NESV/Fenway Sports Group: Owners of LFC

It is not a theory but a demonstrable fact that we were very unlucky this past season, and any team would have felt the impact of that - even those in the 'fantasy land'.

Of course you choose not to engage with any of my questions though and prefer to resort to the constant moaning without having to back it up with much reasoning. Good luck with that, because I am done

The "fantasy" is on your part in believing LFC can compete on a level playing field with an inflexible sell to buy policy.

Quoting the same factual proposition is not as you put it "constant moaning" but repeating the truth.
You can put whatever label of the day pleases but you cannot waffle the truth - Klopp is responsible for our good fortune and we must be thankfull he agreed to sign.
NESV have only parted with £350m+ upon acquiring LFC.

I’m struggling to believe this team of players are the 2nd highest paid players in the league...

Unless the wage bill you are mentioning includes all connected to the club, from owners, investors down to the tea lady...

Criticism is only amplified when the owners failed to back the manger early on in the Jan transfer window, playing players out of their natural positions cost us dearly.

Nope, basic salaries plus huge incentive payments for CL qualifying, winning trophies and the Premier league.

So because of the number of trophies we won, the wage bill went through the roof in the last set of accounts.
It will be less for the season just gone, but CL qualification will have bumped it up a fair bit.

The "fantasy" is on your part in believing LFC can compete on a level playing field with an inflexible sell to buy policy.

Quoting the same factual proposition is not as you put it "constant moaning" but repeating the truth.
You can put whatever label of the day pleases but you cannot waffle the truth - Klopp is responsible for our good fortune and we must be thankfull he agreed to sign.
NESV have only parted with £350m+ upon acquiring LFC.

We are competing though?

17/18 - Top four finish and CL final
18/19 - 97 points and CL Winners
19/20 - League Winners with 99 points, Super Cup and World Club Cup

I'd wager next season we will be there or thereabouts for top honours again both at home and in Europe.

If that's not competing then I'm not sure what is?
 

Nope, basic salaries plus huge incentive payments for CL qualifying, winning trophies and the Premier league.

So because of the number of trophies we won, the wage bill went through the roof in the last set of accounts.
It will be less for the season just gone, but CL qualification will have bumped it up a fair bit.

Thanks mate, way it was presented was misleading as it comes across the team are the 2nd highest paid players in the league because of their contracts & not bonuses paid for winning silverware..

We are competing though?

17/18 - Top four finish and CL final
18/19 - 97 points and CL Winners
19/20 - League Winners with 99 points, Super Cup and World Club Cup

I'd wager next season we will be there or thereabouts for top honours again both at home and in Europe.

If that's not competing then I'm not sure what is?
 

I think what Stuey is saying is that the team needed fresh blood adding as it was clear that the team were fading after Xmas & pressure was mounting on the Boss with limited alternatives other than the last minute dip into the market for CB cover & a finisher upfront..

Thanks mate, way it was presented was misleading as it comes across the team are the 2nd highest paid players in the league because of their contracts & not bonuses paid for winning silverware..

All clubs pay incentives and bonuses, ours just happen to be pretty high.
It's not just a motivating factor, but a way of ensuring that the players are properly rewarded for their efforts.

We're still one of the top paying clubs, even just with basic salaries.

We are competing though?

17/18 - Top four finish and CL final
18/19 - 97 points and CL Winners
19/20 - League Winners with 99 points, Super Cup and World Club Cup

I'd wager next season we will be there or thereabouts for top honours again both at home and in Europe.

If that's not competing then I'm not sure what is?
 

A lot of cognitive dissonance about.

10 years ago, the same people moaning would have ripped their own arms off for that level of achievement.

I think what Stuey is saying is that the team needed fresh blood adding as it was clear that the team were fading after Xmas & pressure was mounting on the Boss with limited alternatives other than the last minute dip into the market for CB cover & a finisher upfront..

Is that what he's saying? I'm not sure it is.

All he keeps saying is that we can't compete when we clearly have.

I know he'll say that's all down to the manager whilst forgetting they hired said manager to fully complement how they operate.

As I've said before that's good practice in any walk of life. Hire the people to make the best of how you operate.

On last season we did buy a forward. It's not really realistic to expect us to sign another one in January just because that player for injured and two of the other three were going through a drought.

