And I'm sure that wasn't your intention when posting the article.
The Suso trick was cute though.
I think you are getting a little touchy and losing your sense of humour mate.
Tony Barrett
Last updated at 12:14PM, October 7 2015
As ever, the sacking of a manager at one of the countryâs leading clubs has led, irrepressibly and depressingly, to an inevitable and counter-productive bout of blood-letting. No sooner had the termination of Brendan Rodgersâs contract been announced when fingers began being pointed, either at the Northern Irishman himself or at some of those he worked alongside, particularly the now notorious transfer committee.
For those who believe Rodgers was hard done by, Michael Edwards, Liverpoolâs director of performance analysis, has become a convenient scapegoat; a bogeyman with a laptop who should follow Rodgers out of the club. For those who believe Rodgers had only himself to blame, his departure was not just merited, it was overdue and the role played by anyone else is largely irrelevant, particularly as JĂźrgen Klopp is about to arrive and make everything better.
In one sense, everyone is right and everyone is wrong. It is about individuals but it is not. It is about who is good and who is not so good but it is also about whether or not they brought out the best in one another. It is about who signed this player and who signed that player, but it is also about how much chance they had to succeed when a twin-track strategy was being pursued.
More than anything else, though, it is about strategy and vision and that was set neither by Rodgers nor Edwards, it was determined by Liverpoolâs owners, Fenway Sports Group (FSG). The battleplan belonged to them, not to their generals, be they âfootball menâ or âlaptop gurus,â they just put it into practice, albeit to increasingly poor effect.
Everything Liverpool have done in the transfer market over the last three years has been far too complicated and far too driven by a desire for value, hence 31 players being signed at a cost of almost ÂŁ300 million in that period. It has also been undermined by the horse-trading which went on within the committee system which saw the manager get one pick and his colleagues get another (although that failing was less evident in the summer when, aside from Roberto Firmino, all of the acquisitions were at Rodgersâ request).
Again, this was totally inevitable with the appointment of a manager who made it plain from the outset that he wished to stand or fall by his own decisions. The collegiate approach that Liverpool were looking for was not one that Rodgers wanted to subscribe to, albeit it was one that he signed up to when joining the club and one which he accepted again when signing a new, long-term contract in the summer of 2014. Clearly, Rodgers wanted to change things from within, to become first among equals to an even greater extent, and that never happened.
That left a fudge in which no-one was able to get exactly what they wanted. It also resulted in a team featuring some players that the manager wanted and some that he was not so keen on. It also left the manager in a situation in which the increasingly urgent need to win football matches was accompanied by the political need to incorporate signings that he clearly was not convinced by. At times, Rodgers veered towards his own men â Lallana over Markovic, Lovren over Markovic being examples â and at others he went with the committeeâs choices. Everywhere you looked, there were compromises that attempted to please everyone but ended up serving the best interests of no-one.
Inevitably, being the manager, Rodgers paid the price with his job. The question that is now being asked, though, is whether others should accompany him through the exit door? It is a legitimate point to make too. Rodgers no more failed on his own than he succeeded on his own when Liverpool became one of European footballâs most exciting teams in 2013/14. Accountability is all well and good but if you have a collegiate system, surely blame, along with any credit, should be shared? In politics, collective responsibility is regarded as a virtue, in football it is yet to exist as Rodgers himself demonstrated by sacrificing two members of his coaching staff in June.
FSGâs view, though, is that the players that Liverpool have are better than they have been showing. Again, this is debatable. Can Klopp really turn Simon Mignolet into a commanding goalkeeper, Lovren into a defender who does not panic when the ball is in his vicinity or Emre Can into a midfielder whose technical ability is not undermined by an ongoing energy crisis? The jury has to be out, even though Klopp does have a remarkable record of helping players to achieve their full potential just through the brilliance of his coaching.
The point now is that we are going to find out, one way or another. Klopp is more than willing to work with a committee, having operated under a director of football to great effect at Borussia Dortmund, and like the majority of modern coaches would prefer others to get their hands dirty in the transfer market while he gets on with the business of making the football team better. His record in player development means that FSGâs entire vision is about to be put to the kind of test which will either make or break it. Should Liverpool fall short under his management, it is inconceivable that he will be the only one to lose his job.
But as well as Edwards and whichever other committee members people choose to focus on, FSG need to look at themselves and ask whether or not their preferred strategy gives either manager or number crunchers the best possible chance of success. By appointing Klopp, they are showing a commendable, if belated, adherence to the idea that an obvious solution is obvious for a reason. For all the science that people in football try to blind us with, one truism remains â clubs that win things tend to have the best managers and the best players. Targeting Klopp shows FSG have accepted that reality on the managerial front; now they need to do the same when it comes to player acquisitions.
Liverpool can be excused, at least to some extent, for falling short on the basis of their spending power in terms of wages in comparison to Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal. But what they cannot be excused for is using their financial resources as ineffectively as they have, which has cost them any chance of overcoming that disparity. With ÂŁ300 million spent on 31 players in three years, funds have been spread too thinly and player turnover has been far too high. Quality over quantity has to become their mantra from hereonin.
There will be an argument, again a legitimate one, that it is harder for Liverpool to attract top players, and that when they do become available they will inevitably be drawn to clubs who are regulars in the Champions League and those with a proven recent record of success. Until Liverpool achieve those objectives themselves they are undoubtedly at a disadvantage. Going head to head with Manchester City over Kevin De Bruyne during the most recent transfer window, for example, would have ended in defeat, with a great deal of time and effort having been wasted.
Yet City, albeit armed with the wealth of a Sheikh, have shown that if the best players are offered the best terms they will come. Liverpool now have to do that to the best of their ability but for this to happen, their aversion to paying elite salaries has to end.
Upon taking over the club almost five years ago, John W Henry, the principal owner, talked of some of the contracts he had inherited from the previous owners as âtime bombs.â He was right too. Liverpool were a club paying Champions League salaries without playing Champions League football, and financial stability had to be restored.
That has now happened, much to FSGâs credit, albeit with significant help from sky-rocketing television revenues, and Liverpool are now in a position to speculate to accumulate once more. Having operated in the hit and miss section of the transfer market in recent years, regardless of how much they spent, they now need to take a step up and at least fight their corner when players of proven quality become available.
If the committee they have in place are as good as FSG believe them to be, then maybe they will flourish but even if they do not, then at least we will get to find out one way or another whether they are fit for purpose. As it is, all we know for sure is that the strategy as it was, with Rodgers and committee members working alongside one another in the uneasiest of truces, was doomed to fail. Anything else just comes down to which side of the blood-letting people wish to place themselves on.
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http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/clubs/liverpool/article4578829.eceMaybe you will find this article by Barratt more to your liking? Seems to be making many of the same points I have been trying to make over the past few pages.... so of course I think its a good one