Being Bayern’s lackey is not my idea of ‘alright’ if that’s our plan. Count me out. Those guys were making CL Finals and winning Bundesliga titles before this strategy.
You can see that him, Edu and Arteta are all selling this story that they’ve inherited a terrible situation and so can’t do much. so all the losses and poor performances are to be forgiven as that’s all that can be expected and what heroes they are for battling through this all with their very long term grand plan and single minded determination.
It keeps them on their seven figure gravy train packages for a few more years and by then they’re so rich they are extremely comfortable to very wealthy/super rich for life. They’ll probably get seven figure pay offs when the vampire finally wakes up too.
They give the whole club permission to fail with this approach as well so if they don’t expect more why should the players really give a fuck rather than just hoover the money out the club and into their pockets as well.
It’s corporate politics of the first degree. Absolutely hate pricks like this and if I was involved as a non exec with this club I’d be shredding this guy every day of the week and asking him to start paying for our losses out of his own pocket.
Fucking 6th most expensive team in the world playing like the 600th and the CEO condones and makes excuses for it. Disgraceful.
No shit it’s good on paper to sign u23 players, everyone wants to do this but there’s a reason most clubs don’t do this for every single signing and it’s not because they’re all really stupid and we’re really clever.
It’s already hard enough to find good enough players that are available, and you’re basically locking out 70% of the market.
I’m wondering now if we passed up good players because they were 26 or something.
The arrogance to think you can identify this talent en masses and then coach the maximum out of it with this destroyer of souls in charge of the team.
Unless you’re owned by sheikhs, a youth project, or at least buying only younger players 21-25, is basically the only choice if your roster hits Maximum Dumpster Fire status due to years of mismanagement.
You don’t have the money to buy a more expensive prime age player to fill every roster hole, the top players don’t want to join you anyway, and the only way you’ll ever truly dig out is to buy younger players who will appreciate in value (maybe even becoming top players) rather than older players who will become worthless and/or impossible to move on within a couple years.
Ideally after laying a new foundation of younger players you then operate like a normal club and mix younger and more established signings.
Liverpool’s squad that Klopp took over, looks pretty crap. Even worse than ours to be quite frank. No need for any ‘youth project’.
2 Years later, CL Final 2018.
Looking much better here, still some duds that they signed (Klavan, Karius), but in good much better shape. That next season Fabinho and Alisson gets signed.
You don’t need ‘projects’ or this fancy crap the club is sprouting. Just good recruitment and a revolving door.
Not to mention the current management is responsible for this mess. You trusting these fools? Could never be me.
Until they finished the squad with VVD and Allison, almost all the key players they bought to build that team were in the 20-25 bracket when acquired - Mane, Salah, Firmino, Robertson, Gomez, Fabinho. Wijnaldum is really the only exception in terms of players they spent significant sums on.
You obviously need good recruitment and I absolutely do not trust our crew to do a Liverpool. But they had the right idea, buy younger players that will move into their primes together.
I still wouldn’t say they signed them in regards to a project. They were identified and bought with intent of improving the team now. Salah, Mane, Firmino, Fabinho all had previous records behind them. This is miles away from Tavares, Lokonga who are complete punts and even Ben White who’s only had 1 season of top flight experience in a very specific setup.
Vinai in the article is very specific when he says:
“Our approach for this window was framed by fully recognising that we are not where we want to be on the pitch — finishing eighth last season, with no European football for the first time in many years,” he added.
“Whilst we would love to jump from where we are to where we want to be in an instant, we need to be realistic that the gap is too large to do that. As such, our activity this window has been focused on youth.
He’s very clear when stating our current failures is motivation to restart an embark on a new strategy because the gap is too large (It fucking isn’t, its only because of you twats but whatever) which might not even bear fruit in 3 years minimum. Signing these talents isn’t going to be easy street when we’re crap like this. Nor is keeping anyone that is remotely decent.
The word “project” in football has lost basically all meaning. City have a “project”, so do Chelsea, so do PSG, so do Arsenal. It’s just shorthand for “this is our recruitment strategy.”
You’re also conveniently overlooking that Liverpool got paid when they sold Coutinho and immediately hit on Salah and Mane which left only the center defense and keeper to fill, which they did.
You’re making it out that the club is embarking on some novel recruitment strategy when what they’re proposing and doing is pretty conservative and also way overdue.
The radical approach would have been breaking up the team after Wenger left and doing a rebuild. Instead the club thought they were being slick by hiring a Europa League specialist and continued to invest.
The club tried signing stopgaps to backdoor the CL. They signed bad contracts with bad players and now we have to pay the price for that mismanagement.
Yep and I’m saying I’m not convinced by our strategy in the slightest.
I’m not overlooking anything in regards to Liverpool. Football clubs sell and buy players. That’s what they do.
Also Sane and Salah arrived before the sale of Coutinho. They were already getting things right.
I’m making it out that way because that is how it is being presented. There’s nothing conservative with our current expenditure this season.
Only the manager was a stop-gap. We did do a rebuild after Wenger left, what you on about? Ignoring this window we’ve sold or released 15 first teamers from the Wenger era and bought in around 11-13 new first team players depending on how you include Martinelli or Saliba.
We only signed one stop-gap in 2018-19 under Sven and that was Lichtsteiner for 1 year and most of the time he was filling in Left Back or Centreback when we had someone unavailable. He was finished and looked awful but he came and gone just like that.
Unfortunately Emery choked top 4 and EL Final, shit happens. The mistake there was just not sacking him right there and then for failing to meet targets. But we know Raul is a fraud.
2019-20, Pepe, Tierney, Martinelli, Saliba were clearly signed with a long-term view. David Luiz was the old player we signed and he wasn’t even that awful. One stop-gap here again.
2020-21 Mari, Cedric, Willian, Partey were all given lengthy contracts. None of these can be considered stop-gaps.
We tried to backdoor into EL and failed, yes. But we didn’t sign stop-gaps to do it.
Yerp spot on Rocky. Your also lining yourself up for a young cheaper manager next time.
It’s moneyball repackaged in other words cheap and hopeful.
Bellerin, Chambers, Holding were all these players.
They’ve technically made it. Are they what people want. Doubt it.
Liverpool success is based on a top manager and 20 odd man backroom staff.
All would of been negotiated and club policy discussed at the interview.
Such a bite size argument youth projects. Teams around us Leicester, West Ham, spurs aren’t going down that route let alone the top clubs.
Klopp actually isn’t getting enough credit here. He made players like Henderson go up a level and the likes of Mane, Salah and Coutinho two. Not many managers would have given up on Sturridge, who was England’s main striker at the time.
The reason why they received so much for Coutinho is Klopp’ brilliance as well as Barcelona stupidity.
If we were to sell say Saka for 100m would you trust the board and the fraud (Arteta) to invest it in our areas of need (cm and Auba replacement)? I wouldn’t.