Just came over a nice article about Liverpool FC today.
It's extremely long and was written in Swedish, so I had to translate it first.
The writer is Robin Bylund, a member of the Swedish Liverpool Supporters Branch.
Have a good read everyone!
DOCUMENT: The eternal loser of modern footballAfter many words on the same old subject. About hope and despair. Of the dream of something new. About the constant return to the same story that repeats itself time and time again. When the feeling was finally there that it was time to take a big bite into the Premier League apple. But I can now confirm that Liverpool is the textbook example of a football club that will never succeed until its run pattern is fundamentally changed.
I have indeed written texts funnier than this one. Just the title, a course to feel bad, but it is also a fact and something that I hope Fenway Sports Group and people with clearly much more power around Anfield than I also reflected more upon. Because if no one does anything about it, then we will remain the punching bag that we have made out of ourselves. We keep repeating Einstein's rule of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result coming out from it.
A motto we have lived with since Rafa Benitez's days.
I have gone back to the books. Dug and winded. Wish I really would have disproved the feeling I had, but instead it has only strengthened. Since winter 2009, Liverpool Football Club has adopted a loser attitude that should be seen as directly criminal in the days of modern football. Namely, to always back out when it comes to the most.
After a fantastic autumn in 2008, Rafa Benitez had led Liverpool to a first place in the Premier League when the year was coming to an end and a new began. Players like Xabi Alonso, Steven Gerrard, Javier Mascherano and, not least Fernando Torres were in their prime, and when the starting line-up was complete, one can probably say it was the best Liverpool had put on the field since the 70’s & 80’s heydays.
The problem was that this was very rarely the case.
Only four matches did the whole quartet start on the pitch together for the whole Premier League season. Of course we got four victories at these occasions - and Liverpool with these players healthy played even Real Madrid off the park with a 4-0 win at Anfield in the same season. But it is what happened in their absence, that will be seen as a significant start on Liverpool's journey to always ending up as losers anyway.
Before the season started Liverpool had signed Robbie Keane from Tottenham and many were concerned about the transfer fee of £ 18m (which barely gets you a junior player in today's football). Wasn’t he a dramatically overpriced signing? Maybe he was, but why bother?
Throughout the autumn Fernando Torres was fighting against injuries. In his absence Keane scored five league goals, which people still thought was too bad. Liverpool were top of the league when we celebrated the New Year.
There was much that was very clear. The Royal Quartet had only got one single Premier League game together in the autumn and it seemed obvious that Rafa Benitez could not continue doing his magics in all eternity to keep the house of cards from eventually falling apart.
One or two purchases in January would - if nothing else - send the signal to our competitors that we were seriously going for the trophy this time.
But what happened instead, I think should be seen as the start of what Liverpool today is associated with; to come close, but never all the way.
Instead of seing rumored players actually sign contracts with us, Liverpool were preparing to dump Robbie Keane at a sale price and at the same time shipping off Jermaine Pennant (although he only got three games in the autumn). A thin squad became even thinner and in January Liverpool claimed three straight draws against Wigan, Everton and Stoke, before everything seriously went south in February when we had to go to the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough with Nabil El Zhar in the starting XI and get beat 0-2. A result that probably was what ultimately cost us the title.
When we had the chance to flex our muscles, we chose instead to go in and take a shower and when Manchester United alternated between Dimitar Berbatov, Carlos Tevez, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney up top, we would lay our fate in the hands of Nabil El Zhar and David Ngog. This was not only a case of showing low respect for the fans, but also against the players who clearly were not ready for the task at all.
The title slipped out of our hands and this probably was the start to the most brilliant Liverpool generation of 30 years no longer saw the light in the tunnel.
Have you thought about writing a “How-to-[oops]-things-up book”, there is much material to gain from the self damaging behaviour we have adopted at Liverpool FC.
Already in the summer of 2009 Xabi Alonso decided to jump the ship. He saw that it was heading out on the open sea without a map, with owners who refused to help keep it on course when required.
The best sitting midfielder Liverpool Football Club ever had left and we replaced him with Alberto Aquilani. Just have a taste at it!
Sami Hyypia, the man who is seen as perhaps the best recruitment throughout Liverpool's history had also decided to hang up his boots. A player with more gained respect than perhaps any other foreigner ever, not least for his fantastic play, but also his parental role on the pitch and his decision to give his captaincy to Steven Gerrard. He was replaced by Sotirios Kyrgiakos.
£ 2 million was what we thought Hyypia’s replacement was worth. Holy Commoli!
