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FSG are not shit


Dave D
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So, I crashed really hard at about 7pm. Just slept like a fallen oak in front of the TV for 3 hours, which has essentially fucked me up quite hard for the rest of the night to come. So I grab a drink, stand between my bedroom and my office thinking 'shall I just go straight to bed or should I pop on the computer for a minute'. I think 'ah well, I might as well check if there's any new movies released...'. Nope. I had a quick scan on here, open this thread and read the post by Beefy (I'm calling him Beefy now. It's a thing), with Ian Doyle's tweet and started checking a few things, just out of curiosity. So, to cut a long story short, the last fucking hour I've been going deeper down the fucking rabbit hole of transfers. It's actually really quite interesting to see which clubs (of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd, and Spurs) have spent what, when they've spent it, the total expenditure, and the net spend and then attempting to correlate what happens on the pitch with how much is spent (both in outlay and in terms of net expenditure).

 

It's interesting also to see what players have been sold to raise money and what that means for the team. Really, the whole net spend thing, without the context of players, is daft. For example, if we sell Coutinho for 142m, buy VVD and (for example) Asensio, Lemar, or somebody like that, and they do better for us than just Coutinho then a net spend of zero is brilliant. If we sell him for 10m and buy 100m player to replace him and he's shit, we've spent 90m and regressed. I'd way sooner have a zero net spend and improve than spend 90m and regress. That's obvious, of course. Where I found it became interesting was to see which clubs sold which players and how they improved or regressed from it. It gives a better understanding of what seems to really matter in winning football matches, which is what I care more about.

 

I've got it all down on paper and I might make a post about it if anybody gives a fuck (probably not) but a couple of surprising things to me straight off the bat were 1) how little Chelsea spend. Over the last four seasons, their net spend has been surprisingly low. Around £35m in four seasons (and very well balanced over that time, with net spending no more than 20m in a season) and they won two titles in those four years and two out of the last three. 2) Fucking hell, Manchester United spending is way beyond what I thought. It's unreal. Their net spend since FSG took over is 650m. 3) City. Heh. Fucking hell. Over 200m per season consistently for the last three seasons, then hundreds of millions before that. How the fuck do they stay within FFP? Offset it against other stuff, I guess? 4) Under FSG Liverpool have sold 75 players for a total of 541m. 338m of that was from just five players. There was other stuff, but those things struck me. That's without looking at wages. That'd probably sway things even more.

 

A few basic conclusions that I'm drawing from what I've looked at is total expenditure seems to matter at least as much as net spent, if not more, but if the total expenditure isn't used to improve the player being replaced, it's going to matter very little in terms of end product. Net spend, expenditure, it counts for very little in terms of progress, it's how you spend your money that really counts. It's all very obvious and seems to confirm some of my opinions about what factors are most important in football, but the level some teams are operating at opens my eyes to how much spending is going on by Manchester Clubs. City get a return on their obscene spending, but United haven't. Chelsea have spent less than us recently but have pushed ahead in terms of league titles. We are pulling back, due to us making the most of the money recently, thanks to Klopp mainly, where as the part of the 700m Liverpool spent under FSG before him was way, way less value. So buy good players. The rest is wank.

 

Chelsea won titles on a modest net spend because they've spent astronomical amounts of money (accounting for football inflation) in the years preceding it. A point that is self evident to anyone that applies even a morsel of cognition to the situation.

 

The gist of what you seem to be saying is "spend money wisely". I don't think anyone can refute that. Spend money wisely. Of course. I don't think anyone wishes for us to spend money unwisely. But spending money wisely doesn't directly correlate with success. Spurs spend money wisely and have done for the last decade. Southampton spend money wisely. 

 

What top clubs do is two things. They spend the money that needs to be spent to acquire the players they want and secondly they don't sell their best players. So when your best players stay (Silva, De Bruyne, Hazard, De Gea etc) you can make mistakes in the transfer market and not regress because the foundation is already in place. You're just trying to add on top of it.

 

Until we adopt that mentality (because it is a mentality, it's not just about having inferior income - case in point RB Leipzig) we will keep having the same conversations over and over again and win nothing of any real relevance. 

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Isn't FSG getting 6m a year in interest payments, though? That rate is completely wrong if so...

 

No, I don't know why you think that. The interest rate is stated in the accounts.

 

Previously their shareholder loans were in fact interest free, which I argued for ages it should be thought of as equity. They then converted it into actual equity. When we found out they were funding the stadium with a loan, we had assumed it would be interest free again, so was a little disappointing to find out it wasn't, but its a very reasonable rate, so not going to affect our spending capabilities by a significant amount.

