Once our season ended i felt it'd be time for a reflective look back at where the club was at but of course events overtook that and a media and wum feeding frenzy ensued. Now that we've reached a point where a breath can be taken perhaps we could maturely and objectively reflect on what has occurred? At any rate I wonder if we can so this article is one attempt and seeing if we can. It is my belief the clubs position can be broken into 3 distinct sections in which progress against this grand plan could be measured; On the field The Business model The physical artifacts of success If we deal with these one at a time; 1. On the field This is the simplest of all to look at and the results do speak for themselves, indeed to the objective mind they show good reason to sack the king. Balancing the cup runs against the league you can see that when bothered the players can achieve but this raises a rather ugly question about why those players cannot deliver week in and week out. I formed an opinion on this midway through the year and it is simply based on one factor; that being fear. I think our players are so afraid of failure, making a mistake, being the one who cost the team the game that they play well within themselves. In doing so they shortchange everyone. A prime example is Downing, this England international is the butt of many's a joke such as the only assist he made all year was getting kenny the sack. However one need only look at his villa record to know he can play far better. So I looked at precisely what he's doing. The FA cup final first 55minutes showed his game up perfectly for me. He was mentally closed off from attacking. Every ball he received wide he would not open his body up to bring the ball forward rather he was closing off the entire forward part of the pitch by using his body as a shield to their full back and he just back passed all day long as a result. Frankly that's pointless. This is what I mean by fear, inhibiting your game by trying to not make the mistake you never take the risk to do something positive. Sadly i saw this all too often at home this year and i do wonder why on earth the players felt they had to play this way. It is my firm opinion that unless this is eradicated by the coaches from the sideline and from our game we will not achieve anything. This is the unlocked potential that any new coach needs to extract from our current players. We are already as good a spurs or arsenal or newcastle but fail time and again to deliver on it. 2.The business model Listening to the talk of the grand plan I have come to the conclusion that it is our owners intention to follow the Manchester Utd model. This is no insult, but a compliment to the model that makes utd the richest club in the world (barring the glazier's harvesting of course) Simply put in the absence of the sugar daddy that Chelsea and City have the only other model in town is the Utd one. I am of the opinion that Real and barca for example and running themselves into the ground chasing each other with money from banks and LFC know where that leads. No I think the revenue generation model that FSG seem to be following is one that can drive "some" success. Unfortunately Utd built Old Trafford in the 90s and while we built the centenary stand for a bank busting 12million pounds back then we failed to really follow through and this is why now in the age of mega money, mega transfer fees and huge stadia costs we find ourselves unable to bridge the revenue gap to Utd, or even arsenal.... 300million like it as not is not affordable to add 15,000 seats total to our clubs revenue. We are too late I think, Unless the club can great increase that number or find some way to increase anfield at say 100million I can't see us building. It makes no real sense, not in the revenue model. I think the owners have said this in a round about way but we as fans don't want to hear it. I do believe finally that there is a naivety in the approach that FSG has taken to its appointments and dismissals however. I do not think they understand that the approach they have taken this summer will cost them any chance of top 4 next year as the transfer window is an effective write off. I do wonder if they are believing the things kenny is and has been saying even though they removed him and that the believe these players will come good. I mention this here as the utterances of Ayre Last week would seem to suggest that to compete we need to be in the champions league to close the revenue gap and we cannot sustain big spending year on year to get there. If the model demand 4th or better to work then i think it will fail. I do await eagerly to see the full structure that their dismissals will create and much will have to be judged on that basis. 3. The physical artifacts of success What exists today to give us confidence that the plan is working? Unfortunately the answer to that question is very very little. So in the absence of any evidence bar on carling cup I'll make a brief list of the things I think will be important to look at going forward. 1. Club annual accounts - will they show a nasty picture when the money spent last summer is reported on? could we have even afforded the 40mil net spend? We don't know. we can only see accounts from last year now. We need to wait and see. 2. What footballing structure is created - DoF and 1st team manager. Who and why them? 3. How much money is made available? - I'd be shocked if we do spend big but if the new people have time will they be backed to buy? 4. Off the field activity - Will there be any progress in the next 6 months on stadia naming rights even? Early in the FSG "era" we saw comolli appointed, kenny brought in to save us from relegation and so forth. It would seem to be that a year on from all of that these decisions were judged a failure and of course significant evidence exists as to why one might conclude that given the performances. I think the next 2 months will say a lot about FSG's judgement and ambition.
Good stuff, lets waut and see what FSG do. I think you are right about some players being scared to play, it does happen. Hopefully they will be better next season now that they have settled in.
I agree whole heartedly about the fear. In particular, it is the English players who show the most fear i.e. Downing and Henderson. This is expected as it's their first season at a really big club with more pressure.