We could have left midfield alone last summer and bought a CB but the club and manager felt we could risk the players we had there and no could could forsee three of the first choice CB getting injured.

And the signing we've made already this summer at CB suggests it wasn't only just about money as to why we didn't buy there in January. We've always waited to get the right player under FSG and this seems to be the case again. We could have gambled on a CB and then not got the player we really wanted this summer.

Is that what he's saying? I'm not sure it is.

All he keeps saying is that we can't compete when we clearly have.

I know he'll say that's all down to the manager whilst forgetting they hired said manager to fully complement how they operate.

As I've said before that's good practice in any walk of life. Hire the people to make the best of how you operate.

On last season we did buy a forward. It's not really realistic to expect us to sign another one in January just because that player for injured and two of the other three were going through a drought.

We could have left midfield alone last summer and bought a CB but the club and manager felt we could risk the players we had there and no could could forsee three of the first choice CB getting injured.

And the signing we've made already this summer at CB suggests it wasn't only just about money as to why we didn't buy there in January. We've always waited to get the right player under FSG and this seems to be the case again. We could have gambled on a CB and then not got the player we really wanted this summer.

When we win, it's all down to Klopp.

When we (only) get 3rd, it's all down to FSG.

These people have all heard Klopp talk about the owners, how he works in and wants a collegiate decision making process, but these people don't hear that, or just ignore it.

Frankly, it's all very childish, like the "we don't compete", despite the number of trophies over the last few seasons, the record points tallies.
We don't spend, but we broke the world record for a defender and a 'keeper.

We could have gone out and spaffed all the money in the kitty for a second rate CB just to appease the idiots, but instead, they worked the best option (and I include Klopp in that), and we got 3rd spot.
Now we have one of the most highly rated young CB's in Europe coming in, and the window isn't even open yet, which tells me that this deal has been on the cards for a long time.

This panic buy nonsense is a great example of why fans should never have any say in the running of a club, as far as transfers go.

It basically doesn't matter what happens, there will be more bullshit gainsaying by petulant tw*ts who refuse to look beyond what they want right now.
They simply do not understand long term thinking or strategies.
It's like saying to a toddler: "you can have one lolly now, or 5 tomorrow".
They just don't get it, or more likely, don't want to because it gives them something to whine about.

If we were so self sufficient, Moores wouldn't have sold up.
He either couldn't be arsed or was too dumb to grow the club.
Parry was just too lazy.

So now we have a team of experts bringing in sponsors from all over the world, doing brilliant deals, expanding the stadium and hiring the best people they can, so that we truly will be self sufficient on a scale we couldn't have imagined 20 years ago.

But it's not enough for the whinging, entitled wretches who want everything yesterday.

F**k 'em.
Bunch of gobshites.

I
And the signing we've made already this summer at CB suggests it wasn't only just about money as to why we didn't buy there in January. We've always waited to get the right player under FSG and this seems to be the case again. We could have gambled on a CB and then not got the player we really wanted this summer.

Van Dijk is a great example of that. When things went tits up that summer the board i was at wanted us to bring someone else in and when we didn't it went in complete meltdown about FSG. Given how some people are constantly complaining in this thread i imagine the sentiment was the same here, though none of those clowns will admit to being wrong.

The simple answer for how we signed no one and walked the league down to two reasons.

1. Jürgen Klopp

2. Teams in transition.

On the second point we have United who were (and somehow still 😂) finding their feet under Ole. City were in a mini transition. Spurs just employed Mourinho. Chelsea had a transfer ban. Leicester are Leicester.

All the above allowed us to be so much better than the rest.

Now imagine if we would have smelt blood and signed three quality signings. Where would that have put us now? Instead we signed no one. Who the f**k signs no one?

Name me another team that wins the Champions League and signs no one.

A year on, from signing no one, and all the teams caught up.

We had a major major injury crisis. This masks NESV's tight fists VERY WELL. Even then, they exposed themselves with how they dealt with the crisis.

We can argue all day about these lot, I know where I stand.

Let's see how this summer goes and take it from there

You talk like a Manc trying to downplay the achievements of winning the CL and then tbe league


Only an opposition fan would look to make excuses for why we won the league - it’s twisting things to suit an agenda

We won the CL - came second in the league , the manager it seems was happy with the squad and believed it could go on and win the league - guess what , it did , yet instead of looking at is for the achievement it is you are only concerned about what players were signed.

