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I’m with Oz yob on this. Mourinho always plays the percentages and in this particular game he simply deemed it too risky to have a go. I also think that even though Man Utd have spent a lot of money, they still have a dearth of match winners and I think this fed into José’s thinking at the weekend. I just don’t think José has quite the side he did whilst at Chelsea during the years he won it. If you compare the spines – De Gea is obviously strong enough, but in defence they are not quite there IMO. In midfield he’s very close having Matic & Pogba, but again, I just think Makalele/Lampard & Matic/Fabregas were more refined and reliable. As for up top, again I think Drogba & Costa were still that bit more reliable/refined than Lukaku. Mourinho needs a very specific spine for me, and he just hasn’t quite got it yet though he is close to it.
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Nine, if you refer to my link above, Chelsea did win £5 million more in prize money, but the TV money was about the same as Liverpool. So in total, Chelsea walked away with about £5 million more. You can obviously see a bigger step change in terms of total TV & prize money after the top 6 clubs because their TV appearances are much lower. The step change isn’t huge though between Man Utd & Everton – around a 9.2% drop by my rough calculation. I think we can obviously say the premier league is more competitive now because the TV money is still pretty good and thus the teams lower down can spend quite a bit more money than they used to. My concern would be more against owners who can now sit in the top 6 and enjoy a total revenue (TV & prize money) which, at worst, is just 6% lower than what the champions get – there is an argument to try and increase some kind of incentive there. Arsenal is a prime example.
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What can I say Banjo? – we’re a popular club 🙂
On a more serious note, I take the point – at least it’s not as bad as Formula One where Ferrari get a huge ‘heritage’ payment for the simple fact they are Ferrari.
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Chelsea were awarded £151 million in prize & TV money for winning the league last season. Liverpool, for finishing 4th….were awarded £146 million. Not a huge difference is it? Whilst I agree it may on the surface seem to create a more playing field, from an ownership / investment point of view – where is the incentive to go for the title if the reward is only an extra £5 million? Football clubs are now businesses, and in business you need incentives to drive forwards. I think this has proved a particular problem for foreign owned teams like Arsenal whose owners have little actual presence at the club but are quite happy to count their chips from afar whilst the club stagnates.
Source for figures: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/40125394
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Klopp won’t change his philosophy or bring in a defensive coach. We won’t see a significant improvement until we bring in more quality throughout the team. The failure to do so over summer has put Klopp under pressure. It is baffling given that money was there – I just think he feels too comfortable in his job. The recent remark about the club’s history affecting the players is somewhat strange – was he unaware of the stature/history of the club before he came in and thus the pressure associated with the manager’s job?
I think in Klopp’s mind he wants a long time to build up the club in a traditional way. I sympathise with that, but the climate we’re in now has changed a great deal and sadly you have to deliver fairly quickly. He doesn’t have that luxury. In any sense, I just don’t think the manager’s job as it is now is one that many people can last in anyway because the pressure and demand of it takes it toll.
In a way, there’s a parallel with Moyes’ first season in charge at Man Utd – the way they talked about building in a traditional long term way and the lack of urgency to rebuild the team in the summer window. His quick sacking just confirmed those days were well and truly over. It’s all about bottom line now and nervousness about potential damage to revenues.
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That’s because in Klopp’s mind it is the whole team that is responsible for defending – i.e. the back 5 only play a small part of that which is why he comes out with the comments he does about also blaming midfielders for mistakes that lead to us conceding. The only way Klopp will ever kick on then, is with the injection of some very special players into the team. VVD & Keita were a step in the right direction, but the failure to bring in that type of quality this season will now put him under big pressure – as I say, that failure I think partly comes from owners who aren’t present enough at the club to keep him on his toes. Too much trust can be just as problematic as too little.
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Nine, the question of the owners, FSG, is an interesting one. I think they share part of the culpability in the club’s failures to bring in the players needed whilst also helping to keep Klopp’s feet to the fire to ensure we stay ambitious. But they can’t do that from across an ocean – instead they seem to think that they can trust Klopp with everything and hence won’t interfere with anything. There do seem quite a few parallels with the Arsenal owners in that regard.
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We’re a confidence based team because there are no lynchpins/leaders in the side to help us grind out wins if confidence is low. Klopp is obviously quite picky about who comes in and part of me worries that there’s that element of Houllier about him whereby he’ll bring in hungry players ahead of more talented ones (replacing Anelka with Diouf being the prime example). Also I don’t think there’s enough presence at the club from John Henry & Tom Werner because a) they’re obviously trying to run things from across an ocean and b) because I think they think Klopp will take care of everything and they’ve put too much faith in him.