The 2009/2010 season went quickly straight to the south. With our best defender for 10 years and the most controlling and skillful midfielder the club has ever seen lost, this could hardly have come as a surprise. And having been just a couple of pounds spent from winning a league title and mark the start of a new dynasty, Liverpool were rather a broken club in just over a year.
At the turn of 2009/2010 we were 8:th in the league, seven places lower than the year before. During the january window we dropped off Voronin and Dossena (which hardly made anyone sad), our pathetic attempt to save the season was to bring in Maxi Rodriguez on a free. Not a penny it cost us.
With hindsight we know that the owners' time was already running out here. The bottom was in sight, and if you do not feel the vibe already here so was the summer of 2010 the full proof that Liverpool Football Club in just 18 months had gone from Europe's elite, to a small sailing yacht with open holes in its hull.
Rafa Benitez was replaced by Roy Hodgson and Javier Mascherano was replaced by Poulsen. Even the blind could now see what was happening.
In the autumn of 2010, the full disaster strikes. Both the football and economic results were disastrous and it was now only a question of survival. Liverpool FC that just 18 months earlier scored a total of 8-1 in 180 minutes against Manchester United and Real Madrid in the same week, was now f*cked up beyond all recognition. You were just sat speechless.
What we get to now is perhaps a more interesting analysis. And that seems to split many peoples views: Namely the entry of today's ownership company FSG.
But I want to let history and the results speak. Let Einstein's words about the madness continue subside and we'll see if the footballing results really have gotten so much better since FSG took over. And if we have really learned anything whatsoever.
Fenway Sports Group might have saved us from bankruptcy. We should perhaps be immensely grateful to them. At the same time, I am convinced that a club of Liverpool's dignity would never been able to come that far. There had been other opportunities. There always seem to be for the biggest clubs. But if they were better or worse than those who were, of course, we can only speculate. And thus there is after all much to thank John W. Henry and others at FSG for.
Following the e-mail that was leaked, or actually released in connection with the court proceedings that have taken place, it is also quite obvious to state that Fenway Sports Group's interest was primarily to make money. Maybe even take Liverpool (and football in general) closer to the United States, have their own name to grow and at the golden sky selling the club, and earn several billions of profit.
It was hardly the dream of lifting the Premier League trophy that made FSG act and buy Livrepool FC.
Fernando Torres was the first to force their hand. Another long-term rebuildning process with the accolades that we would eventually find the way back to "the very top" was nothing that seemed to thrill the worlds, at the time, maybe best striker. He stood in exactly the same place two years earlier and saw a club slow down when they almost arrived at the target - and to embark on yet another journey with several years of reconstruction, there was neither the time nor the power to. Chelsea stumped up £ 50m on the table, followed up by recruiting David Luiz for £ 25m in the same jiffy and 18 months later, Fernando Torres stood there with the Champions League trophy on May 1 evening in Munich. Say what you want. Had he stayed in Liverpool, he had barely even got to play a qualifier for the same tournament!
It thus became a new rebuilding process once again and both on the bench (Dalglish) and in the squad (Suarez / Carroll) a lot changed during the winter of 2011. We got our act somewhat together and climbed from celebrating the New Year at 12:th place to finish as 6:th. But again one step forward and two steps back, you know.
The summer of 2011 is in many ways also one of the clearer examples of Liverpool's solid work to just get worse and worse. As we managed to set the right course in spring 2011, often led by the beautiful combination play from Maxi Rodriguez and a certain Luis Suarez, we started to build the squad in a strange way. Star signings named Charlie Adam, Jose Enrique, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson arrived. "Premier League proven" was the new slogan, and although many claim that Fenway Sports Group nevertheless opened the wallet here, we landed on a netspend of only £ 35m. Something we can say that Jordan Henderson about alone is worth. So the money spent is back and safe with a little interest to it aswell.
Above all, Fenway Sports Group have been hugely restrictive with wages and have thus always been forced to shop in the bargain basement shelves for players who have been massively overpriced. Other clubs also have called the bad cards we sat on and known that we can not match the expectations of world-class players and thus have been able to charge for their mediocrity as if they were stars. They have been the only ones we have been able to attract.
If we had instead gone all in and broken the bank with both transfer fees and wages, we had quite simply been able to persuade the players to settle for a short transition period and that the golden sky actually was waiting, like we sing every day. But as long as you pay salaries like Everton, you get players like Everton. And not like the Manchester City’s of this world.
The story repeated itself again a year later. In 2011 we thought Dalglish was the man to save us. 2012 Brendan Rodgers became our new manager. That made it four season starts in a row with four different managers.