 

What I think happened was that the plan was for the club to borrow the money for the redevelopment. We used to have a £45m facility to fund the early stages, and when that needed to be refinanced as it was becoming almost fully used, FSG realised they could get the funding cheaper than we could, so they borrowed the money, lent it to us, and we are paying the interest on their loan, but saving what seems like about 1% on what we would have had to pay ourselves.

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No, I don't know why you think that. The interest rate is stated in the accounts.

 

Previously their shareholder loans were in fact interest free, which I argued for ages it should be thought of as equity. They then converted it into actual equity. When we found out they were funding the stadium with a loan, we had assumed it would be interest free again, so was a little disappointing to find out it wasn't, but its a very reasonable rate, so not going to affect our spending capabilities by a significant amount.

 

What I think happened was that the plan was for the club to borrow the money for the redevelopment. We used to have a £45m facility to fund the early stages, and when that needed to be refinanced as it was becoming almost fully used, FSG realised they could get the funding cheaper than we could, so they borrowed the money, lent it to us, and we are paying the interest on their loan, but saving what seems like about 1% on what we would have had to pay ourselves.

A bit like the Council are planning to do for Everton's stadium! Why bother asking your owner to put in cash when the ratepayers will.
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Lot's of chat on here about account and the like and I can't say I've got the energy or time to dive deep into them, so fair play to those who have.

 

Quick question though.

 

We've spent approximately 130m net over 14 transfer windows. That's 9.2m per window.

 

Are you guys telling me that's adequate expenditure? 9th richest football club in the world, ballooning TV deals, a litter of new corporate sponsorship deals on a yearly basis. And we can only afford a net outlay of 10m on transfers per window?

 

Just doesn't seem right to me.

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I guess wages are the biggie but it doesn't seem right to me either.  You'd like to think there would be (at least) one window that bucked the trend and wasn't dependent upon the sale of one of our best players.  In turn, that would give the incumbent manager the chance of building something.  

 

We're like Fabric in its heyday; one out, one in.

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Lot's of chat on here about account and the like and I can't say I've got the energy or time to dive deep into them, so fair play to those who have.

 

Quick question though.

 

We've spent approximately 130m net over 14 transfer windows. That's 9.2m per window.

 

Are you guys telling me that's adequate expenditure? 9th richest football club in the world, ballooning TV deals, a litter of new corporate sponsorship deals on a yearly basis. And we can only afford a net outlay of 10m on transfers per window?

 

Just doesn't seem right to me.

Why are you (and lots of others) focusing on net outlay, though? I think that’s the question we need to ask ourselves. Is net spend the key to winning or is overall outlay and making sure we get bang for our buck more important. If purely winning is what’s important to you, net spend isn’t the only thing to look at and I’d argue it’s not the most important thing to look at.

 

I think it depends. We’ve sold 75 players under FSG. I’d argue that between 2-4 of them have been players we actually didn’t want to sell. We aren’t at the top of the food chain so, especially with South Americans, that can happen when one of the few clubs that can poach from us come in. Importantly, we got 540m for those 75 players. 340 of it was on just five players (Torres, Suarez, Sterling, Benteke, Coutinho).

 

The Coutinho income almost doubles the net spend. Net spend has fluctuated massively in the space of a week this window. It’s not the be all and end all. Once that money is spent again, it’ll go up. I’m much more concerned with us buying the right players with the money we spend. I don’t care if the money comes from donations from owners or from the sales of players we don’t want. I care about how much we have to spend, and how well it is spent. When our best player gets poached, we need to reinvest that money wisely.

 

Focusing on just net spend is simply a way to make everything look bleak. If you look at the signings under Klopp, it does not look bleak at all.

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Lot's of chat on here about account and the like and I can't say I've got the energy or time to dive deep into them, so fair play to those who have.

 

Quick question though.

 

We've spent approximately 130m net over 14 transfer windows. That's 9.2m per window.

 

Are you guys telling me that's adequate expenditure? 9th richest football club in the world, ballooning TV deals, a litter of new corporate sponsorship deals on a yearly basis. And we can only afford a net outlay of 10m on transfers per window?

 

Just doesn't seem right to me.

 

Yeah, the reason it doesn't seem right is because it isn't right...

 

From the annual accounts, our net cash spending since their first full season in charge to the last published accounts YE2016 is £208m. If you were to include the Jan 2011 window, that would go up somewhat, especially as we paid for Carroll in full.