Then after winning the league during a pandemic where finances were restricted we bought three players

You talk like a Manc trying to downplay the achievements of winning the CL and then tbe league


Only an opposition fan would look to make excuses for why we won the league - it’s twisting things to suit an agenda

We won the CL - came second in the league , the manager it seems was happy with the squad and believed it could go on and win the league - guess what , it did , yet instead of looking at is for the achievement it is you are only concerned about what players were signed.

Then after winning the league during a pandemic where finances were restricted we bought three players

Oh shut up with the secret manc talk

You talk like you've got John Henrys nuts in your gob

Oh shut up with the secret manc talk

You talk like you've got John Henrys nuts in your gob

When we won the league all over Twitter etc this is exactly what opposition fans said



” On the second point we have United who were (and somehow still 😂) finding their feet under Ole. City were in a mini transition. Spurs just employed Mourinho. Chelsea had a transfer ban. Leicester are Leicester.”


Why the F**k would a supposed Liverpool fan try to downplay our achievement

When we won the league all over Twitter etc this is exactly what opposition fans said



” On the second point we have United who were (and somehow still 😂) finding their feet under Ole. City were in a mini transition. Spurs just employed Mourinho. Chelsea had a transfer ban. Leicester are Leicester.”


Why the f**k would a supposed Liverpool fan try to downplay our achievement

Because it's the F***ing truth.

Were the above teams not in the situation I quoted? Enlighten me then

Whilst I don't necessarily disagree with many of the points here, I think you're purposefully making it sound as if it is all about one man. And in the end, let us not forget that Jürgen Klopp was their appointment - they have managed to attract one of the world's best, gave him time to build and equipped him with the tools to succeed and retain a great squad. I think it doesn't just "colour" people's perceptions, I think it has to - certainly reflects well on them. Backing a manager isn't just about transfer spending, or else the likes of Salah could be playing for Real Madrid right now. And among the tools Klopp has been given, you could include one of the world's best recruitment teams and, despite your assertion that the team has been entirely "selected" by Klopp - as if it was the work of his individual genius -, plenty of reports suggest that our recruitment team have been crucial to our recent success.

Am I necessarily happy that we didn't sign a CB early last season? No, if anything because Gomez and Matip have always been injury prone. But this past season has been beyond all reasonable expectation - when even your DMs turned CBs get injured, there is no planning for that. We could've been stronger but do people honestly believe that among all the chaos and disruption in our season, one additional CB signed at the start of the season ("to replace Lovren", of all people) would have made a huge difference to our final standings? I honestly don't believe so.

To be clear, I have not said our success is 'all about one man' or that the team was 'entirely selected' by Klopp. I think it's important to give credit where it's due and have said it was obviously a very good call to hire Klopp, who was also obviously a very good manager before he joined the club; one who most regarded as being of a significantly higher calibre than Brendan. Fair is fair though and hiring a world class manager who won back to back German titles and nearly won the CL on a limited budget was a good call. The reason I emphasise the manager's role in selecting, shaping and honing the team -- and leading us to success -- is because he is the single biggest factor in that success; not FSG, not technical analysts, data scientists or recruitment teams.

It sets the stage for success when you have owners who are reasonably competent at running a sports operation who don't leverage the club to the point of near bankruptcy and who do sensible things such as increasing the stadium capacity, appointing smart people in important positions capable of supporting the manager in his recruitment decisions and not completely losing out to our competitors from a commercial standpoint through sheer neglect. But all of that is fairly rudimentary stuff that approaches something close to a minimum standard as far as an owner should be concerned. The main difference is the manager. Take him out of the equation and I can't for the life of me think of another manager who would have achieved what Klopp has on the same budget.

We are competing though?

17/18 - Top four finish and CL final
18/19 - 97 points and CL Winners
19/20 - League Winners with 99 points, Super Cup and World Club Cup

I'd wager next season we will be there or thereabouts for top honours again both at home and in Europe.

If that's not competing then I'm not sure what is?
 

Apart from last season we have been competing with the also rans, if we don’t have some luck with injuries we will once again be runners up.

I’m struggling to believe this team of players are the 2nd highest paid players in the league...

If I posted it in the format of a twitter conspiracy theory, would you find it easier to believe it?