Somewhere here we should of course have asked ourselves if these errors not more stem from passive ownership, a football world that changed and that poor Liverpool remained on the platform with their dozens of midtable players while Chelsea, City, United and to some extent Arsenal all pulled away with all the stars they had signed for their respective clubs.
Champions League had become a pure utopia for us. The season ticket that Rafa Benitez had bought the club had been lost, and the whole setting was changed from talking about titles to talking about the fight for top four. Sure we got a League Cup trophy in 2012, but since we claimed the FA Cup title in 2006, this is the only Cup we have won! Something that should not be accepted in any way at our club.
Even Brendan Rodgers was forced to deal with seeds instead of the finished flowers and with Fabio Borini and Joe Allen this summer's big events and the disastrous initiative to allow a television crew to destroy Brendan Rodgers first pre-season, we hardly had put us in pole position to switch it up and challenge our competitors.
At the same time the owners had chosen to kick out players like Dirk Kuyt and Maxi Rodriguez through the back door for wage purposes, and we did not even manage to get £ 1m from their sales. Everything was just about to get the weekly wage bill down.
If we fast-forward Brendan Rodgers first season, the most pleasing aspect was of course to see Raheem Sterling develop (something Brendan happily and rightly take credit for) and, in time, the first signs of Luis Suarez's full brilliance.
Winter 2012/2013 is also the only time Liverpool seriously acted in the January window in a positive sense, and even if the upshift was far above what one would expect in return, Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho, were two very exciting signings who got to symbolize that we wanted more than to be 8:th, as we were when they joined.
In the spring of 2013 we began to see trends of what was to come and while Sturridge scored ten goals, also Philippe Coutinho showed, with three goals and a dazzling technique, that we might had gotten across not one but maybe even two real diamonds.
Here and now, one can think that maybe we should have learned at last? The players of the highest class helps to raise a team? The fact that we were lucky enough to come across these ones cheaply would of course be seen as an exception, rather than a rule of thumb that FSG believe to be reproduced year after year? Quality does cost as a rule. The exceptions are hardly what we should lean heavily towards. But FSG were not of the same opinion.
Instead we again went shopping from the lower medium layer when the summer transfer window 2013 was opened. Players like Luis Alberto and Iago Aspas (even though he performed and still performs well in Spain) were the players that FSG saw as perfect in its construction of of the squad. Players who had not yet propelled themselves up to the top class level where they could demand more from the huge total wage bill that makes up todays Premier League.
2013/2014 must of course be seen as the great success in what otherwise has been Liverpool's continuous groping in the dark for a real identity. Led by Luis Suarez who developed quite outrageous super powers after finishing 2013 with biting Branislav Ivanovic's arm, Liverpool played great attacking football that blew opponents to bits from left, right and centre. It was Sturridge, Suarez, Coutinho and Sterling. There was even a player called Steven Gerrard who dictated the tempo in the midfield area again, and managed to put away every penalty that Luis Suarez had usually earned us. It went so far we were even called Penaltypool that year. We were that leathal. Remember?
At the New Year, we were again in the very top - and now, five years later since last time we found ourselves in that position, with the mistake that cost us the league title that time, we should well have learned what was required at this stage. Shouldn’t we? A squad and not just the starting XI. A full orchestra that can assist each other even if the soloist gets sick. Now finally the penny must have dropped. No? But no.
We can speak about margins that could have made us become champions anyway, but the hard fact is that when it mattered the most, we bottled it and only took four of the last nine points available, and that will not make you a champion. No matter what. Jordan Henderson was injured. Did that cost us the title? We didn’t have a proper replacement for him, and the fantastic results just vanished.
And Manchester City, where star players like David Silva (27 games) and Sergio Aguero (23 games) even went injured for long periods of the season, showed at last that the richest are the strongest and had a squad big enough to ride through the toughest moments and come up - and beyond us - with five straight wins in the season's final month.
Deja vu.
The summer of 2014, then symbolize the climax of everything that has made us a football club without a view towards the very top. A true world class star disappeared and mid table quality players were brought in to replace him. We have become a selling-club and so it is, whether you like it or not. Luis Suarez disappeared and even then, with the Champions League around the corner for the first time in nearly five years, we would have managed - or were given the economic forces to do so - to recruit the needed quality not to fall back to square one again.
It should have been Alexis Sanchez but it was Rickie Lambert. Happy days for the finance manager of Fenway Sports Group.
