Liverpool FC Forum

by **JBG** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:12 pm

I think we will all accept that our club is now at a crucial juncture in its history.

We haven't won the title in 14 years, we have struggled to establish ourselves in the Champions League and we have fallen miles behind Man UTD, Chelsea and possibly Arsenal as well as far as muscle goes in the transfer market.

Whats more we are currently managerless (Phil Thompson nothwithstanding) and a dubious stranger from Thailand is seeking 30% of our club and more worringly, 2 seats on the board.

I think that its time for a major re-think in the club's entire strategy.

I have noticed a new trend in recent years in Europe.

If you follow the Champions League closely you will see that a number of smaller clubs are beginning to upset the applecart of the European giants.

This year Porto won the European cup, beating another club with small resources, Monaco, in the final.

Another club with relatively modest resources, Valencia, won the UEFA Cup.

In 2002 Bayer Leverskusen, again a smaller club, reached the Champions League final.

Valencia reached the Champions League final in 2000 and 2001.

Also look at the European leagues.

Werder Bremem upset the giants of Bayern Munich to win the German league.

Valencia have now won 2 out of the last 3 Spanish leagues (quite possibly the toughest in the world).

Real Madrid, despite spending hundreds of millions in the last couple of years in transfer fees and wages, were lucky to finish in 4th place in Spain.

Deportivo La Coruna and Valencia, two regional clubs in Spain, are challenging and beating the established order of Real and Barcelona.

My point is that the likes of Deportivo, Valencia and Porto has show that it is possible to challenge the established oder and win with modest resources.

Look at Porto for example.

They have no real stars, although in fairness Deco has made a big name for himself this year.

Their success is based on strict adherence to first principles of football. They defend extremely well, are hugely disciplined and every player gives 100%. Most importantly of all they have a superb manager.

Valancia and Deportivo (aside from their 3-8 defeat to Monaco!) also defend superby and play as a unit.

These three sides are real "teams" in that every player knows exactly what his role is and gives everything for the side.

Liverpool need to learn from the likes of Porto, Deportivo and Valencia.

There are no reasons why we could not emulate them. We are much wealthier than them and have a greater history, so we have the advantage over them in that we have more money to spend in the transfer market and could hold onto out top players by paying them large wages.

However, we need to look at these sides and learn from their strict adherence to first principles of football: defend doggedly, be disciplined, hold the ball and be fast and decisive in attack.

In my opinion the first step is to sign a top class manager who knows how to organise a team and get the best from his players. I would be prepared to break the bank to get a top guy in rather than blow £14million of a striker, for example.

We should then support this new guy as best we can. If he wants to sell 10 members of the squad and get in guys whom he trusts and can rely on to deliver his proven type of football, so be it.

We almost succeeded with this in appointing Gerard Houllier and in a fashion Houllier tried to model his Liverpool side on what Valencia, Deportivo and Porto are doing now. The problem with Houllier is that he wasn't quite good enough, had a poor record in the transfer market and while he was successful for a while in establishing the team as a side that was hard to beat, he didn't understand or was unable to accomplish a slick attacking capacity, which Valencia, Deportivo and Porto have managed.

I have a feeling that when Gerard Houllier watched the European final on Wednesday he was thinking: "Thats what I was trying to do at Liverpool".

Unfortunately Houllier wasn't skilled enough.

They new manager has to be 100% suitable for the job and must look to the three sides I have mentioned above as his model.

We should no longer follow the policies of the last 14 years where we tried to imitiate Man UTD in the transfer market. We should bring an end to the days when we would spend £8.5million on the likes of Stan Collymore.

Liverpool should forget about trying to sign "star names" and instead go back to basics of setting up a proper "team" that knows how to defend, support each other and be potent in attack.

Some of the ground work is already there. Gerard Houllier was not all bad for Liverpool. He has left many positives.

