04 Jan 2015 13:25:34
So Brendan has asked the Owners to buy ready made players, have to think now who bought the players over the summer Brendan or the Owners? Who should we be blaming for not buying quality & experience over potential when that was all we needed?

1.) 04 Jan 2015
The owners know nothing about football, so why would they suddenly start buying players?

2.) 04 Jan 2015
This has already been covered several times. The Owners don't buy or sell as such, they provide the funding and investmet. They will leave things like buying and selling to the people that should know, that is, The Transfer Committee, which BR is very much part and other relevant people that need to be involved with buying and selling within the Club.

3.) 04 Jan 2015
Aren't Lallana and Henderson ready made? Buying more at this point makes no sense. We should be selling and get in compliance with ffp.

4.) 04 Jan 2015
If you think back to last January when Rodgers tried to get konoplyenka.
If he had got him where would sterling be upto at this point?

5.) 04 Jan 2015
Kashi that's all well and done but it's the owners who curtail the arrangement to supplement their hedging theme. It's like giving your son £30 grand for a car but telling him he can't shop at Landrover as the running costs are too high, he can't have a new car as you get hit with VAT and he's not allowed to buy a sports car because of the insurance premium, so what's he left with? Secondhand Ford or vauxhall runarounds where he can buy 2 or 3 with the £30k.

{Ed002's Note - It is far from a hedging scheme now Ozone with the level of investment they have thrown at the club (albeit based on borrowing now). People are all too easily forgetting the close to £50M spent on agent and representative fees that the club has incurred since the owners arrived. As an example - more than £15M was spent this last summer. Additionally there are the wages of the players and other staff, work on the renovation of the main stand of the du Arena (or whatever it will be called), cost of the revamping of the football side of the business etc. to take in to account. I have explained before that 2017 will provide a major break point for owners who wish to sell their EPL assets. I would think the chances of the finances being settled and the owners taking the opportunity to move on would be pretty high.}

6.) 04 Jan 2015
Im not saying that they identified the players and then went and bought them, i'm saying did they inform Brendan and the committee what type of players they will sanction, ie.young potential with resale value and not above a certain age? If they did then the summer debacle is all down to them and maybe not all Brendans fault. By the way Henderson was not ready made when we bought him and Lallana is only ready made in the PL not for Europe.

{Ed002's Note - I still think those "guidelines" have been rather over-played. Clubs will always look to younger players where they can but it is not simply for financial reasons. Lovren and Lallana are certainly mid 20s or so and they were hardly cheap. Lambert may have been cheap but the cost of his pension contributions and the costs of having stair lifts installed have to be taken in to account.}

7.) 04 Jan 2015
I love you eds002

{Ed002's Note - Have you signed up for the Ed002 Appreciation Society at: tinyurl.com/c6j7t2m }

8.) 04 Jan 2015
04 Jan 2015 16:37:43
Thank you Ed002, this was a great read
Really appreciate it.

9.) 04 Jan 2015
04 Jan 2015 17:03:14
Bottom line is the squad has got to be a blend of established stars, young players with high potential and internally promoted youngsters. Everybody - owners, BR, transfer committee etc know this. The problems have been largely getting the blend right. We don't have enough 'established stars', too many of the 'young players with high potential' turn out to have little potential at all, and not enough young internal players are making the grade/being given a chance.

10.) 04 Jan 2015
The £50 mill agents fees interesting Ed. That also suggests to me that effectively our scouting system is the bare minimum. Given that agents have attracted such high fees, I would assume that the majority of signings have been offered to the club by agents as opposed to LFC scouting network identifying a required player and subsequently negotiating. It seems to me that various agents may have welcomed the owners transfer policy as this seems to have indirectly attracted a premium through narrowing the scope of the marketplace and enabling a 'found you one that ticks the criteria' approach from the agents.

{Ed002's Note - The scouting network has already been revamped by the owners this past summer. The fees this summer were particularly high for two players. In other cases it is the simply the number of players Liverpool has been buying.}

11.) 04 Jan 2015
Plus maybe if the owners had focused all their efforts on revamping the football side of things from the outset as opposed to worrying so heavily on fulfilling their short term venture capitalist goals, the business aspect may have just fell into place with all the required revenues coming from the success on the pitch. They saw the Arsenal model and have been unable to see a clear picture for the $$$$.

{Ed002's Note - They have been working through the club top to bottom. (a) A new overlord is in place in England. (b) The commercial side has been reworked with a nice new office in London. (c) Academy has had a shake up with new staff. (d) Scouting network has been cleansed.

