So the rumour is that our summer transfer budget is 60 million. I really have no idea what that means in the modern game - amazingly it might pretty much be peanuts compared to what some of our rivals might be ready to pay for players and wages.
I think we can all agree theres no way we are going to outspend our rivals if we want success. What we need to do is plainly to spend money in a smarter way. Moneyball was an attempt to do that by targeting the right signings. If we had an amazing finisher it might have paid off but so far the results have been mixed.
Looking at our past form:
season 10-11 [scored 59] [conceeded 44] [finished 6th] 58 points - Winners Man Utd 80 points - deficit 23
season 09-10 [scored 61] [conceeded 35] [finished 7th] 63 points - Winners Chelsea 86 points - deficit 24
season 08-09 [scored 72] [conceeded 27] [finished 2nd] 86 points - Winners Man Utd 90 points - deficit 5
season 07-08 [scored 67] [conceeded 28] [finished 4th] 76 points - Winners Man Utd 87 points - deficit 11
season 06-07 [scored 57] [conceeded 27] [finished 3rd] 68 points - Winners Man Utd 89 points - deficit 21
season 05-06 [scored 57] [conceeded 25] [finished 3rd] 82 points - Winners Chelsea 91 points - deficit 10
season 04-05 [scored 52] [conceeded 41] [finished 5th] 58 points - Winners Chelsea 95 points - deficit 38
season 03-04 [scored 55] [conceeded 37] [finished 4th] 60 points - Winners Arsenal 90 points - deficit 31
season 02-03 [scored 61] [conceeded 41] [finished 5th] 64 points - Winners Man Utd 83 points - deficit 20
season 01-02 [scored 67] [conceeded 30] [finished 2nd] 80 points - Winners Arsenal 87 points - deficit 8
Those deficits are massive. In simple terms, turning six defeats into six draws (a huge difference) would only yield us 6 points extra towards our deficit.
Even if we were level pegging with our average form over the past decade we would still fall WAY short.
Now the bad news: currently we have only scored 37 and already conceded 29 leaving us on 42 points. This means that the signings we make this transfer window not only have to be as good value asd our rivals just to keep us where we are they actualy have to be significantly better to make up for the shortfall of points resulting from last Summer's dealings.
In other words, even signing another Torres, at one point the best in the world, would not in all likelihood be enough - even if you conceeded Damian / Kenny's transfer policy could identify such a player, that he would come to our (non Champions League) team for the kind of wages we are offering and that he would start firing straight away.
Is it likely that this will happen? I think the answer is a depressing and pretty obvious no.
So what can we do? As I said above, obviously we have to be smarter than our rivals. That means out-thinking them and doing things that they are currently not doing - either because they simply havent thought of an idea or they HAVe considered an idea that is deemed too stupid or ludicrous to try.
If we win every game till the end of the season we will finish on 66 points - the league champions (IMHO) will finish above 90 points - a deficit of at least 26 points. Cup victory (or victories?) aside that's how good we are - compare it to our form in the past ten years. In terms of value for money, each additional point will cost us £2.31 million pounds assuming not a penny is wasted in order to get us to the top.
So this thread is all about ideas to help the club that differ from just signing the latest South American wonderkid and would cost less than a couple of million pounds per season to get us an extra point (though obviously the cheaper the better and the more points the better).
I'll kick off with an obvious one.
Its generally acknowledged that the atmosphere at Anfield is now pretty poor in comparison to a lot of clubs (big games excluded). If the crowd were encouraged to sing and get behind the team I think it could easily translate to at least 6 points a season (that's three of our many home draws being turned into victories). Ive been to Anfield when the crowd are so behind the team ive thought that us winning was the ONLY possible result. So why arent the club doing more to encourage this? Why not have a singing section in each area? Why not have a signup service where the words to popular songs could be texted to your phone for newcomers who want to be involved? Why not have people employed by the club to bang on massive drums so that the crowd could should "Liverpool" or "Dalglish" or whatever to get the atmosphere going? Why not have videos of the best songs and chants emailed to you by the club as a reminder of your day there? Hell, why not offer a quid discount on your ticket price if your'e prepared to sing a song in front of everyone at the box office? How can it possibly be anything other than a win-win scenario for us to do that?
Feel free to add your ideas below, no matter how stupid.
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