2024 accounts

[Beamrider]

The 2024 accounts have dropped overnight. You can find them here if you want to take a look yourself.

THE LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB AND ATHLETIC GROUNDS LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

THE LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB AND ATHLETIC GROUNDS LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

I'm a bit pushed for time this week so am going to do some piecemeal updates, which will also hopefully make things more digestible.

Firstly, the DYNASTY INVESTMENT.

The original announcement / publicity around Dynasty suggested that it would be for between £82m and £164m. I had expected that it would be in the form of shares so as to reduce the club's overall debt, but had then noted that no filings were made about a new share issue and that either this was an error or it had come in as debt.

The accounts reveal that the investment by Dynasty was £127.3m which went into a US company (UKSV 1 LLC, now renamed FSG Football Group LLC). The money has then been passed on to our UK holding company as a loan, with a further loan by that company to the Club. So LFC has received an injection of interest-free debt. So LFC has an interest-free loan of £127.3m. This explains why no filings were made - none were needed.

However, this debt investment will fall foul of the new rules on shareholder loans following the Man City associated party hearing. In effect, this means that the club will need to assume additional interest is charged on this debt when filing its accounts for Premier League PSR purposes (but not for UEFA purposes). If this were to become a problem (i.e. if we were close to the £105m loss limit) then it could be fixed by converting the debt into shares. Since we are not close to that being a problem, I suspect we've just left it as debt.

BANK DEBT

Our bank debt in the year has actually gone down by £10m. More than that, we have renegotiated our bank facilities. Previously, our borrowing limit was £200m, it's now £350m. At the end of the year, £116m was drawn, so we had capacity to borrow another £234m if needed. The bank facility was signed at the end of September 2024 (i.e. after the end of the period covered by the accounts) so it would not have covered the bid for Caiceido.

Some of this flex in the facility is used during the year as football cashflow can be quite "lumpy", with peaks and troughs through the year i.e. we will draw it down at times, and repay it - it basically works like an over-draft, but we have to activate borrowing and repayment as and when needed. So I'd be inclined to look at the new facility as an increase in our borrowing potential of £150m (the increase in the facility) as it's possible we'll get close to the £200m limit as it is. The kicker is that the rate on the bank facility has gone up by 0.5%, but that's not a big deal and hardly surprising in the current climate.

So the headline news will say our net debt has increased by £113m, but we still have £234m headroom. The increase in debt will have funded our operating losses and spending on players / infrastructure (mainly the Annie Road).

Summary

All looks OK and the investment is around the middle of the expected range. I would have preferred this to come in as shares, not a loan (in which case our net debt would have reduced by £10m).

The increase in debt facilities gives us plenty of wiggle room in future.

 

[Beamrider]

INVESTMENT SPENDING - PLAYERS

The headline cost of additions to the playing squad (i.e. the headline fees, ignoring timing of payments) is £194.5m. This covers Szobo, Mac Allister, Gravenberch and Endo. I had expected a total cost for those guys of £172m.

The additional spend is likely to be:

- Higher than expected agent fees
- Contingencies for historic players (principally Darwin)

On this latter point, the accounts for 2022 disclosed potential future payments of £55.9m but 2024 discloses £41.6m. Given the significant investment in the squad for the midfield, so it's likely that a lot of the difference will be contingent payments rather than under-estimate of agent fees on my part. That means we're probably carrying the donkey at a significant cost and will need to achieve a good fee so as not to take a loss on him.

Ordinarily, new signings would be paid for in three instalments. Contingent fees (Darwin) are due immediately. So if we go back to my estimate of £172m, I'd expect to see transfer fees of 1/3 (£57.3m) due after more than one year. The accounts disclose £37.5m due on this basis. I suspect the explanation here is that the fee for one of the players (probably Szobo) was due all in one go as it was a release clause. This will have accelerated about £40m of payments into 2023-24, which would explain part of the growth in our debt. NB - his rumoured release clause was £60m, so the numbers and the principle all stack up.