We need to understand that its pointless trying to emulate Chelsea and Man UTD from now on. We just can't compete in financial terms. However, just because we can't compete in financial terms doesn't mean that we can't compete in footballing terms.

Even in our heyday we were never the richest club in the world. Other clubs on the continent could pay more in wages and lure the likes of Platini, Cruff and Maradonna to their sides.

Yet we still went on to dominate Europe.

How? In some ways we were the Porto or Valencia of our day. We had real "teams" that worked as a whole and never conceeded nothing to the opposition. We had no Maradonnas, Platinnis or Cruff's but we still went out there and won.

The first step is to get in the type of manager who can deliver what I'm talking about.

by **simic_ie** » Fri May 28, 2004 12:23 pm

Well, theres nothing else I can say after that, excellent post JBG, Liverpool are not big enough to compete in monetary terms so we are going to get a shrewd manager who can get the best out of his players and who can spot an excellent player on the cheap (Wenger anyone)

by **big al** » Fri May 28, 2004 1:36 pm

Liverpool have never been properly exploited as far as their financial drawing power is concerned. This is due in my opinion to poor Executive management.

Manchester United exploited the boom in football in the late 80s and early 90s, Italia 90 give a feel good factor to fans across europe, united exploited that.

Liverpool have a massive fan base worldwide but continually fail to milk it for all its worth. I'm not saying they should change kits every other week like united but they have a brand that is still world class, the club needs to take a leaf out of Real Madrids book and learn how they reinvented themselves in the last 10 years.

5-10 years ago everyone wanted to play in Serie A, many still do, but La Liga and the premiership are now its equals. Personally I still believe the hardest league to win is the english league, not least because of the amount of fixtures, the speed of play, the competive nature of games ( not so much chocolate men as in europe) and of course the weather. I also think that there are more teams that own there day can beat anyone, That was in essence Houlliers demise.

I agree with a lot JBG has said but I think the task at Liverpool requires the new manager to be able to hit the ground running. I'm not talking about the fans giving him time to fit in, really its down to the playing staff, everyone says we need 3 world class players but in my veiw if they are all foreign, bought by a foreign manager then they will need time to adjust, will Gerrard and Owen be patient enough, if not then we need 5 world class players.

by **woof woof !** » Fri May 28, 2004 1:55 pm

Good post JBG.
Thinking back to our glory years we were first and foremost a TEAM and not just 11 individuals .We worked and played as one unit.Many of the players who went on to become household names weren't stars when we signed them. They were talented hardworking players who were able to flourish and display their skill in a side that knew exactley what was expected of them. Everybody knew who the first 11 were and there was no fannying about with constant team changes week after week.We played hard fast aggressive football allied to the ability to defend when required.We certainly did upset the balance of power in europe and for years the "Glamour" sides of Italy,Spain and Germany sh*t their pants when drawn against us.Ultimately it wasn't Madrid,Milan or Munich who were masters of europe it was LIVERPOOL. A team comprised of home grown talent stuffed with pride.

by **stmichael** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:04 pm

i think the key to success is BALANCE. for me, as a fan, i love nothing more than seeing flair players who excite the crowd. however these flair players must also be prepared to put the work in.

porto on wednesday were a prime example of this. they were not exciting to watch. once they got a goal up they just closed the game down and hit on the counter-attack to great effect. not a team of stars who cost the earth, just a great team who are well organised and have a great balance of grit, flair, youth and experience. they also had 9 portugese players starting which helped.

houllier gave us the organisation, but we weren't able to balance this with the flair going forward during his last two seasons. i'm sure the new manager will turn this around.

by **JBG** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:20 pm

The new manager has to.

I agree with Big Al that we haven't exploited our brand name to the full. The Thai PM sees Liverpool as a great chance for making some hard cash off our image rights etc in the far east.

It drives me nuts sometimes to see the financial success Man UTD have achieved. They were always a very big club but they were lucky that they were winning trophies at a time when satelite tv really took off, thereby hugely increasing their fan base across the world.

