KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Could you please explain?

Of all the verbiage on this thread the most succinct comes from sixties red.

FSG are cheapskates trying to milk a once proud club.

That is exactly how it is. The idea we are going to buy cheap players who no one has heard of and they will become world beaters and FSG are better organsated than all the other clubs and no other club has thought of it or can copy it s something I would expect from an 11 year old.

I am not pretending to teach you anything, I am not the one telling others that they don't understand business (more than once). FYI I have studied business and working in business for the last 20 years. In fact, I have always said that FSG understand business very well, what they are doing is exactly what should be done to make LFC profitable quickly, I have personally led 2 turnarounds, so I know what I am talking about.

What I also said is that I am not sure that the teams winning the trophies today in the EPL are the most profitable ones except Man United because they, as well, are befiting from past glories in addition to the last 20 years of recent success. The other profitable club is Arsenal who have won close to nothing in the last 10 years, this is where I think we are heading, profitable but winning only the odd trophies every now and then.

Now if you think we will be competing with the top 4 teams regularly with the FSG policy/strategy (which you seem to think is quite unique and cannot be copied by others), good luck. Only chance in my opinion is if FFP changes the landscape.

Please don't talk about Barca, they have regularly bought top players despite having arguably the best youth system in the world and regularly top managers. Top fees they paid are numerous the most recently being Neymar (57m Euro), Fabregas (34m), Villa (40m), Sanchez (26m), Ibrahimovich (69m incl. Eto'o), Eto'o (27m), Alves (35m who we couldn't buy in Rafa days), Saviola (36m), Overmars (40m) even if not all have regularly excelled.

I never said that we need to buy all the best players in the world for all our positions, but, I do believe we need to buy a couple of top players or even good players to fill the 4 positions you have mentioned. How much of net would that cost, 75m? If so called investors cannot invest 75m to close the gap so that we can compete for top 4 where the returns can be much more than that over less than 3 seasons (that's a 3 years payback period), I would say they have a different BUSINESS plan. Of course there are no guarantees, in business you need to take risks.

That said there is a less risky path which FSG has taken where investment would be much lower and returns though lower would be more certain. As a business man, this is what I would do, but, I am a fan of LFC and not a businessman shareholder, my motivation is not to have FSG to be successful business people with LFC but for us to win top trophies. This is where we differ.

That is a bizarre statement from you Stan. This is exactly how the club will get back to the top, the model shown by Barcelona and now Dortmund is the most sensible way forward. World football is littered with clubs who have had a boom bust attitude. It is a business and its the not treating LFC like a business which has caused us most of our problems. It has run like a corner cafe for 25yrs, where its all about a smile and the locals.
FSG are no fools and neither are we, we want hungry young players on modest salaries. If they are good enough they can earn it. I want to see a Liverpool team which actually over achieves, like 2005. We need spirit and togetherness not a conveyor of mercenaries like city and Chelsea have.

The young players we have are probably some of the best in the league and they know under BR thy have a chance, when was the last time this happened?
It's a shame so many are not on board but for me FSG have brought back some much needed identity and togetherness.

Looking at recent transfer activity it's long overdue that somebody has a stop button. When money for willian got silly we moved away. I want new players to fight there way to get here, not be hauled around Europe by a dodgy agent.

We are in a good place, opportunities will come up and for once we have money to spend

That is a bizarre statement from you Stan. This is exactly how the club will get back to the top, the model shown by Barcelona and now Dortmund is the most sensible way forward. World football is littered with clubs who have had a boom bust attitude. It is a business and its the not treating LFC like a business which has caused us most of our problems. It has run like a corner cafe for 25yrs, where its all about a smile and the locals.
FSG are no fools and neither are we, we want hungry young players on modest salaries. If they are good enough they can earn it. I want to see a Liverpool team which actually over achieves, like 2005. We need spirit and togetherness not a conveyor of mercenaries like city and Chelsea have.

The young players we have are probably some of the best in the league and they know under BR thy have a chance, when was the last time this happened?
It's a shame so many are not on board but for me FSG have brought back some much needed identity and togetherness.

Looking at recent transfer activity it's long overdue that somebody has a stop button. When money for willian got silly we moved away. I want new players to fight there way to get here, not be hauled around Europe by a dodgy agent.

We are in a good place, opportunities will come up and for once we have money to spend

That is a bizarre statement from you Stan. This is exactly how the club will get back to the top, the model shown by Barcelona and now Dortmund is the most sensible way forward. World football is littered with clubs who have had a boom bust attitude. It is a business and its the not treating LFC like a business which has caused us most of our problems. It has run like a corner cafe for 25yrs, where its all about a smile and the locals.
FSG are no fools and neither are we, we want hungry young players on modest salaries. If they are good enough they can earn it. I want to see a Liverpool team which actually over achieves, like 2005. We need spirit and togetherness not a conveyor of mercenaries like city and Chelsea have.

The young players we have are probably some of the best in the league and they know under BR thy have a chance, when was the last time this happened?
It's a shame so many are not on board but for me FSG have brought back some much needed identity and togetherness.

Looking at recent transfer activity it's long overdue that somebody has a stop button. When money for willian got silly we moved away. I want new players to fight there way to get here, not be hauled around Europe by a dodgy agent.