On the sales side, we disclosed a profit on sale of £22m. This implies that the proceeds on sale were £35m. I've commented on this previously that I thought the rumoured sales prices for Hendo (£12m) and Fabinho (£40m) were over-stated and this proves that to be the case. There's £17m missing there. The difference isn't add-ons as the accounts only disclose £2.5m in total add-ons potentially due to club at the end of the year (although any add-ons for Hendo would have lapsed when he moved to Ajax in January 2024, so we may have lost something there).

FUTURE SPENDING

The plus side of accelerating Szobo's fee and of not spending much this year is that we will have less to pay in instalments next year. This, combined with the greater available level of debt, should give us more to play with in the summer window. And if that sounds exciting, it's probably worth pointing out that I said that last year too. The reason we didn't have quite so much to play with this year was probably two-fold:

1. Nervousness about going all in and giving the new manager a huge war-chest; and
2. Continued spending on Annie Road.

EDIT - scrub that last comment, Annie Road was already complete, getting my years mixed up.

 

[Beamrider]

INVESTMENT SPENDING - INFRASTRUCTURE

Firstly, let's talk about the Annie Road. Unlike previous capital projects in recent years (i.e. the Axa) the Annie Road directly provides income to the club in the form to ticketing. So that's good for revenue generation, and best of all it improves everyone's chance of, you know, getting into the ground.

However, the final bill for the stand is £94.6m, with a further £19m having been spent in 2023-24. For context, when I was there, we were looking at a very basic concept, just adding a load of seats for normal punters, and the cost estimate was less than half that. It didn't turn enough of a financial return to move the dial.

I've said it before and it's worth repeating. This, plus the Axa, is Klopp's legacy to the club and to us as fans. He accepted a reduced transfer budget for a number of years in order to get those two facilities built. He didn't grumble, he got on with it. And somehow, by some miracle, he still managed to leave Slot with a squad capable of winning the league. He doesn't get enough credit for that. OK, on the other side of the coin we have the contract issues with Mo, Virgil and Trent, but I'm not sure I blame him entirely for that (but maybe he could have got them signed up before he announced his departure).

Of course, the scale of the new stand is bigger than it was when we looked at that first assessment, and it's still worth doing IMO because it puts our capacity where it needs to be. Any further expansion would be hugely costly because you'd need to invest masses in local transport infrastructure, in addition to whatever the build cost would be.

The stand has helped dive an increase in matchday revenue of £22m, although the accounts acknowledge that some of this is due to playing more games than last season - I'll have a look at those numbers when I get on to profit and loss.

However, what is surprising to me is the level of capital spend elsewhere. In addition to the Annie Road, the club has spent £32m on other capital projects. In normal years, our spend is between £5m and £10m. I'm at a loss to know where this extra came from. Needless to say I would hope it's a one-off.

Summary - Annie Road has cost a lot of money, but it's a sensible investment for the future which probably tops out the stadium capacity. Klopp and Slot have worked a miracle in getting results out of a squad that could have been stronger still had more money been made available to invest in it. It's to be hoped that the other spending of £32m will be a one-off.

 

[Beamrider]

WAGES

The big surprise to many has been that wages have increased from 2023 (£372.9m) to 2024 (£386.1m) - up by £13.2m (just over 3%).

There are a couple of things to say here. Firstly, the accounts disclose £9.6m as having been paid to staff leaving the club. I suspect none of this is to Klopp, and I've only just worked this out. Because Klopp left voluntarily, he won't have been entitled to much, if anything, in respect of the remaining time on his contract. His deal had two years to run. However, his other staff will also have been on deals with two years to run, but they didn't leave of their own accord, they left because he was leaving and the club decided to give the new guy a clean slate. So we will have had to pay off the remaining two years on the contracts of all the back-room staff that left, and I think that's what the £9.6m represents. The accounts say that it relates to "severance payments to former football management personnel and coaching staff as part of contractual obligations following their departures from the Club". The only thing that is missing in that statement is "but not the manager".

Secondly, the club notes that its running costs have increased due to "higher salary and overhead costs... resulting from an increased number of fixtures during the year and a higher cost base to support the increased commercial revenue". I think we can translate that into higher salary costs for the administration and operational staff. Although the staff numbers are fairly constant (increase of 3 heads in total) the wage rates will have gone up, and matchday costs will be higher due to the number of fixtures. I'm guessing the commercial reference could be a few account managers taken on, but also more of budget for providing greater benefits and perks to partners (this latter bit wouldn't be reflected in wages).

