work, but at least they tried something. It was a better idea than having Morientes, Voronin or Ngog leading the line.
Not enough squad depth: Yes we have had a small squad, but you cannot have a massive squad of world beaters when you are not in Europe, let alone the Champions League, with a sane business model (unlike Chelsea and City). It was the right squad size for the occasions. Now it is bigger, now that it is necessary, and if they’d had it their way, we would be two world beaters heavier right now.
Failing to sign the top targets this summer / the Virgil Van Dijk debacle: No it didn’t work out perfectly this summer, but we do have Nabby Keita in the bag, which is a remarkable achievement! The word coup gets thrown around a lot, but this is nothing short of standing in front of a tank with your shopping, in coup terms! And yes, VVD was awkward and embarrassing. Who knows who is to blame for how that was handled, Klopp or FSG? But the intention to spend £60m odd on a defender and the same on a potential replacement for Gerrard shows real ambition. One that has been glaringly lacking.
Being here to only make money: Everyone is here to make money. You’re a fool if you delude yourself into thinking otherwise. Only mad Russians and bored Sheiks can do otherwise. Basically you need an oil reserve if you want to do anything other than make money. But our owners seem to enjoy the competition and the prospect of winning, along with the business side, and being involved with a club that echoes their beloved Red Sox.
Being absentee landlords: Ok they’re not here. On the ground, hands on, in Liverpool. Good! Who wants baseball owners sticking their noses in what they don’t really know enough about? They have representatives here, and leave the club to be run by people who know better than themselves. That is proper management – delegating, and the proper use of resources and expertise that are possibly greater than your own. Who would you rather, Mike Ashley???
Yes mistakes have been made, but they constantly seem to learn, evolve, and aspire to better things.
The good:
- They forcibly removed the worst ownership in the club’s history, with impressive guile, and in doing so saved us from oblivion.
- They increased the capacity of our beautiful stadium to be competitive, with the possibility of increasing it further still. (And grumbling that that hasn’t been done yet, is harsh, it was always an ‘option’.) An issue so all-consuming for decades, climaxing with the woeful yet alluring ‘Spade in the ground within sixty days’ farce. And they dealt with it, with stupendous ease and grace, especially given how much time, effort and money went into the planning before they arrived. They walked the line of increasing our capacity, whilst keeping our spiritual home intact, impeccably. And they did it all without a single game being disrupted. So much so, they’ve had Barcelona sniffing around for advice. I didn’t see us play one game at Wembley…
- They removed the worst manager in the world, and replaced him with a stabilising club legend who won a cup and got to the final of another. And yes they let him go, but probably for the best considering where we are now, and what came to pass after the King’s departure. Let’s face it: Carroll, Adam, and Downing were fantasy football statistics, and were never going to restore Liverpool to its full glory, or play the kind of football we demand.
- On shaky ground and in no uncertain terms told Arsenal where to go! ‘What do you think they are smoking over there at the Emirates?’ Come on…. glorious!
- They hired a young manager with a vision, who in an alternate timeline won us our first ever Premier League title. Thus solidifying the position of everyone involved as immortals.
- They hired the best manager in world football available to us. One so immeasurably sought after and courted – but THEY got him! Arguably the best manager we’ve had since the last time we won the league, along with maybe Rafa and Houllier. In doing so we are back in the Champions League and doing ok, despite insane levels of competition now for those places.
- They dreamt real big this summer. A transfer kitty unheard of ever from Liverpool. They sought to mix it up with the oil boys. They went all in with Jurgen, sensing this was the time to strike. Ok it didn’t go perfectly, but we did get Salah and Keita (a year on). Only VVD missing. They gave it a real good shot, learnt their lessons (again) and went big. We’ll try again next year. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But no more are the half measures: The Dioufs, the Diaos, the Morientes’, the Poulsens, the Coles, and the Koncheskys. Even no more Borini’s and Markovic’s. No more nonsense bargain buys, only serious business. They are learning.
- In no uncertain terms they told Barcelona where to go! After losing so many of our top players…you know where I’m going with this…Owen, Torres, Alonso, Mascherano, Suarez. They drew a line in the sand and said ENOUGH! It stops NOW! Yes, maybe we lose Coutinho eventually, but it was a really ballsy play, and an attempt to be in the absolute elite and a refusal to be bullied.
- They got the Ox. Whether he turns out to be a worldie or merely another decent English squad player is beside the point. They still bloodied the noses of Arsenal and Chelsea. And further enhanced our standing in the game.
So there you have it. Overall, despite mistakes being made, they have performed ok, and done so much for our great club. We have a better manager, a better squad, a better stadium, are much stronger financially, commercially, and are in a better competition than when they arrived. We are still a massive club, bigger as a brand than when they arrived, in the mix for the top trophies in club football, when seven years ago we almost imploded. Let’s not tar all yanks with the same brush. One lot managed one of the worst teams in baseball and nigh on destroyed us, the other lot managed one of the best, and basically saved us.
Are things perfect, no. Are they ever? Are things as good as under David Moores and his family’s ownership of the fifty preceding years? Probably not. But David Moores sold because he couldn’t keep up financially, and couldn’t afford and didn’t want to build a new stadium, making that question moot.
Who would you even get if it wasn’t them anyway? You want the Glazer’s? They haven’t been amazing, they’ve been worse I would say, and they had a bigger brand to start with. Kroenke at Arsenal? Devoid of ambition, run like a loan business, and overseeing a slide into abject misery. You don’t see them splashing the cash too frequently, and we, for the first time in a long time, can claim to genuinely be the bigger club (and I mean that in current terms, obviously we are bigger overall…hahahahahahahhaha *laughs manically *laughs smugly *scoffs). Arsenal’s success is down to Wenger. So who else then?? How many clubs have been ruined by bad ownership? Newcastle, Leeds, Forest, Villa, West Ham….it could be worse – a lot worse, as we saw under our previous owners.
It could also be better if we had one of the oil boys. But whilst infinite money (given that financial fair play seems to count for nothing) would be nice, isn’t there a piece of your dignified soul that loathes those clubs as having earned nothing and bought success? I don’t know if I really would want that anyway. I probably would if it arrived but if we just bought all the best players in the world it world and bought the title it would be tinged with guilt. We are proud, we deserve what we have, and we have earnt it over decades, and is what defines us as true giants of the game. That legacy, that the most successful, most cash rich clubs around us, without a true worldwide following that has stood by us despite a lean spell can only dream of, makes us who we are. Don’t sell your souls, and don’t get caught up in social media madness where vitriol is king. We are Liverpool, and for the most part we have decent owners. They are ok in my book.
Keep the faith. YNWA!