Had we maintained our success on the pitch in the 1990s we could be the financial success story of the 1990s, not Man UTD.

Arsenal have a plan to reach financial parity with Man UTD by 2010. The want to match them in gate receipts with their new stadium, at least equal them on the pitch and increase their fan base internationally.

We should be trying to do the same.

However, even in a perfect world and everything goes right for us, it would still probably take 10 years for Liverpool FC to close the gap financially with UTD.

Until then I advocate copying the Valencia, Porto and Deportivo model on the playing side: of course we have the extra advantage over them given our greater resources.

by **stmichael** » Fri May 28, 2004 3:28 pm

Parallels may be drawn between Liverpool and Manure's success on the field and even their geographical proximity, but that my friends are where any parallels end.

On the one hand, there's Liverpool. Four times Champions of Europe and winners of 18 League Championships. Undisputedly, they are the ****** of the north and undisputedly the kings of English football. Honour, dominance, courage, character and wisdom.

On the other hand we have the poorer cousin of the legendary Scouse greats, Manchester United PLC. Undisputedly rich with wealth, fat chequebooks, Eastern sweat shops, commercialism personified and a blinding prawn sandwich turnover. There's no doubt that they are a successful club. Their manager, in his longevity, has brought tremendous success to the Mancs' realm, but nevertheless, with all their recent silverware, there is one thing their wealth cannot buy - heart and soul.

We're rather more like the mythological equivalent of Zeus, to the Mancs' Hades. When brothers Zeus and Hades divided up creation. Hades got the Underworld and Zeus took the sky.

No doubt we'll be subjected to the ritual "in our Liverpool slums" and "if you all hate Scousers".........but why? It'll be rather ironic that the Mancs will have to drive past the "European City of Culture" signs before they enter our glorious city. Statistics relcently show Manchester to be the Crime Capital of the UK. Will that in any way serve to prevent them having a go at us? No, of course not, for manifest jealousy will ignore such "indiscretions".

We, Kopites, in our unmerciful way, use humour, verse and glorification as a poisoned cocktail to deal with our adversaries. "You'll Never Walk Alone", "Fields of Anfield Road" and "Scouser Tommy" will echo around Anfield, whilst the Mancs will be busy ripping off John Denver classics.

Our club isn't the crazed commercialization of the once beautiful game, but rather the epitome of the last culture within it.

Cast your mind back to the fiery European night of Roma, when queues to obtain tickets were six hours long and a lucky 44,000 Scousers in the ground all thanked Abbad Rashid and his medical team for their efforts in which, after an 11 hour operation to repair one man's aorta, we welcomed home Gerard Houllier.

Red scarf blowing in the wind, his lean and hollow face exposed to the elements, in our hour and a half of need, he came back to lead us. We welcomed Houllier back in to our family and the warmth of his gesture must never be forgotten.

We are far superior to those mancs!

by **Woollyback** » Sat May 29, 2004 12:11 am

St M, you've got a cracking turn of phrase

You need to be writing books or something.

On the topic of the city of Liverpool vs the city of Manchester I've lived and worked in both cities for many years and can honestly say (without bias) that Manchester is a bigger sh*thole. Yeah it's probably wealthier if you include the Cheshire suburbs but there's whole swathes of the city that are worse than anything in Liverpool (anybody ever been to Salford?). Jeez, even the Manchester Olympic bid knew it - they planned to host the marathon in Liverpool cos Manchester's just too ugly!

I actually quite like Manchester though, I live out in the commuter belt but work right in the middle of town and it's not a bad place to be at all. (Give me Manchester over some faceless southern hellhole like Milton Keynes or Reading). But there's just something about Liverpool that I can't put my finger on that all Manchester's money put together couldn't buy. (I blame the Mrs for us ending up over here, I wanted to stay in the 'Pool). But seriously, the figures don't lie - the media image of Liverpool being a city of slums and thieves is all very convenient to them when they're trying to sell papers but in reality it's utter bollox.