This is a problem with foreign owners – Man Utd got away with it because the brand had already been built. Abramovich, for all the criticism he gets, does seem to be present at the club quite often and knows what’s going on. Contrast the owners of Arsenal & Liverpool – how often do they come over? I’d be curious to know. It’s argued that some owners may be too interfering if they get too close, but that’s a question of the owner themselves and results obviously dictate whether such interference can be worth it. But either way, if an owner buys a club they can only run it properly if they have a strong presence at the club. Leaving it in the hands of other people basically points to it being bought purely as an investment.
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As well as a lack of leaders, we also lack winners. Why we didn’t look at resolving this over summer I don’t know. Meanwhile Man City putting six past Watford. And before people say Liverpool can’t afford such players, we were prepared to throw £140 mill at two players over summer so that doesn’t wash anymore. It seems Klopp only wants hungry players…we saw what happened when Houllier opted for the more hungry Diouf ahead of Anelka.
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TT seems to be dying a slow death. It’s going through periods now where nobody can log in. If they don’t start picking up the pieces soon, the exodus will continue and that will be that.
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Paxton, not sure whether it’s arrogance or naivety.
I think the recent window just gone showed a huge lack of leadership from both owner and manager, but particularly manager. I don’t think there was a strong enough plan to do what we needed to do over summer, not just over the areas of particular weakness, but also over Coutinho.
I think Klopp is a passionate good coach in the dressing room, but when it comes to more business matters, I think he’s more ‘laissez faire’ and too easy going. In some ways, I think his positivity sometimes gets the better of him. When we didn’t sign the players he wanted, it appears he just shrugged his shoulders and got on with it, only trying to look at the positives as opposed to the negatives. Admirable one might say. But you have to be ruthless in this game, and I think he should have stood up a lot more for what he wanted (assuming he didn’t).
Take Coutinho. It was rumoured that Klopp actually would have accepted his departure but it was the owners who, still aggrieved over Barcelona’s handling of Suarez, put their foot down and said “never again!”. Now if that was the case, I think Klopp should have had more conviction over what he wanted, and put it to the owners in the strongest possible terms. I’m not going to absolutely lay into FSG over this – they are clearly inexperienced with the European game. Hence even more need for Klopp to tell them how it is. Either way, whatever did happen behind closed doors, we were left with a far from ideal situation – over Coutinho, VVD, and a shortage of players in other key areas. People might say it’s good we’ve still got Coutinho – but I still think all we’ve done, like Saints have over VVD, is delay the inevitable somewhat. And even if not, it will take some time for those players to pick up the pieces from where they left off. I think there’s an element of both clubs cutting off their nose to spite their face and it was completely unnecessary. And as for other players that we needed, Klopp again should have demanded more options from the club – but instead we get this – “it’s all about coaching what we have now and developing the togetherness”. This is all no doubt important, but it’s all a bit too idealistic for me, and it could actually lead to putting a lot more pressure on Klopp than he needed. Now I’m by no means saying we’ll have a disastrous season, but it could put increased pressure on Klopp, pressure he could well do without. In short, should Klopp have been more ruthless here? Is he too “nice”??
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It’s a fair point NB. In some ways you could argue the whole aim of trying to get us where we want to be is an impossible one. On one hand you need a long term continuity and stability there, on the other you have to build quickly in order to make yourself attractive to the best players. On the surface these two factors may seem to run counter to each other. But these would be my thoughts:
If I was in charge I’d do several things. I’d invest in not just the academy but the city itself, ploughing money into schools and facilities throughout the city and region – granted it wouldn’t be cheap – though look at some of the big money we’ve blown in the transfer window so easily. We should never underestimate the local ‘heart’ importance that a club needs. It may obviously have the added bonus of helping some of the more deprived areas. This would obviously be a long term strategy.
Secondly, I’d invest more in the scouts and recruitment department – targeting the Southampton scouts probably wouldn’t be a bad start 😉 I’d obviously avoid the debacle of a political style transfer committee, though I would set it up to try and promote as much dialogue between the scouts and manager as possible so that the manager (who had final say) was ultimately persuaded as opposed to forced to have a player landed on him. You’d build up a healthier and more productive relationship that way. I’d also ensure that as much due diligence was completed by the club as possible when weighing up whether to move for him – using both stats and old fashioned judgement. This would be more of a short – long term strategy.