This is publicly available information, we've been among the top 3 biggest wage bills in the past few years.

From 2010/11 to 2015/16, we had, along with Man Utd, the largest wage growth in the whole of the Premier League:

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/849897139954225152

In the years after that, we once again had the highest growth of the whole of the big 6:

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1387293092257091584

Expenditure in wages is more strongly correlated to success than transfer expenditure, but of course, we can pretend we are doing things "on the cheap" and that we can't "compete" (even though we do compete), and care only about how much more this club or that other club are spending in players that wouldn't make our starting XI, as long as it fits our obsessions.

Because it's the f**king truth.

Were the above teams not in the situation I quoted? Enlighten me then

What “mini transition” were City in ? Kompany left and they bought Cancelo and Rodri - what’s this “mini transition” - City were the only challengers anyway.


How about the truth is - we were better than anyone in the league regardless of what they did , give the actual credit to the team you supposedly support as opposed to trying to find excuses for others not challenging just so you can point fingers at the owners ( for not signing players yet winning the league 🤦‍♂️)

This board is getting boring with the same camps reiterating their same points for and/or against FSG.

I've come to terms that there'll be one camp who'd credit FSG for building the club and set the stage for us winning trophies.

There'll also be another camp who feels disrespected by FSG for not knowing the values of our club, not running it they way they should be running it and hence FSG aren't fit to be our owners. 

My verdict is FSG got most things right in the business sense. We're going in the right direction with the value of the club heading north. Their key mistakes were the ticket price hikes, the furlough and the Super League. But the steps taken to understand the fans are improving with more discussions platforms with fan groups established. No one is perfect. We're well positioned to win things. The stature of the club is growing (got to be careful of saying this because seems like a higher value feeds into FSG's greed and so do we want the club to have a higher value/stature and attract better players?). If we can't overlook their mistakes then we can never move on. In the grand scheme of things, they got more decisions right than wrong. In the absence of perfection, I'd go with someone who's more right than wrong over another who's the completely opposite.

We wish for the perfect owner. A reply to one of my previous posts in desire for the perfect owner who could do the list of things I dream of was "good luck finding such an owner". Why don't we just enjoy the ride while they are putting the building blocks in place for more success? A higher marker value means a better budget and ability to attract better players and that is somewhat linked to onfield success as well.

The "fantasy" is on your part in believing LFC can compete on a level playing field with an inflexible sell to buy policy.

LFC have been competing at the highest levels, so I don't know what kind of lunacy you're on about.

Quoting the same factual proposition is not as you put it "constant moaning" but repeating the truth.
You can put whatever label of the day pleases but you cannot waffle the truth - Klopp is responsible for our good fortune and we must be thankfull he agreed to sign.

Oh I am thankful for Klopp - and also for the people who hired him and helped him build this squad. I am thankful for the players as well. I have a lot to thank for, with the past few years being the most fantastic I've experienced as a Liverpool fan. No problem with being thankful. I do have a problem, however, with pretending this is the work of a single individual.

You go on though and continue ignoring any evidence that does not fit your narrative. I hope the constant moaning is something of an emotional release for you and that it brings you some satisfaction, I really do.

If you find it in yourself to have some intellectually honest debate, however, I have asked a few questions for you I would be genuinely interested to hear your thoughts about.

To be clear, I have not said our success is 'all about one man' or that the team was 'entirely selected' by Klopp. I think it's important to give credit where it's due and have said it was obviously a very good call to hire Klopp, who was also obviously a very good manager before he joined the club; one who most regarded as being of a significantly higher calibre than Brendan. Fair is fair though and hiring a world class manager who won back to back German titles and nearly won the CL on a limited budget was a good call. The reason I emphasise the manager's role in selecting, shaping and honing the team -- and leading us to success -- is because he is the single biggest factor in that success; not FSG, not technical analysts, data scientists or recruitment teams.

It sets the stage for success when you have owners who are reasonably competent at running a sports operation who don't leverage the club to the point of near bankruptcy and who do sensible things such as increasing the stadium capacity, appointing smart people in important positions capable of supporting the manager in his recruitment decisions and not completely losing out to our competitors from a commercial standpoint through sheer neglect. But all of that is fairly rudimentary stuff that approaches something close to a minimum standard as far as an owner should be concerned. The main difference is the manager. Take him out of the equation and I can't for the life of me think of another manager who would have achieved what Klopp has on the same budget.