Obviously we binned off some expensive players (Naby, Ox, Fabs, Hendo, Milner) but they were mostly on deals from 2-3 years ago and were replaced by Szob, Grav, Mac and Endo who would have been on 2024 market rates - so potentially as expensive or even more so, despite their lower profiles when signing.

There will be more bonuses for the players for CL qualification, which weren't triggered in the previous year.

Finally, there will be some chunky agent fees on those deals, some of which will go into wages as being the players' share. Given our reduced transfer activity in previous years, there was probably a year on year increase in agent's costs.

So yeah, I get where the wage increase has come from.

Summary - the wage bill is more complex than it first appears and there are factors which would explain the increase, not least of which is compensation to Klopp's backroom team.

 

[Bradley]

Imagine being Klopp's club pickleball coach on a decent wage and getting a massive payment because Slot has his own pickleball man.

 

[Beamrider]

Imagine being Klopp's club pickleball coach on a decent wage and getting a massive payment because Slot has his own pickleball man.

I'm guessing you know Klopp had a padel tennis court built at Melwood (and I assume at Kirkby too).

 

[Bradley]

I did. I also saw a clip of Slot playing a game with Gary Linaker as part of an interview, so he's keen on it as well.

 

[Beamrider]

FFP

Firstly, let's deal with Premier League rules.

Allowing for add-backs (principally depreciation, Youth Academy costs - which I've estimated), we are comfortably within PSR rules. In actual fact, our net position over the last 3 years is probably a profit, once the adjustments are taken into account. Even before the add-backs, our aggregate loss is £58.6m, so there is still plenty of headroom. So PSR is not a problem.

There is also a voluntary period of monitoring the Football Costs Ratio (with the intention that this will take over from PSR long-term). I've commented below on this in a UEFA context, where the target is stricter. Provided we comply for UEFA (we currently do) we'll have no issues for the Premier League.

UEFA

Remember that this is a "football costs ratio" test these days, not profit-based. The test here is more difficult to check as:

1. It only includes the football element of the wage bill (which means we need to estimate the support staff costs).
2. It is done on a calendar year basis (accounts are June - May).

So, those caveats taken into account, I reckon we are looking at a percentage of around 72% (when the target is 80% for this year), so we should be fine this year.

Next year, the target is 70%, so we'd be over on the 2024 numbers, but our CL revenue will improve the position. We'd be OK against the test, subject to whatever impact contract renewals and summer transfers have on the wage bill. I am sure the club will be monitoring this carefully.

Summary

No issues for 2024 and probably also for 2025. Club will need to monitor things carefully when looking at the summer transfer window, but success in 2025, and qualification for the 2025-26 UCL, will give us breathing room.

 

[Squiggles]

Regarding the Annie road end, did we get compensated for the contractors going bankrupt? Or did we have to just swallow the loss of match day rev?

 

[bluebell]

Wow mate... That's some body of work. So DYNASTY INVESTMENT loan has to be paid back rat some point, right? When it is paid back does the money go back to FSG? Also does Dynasty Investment now have shares in LFC? If LFC do payit back then we can say they've got actual liquid cash return on their investment. What do you suspect the club will use this cash injection for, eg refinancing of high interest debt

 

[Beamrider]

Regarding the Annie road end, did we get compensated for the contractors going bankrupt? Or did we have to just swallow the loss or match day rev?

The accounts are silent. My take on what is likely to have happened:

Firstly, we would have paid for work done in arrears, on a monthly basis. An independent surveyor would have certified the work done at the end of each month and the contractor would bill in line with that schedule. There is usually a sum of around 3% retained from those payments - so if work certified is £5m, the club would pay £4.85m. We'd then pay half of that retention amount when the job was completed and the rest a year later. Essentially, the money is held back in case there are repair works required - either the contractor does those repairs and eventually gets paid in full or the club can use the retained amounts to pay someone else.