I found it interesting to note the 3 best players we had in the FA cup final were: Agger, Gerrard and Carroll... I don't agree its english players who show most fear. Suarez for example was bad in both finals, Reina gaffed for thier first goal, skertl struggled badly v drogba. I think it's all about mentality and some guys have it and some don't. I beleive comolli did an interview and admitted this was an issue in his statistical approach. Basically he bought players with nice stats but were cowards. Its easy to turn up on a nothing game and make 3 assists v west brom for villa for example but when your neck is on the line do you deliver?
Yep this is probably what has been the real problem with some of the new signings rather than ability or motivation. Its something I brought up ages ago; no doubting Kenny saw the potential and the character of some of the players but I think the thing that was lacking is the mentality, its something that you have to admire about Fergie, he does tend to get that part right more often than not!
well one would agree but.... ferguson's hit rate is not better than 90% of managers, the kelbersons, bebes and such are prrof of that. ferguson has a way of bullying utter effort and his style into players game after game. Thats his secret. I eman lets fact it when you get scholes, giggs and neville as well as other lesser youths all through at once as a golden generation and you rely on them for 15 years then adding the ronaldo's and berbatovs for big moeny does wrok. ferguson signed veron... need we say more? Ferguson get the performance out of them or hammers them and drops them if they don't give it... and that goes for wigan or wolves games as much as CL finals. I don't think we got enough out of our players in the smaller games.
There is nothing simple about what's on the pitch, nor what happened this season. You haven't been particularly objective in coming to a simplistic contention. A simplistic view will find good reason to sack the king. Then again it would be quite simplistic of me to suggest true fans are loyal to club legends, whatever the results, and Kenny deserved his contract to be honoured "simply" because of what he's done for this club through the years. In simple terms, what was on the pitch wasn't reflected in results. That is a very complex situation to decipher. Yes, there was fear. I saw it in the finals. I didn't see it as we overran team after team. Swansea and Norwich played well and deserved to beat us. So did other small teams against bigger teams elsewhere. Big woo. It happens. A couple a year is okay. But the fear was tangible in the finals and that came from pressure, both from the media and fans that we had to win silverware. Had to. Had. To. And it showed in the players. So we won one, but then the pressure mounted because the media decided only two cups would suffice as a decent season. It's interesting you say we're as good as Arsenal, who get slagged off daily by the media for not having won anything recently. They qualify for top four every year and yet Wenger's job has never looked so uncertain. Let's do a little simple arithmetic. What is the average number of woodwork hits per season for a PL team? Five? Ten? I'd say between that so let's take the high ten. Round down our woodwork hits to thirty. That's twenty which either go in or out. Take half of them out and half go in. Forget all the attempts saved by MotM goalkeeping performances, which were also above average. So that's ten goals more, at worst, by the law of averages. That'd give us more than Newcastle, who you may note finished with a worse GD than us even without those ten goals. And everybody generally agrees Newcastle had a good season. They lucked out that the dodgy knee which caused Stoke to reject Demba Ba didn't play up but we'll see how consistent their new platers are next season and the season after. Because football isn't simply one season long. What part did Pepe's lack of confidence play? It's no coincidence the club want to bring back Rafa's goalkeeping coach. Pepe hasn't been the same since Hodgson told him to play more like an English keeper. It's another strand of complexity, another area which hopefully was going to be improved next season, whether the manager was Kenny or not. On the pitch was not nearly as simple to analyse as just looking at the league table, not if you want to predict how next season will go, any more than you could predict that Alan Pardew would make the signing of the season and take Newcastle to 5th. I wouldn't suggest that corporate business models are simple, either. Utd, it was said at the time of the bond issue by financial analysts more knowledgeable than I, would have to keep winning trophies to be able to pay off their debt. What did they win this year? That is simple: nothing. Their squad erosion looks like continuing. FSG have made it clear time and again they're relying on Eufa to implement and police FFP to compete. Nobody can really say how that's going to affect things so it is far from simple but clubs are already making allowances for it. Chelsea look like they're trying to transition to producing their own players. Now RA's won his treasured trophy will he be as devoted? What else has he got to win? The execs at City know FFP is coming, even if Mancini is demanding a huge summer budget. There's more complexity with FFP, as far as my non-corporate eyes can see. II's supposed to even the playing field a little, which has already been evened somewhat this season, with more clubs competing for top four places. Villa were up there with us and now it's Spurs camped there and Newcatle as the newbies, while Villa are where Newcastle were. Who's to say who it'll be next season. There could be eight teams competing regularly for top four, so any club relying on Champions League qualification money to survive is going to be on a shaky wicket. Michael Calvin wrote an interesting piece in the Independent yesterday: This being football, the last rites (of Shankly's Liverpool) will be read by hysterics in cyberspace. The eulogy will be delivered by a glib bookmakers' runner, shouting online odds on the identity of Kenny Dalglish's replacement. The cortège will be led by Americans accustomed to reading between the lines of a baseball box score. Street wisdom from the Boot Room decorates the walls outside deserted offices in the inner sanctum. It is as if a neutron bomb has detonated there, in the dog days of a fateful season. Fixtures and fittings endure: all evidence of humanity has been erased. At a key moment in the player- recruitment process, when long-term strategies are activated and deals are done, the club is in a state of paralysis. Some 200 scouting reports are sent electronically each week, but there is no one to act on them. Good men remain, but they are impotent, fearful for their futures. Great clubs, important institutions, look after the little people, the small details. Liverpool's owners, Fenway Sports Group, are behaving with a stunning lack of class and professionalism. Senior staff feel isolated and ill-informed. Replacing Dalglish is Liverpool's most important act since they took a chance on young Billy Shankly.They are insulting his memory, and our intelligence.