So why did it take 20 plus years for our club to do it then ?

Klopp has spent over £500mil - he isn’t working on some shoestring budget

VVD - £80mil
Alisson - £60mil
Fabinho -£50mil
Keita -£50mil
Mane -£30mil
Salah -£40 mil
Gini -£25mil
Ox -£35mil
Kounte -£35mil
Jota -£45mil
Thiago -£25mil


£550mil since he has taken over the club - he isn’t bargain basement hunting. He has been able to buy some quality players and those quality players are scouted etc by that huge technical team behind him.


Klopp is outstanding , he has made errors at times but he knows exactly how he needs the team behind him to function - the single biggest factor for the success is not one person - it’s how all the people work together to provide the platform for the manager to do his job

I’m struggling to believe this team of players are the 2nd highest paid players in the league...

Unless the wage bill you are mentioning includes all connected to the club, from owners, investors down to the tea lady...

Criticism is only amplified when the owners failed to back the manger early on in the Jan transfer window, playing players out of their natural positions cost us dearly.

Here's the thing about wage bill.

If our wages are not right up there - someone would say we're not paying enough to attract talented players.

If our wages are high and we underachieve, someone else would say we've got the wrong players.

It'll be amazing for the same person to be echoing both possible responses on either outcome. I see that there's so little room for error. It's understandable why the owners are being hated. Some fans are hard to please.

The simple answer for how we signed no one and walked the league down to two reasons.

1. Jürgen Klopp

2. Teams in transition.

On the second point we have United who were (and somehow still 😂) finding their feet under Ole. City were in a mini transition. Spurs just employed Mourinho. Chelsea had a transfer ban. Leicester are Leicester.

So we collected 196 over two seasons solely because of Klopp and teams in transition?

Were Europe in transition when we reached 2 European Cup finals too?

Now imagine if we would have smelt blood and signed three quality signings. Where would that have put us now? Instead we signed no one. Who the f**k signs no one?

Name me another team that wins the Champions League and signs no one.

Why should I care if we then won the league with 99 points?

A year on, from signing no one, and all the teams caught up.

We had a major major injury crisis. This masks NESV's tight fists VERY WELL. Even then, they exposed themselves with how they dealt with the crisis.

Have they, really? If we had an unprecedented crisis and still finished 3rd, have all teams caught up? Seriously? And why have they only caught up on a season when we did sign players (including a top starting player from the European champions), and not when we didn't?

Answer me this, then - who do you believe would have won the league if City had had as many injuries as we did, and we just had regular luck with it? If Ruben Dias were out for the season in the first few months?

If we had a couple of injuries and that completely unravelled our season, then yeah, I could perhaps agree that this would be a poor excuse. But that wasn't the case - we were top of the league by the end of the year, even without the world's best defender, and things only fell apart following the kind of unprecedented crisis any team would've struggled with.

We can argue all day about these lot, I know where I stand.

Let's see how this summer goes and take it from there

Fair enough, we shall see - not in the summer though, we will see how we do during the season, that's what matters. I can let Man Utd "win" the transfer market.

It sets the stage for success when you have owners who are reasonably competent at running a sports operation who don't leverage the club to the point of near bankruptcy and who do sensible things such as increasing the stadium capacity, appointing smart people in important positions capable of supporting the manager in his recruitment decisions and not completely losing out to our competitors from a commercial standpoint through sheer neglect. But all of that is fairly rudimentary stuff that approaches something close to a minimum standard as far as an owner should be concerned. The main difference is the manager. Take him out of the equation and I can't for the life of me think of another manager who would have achieved what Klopp has on the same budget.

I don't disagree with this, but the truth is that very few clubs are actually that well run - just look around. So you can hardly say it is 'rudimentary stuff'. It is true LFC had a lot of unexplored potential due to the incompetence of previous owners, and the new ones have done well to more than revert that trend, but go well above it. And investment in the team (particularly wages) has gone along with revenue increase, allowing Klopp to build this team in a world-class environment. I also agree that without Klopp this wouldn't have been possible; which again, for me hardly reflects poorly on the owners; for I don't think we would've been able to attract and retain him and his team if we were not a well run club.