http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/...cle3526630.ece
Tony Barrett
“At a football club, there’s a holy trinity — the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques.” - Bill Shankly.
On what would have been Bill Shankly’s 99th birthday, Brendan Rodgers faced up to the new reality of being Liverpool manager. The club’s directors may still be there to sign the cheques but only if potential signings fit in with their own long-term strategy and age profile, a lesson that Rodgers learnt to his cost on transfer deadline day.
Had Rodgers got his way on Friday, Clint Dempsey would have been in his starting line-up for the visit of Arsenal to Anfield. As it was, the loss of an internal power struggle with Fenway Sports Group, the Liverpool owners, meant that the United States player went to Tottenham Hotspur, leaving Rodgers able to call upon only Luis Suárez and Fabio Borini as senior attackers from now until January.
With the exception of Suárez and Steven Gerrard, Liverpool’s new-look midfield and forward line did not feature a single player who had scored a goal for the club before kick-off yesterday, a statistic that remained unaltered after the final whistle. On the substitutes’ bench, there was not a single forward. Stewart Downing — he of no league goals nor assists last season — was the only recognised attacking player and Rodgers has spent the opening weeks of the new season trying to convert the fitful winger into a left back.
Last weekend, when Manchester City were the visiting team, Rodgers could at least summon Andy Carroll from the bench and the forward came within a Jack Rodwell goalline clearance of winning the game. By then, though, Rodgers had long since deemed Carroll surplus to requirements and the decision to exile the 23-year-old on Thursday was a calculated gamble predicated on the idea that the paucity of attacking options left available to him would compel FSG to grant him his wish to sign Dempsey.
The inherent risk was that FSG would not back down on its belief that 29-year-olds, even ones who scored 22 goals last season, are not the future of the club. Note to Anfield: Robin van Persie is also 29. The Boston-based investment group sanctioned an offer for Dempsey but it was a half-hearted attempt with sources at the London club insisting that the bid was £3 million, although Liverpool dispute this version of events.
FSG had been willing to approve the recruitment of Daniel Sturridge, six years Dempsey’s junior, from Chelsea on loan with a view to a permanent transfer but Rodgers had been less keen. It came down to a battle of wills and Rodgers lost as his employers favoured their own philosophy and transfer strategy over their manager’s judgment. Yesterday Arsenal took advantage but it is hard to imagine, given Liverpool’s chronic lack of firepower, that Arsène Wenger’s side will be the last side to do so.
Rodgers now has a squad that is not fit for purpose and in allowing that to happen, FSG has taken a gamble of its own by putting performance and points at risk for the sake of its principles. It had the opportunity to recruit a player with the potential to give Liverpool at least a degree of the cutting edge that they so clearly lack but preferred to adhere to its own beliefs. With each Premier League place worth about £750,000 in additional prize money there is also a financial element to the risk and a possibility that signing Dempsey, even for a £6 million fee, could have turned out to be cost effective .
As the club that perhaps best captures the pre and post credit crunch era — bought on easy credit, taken to the brink of administration — there is something apt about Liverpool being at the heart of a debate about whether they should continue with austerity measures or spend their way out of the trouble that they find themselves in. But with three games of the season gone Liverpool have scored only two goals and neither came from open play.
Tom Werner, their chairman, claimed earlier this year that the club has “the resources to compete with anyone in football”. On the evidence of a summer in which too few cheques have been signed for Rodgers’s liking and one of his key transfer targets has been missed, that already seems little more than a fanciful boast.
Tony Barrett
“At a football club, there’s a holy trinity — the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques.” - Bill Shankly.
On what would have been Bill Shankly’s 99th birthday, Brendan Rodgers faced up to the new reality of being Liverpool manager. The club’s directors may still be there to sign the cheques but only if potential signings fit in with their own long-term strategy and age profile, a lesson that Rodgers learnt to his cost on transfer deadline day.
Had Rodgers got his way on Friday, Clint Dempsey would have been in his starting line-up for the visit of Arsenal to Anfield. As it was, the loss of an internal power struggle with Fenway Sports Group, the Liverpool owners, meant that the United States player went to Tottenham Hotspur, leaving Rodgers able to call upon only Luis Suárez and Fabio Borini as senior attackers from now until January.
With the exception of Suárez and Steven Gerrard, Liverpool’s new-look midfield and forward line did not feature a single player who had scored a goal for the club before kick-off yesterday, a statistic that remained unaltered after the final whistle. On the substitutes’ bench, there was not a single forward. Stewart Downing — he of no league goals nor assists last season — was the only recognised attacking player and Rodgers has spent the opening weeks of the new season trying to convert the fitful winger into a left back.
Last weekend, when Manchester City were the visiting team, Rodgers could at least summon Andy Carroll from the bench and the forward came within a Jack Rodwell goalline clearance of winning the game. By then, though, Rodgers had long since deemed Carroll surplus to requirements and the decision to exile the 23-year-old on Thursday was a calculated gamble predicated on the idea that the paucity of attacking options left available to him would compel FSG to grant him his wish to sign Dempsey.
The inherent risk was that FSG would not back down on its belief that 29-year-olds, even ones who scored 22 goals last season, are not the future of the club. Note to Anfield: Robin van Persie is also 29. The Boston-based investment group sanctioned an offer for Dempsey but it was a half-hearted attempt with sources at the London club insisting that the bid was £3 million, although Liverpool dispute this version of events.
FSG had been willing to approve the recruitment of Daniel Sturridge, six years Dempsey’s junior, from Chelsea on loan with a view to a permanent transfer but Rodgers had been less keen. It came down to a battle of wills and Rodgers lost as his employers favoured their own philosophy and transfer strategy over their manager’s judgment. Yesterday Arsenal took advantage but it is hard to imagine, given Liverpool’s chronic lack of firepower, that Arsène Wenger’s side will be the last side to do so.
Rodgers now has a squad that is not fit for purpose and in allowing that to happen, FSG has taken a gamble of its own by putting performance and points at risk for the sake of its principles. It had the opportunity to recruit a player with the potential to give Liverpool at least a degree of the cutting edge that they so clearly lack but preferred to adhere to its own beliefs. With each Premier League place worth about £750,000 in additional prize money there is also a financial element to the risk and a possibility that signing Dempsey, even for a £6 million fee, could have turned out to be cost effective .
As the club that perhaps best captures the pre and post credit crunch era — bought on easy credit, taken to the brink of administration — there is something apt about Liverpool being at the heart of a debate about whether they should continue with austerity measures or spend their way out of the trouble that they find themselves in. But with three games of the season gone Liverpool have scored only two goals and neither came from open play.
Tom Werner, their chairman, claimed earlier this year that the club has “the resources to compete with anyone in football”. On the evidence of a summer in which too few cheques have been signed for Rodgers’s liking and one of his key transfer targets has been missed, that already seems little more than a fanciful boast.
