"All the young dudes: lighting the fuse?" by Stu Montagu

Generally it’s regarded a bad idea to try and run your football club based on the warbling of 1980s soul divas but it would seem that when Whitney Houston outlined her manifesto of believing that the children were our future, teaching them well and letting them lead the way it struck a chord with John Henry and the FSG boys.

A policy of prioritising buying players with potential to develop and become something special has been the modus operandi around Anfield over the last couple of seasons. Critics of the policy, who see it as too frugal, too unambitious or just straight up poor strategy would no doubt see “it’s not right, but it’s okay” as a more accurate Whitney number to sum up the owners attitudes to the club. That is surely an overly harsh interpretation of the situation though, and the worst accusation that you can throw at the owners is that their interpretation of doing things right, differs to yours. 

When talking about the size, and configuration, of transfer outlay the club should be looking at and the financial situation we are in it is always handy to think back only five years to the times where the club was leaking £45m in interest payments over the course of single seasons. In the early days of their tenure FSG put around £50m into the club to reduce the debt whilst still freeing up a conservative but reasonable amount of money for transfers. Fast forward back to the present and the club seems commercially in better shape than is has for years and last season had possibly its best tilt at the league title for the past couple of decades. The ship has been steadied, very few people would dispute that, but it is the course we now set sail on for the foreseeable future that is the topic of most debate.

It is an uncomfortable truth but for the short and medium term the future of Liverpool Football Club is one of being at a financial disadvantage to at least four other outfits. After coming within the bounce of a couple of balls of winning the league title the bookies had Liverpool as having about an 8% chance of winning the league. If we compare that with the odds of finishing in the top four again, which was an even-money 50% shot it shows the difference in probability that all four of those opponents can be leaped as opposed to just one of them in a given season.

Given that the gap in resources from LFC to three of those four clubs is sizeable, and will be staying so for some time, it’s easy to see the logic behind FSGs reluctance to throw excessive money at the problem. Throwing a fortune at the club to remain less heavily funded than two, or more probably three, of your rivals is a hard sell to analytical business men, and even to some fans that have spent the last decade deriding clubs that are buying their success with funds outside of their means. Looking at it like a poker player, the amount of money that the club is going to have to throw into the pot to try and win really isn’t going to increase its odds of winning that pot very much. 

If the key to the next step in progressing the club, both on the field and off it, is to usurp one of these four rivals as a regular champions league contender (and it very much is) then it is Arsenal that is going to be in the crosshairs. The revenue swing of the television and participation money from being at Europe’s top table is very much an important factor in the balance between Arsenal and Liverpool, whereas it’s far less so with the other three established top-four competitors.

There’s a good argument that with the money increasing for Champions League participation this season an extra push of capital is a good investment for the club. It’s one I wouldn’t argue too strongly against but I would counter it by suggesting that even under the current model of spending the club will feel they can leapfrog Arsenal. No doubt they’ll have to do more wrong than right in the transfer market and on the training pitch but it is an achievable short-term goal. 

Any belief that long-term success can come through investing in a very specific profile of player, and that a top four finish may be possible this season, will have been hugely bolstered by the performance of some of the new recruits in the current run of good form.  Despite claims of money being wasted we are currently watching the blossoming of Can, Markovic and Moreno into players that are regularly performing well for the first team. After cautious and tentative beginnings for the club all three of them are playing important parts in the rejuvenation of the team over the last month or two.

Can belies the fact he only turned 21 last month with assured, composed play and offers genuine quality bringing the ball out of the defence and distributing it long. Markovic is now growing into a more bold and confident player, keen to affect the game and diligent in his work when out of possession. Moreno is, well, erm, bonkers. He’s running the length of the pitch and scoring, winning physical battles with Lukaku and then doing something daft that means we concede a goal. Regardless there’s a player there and he’s at worst a slight improvement on what we had last season – with huge potential to be a vast improvement over time. Significantly all three of them seem to love a bit of needle and are showing the mentality that the team had in the run-in last season when we were as snarly as we were tricky.

The important factor in buying these sort of players, given the financial disadvantage that Liverpool are at, is that it isn’t so much spending money as investing it. The idea that you are wasting money by buying this sort of profile of player, if doing it with some sort of competence, is so far wide of the truth as to be absurd. You can claim that opportunity may be being wasted if they take time to develop or to bed in but that point of view very rarely takes into account the risk of that happening with anyone. Young or old, domestic or foreign; there is always a risk there.

Transfers don’t work as often as they do, that’s the truth of the game, even for the very good managers. So if transfers are difficult to get right (and they are) then by purchasing this profile of player you are in essence mitigating that risk and investing in assets that would have to tank spectacularly for you to lose much capital on them when they are sold. We’ve invested £45m in those three assets and, come the end of the season they will almost certainly still be worth at least that amount of money, if not more. Once you look at the value they represent once they enter a second contract period the club really starts to benefit from the policy.

It is interesting to look at what Dortmund achieved during their phoenix like rise from the ashes of financial catastrophe which culminated in a short period of huge success on the pitch. They too enacted a strategy of looking to buy players of a specific profile that would provide the club with value, and with a superb coach at the helm it came to fruition. Often you’ll see the essence of football reduced to “Just buy the right players and get them playing better than the competition” when things aren’t progressing at a club and, as much at that is simplifying the complex to a ridiculous level, Dortmund managed to do this brilliantly.

Even when they regularly had key elements of the team removed each season, in the form of Sahin, Kagawa and Goetze, they managed with astute re-investment.  You could look at their feats and point out that they only had one better resourced opponent to try and better each season (in Bayern Munich) as opposed to Liverpool having four, and you would have a point. It’s easier for the perfect storm to count for something if just one opponent has to have a lull. 

Another angle is that it’s realistic to suggest that the player-harvesting that may have eventually taken its toll is something Liverpool could be more protected from if in a position as a top four regular in the best paid league in the world.

One common theme of: “How are we meant to compete with City or Chelsea buying these kids?” is one that has reared its head a fair bit recently but if we’re talking about doing it consistently over time you can really, genuinely, knock the last three words off that question. That’s not a lack of ambition, that’s just realism. If the ambition of the club is to attempt to set up a base camp as one of the regular Champions league qualifiers and then use that to launch sporadic title challenges when things click for us then I fail to see how that can be criticised by the fans.

If the strategy of the club is to then increase that probability each season of having a tilt at the title so they come as often as possible then things will keep moving in the right direction. For a little perspective, previous to this one it’s been four seasons since Chelsea have been properly involved in a title chase and, unless they improve their results, Man City may have, at the end of this season, only been involved in two out of the last four. Both only started this season with around a 30% of the title according to the bookies, despite the huge wealth that they have at their disposal.

In this reality is it lacking in ambition from the club, or from any fans, to think that regular participation in the Champions League and occasional genuine title challenges are an acceptable point to aim to get to? Last season proves that Liverpool can challenge for the title without matching the bigger boys spending, it doesn’t prove that they can do it consistently, which is an entirely different challenge.

The astute selection of these younger promising transfer targets could go a very long way to negating some of the financial disadvantages the club is up against in the next few years and, hopefully, can increase the regularity of brilliant seasons where the club are in the mix for the title. Buying these players and employing a manager that has the nurturing of developing talent as one of his better qualities is unquestionably joined up thinking from the club.

Whether this vision for the club is the correct one is something that fans may well disagree on for the foreseeable future but if any further signings show the amount of promise, or deliver the performances, that this summer’s younger players have then success is far more likely, both on the pitch and on the books. 

Stu Montagu

@SimianJustice