We are in a good place, opportunities will come up and for once we have money to spend

Look Vish. Again, you're playing this game of doing things and just not admitting them. Yes, I did say that I don't think people who understand business think there is only one option. I mean a SWOT analysis can pretty much form the basis of a long line of smaller strategies to try and improve the way the business works. I don't think a strict application of business ruling works in sports ventures ran by a group of investors anyway, but little/no percent of the time is there only one option on the table. On that basis, there should be an acknowledgement that there are greater powers at being that may have alternate plans. And as I have said before, the revenues are being built to offer better spending inside the club, not to be taken out by FSG. People, and I include you, have basically dismissed 90% of all the factual and statistical proof that they don't undermine fans by taking money out of the club, and you continue to suggest it. We're not going to agree, because I take the information I have to hand and analyse it before I decide, whereas you have pre-determined what you would do in their position and suggested that is what they are doing. There is a fundamental difference there that won't change.



Fine. But you're not judging the team are you. You're saying no matter how well we work in the transfer market, it is impossible. Why haven't other teams all given up by now then? As a businessman, I thought it would be clear that small businesses can become big businesses without the need of straining resources from the owner. They can be grown, albeit gradually, using the funds the club makes and grows in revenue avenues. I can't quite understand the reluctance to even admit there are possibilities that don't involve a ceiling of mixed results.



I never said it couldn't be copied, or unique. It could be, but we are in a market right now where the teams we're competing with all have different strategies. It is not about being unique, it is about being effective in what you do. A lot of teams do throw money around. And for some it pays off, and for others it doesn't. There is a reluctance by many on here to actually talk about things the club does well, and to over-exaggerate the things other clubs do too in my opinion, and I think this opinion is based on this misrepresentation.



Sorry but I will. That you're spouting information irrelevant to the point I made either shows I worded it badly... not the case in my eyes, or you're not willing to look at it at all. I didn't make a single reference to how much they paid for players. I never made a reference to some of the wonderful players they have signed. I made reference to their current starting eleven, and a point about the supposed quality of all of them. You take my point completely out of context. In fact, your basically just saying no, and bleating on about another point entirely that I didn't make.

And why request not to talk about another club. You already say that it is important to match ourselves up to what the market is doing, and now you're asking me not to. Why? I never said we were as good. They are a club that have been the top team in football, and that the basis of that comes from a balanced team, that, in my opinion, has areas which they have lesser quality players that best compliment the team.



Business is about deciding on what best risks to take, not just taking them. You say it is a 3-year payback plan, which seems incredibly short-term. And there is absolutely no guarantee with any manager that with that money we improve to that level. So although I understand the point, I don't think it is the only option. I think a cash injection would help us for sure. I think it quickens the improvement process. But I don't think we should because the other teams spending has been very high. A lot of people have been saying we want more money to spend, and no acknoledgement of what the transfer market is offering. If we can't buy who we want now with that, then having money to spend now doesn't help.



And where we differ, is that I don't think they're choosing between business and success as two independent entities. With one, comes better spending to improve the chances of the other. It is the better of the long-term strategies to get us competing long-term. It just appears some people are impatient to the point they want it all now.

If you meant that there are different options instead of one, I agree, but, you would also understand that the chances of success of a different option is lower. If you look at the EPL recently, you will notice that most of the time it has been clubs spending more than what we are spending now that have won the league. The only club that has been in the top 4 while spending less than us is Arsenal. Man U's net spending might even be lower than us, but, instead of money they had a huge asset that they have sold, ie, Ronaldo, this doesn't happen very often.

It can be possible to work much better than others on the transfer market, but, there is not much that shows to me that we will consistently be better than others at it. Our scouting has not been great compared to others, by improving we will get to the same level as the best, may be a bit better, but, can't see how this will become our competitive advantage. The other problem is that when quality players are revealed by us, they become the targets of teams higher than us like Suarez, I only hope that he will play to his maximum capacity instead of sulking now.

For Barca I made the point that despite having a very good youth and scouting system, they are still paying top fees to buy players, they think they need both, thus they bought Neymar, who is in their starting eleven. We are quite far from their scouting and youth system from what I have seen.

I agree that business is about choosing the risk you want to take and as business people I am sure that FSG has made the right choice for themselves as business people. Where we don't agree is that I think that FSG's main objective is to make LFC profitable and the trophies will be a bonus. City owners for example are different, I think that they see winning trophies as the main target (their main purpose) and the profits will follow in the long run once they have build a brand by winning a lot of trophies.

I think I have understood what you are saying. You feel that there is another way of winning the league by investing less; in a business you would say grow organically and being better than everybody else. My feeling is, though anything is possible, I do not believe it would work if the footballing landscape doesn't change. I have seen Arsenal taking that same route with a top manager, playing great football, recruiting young players, but also selling their top players (we have refused to do it with Suarez unless we had more money but for how long can we keep him) but I see some very unhappy gunners fans. We have won more trophies than them recently.

Chelsea, City and United in the mean time are growing their franchise with Chelsea already selling more shirts than us and also in a position of signing better sponsorship deals than us. Since FSG took over and their policies, the gap has only grown bigger, don't think you can deny that. In can change next season, but right now it is what it is.