When Buckingham went into administration, the administrator would, I believe, have been entitled to bill for any unpaid work (and they would have had a duty to do so). But I think it's likely they would not have been able to claim those 3% retained amounts on the basis that they (Buckinghmam) didn't complete the job, so they didn't meet the conditions to claim them.

It's hard to say, but the club taking on the rest of the contract may have driven the costs up a bit - on the one hand, costs for individual jobs may have been driven up given risk for the contractors, on the other hand they will have saved paying a profit margin over to Buckingham. But if there was a net cost, we may have argued to reduce any payment due to the administrator accordingly. My gut feeling is that there's likely to have been some additional cost from doing this, but I couldn't say how much - probably a few £m. We will have tried to recover that from the administrator, but I doubt we'll have succeeded.

But I'm confident that we won't have made any advance payments to Buckingham, so we won't have lost any money that way.

On your particular query about matchday revenue lost, the contract will have included what we call LADs (liquidated ascertainable damages). These are payments that are due from the contractor in the event of them failing to deliver under the contract. Included within the LADs would be the lost revenue from the stand not being (fully) available. But these payments would be due from the contractor, so when they went bust there was no prospect of us receiving them.

However, on a similar principle to the other costs discussed above, we'd have likely argued that we should not pay anything more to the administrator for un-billed works on the grounds that we could counter-claim for LADs and no net payment would be due. I don't know enough about the law to know whether that kind of off-set would be allowed.

Finally, some or all of the risk may have been insured, but I think if it had been there would be mention of this in the accounts (and I've not seen anything to that effect).

TLDR - probably no compensation, but we may have been able to withhold payment of any unbilled work.

 

[Beamrider]

Wow mate... That's some body of work. So DYNASTY INVESTMENT loan has to be paid back rat some point, right? When it is paid back does the money go back to FSG? Also does Dynasty Investment now have shares in LFC? If LFC do payit back then we can say they've got actual liquid cash return on their investment. What do you suspect the club will use this cash injection for, eg refinancing of high interest debt

Dynasty have invested in FSG Football Group LLC (a US company). They will have acquired stock (shares) in that company.
That company has loaned the money to LFC (via UKSV Holdings Company - the UK company that bought the shares in LFC).
The loan is repayable on demand - i.e. FSG could insist on getting their money back. This is the same structure used for FSG's loan (which stands at £71.4m), and this has not been called to date. In practice, it's highly unlikely that either amount would be demanded, unless LFC made a huge one-off profit (which is also unlikely).
The benefit of keeping the loan in place is that FSG could use repayment to pull cash out of LFC in future (it is much easier to do this than pay a dividend). They can only make a repayment if the banking agreements would allow it - in broad terms, the finances would need to be healthy to gain permission from the bank.
My best guess would be that FSG may use these repayments to extract moderate amounts of cash from LFC in the future - when they took repayments on the stadium loan, it was generally £10-20m. I don't see the situation where we'll need to borrow £100m from the bank to give them a wad of cash.
So no impending repayment date and highly unlikely that it will all be repaid. The most likely situation where it would be repaid in full would be on a sale of the club, where the purchaser would need to repay it as part of their purchase price.
In terms of what it would be used for, we have effectively already used it, and it was used to fund the accelerated payment on the Szoboszlai fee, the capital spend on Annie Road and funding the underlying losses in 2024. Those amounts would otherwise have been funded from the bank facilities at a cost of 5-6% interest.

 

[Beamrider]

REVENUE

MATCHDAY

Firstly, let's look at Matchday Revenue. This increased from £79.8m to £101.7m (increase of £21.9m).

There are two factors here.

Firstly, we played 29 homes games v 25 the previous season. This meant 3 extra cup games (which will have had reduced pricing) and 5 Europa League games, v 4 Champions League (again lower pricing).

Secondly, the Annie Road was open, at least in part, for most of those games.

I think the Annie Road will have contributed more to the increase than the extra games. There will also have been increases in hospitality prices, even if general admission tickets didn't go up. Most of the hospitality is sold on multi-year contracts which include inflationary price increases each year.