The above two strategies would give the club a firmer, stronger foundation for the future and in some ways would take care of some of the short term problems regarding building as quickly as possible – imagine if Klopp had an array of great options every time he sought a player. (Granted who to blame is for not looking for alternative players in the window just gone is unknown – was Klopp happy with what he had or did the club not give him many options?) Now it might well be that the club is already doing some elements of all this and granted it can take time for some of this to develop. I am just very wary of not making the most of the hard work we keep doing getting say into the top 4 (like under Rodgers) but then not capitalising on it through poor transfers and ultimately falling back down the ladder. As mentioned in my first post above, such failures then put an added pressure on us – particularly the manager, that really sets us back. Until we fully resolve this, I think we’ll always struggle to get over that line we so want to cross.
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Thing is, in today’s climate new managers generally need to deliver by season 2/3. As soon as a club’s stock is high, they need to strike whilst the iron is hot and bring in ‘life changing’ players. The longer Klopp goes without any tangible success, the more the pressure will mount and ultimately get to him. We’ve seen it time and time again with our previous managers who are mentally exhausted by the time the supposed 4/5 year plan is due to come to fruition. Last summer Chelsea snapped up Kante & Luiz, two players that had a huge impact on their success last season. We were close to bringing in our own Kante & Luiz in Keita & VVD this summer. We messed up on the latter and have secured the former but for next season – that’s all good and well, but it’s invited more pressure on Klopp to deliver with a somewhat limited squad that lacks any real leaders. We may still see success in the longer term, but we’ve certainly missed an opportunity this summer to reduce the pressure on us.
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Concern for Liverpool under Klopp so far is this: when the players are all up for it, there are few better sides around. However, because much of the defensive side of the game uses all 11 players with pressing, it only takes a few of them to not perform for the plan to come apart (like some of the dropped heads after Mané’s sending off). Hence I don’t see VVD as being the silver bullet – rather an all rounder like Keita would have had a bigger impact today IMO. Until he comes in, losses like that seen today will always be possible.
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Yeh Banjo the purist will say it’s a 50-50 ball there to be won by any means as long as you go for the ball or others will say that players should be aware of the potential consequences of such actions and adapt accordingly in those situations. I certainly sympathise with the latter point.
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Wonder if the dangerous play came into the decision there from UEFA – was Evra not sent off in a CL game a few seasons ago for trying to pluck the ball out of the air with a high foot as the opposition midfielder came in? We’re edging towards a non contact game if so.
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Whilst some of the focus has moved ever more to club football, I think many fans do still care, and I’m not sure I subscribe that this mass moaning of international football actually reflects reality. I think as Paxton has touched on – fans are merely sick of underperforming England teams with players that seem half interested at times. The last real excitement for me over an England team was Euro 96. Why? Not just because we made the latter stages, but because you could see the players were so up for it, and there was an actual plan. Obviously the premier league didn’t then dominate the way it does now, but I think that’s a more secondary reason. I think a lot comes from the manager, and for the last two decades we have generally installed managers who are more idealistic & safe than pragmatic (as seen when they have picked the best XI vs the most effective XI). But not just, there’s simply hasn’t been any charisma about the managers – in most of our games I generally see a negative plan whereby we are only bailed out by individual brilliance – this is exactly what happened the other night – we needed the brilliance of Diers flick to get the ball rolling and then the brilliance of Rashford to seal it. When was the last time we saw a real England team goal because of a positive coherent plan from a manager? You just don’t see it. You just tend to see players increasingly frustrated, ending with them resorting to pot shots around the box. Imagine what a Klopp type figure could do for England.
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Nothing ever changes with England. We’ve always looked like a team of individuals that’s just met each other and we get schooled by other much less established football nations.
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He basically sits in the Henderson position doesn’t he? But looks more comfortable in possession, can spray the ball out, can dribble with the ball out, scores goals but is willing to track back and likes a tackle. Finally close to replacing Stevie??
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Success should be determined on how well the players bought fit into the system together with the quality of that player. As you say Ed, Mourinho has his Matic back – that was a huge huge signing for him and it now looks like the Mourinho service is starting to resume.
I think, whilst it may be disappointing that Liverpool couldn’t bring in a CB, Keita would have been a bigger signing because he would have a bigger impact on a Klopp team – being like an insurance policy like Kante, who would bail us out of all sorts of situations – important for a open side like Klopp’s. At least he’s in the bank for next summer. Liverpool’s dip in form last year coincided not so much with the loss of defensive players but attacking ones – when they lost Mané & had an out of form Coutinho that’s when they struggled – as soon as Coutinho came back into form, they lost just 1 of the last 12 league games. They’ve strengthened those positions with Salah & the Ox. So all in all, not too bad a window.
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