about in the media...
Zenit St Petersburg - 80 million Euros for Hulk and Wetsil...!!!
To me these transfers alone proves the changes in football and how hard it is now to compete..
I think up till roughly ten years ago players picked clubs based on their prestige, history, size of the club and the potential to win trophies at one of the "clubs of their dream"
Now since billionaires have started pumping money into small mediocre clubs first one really we knew about being Chelsea a distinctively average English club with very little prestige and now a European powerhouse shows how money is changing the game and the status of football clubs. 6 years ago if someone said the worlds best stars would be playing for Manchester City they would have been laughed at.. If someone asked me 6 years ago who Zenit St Petersberg actually were I would have struggled to tell anyone that I honestly knew much about them...
These are the challenge's our new owners of actually anyone who owns us is now facing.. Liverpool may sell more football tops and have more supporters and well more prestige around the world than Zenit or Manchester City but this actually means nothing to a modern football player their primary motive in the sport is now money. Our club might be massive, one of the biggest in the world but now it's actually not possible for the top clubs in world football to compete with some of the much smaller ones simply because they have billionaires throwing crazy money about..
To a certain extent because of our history the club has the global fan base and income to make large transfer fee's possible as we can to an extent sustain it however it you look at this Hulk transfer. Chelsea's summer spending and Man City's spending in general the only way Liverpool and even Manchester United now can compete is to be very clever in the transfer market and also bring in top youth's... United already have a much better squad so can get away with the one marquee signing a summer to sustain their top level. We are miles behind that so I think the only way we can ever compete with the Chelsea's, Man City's, Zenit's, PSG's and so forth is to actually do it the slow way we are doing it...
I am as frustrated as anyone right now however there is no way on earth without a crazy owner any team can compete at the top level of the game anymore specially in England where we have the 2nd biggest club in the world and 2 sugar daddy spenders this is the hardest league in world football to compete in!!!
Lets hope the FSG plan works and if it doesn't then we can't really grumble because the only way to compete in England and soon Europe is to spend 50 - 100 million a summer until you have a european elite squad then top it up every so often with massive spending and 50 million plus players....
I don't expect Liverpool to do that and I doubt any other fan should either. FFP is the only way Liverpool will ever be able to compete at a top level again. I think myself and other need to look around at the transfers going on in football to realize that is where we are at and it's not going to change any time soon...
This article is not written in a way that I am moaning about no being able to compete it is written in a realist point of view regarding how much football has even changed in the last decade and how how we have to manage our expectations while our club try's to adapt...
The transfers almost unspoken...
posted on 5/9/12
So the excuse that LFC isnt good anymore is because of the Oil Tycoons, but ask yourselves even prior to these takeovers Liverpool didnt really achieve much. Yes you won the CL and a cup treble but on the league front lfc has been terrible
posted on 5/9/12
Later fellas.
Thanks for the discussion
posted on 5/9/12
Would the almost bankrupt days away from doing what Rangers done Chelsea be anywhere without that money????
And a CL is not to be sniffed at Chelsea spent enough money to get theirs did they not?
posted on 5/9/12
Yes they did, but how about the League?
posted on 5/9/12
Thats the only thing we have not won in our 21 year barren spell..
What did Chelsea win the 20 years before you got the cash???
posted on 5/9/12
Johnsons,that proves the point. Sending Carroll on loan and having no replacement was what you said, amateurish. Having CEO with knowledge a decent football background would have prevented that.
posted on 5/9/12
>>Yes they did, but how about the League?
costs more than we had in the 23 and wages.
could have (should have) won it a few years back but that was more down to the brilliance of Benitez rather than coming up with the required wages + squad cost it takes.
posted on 6/9/12
FFP will not be effective if UEFA and FIFA are their usually spineless selves. There has to an enforcable sanction against those clubs that break the rules, such as expulsion from the all European competitions.
As this is unlikely to happen clubs will continue to spend vast amounts of money until one goes bust or one of the sugar daddies pulls the money. At which point there will be mass panic and those clubs saddled with huge wage bills will be in trouble. If the TV money suddenly drops off and the banks and finacial institutes who lend the clubs money are spooked by a club going belly up those clubs on a knife edge finacially will likely follow.
With regard to Liverpool I personally think that FSG are doing the right thing, all clubs were previously run this way with talent coming up through the ranks usually 1 or 2 at a time so as not to upset the balance of the squad. This will work in the long run if they can start filtering the young players in now rather than buying players to fill gaps. As much as it hurts to say United did it with the team in the 90's filtering in Butt, Beckham, Scholes etc over a few seasons as they developed in the reserves. In the end they had a young squad but it had a good mix of young players and more experienced players who had been purchased. This is what Liverpool need to concentrate on doing.
posted on 6/9/12
Having CEO with knowledge a decent football background would have prevented that.
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I don't know that it would though. I take your point about the situation needed someone to step up and say Carroll can't go until there's a replacement but shouldn't that someone have been Rodgers.
Targets must be Rodgers, negotiating for those targets - we don't know who does that, if it's Ayre then he should be used to doing it by now not to have messed up. It doesn't need a footballing brain to be able to negotiate, it just takes a brain!
posted on 6/9/12
This is a great article. I go along with the view that FSG are building a sustainable club. This Carroll debacle was a a one off but costly mistake which they won't repeat.