It should also be noted that the Annie Road and extra fixtures will have added to our matchday costs - i.e. extra stewarding, catering and other overheads. Most of the hospitality is sold on a season ticket basis and seasonal hospitality customers do NOT pay extra for additional games. What this means is that for hospitality there is a cost of running the extra games, but not much extra revenue (beyond tickets sold match to match). It's likely that an extra game doesn't actually make any net profit for hospitality, and it may even lose money, but the sale of general admission tickets will turn a profit, albeit depressed by the extra stewarding costs etc. In short, a low-level cup game probably doesn't put a lot on the bottom line, especially after deducting the gate share to the opposition. European games will turn a decent profit.

MEDIA (i.e. TV money)

Down from £241.6m to £203.7m (reduced by £37.9m).

The reduction will basically be Europa League v Champions League, offset by a higher payment from the Premier League (about £8m based on the PL's published figures).

There may also be some extra revenue from TV coverage of cup games - used to be £1m per game but no idea if that still holds.

COMMERCIAL

Big increase from £272.5m to £308.4m (increase of £35.9m).

This is a really good result from the commercial team, and the accounts attribute it to new partnerships and improved retail performance. On both of those counts there will be costs of sale associated with the deals, so not all of the increased revenue will drop to the bottom line.

There is probably a decent wedge in there from the kit deal too.

So all in all, it's a strong revenue performance, and much better than we might have expected. To be out of the Champions League and still increase total revenues is a great result.

 

[Beamrider]

COSTS

This is where we've struggled. I've already discussed wages above. However, costs are up across the board:

Cost of sales up £13m - this will mostly be retail (costs of goods sold), hospitality delivery costs (including new hospitality in the Annie Road) and costs associated with new partnership deals. Plus a bit of inflation on everything else.

Depreciation and amortisation are up due to increased player and fixed asset spend. That's just normal and it's all accounting bollocks anyway.

Other overheads are up £17.4m (from £63.5m to £80.9m). This will be the general admin spend - rent, rates, repairs, insurance, utilities, consultancy etc. This is quite a sharp increase, and some of it will be associated with the Annie Road (running costs) but it's still quite a big up-tick, and it's possible there'll be quite a cost for energy in there. But none of this has been commented on in the accounts, so there's unlikely to be exceptional costs in there.

 

[Beamrider]

CASH

Firstly, operating cash flow is relatively static (£83.7m v £88.9m the prior year). What this indicates is firstly that some of our loss is not cash-based (i.e. not a result of cash shelled out in the year), but also that we've managed cash flow by timing of paying our bills at year end.

The net cash payment for players (i.e. taking into account timing of payments) is up from £83.1m to £132.5m - an increase of £49.5m. So nearly half of the Dynasty cash has gone towards funding that player investment.

Most of the balance of that cash has gone towards out spend on fixed assets (£56m) and repayment of bank debt (£10m).

As usual, we are carrying a low cash balance at the year end (£7.5m). This will be enough to settle any day to day costs and ensures our debt is not drawn too high (no point incurring interest costs drawing down debt we don't need).

 

[The Nomad]

I know we can dream, but could the increase in Capex be related to buildings to facilitate a possibility of a future expansion?

 

[Beamrider]

FUTURE SPENDING

So now for the big question - how many squillions will we have to spend in summer?

FACTORS INCREASING SPEND

We're having a good year. Our revenues should be well ahead of last year. We should pick up £70m odd from Champions League alone and there will be sponsor bonuses if and when we win competitions.

We shouldn't be forking over huge chunks of cash on capital projects - Annie Road and Axa are done, there are no major capital projects in the pipeline.

We shouldn't have huge legacy payments to make on historic transfers due to reduced spending this year and the front-loading of payments for Szobo.

Cash - we have the ability to draw down bank debt if needed, and the low level of instalments on past deals means a lot of the cash surplus from general trading in 2025-26 will be uncommitted.

Sales - profits on sales will improve our football costs ratio on two counts - the profit is a positive, but it also gives us some headroom in our amortisation charge to accommodate the amortisation of new signings.