Can't be any worse....can it? MITO, we'll take your opinion seriously, when you can go to the match without having to get permission from your bird
1. Noble... you are probably right there. I have now two kids so permission is indeed required worst luck... 2. muppet. your post requires some response given the quality of thought out in. so... first let us discuss the contention that kenny deserved to have his contract honored given his service to the club. That could be taken two ways. First would be that you feel like Ayre that his work to unify the club and such has not yet borne fruit but will do.. or second that no matter what the results he should get his 3 years.... frankly your view may have some merit though performance and result cannot be so simply divided. Every sloppy goal or narrow loss we suffered are all part of performance. Inability to finish, nervous snatching at chances shooting from long range or just plain bad luck.. In the end carragher summed this up as the manager carries the can. houllier got fired for it yet said we were 10 games from greatness... rafa got fired after one bad year.... are these "right" To expand my point I will say I can see why kenny should remain and would support that view but I can certainly see why sacking him after 6 months of dire form with no uplift bar cup games is also supportable. next you mention how most of the time we over ran sides. Well I can see that point too. However i can say that the easy option was taken a lot of the time. The inside pass, the turn back rather than beat the man, the snatched shot, fear need not only be displayed though shaky legs it can simply be called inhibited play. By this i simply mean you are too afraid to take your man on, beat him and cross the ball... or worse you are too afraid to make that run to get in the box, thus we find one man in there when there should be 3. I think we did this all too often. When i say we are as good as arsenal I mean it, we are as good POTENTIALLY man for man as them or spurs or newcastle. In fact i am convinced of it. We have the talent, it didn't come through in my opinion. If it doesn't the only guy who ever gets it (rightly or wrongly) is the manager.... AVB got it because drogba, lamaprd and terry wouldn't bother their barneys. he's sacked and they can win the CL? hmmmm.... maybe the players should be blamed but they never are. Now the woodwork thing... in the end I don't know the average and I can't really care about that. Its an excuse of sorts, we should have done better but even so and even adding points to the total we have to ask ourselves about why the players after Christmas fell apart defensively. Before Christmas we had some bad luck too but didn't concede goals.. perhaps its a fine line but if and buts don't put points on the board unfortunately. I just can't buy the pure bad luck routine... again a few more guys i nthe box when it mattered and we score more btu that takes less fear. but finally if i may I'd like to expand on the fair play model. You see you have a point about more clubs competing for 4th but I have a view here that may be controversial. I have been looking and forming an opinion that the revenue verses expenditure quotient has shifted so far that in order to compete you must bankrupt yourself. The "smart" clubs are not competing. This brings us back to arsenal i guess. If we let cheslea and barca and real and city spend themselves silly what's left to the rest of us? Well.... if a good player (merely good) is not going to got 20million what chance has the majority of clubs got? Answer NONE. Now every now and then an everton will unearth a cahill etc. thats great and they become an asset to sell on. If you cannot buy 5 players for 20million to compete then what happens? Again the clubs who stop competing fall back in to the pack. We now have clubs like newcastle emerging with low spends and competing but in the narrow arena that is ONE year and the ENGLISH prem. we saw stoke thumped in europe, they fell away in the league. Who is to say any of us are really good enough to compete internationally???? To sum up. I think the bigger pack for 4th is not evidence of a superior product but the dawning of a realization that clubs cannot spend this much and like Spain a 2/3 horse race will emerge with the rest picking up scraps. Stadnard below the best clubs are getting lower not higher.
oh and I should state I also agree in terms of the sentiment as expressed by baz. Unfortunately what's done is done. I can see certain things that could be used to justify it if i remove myself from being an ardent supporter and look form the outside.