OK it's not Beverley Hills but I love it!

Soap box time over - Liverpool's great, Manchester's not so great

by **Dalglish** » Sat May 29, 2004 12:31 am

Porto and Werder and Monaco and Valencia have all proved it takes more than money to win in Europe and AMEN to that is what I say

Thats why the NEXT manager is crucial to Liverpool's next 10 years in my opinion.

Do all the mercahndising you want but there is no substitute for class.

On the Liverpool/Manchester divide its been the same since the industrial revolution when the two cities competed for business. Long may it continue !!!!!

Littl;e STAT for you ........ the Poorest most underprivaleged place in the country was announced last week . Well done Harpurhey just out of Manchester City centre for this new found accolade !!!!!

by **Woollyback** » Sat May 29, 2004 12:58 am

Dalglish, Harpurhey is a special kind of sh*thole. You've never seen anything like it, even Swampy turned down a council house there

by **Woollyback** » Sat May 29, 2004 1:00 am

All this talk about the new forum's cencorship has got me paranoid, am I gonna get barred for frivolous posting??

by **Dalglish** » Sat May 29, 2004 1:24 am

I know Al !!!!!! Its the ONLY place even the A-Team won't go

by **azriahmad** » Sat May 29, 2004 5:22 am

According to Forbes magazine, April 2004 issue, Liverpool is 8th largest soccer club in terms of worth and revenue at US$447 million and US$172 million respectivey. Our operating income (defined as earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation) is US$61 million, third beind manure at US$91 million and Newcastle at US$77 million. Newcastle has a higher income than us in spite of lower turnover because of their lower wage bill. These figures were compiled by Deloitte & Touche, UK, an international accounting frim.

Liverpool's revenue is smaller than manure, Juve, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich because of less tv money from Europe and also merchandising. manure's revenue is US$289 million.

I totally agree that Liverpool is at a crossroad, as the financial success is tied to playing success. Liverpool has also been more of a football club than a business and because of this, the footballing side must be much more conducive than say at Chelski.

Given that, there is no reason why the club should continue to underachieve on the pitch.

Houller's legacy of good administration with the modernisation of the academy and Melwood should yield results in five years' time with good homegrown youngsters coming up to the senior squad. In the mean time, we need a really good coach/manager to ensure the present and immediate future playing staff progress froward.

In the Champions' League, smaller clubs like Porto, Monaco and Leverkusen did well on the strength of their coaches' guile and ingenuity and the players' collective will and desire as compared to the bigger clubs.

Liverpool are not exactly minnows but the reality of it is that if we stand still, we will become minnows in the future.

by **BOODIDDY** » Sun May 30, 2004 8:41 pm

The problem that we had, and it was a problem no one could see at the time was that that when we was successful the money of today wasn't there. The opportunity to open megastores in the far east was a non entity. We came unstuck at the most vital boom time of European soccer. United and other major euro clubs exploited this, we were unable to. To get back to that level of dominance, i believe can only be achieved with an abramovich. But, to compete on the field this needn't be the case.

We can follow the blueprint of depo, valencia, porto, leverkusen and that of boavista (for a short time) and ultimately challenge the big boys. We still are a huge club, our status in G14 emphasises that.

Our next few steps are crucial, the manager has to be right, the finance men have to be right for us long term and the change in playing personnel has to be crucially right. No more "rough diamonds" we need "gems". The likes of Valeron, Deco, Aimar, Baraja and Morientes. This will make europe take notice of the mighty Liverpool once more.

by **JBG** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 2:40 pm

If we did manage to emulate Porto, I would hope that we would have a better chance of holding onto our players than they have!

Their 2003/04 suad has been gutted, and it now looks like Arsenal are lining up a move for Maniche.

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