FACTORS REDUCING SPEND

Wages. Fuck's sake. Wages. Who knows what we'll end up paying to Mo and Virgil. I'm assuming Trent is gone. Lucho needs to be renewed or sold. Conor will get a bump. Others will come knocking.

UEFA's FCR compliance - we are above the 70% target at present, but CL revenue will help. But if we have to spend to replace Trent, Virg and Mo then that won't look pretty - the combination of transfer fee amortisation plus wages will be higher in total than it is at present (where the amortisation is bobbins for all of them).

BEST GUESS

If we hold back on spending, it's likely to be be more down to compliance with FCR than it is to do with spending power. I think we'll have the funds to make sizeable investments, I'm just not sure we have the headroom in our FCR to accommodate them all. And unlike some clubs, we take those things seriously.

In short, we're a kid in a sweet shop with load of pocket money. But we've got diabetes.

 

[Beamrider]

OK, so it turned out I had more time than I thought.

That's all from me unless you have questions. I'm at the Price of Football live show tonight (in the audience, though they did ask me to join the panel) so may not get back to you until tomorrow.

 

[Beamrider]

I know we can dream, but could the increase in Capex be related to buildings to facilitate a possibility of a future expansion?

I think that's highly unlikely. The costs have gone into the main fixed asset category which covers stands and equipment.
If the costs were related to buying up property they'd go into property headings, and if they related to planning / design they wouldn't go into fixed assets at all.
It may be refurbishments at the ground or offices, and possibly people who are regularly in hospitality will know if the lounges have been improved. It could also be spend on accessibility, particularly for disabled users.
But it's a big number and it's not immediately obvious to me what it is.
On the more general principle, the costs of getting to a ground of c 60k capacity were manageable (and we're there now). In an ideal world, the Club would love to re-build the Kenny to mirror the Main Stand, but that's a huge project in terms of land grab as the footprint isn't big enough without buying neighbouring houses.
Expanding the Kop is a non-starter due to the road access outside which needs to be preserved. A second tier just isn't workable due to sight-lines from the back of the stand.
The bigger issue is that it had been suggested by the Council that we would need to have rail access to the stadium to push the capacity much beyond 60k, and whilst there were solutions to that (some dis-used lines / tunnels in the area), they were cost prohibitive. So in terms of where we are today, I don't see any significant changes.

 

[Beamrider]

I nearly forgot. There's no mention of the money we're owed by God knows who these days for the Coutinho transfer. We may have written it off, which probably added to our losses last year.

 

[SummerOnions]

Thanks for sharing! It's still weird to not have this hate at a Hicks or Gillett or whoever. We never pushed to do an all or nothing which while it would be nice to win/have won more under Klopp, we didn't take the risk of tanking ourselves if we fucked up and failed to finish top 4

 

[Farkmaster]

I'm wondering what effect this new environment of compliance will have, in terms of the situation you are describing where teams could reasonably spend money but it becomes very risky. What other infrastructure investments could a team make that would more reliably increase revenue that isn't football related. Are teams likely to be able to make other more ancillary capital investments around stadiums, hotels and the like? On the footballing side of things, we seem essentially done with stadium and training, except for the women's game.

 

[Athens]

I'm guessing you know Klopp had a padel tennis court built at Melwood (and I assume at Kirkby too).

Fuck me. Imagine not only getting paid a fortune but you're in a position that you can get your employers to build you a court to play your favourite racket sport.

How the other half live.

 

[Farkmaster]

Fuck me. Imagine not only getting paid a fortune but you're in a position that you can get your employers to build you a court to play your favourite racket sport.

How the other half live.

Every derelict mill around here has a old bar and a bowling alley, so that the people who did all the work would riot less. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

I think klopp saw how the other half lived while working himself to the bone mentally anyway, the dadbod, living at the training ground, using a very nice company gym, and that's why now he's flying all over the place getting paid shit tonnes to do fuck all.

 

[Beamrider]

Fuck me. Imagine not only getting paid a fortune but you're in a position that you can get your employers to build you a court to play your favourite racket sport.

How the other half live.

Obviously he argued it was good for the players to work on their mobility and team-work, but we all knew that was bullshit.