We can talk about the different reasons why players refuse to sign for us, or how close a transfer may actually have been. But with Liverpool’s now almost bizarre track record of f*cking up transfers, we must still face the truth: We are tight f*ckers who always manage to negotiate ourselves out of the equation.
Diego Costa, Alexis Sanchez, Willian, Mohamed Salah, Henrikh Mkhitaryan are not exactly small potatoes. These are the players who really could have taken us to the nest level. But who instead followed the money and laughed off Liverpool's awkward attempts.
When even young players like Dele Alli and Christian Pulisic (recruited to Dortmund in 2015 by Jürgen Klopp and Michael Zorc) not even want to consider Liverpool's contract proposal, due to the fact that the club management tried to make these players sign a junior contract, you even want to burst out in full cry!
Two players that potentially (yes, yes, anything can happen I know) may be among the world's best in a few years, and we do not even want to invest in them. Curtain!
To fast-forward past the Champions League fiasco, Mario Balotelli and other things that make you feel really sick, we start approaching the end of our analysis around December 2016.
Again, a converted Liverpool side. A Jürgen Klopp who replaced Brendan Rodgers and that in just twelve months took Liverpool back to the top of the Premier League. Liverpool led by Lallana, Coutinho, Mané and Firmino in the attack and Jordan Henderson just behind them further back the pitch.
At the same time, it was a Liverpool side that lacked width. Whare the bench often consisted of junior players and where minor injuries had came after one another, but exploded in Philippe Coutinho taken a nasty blow that would keep him out for at least two months - and with an uncertainty of how his form then would be.
We also knew that Sadio Mané would leave the team to play the African Cup of Nations and the options behind performance-wise conspicuous by its absence.
We also knew that many games were won by just attacking flair and hardly by defensive organization and a worse offensive would put leaden demands on our already swaying defense. Where Joel Matip was out injured and the (offensive) midfielder James Milner still played at left back.
If you try and write down 50 different scenarios about when a club really should act in the transfer market, this is perhaps the one which shone through as the most clearly obvious one. And then to just instead sit back and ignore the fact is, according to me, to spit every single supporter straight in their face!
And yes, with the right economic jacking Jürgen Klopp had certainly been able to find the players he wanted. And no, it is not always required two-to-tango. Sometimes it only takes a shitload of money and some determination.
We fans are behind this team day in and day out, I want to suggest that we are many that add clearly much more time to think about this team than most of Fenway Sports Group's leading positions do, and it irritates me immensely when looking back to how they so casually ignored all that we mortals sat here and cried about.
Instead we are today a Liverpool side that has been both caught up and even overtaken by our competitors. And now once again, will hope, have faith, and beg that maybe, just maybe get the top four place - and then to see it all start over again.
Because that's how it sounds. Year after year. We must first get Champions League and then invest. Maybe it’s soon time for us to finally see the penny drop and someone to understand we do not reach the Champions League unless we invest first.
Liverpool with the exception of 2013/2014 have not qualified for the Champions League since 2008/2009 - and that according to me, in this unbearably long text, was the start of the Liverpool we see today. Where ‘Losers’ is our middle name, and where mediocrity is something we are happy to settle for.
Our final league place are modestly put in the almost embarrassing row of 7, 6, 8, 7, 2, 6 and 8, since we really got the loser mentality rolling and thus it is more common that we will end up 8:th than 4:th. Something that does not seem to worry the Fenway Sports Group at all.
Their joy just seems to be in a club that has multiplied its yearly turnover, gained market share in North America, Asia and Australia, and that is ready to be sold at enormous profit.
They have a mentality of wanting to generate cash flow before it can seep down into expenditure items, and there is no interest in investing in the hope that the future will bring results. Their horizon is extremely short-sighted and they seem never to have had a genuine dream to see the Premier League trophy lifted at Anfield.
As soon as possible I therefore hope for a change. Either in the form of new owners or that Jürgen Klopp slams a pint of German beer between the eyes of the whole lot, explains how f*cking scheisse their attitude is and require investment in the summer no matter where we are in terms of league place come May 2017.
If we ever want to play with the big kids again, it is time that we stop running around with a pacifier and a diaper. Buy what we need and build for the future to mature in. Stop humiliate those fans who bleed for the team and show that you are serious. Otherwise, it's time to move on.
That Liverpool have won just one League Cup trophy and played only six Champions League matches since we were fighting for the title with Fernando Torres, Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano and Steven Gerrard in 2009 is a betrayal from all who have been in executive positions at our club - and I can only pray to the football god that this long suffering one day will go away and show to have been worth going through.
Right now though, Liverpool is the modern football's eternal loser.
