I wouldn’t say it’s Pep and Klopp’s strategies...
If the rumours that were circling around January, and what Jamie Redknapp was saying, were true, Klopp is said to have had a heated boardroom argument with the CEO/owner of Liverpool about their lack of transfer activity.
Liverpool earnt £1.45bn in the last three years alone, yet they’ve invested just £200m back into their squad.
I keep saying this, but instead of moaning about City, Chelsea, Paris, FFP, always playing the victim card and never questioning what’s going on at their own club; Liverpool fans should be screaming from the rooftops “WHERE THE FUCK DOES THE MONEY GO AT LIVERPOOL?!”
City have recently started earning less money than Liverpool (although we will get a new sponsorship contract this Summer to probably even that up), yet we invest our money into what the entire point in this whole sport is about - the football team.
This is a stark contrast in club strategies.
I don’t like Klopp - he’s a moaning excuse making tosser when Liverpool lose - but I don’t feel like he’s being provided with what his quality as a manger deserves. He almost has to only go out to win the big two trophies because that’s all their owner is interested in. The only two trophies that bring in money. Their owner is a Yank, and Yank owners are all the same in that regard. A poison to the sport. They’re not interested in building a squad for all comps, they’re only interested in what brings in money. Becaus of this I wouldn’t be surprised if Klopp leaves in the next year (or sooner!).
Now don’t get me wrong, despite all the investment into our squad, we still have holes and deficiencies, we’re far from the finished product, and we only truly have one very elite level player (de Bruyne); but our transfer strategy is a holistic one (Begiristain wasn’t lying when he brought that up last decade!). Our investment into the squad is about the entire unit so that there can be rotation and not a huge drop off in quality when we rotate so that we can go all out to win every competition every season. That’s why we’re consistent with a lot of £40-60m signings, rather than a few £25m and a few £100m signings. In 13 years, we’ve only bought one or two very elite level players, some may argue none. We buy young up and coming players with potential on the whole (Yaya Fernandinho Walker and Mahrez are really the only exceptions age-wise, and deBruyne quality-wise). We are certainly no Galacticos, and we only have the legends who became elite players in Agüero DSilva and Kompany through Brian Marwood’s great work. It works to a certain extent because we usually go quite far in all the comps and do win a few or a number of trophies. But then sometimes we are (or have been, maybe not this year, hopefully!) hindered when we need those very elite level players in the biggest of games in the CL. Because of this we rely massively on Guardiola. It’s his football philosophy, coupled with the holistic approach, that makes us so good. If Pep left us, I don’t think we’d be anywhere near as good as we are with anyone else because I’m not sure anyone else would get so much out of a squad of very good players with so few very elite level players.
This is in stark contrast to United, though. They’ve spent an almost identical amount of money on their squad as we have, but they haven’t got a squad. They’ve got a mish-mash of “names”, good quality, lazy fuckers who should be doing better, and shite. When certain players are out, the drop off in quality is huge. However, a bit like Liverpool, their first XI is good and a really good manager could do something with that team if they all stayed fit.