 

[Beamrider]

Thanks for sharing! It's still weird to not have this hate at a Hicks or Gillett or whoever. We never pushed to do an all or nothing which while it would be nice to win/have won more under Klopp, we didn't take the risk of tanking ourselves if we fucked up and failed to finish top 4

I kind of look at the Klopp era as being about instability on the pitch and stability off it. Klopp had the vision and the humility to do what was best for the club long-term, rather than throwing his toys out of the pram because he didn't get to spend £200m every summer. He was also good at getting the best out of players - Sterling is probably the only one I can think of whose form didn't dip when he left (although it has done since), and I sense that Arne gets that too. I don't think Mo just suddenly upped his game a few levels, I think Arne built a system to get the very best out of him, and maybe the likes of Harvey and Endo have seen their potential sacrificed for that as they don't fit they way he wants to play to get the best out of Mo. It's hard to argue with that, as much as I like those guys and feel sympathy for them.
But it's fair to say that the lack of antagonism towards FSG owes a lot to the compliance and pragmatism of the managers we've had. Rodgers or Rafa would have properly thrown their toys out of the pram, Klopp and Slot wouldn't do that (and I think that's largely because there haven't been promises made to them when they were recruited which were never going to be kept - I think they both knew exactly what they were getting into).

 

[peterhague]

I kind of look at the Klopp era as being about instability on the pitch and stability off it. Klopp had the vision and the humility to do what was best for the club long-term, rather than throwing his toys out of the pram because he didn't get to spend £200m every summer. He was also good at getting the best out of players - Sterling is probably the only one I can think of whose form didn't dip when he left (although it has done since), and I sense that Arne gets that too. I don't think Mo just suddenly upped his game a few levels, I think Arne built a system to get the very best out of him, and maybe the likes of Harvey and Endo have seen their potential sacrificed for that as they don't fit they way he wants to play to get the best out of Mo. It's hard to argue with that, as much as I like those guys and feel sympathy for them.
But it's fair to say that the lack of antagonism towards FSG owes a lot to the compliance and pragmatism of the managers we've had. Rodgers or Rafa would have properly thrown their toys out of the pram, Klopp and Slot wouldn't do that (and I think that's largely because there haven't been promises made to them when they were recruited which were never going to be kept - I think they both knew exactly what they were getting into).

Tbf the incredibly good deals we did for Klopp probably helped there too. He probably had as good a squad as you'd expect from 2 or 3 times the outlay we actually made.

 

[tombrown]

Thanks for the summary paragraphs. Have a like

 

[Beamrider]

I'm wondering what effect this new environment of compliance will have, in terms of the situation you are describing where teams could reasonably spend money but it becomes very risky. What other infrastructure investments could a team make that would more reliably increase revenue that isn't football related. Are teams likely to be able to make other more ancillary capital investments around stadiums, hotels and the like? On the footballing side of things, we seem essentially done with stadium and training, except for the women's game.

It's an interesting question. I think I've mentioned this before but we had a consultant in one time who had worked in ticketing at United. He said their strategy in the Fergie years was to first offer him the opportunity to sign players, and if he said he didn't want or need anyone then they would expand the ground. They might not be in such a mess today if they'd continued that approach, spending money upgrading the ground rather than on Casemiro and Antony.
What happens then is that when you look at capital projects, finance and ops get involved, and often after a long appraisal the project doesn't go ahead or is watered down because the returns aren't good enough.
Whereas the decision to buy players is more impulsive and emotion driven. Truth is business decisions need more emotion / fan engagement and player trades need more kicking of the tyres from finance.
I think the issue here is more for the clubs in Europe - fail on FCR and there are automatic financial penalties. Fail badly and those penalties are huge.
I think UEFA will shit the bed on enforcement, or go softly with the fines, and once that happens clubs will be free to take a bit more risk again. At low levels of failure, chances are UEFA will allow lee-way on penalties, but at higher levels they haven't built in any wriggle room. I think there are interesting times ahead on the new rules.
But if you're not in Europe, you'll need to go some to get penalised under PL limits. It could, in theory, help level the playing field a bit where PL rules allow clubs not in Europe to spend and UEFA rules prevent those in Europe from doing so.