 

The last 4 windows (including this) I think we are roughly flat if you look at reported transfer fees alone, but this doesn't take into account agent fees and signing-on fees, which would probably add on another £10-20m

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Neutral spend and devoid of ambition for success, while waiting for external market forces to carry the club towards a multi billion valuation. If John Henry wore a cowboy hat he’d be vilified.

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Why are you (and lots of others) focusing on net outlay, though? I think that’s the question we need to ask ourselves. Is net spend the key to winning or is overall outlay and making sure we get bang for our buck more important. If purely winning is what’s important to you, net spend isn’t the only thing to look at and I’d argue it’s not the most important thing to look at.

 

I think it depends. We’ve sold 75 players under FSG. I’d argue that between 2-4 of them have been players we actually didn’t want to sell. We aren’t at the top of the food chain so, especially with South Americans, that can happen when one of the few clubs that can poach from us come in. Importantly, we got 540m for those 75 players. 340 of it was on just five players (Torres, Suarez, Sterling, Benteke, Coutinho).

 

The Coutinho income almost doubles the net spend. Net spend has fluctuated massively in the space of a week this window. It’s not the be all and end all. Once that money is spent again, it’ll go up. I’m much more concerned with us buying the right players with the money we spend. I don’t care if the money comes from donations from owners or from the sales of players we don’t want. I care about how much we have to spend, and how well it is spent. When our best player gets poached, we need to reinvest that money wisely.

 

Focusing on just net spend is simply a way to make everything look bleak. If you look at the signings under Klopp, it does not look bleak at all.

Because it shows the owners spend fuck all compared to what we make, you know this.

 

We sell our best players, we never add to them.  We would never spend 200 million (50 x 4 instalments) with no sales for example, bump the stars wages and push on and win.  

 

It is a cycle of sell to spend.

 

We have been so close a few times but never did enough.  These owners don't want to get us over the line, they want to maximise profit.  They don't care if we never win anything again.

 

It will be very interesting to see what happens with Salah, Mane, Keita and VVD over the next few years.  Will we spend and add or will we sell them.  I am not sure the rest of the squad are likely to fetch much so the next few years will be very interesting.

 

Also, why are we always told we can compete with anyone, when we clearly cant.  We have solanke upfront for fucks sake.

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They got the club for a pittance and could afford to throw a couple of hundred million in while still being in profit given the value of the club.

 

I don't expect them to do that but I also don't expect us to be anywhere near a flat spend after 7 years. Anyway season ticket renewal is up in a few months so we should find out what our summer warchest is.

 

I actually praised them a few weeks ago when it looked like we were going to do what needed to be done. Finish the window with a whimper as usual.

 

All this behaviour pre-dates Klopp aswell so I don't buy that he'd say no to bringing in a new keeper now or better players then we've got.

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i think we are lucky to have Klopp like we were lucky to have Rafa. 

 

However, I would quite like to see how Rafa would act with these guys as he would soon let us know what was going on!

 

There can't be many options left for a buyer in the future.  It has to be a sovereign wealth fund willing to throw billions at something and everything questionable that comes with that.

 

Isn't there a huge fan in Silicon Valley who wants some trophies?

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The thing that grinds my gears about this is that we finally make the big money starting XI moves that could move us into the top tier, again.

 

Keita was a real coup(umm next year anywho), and securing VVD (late, mind, but still) was also massive.  We've needed to make real first XI purchases to the midfield and defence for ages... Salah has turned out better than we likely all dreamed.  It was going well.

 

Of course, we immediately sell Coutinho for a massive wedge, and then sit on our hands.  We have so many needs to our squad.  A first XI Goalkeeper, a top tier forward to rotate with Firmino/Salah/Mane, replace Morono, replace Lovren, replace Can, replace Milner...

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The thing that grinds my gears about this is that we finally make the big money starting XI moves that could move us into the top tier, again.

 

Keita was a real coup(umm next year anywho), and securing VVD (late, mind, but still) was also massive. We've needed to make real first XI purchases to the midfield and defence for ages... Salah has turned out better than we likely all dreamed. It was going well.

 

Of course, we immediately sell Coutinho for a massive wedge, and then sit on our hands. We have so many needs to our squad. A first XI Goalkeeper, a top tier forward to rotate with Firmino/Salah/Mane, replace Morono, replace Lovren, replace Can, replace Milner...

So, is your issue with Klopp, who is making that call, or FSG for not overriding him?

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You don't know whether it's either of those things, neither do I.

 

What we do know is that in the past the owners have left the manager to just get on with what he's got rather then strengthen (even when it was needed).

I do know, because Klopp has said so. So the question remains.

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