They are getting there Ozone. The big fear would be another shake up of the playing staff and further time in the transitional wilderness. If, as I expect, Rodgers is moved on over the summer and a new structure put in place, the first interview question for the manager has to be "with the extant playing staff, what would you be looking to do?" Obviously I don't know how AVB or Rafa will answer that question. }

12.) 04 Jan 2015
Yes I'm aware of Hogan the overlord sitting in his shiny office in London concocting ways to tap into the 580 million global fan base Ed. All designed to bolster revenues and further inflate capital value in readiness for the big sale in 2017. There is absolutely no aspect of the owners business model to suggest longevity in the interests of success on the pitch.

Let's face it your man Roman wants bragging rights on his yacht with his muckers and therefore gets drunk on the success of Chelsea on the pitch, the owners at Man City have a bigger picture in terms of their brand which
also requires success on the pitch and Utd have no other alternative but to go down the galactico route as a fall in the share price and their fair weathered fans acting with their feet could cripple them as a business. LFC on the other hand was acquired under distressed circumstances at a snippet by a bunch of venture capitalists with hedge fund management backgrounds adopting a short term business model geared to flipping the business at an inflated capital value by simply reducing expenditure, bolstering commercial revenues and expanding the ground. In fact, it could be argued that they may be dressing the business for a sale to an institutional type owner.

13.) 04 Jan 2015
Yes I'm aware of Hogan the overlord sitting in his shiny office in London concocting ways to tap into the 580 million global fan base Ed. All designed to bolster revenues and further inflate capital value in readiness for the big sale in 2017. There is absolutely no aspect of the owners business model to suggest longevity in the interests of success on the pitch.

Let's face it your man Roman wants bragging rights on his yacht with his muckers and therefore gets drunk on the success of Chelsea on the pitch, the owners at Man City have a bigger picture in terms of their brand which
also requires success on the pitch and Utd have no other alternative but to go down the galactico route as a fall in the share price and their fair weathered fans acting with their feet could cripple them as a business. LFC on the other hand was acquired under distressed circumstances at a snippet by a bunch of venture capitalists with hedge fund management backgrounds adopting a short term business model geared to flipping the business at an inflated capital value by simply reducing expenditure, bolstering commercial revenues and expanding the ground. In fact, it could be argued that they may be dressing the business for a sale to an institutional type owner.

{Ed002's Note - The owners long for success on the pitch and have invested accordingly - the issues surrounding some other choices is where they have screwed up. Comolli, Dalglish and Rodgers were serious mistakes - as I explained from the day Comolli arrived.

I don't see that comparison between owners really works too well. Chelsea has a long-serving owner who is a football fan and is not looking for a profit. Liverpool has owners who are sports investors looking to build an asset to achieve on field sporting success and off-field commercial success - eventually leading to a valuable asset that can be used to leverage other sales or sold at a profit. The reality is that it has cost them far more to run the club than they could imagine and we are indeed looking at a possible sale in 2017. I have for years explained the issues surrounding institutional owners - Manchester United are at risk of that; Liverpool less so.}

14.) 04 Jan 2015
Except they haven't reduced expenditure, quite the opposite really. Bottom line is Liverpool will be worth the most if it is successful, both on and off the pitch, so in that our interests are very much aligned with the owners, whatever you think their motivations are.

I think you perhaps are overthinking things though. Henry bought a newspaper and no one with any rational thought to making money as a prime motive would do so. If all he cared about was making more money, he'd probably go back to selling soybeans and Werner would probably go back to producing in Hollywood.

15.) 04 Jan 2015
That's my point Ed, the main issue being that your boys have a football fan as an owner. He wants success and will dig deep into his own pockets if necessary. He clearly celebrates success and puts it before profiteering. We have vultures as owners who aren't interested in trophies but solely $$$$ and top 4 if possible to facilitate enhanced $$$$$

{Ed002's Note - Chelsea has worked toward being self-sufficient and have managed to do it. Liverpool want the same but due to a number of poor decisions are stuck with significant debt - it was never simple profiteering - but I do understand your point.

If Liverpool can get the right folks in over the summer and sell to buy this summer then they can start to settle. The players are pretty good generally (albeit the "fans" want them replaced of course). Someone needs to look at the players with contracts post this summer, the reserves and the loan players and to pick who they want for now, who they want for the future, and who they can sell. Anything they need should still come from the money from sales - and even then FFP may continue to be an issue.

The owners are not bad people - they have just made some bad decisions.}

16.) 05 Jan 2015
05 Jan 2015 05:48:18
Thanks for your responses Ed002.

{Ed002's Note - You are welcome.}