The criticism of Fenway Sports Group and their perceived lack of investment in the Liverpool squad at crucial times isn't new.
While the earlier years of the ownership, where the club had been acquired from the near ruinous regime of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, where the club was still more than two decades on from being champions of England again and where the fanbase were being continually starved of those memorable European nights, meant that FSG had some space and time to establish a strategy and recruitment model to bring them back in the mix with the new powers of football, recent years have been less forgiving.
Champions League winners in 2019, Premier League winners in 2020, a whisker from the quadruple last season and an established presence among Europe's finest year in, year out, with three Champions League final appearances in five years has raised the profile, the revenues, the opportunities, the expectation and the pressure to deliver.
Jurgen Klopp has been the man at the helm to mastermind the revival of Liverpool, taking it to levels that just a few short years before seemed impossible. He was the only man who FSG wanted when they parted company with Brendan Rodgers, the Reds owners believing his approach and charisma would be what was required to make a success of the more analytical approach to recruitment that had been championed by those in Boston, an approach that they had also followed with their ownership of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
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In recent years, though, the success of Liverpool has been seen by some as something achieved in spite of FSG, triumphs delivered through the sheer brilliance of Klopp and his ability to pull levels out of players that were never expected. The role that Klopp has played at the football club has been nothing short of remarkable, worthy of adding his name alongside the greats to have sat in the Anfield dugout.
While there may be truth in the fact that if it wasn't for Klopp steering the ship the recent past wouldn't have been so joyous, there are elements of revisionism around FSG's approach, one that was laid out at the start and one that has, largely, delivered success and a ride that many would surely have accepted were it presented to them as an option at the start of their ownership.
As business owners they have delivered. A stadium that has improved beyond recognition from what existed when they took over, a balance sheet that allows them to fund the club sustainably against a backdrop of a new wave of owners in football with an open wallet policy and some deeply questionable motives. All that is to their credit and are things that can't be denied, at least by those who are open to having a meaningful conversation around what football club ownership should look like.
But for all the commercial revenue streams increasing, for all the joy that occurred on the pitch through the last few seasons, there has been an underlying worry that the lack of risk taken in some transfer windows and a perceived reliance on what is now seen as the 'Liverpool model' of sell to buy, has meant that it has all seemed a little more impermanent than the success that Manchester City have been enjoying, albeit success that has largely been domestic.
There are genuine questions that need asking of the ownership, who simply mustn't be absent. There have been two or three missed opportunities in transfer windows that have led to the current situation, where not enough risk was taken to add components to aid a smoother transition and avoid the problem of an ageing squad, one that Liverpool now and have and one that may prove very costly to resolve, especially with few saleable assets who would command the kind of sums to really offset the required spend.
They are valid questions. The recruitment strategy that has existed at Liverpool has proved successful and there has been little need, certainly in the eyes of ownership, to deviate from it. But as with any business strategy, when market conditions affect the landscape there needs to be a change of step, even if for just a while, in order to aid the longer term prospects of the business. The longer term prospects for Liverpool as a business are impacted by a lack of on-pitch success that may occur, and most definitely through being pushed out of the race for Champions League football by new money and resurgent teams.
The anger was palpable after the losses to Nottingham Forest and Leeds United, the calls on social media for FSG to sell up and ship out visible. The Reds owners won't be doing that, Liverpool is far too valuable to them as a business and they have long-term objectives for the growth of the football club, objectives that have success on the pitch at their core.
The calls for them to leave offer up some difficult discussions around football ownership. Do fans really care who owns their team as long as they are spending money? Would ownership from groups that have been heavily criticised, such as Newcastle United's owners, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, and Manchester City's Abu Dhabi-based City Football Group be welcomed with open arms despite the geopolitical issues that surround them and their accusations of reputation laundering and sports washing? Is it all ok if you are signing big players in the transfer window?
Then there is the other side of the equation. Football fans support their team, they don't support who owns the team. Football fans want their team to succeed - is it really their fault if their owners have links to questionable human rights practices? Is it fair that celebrating success and wanting their team to succeed is seen as somehow reflective of their support for the owners? In truth the game of football was taken away from regular folk many years ago, there are no more Jack Walker's out there willing to lose a lot of money just for the love of their team. You also need to be a billionaire several times over. There are other factors at play, whether they be political or financial, and Financial Fair Play regulations make it hard for anyone to truly challenge the established status quo anyway, certainly not immediately.
If FSG did choose to sell there would be plenty of suitors, as there were when Chelsea were forcibly sold by Roman Abramovich earlier this year.
The options would be groups similar to the Saudi PIF, investment funds for nations where the sole focus is to launder the reputation of certain regions. The other interested parties would be a mish-mash of cobbled together billionaires, as was seen with Chelsea, who are following the trail of investment that has headed into football. An initial rush of capital would arrive before it would be scaled back to make it a business. Then there is the US interest that would undoubtedly arrive, with American investment now making up nearly 50 per cent of the Premier League's ownership structures. For US investors, FSG are seen as the gold standard in how to make investments in sport work, and with the game moving towards a more data analytical approach there wouldn't be a major step change to what FSG are doing, aside from a quick burst of capital perhaps made available for initial transfers.
Then there is the likes of Manchester United. The Old Trafford club's net spend has been held up as a mirror against the Liverpool approach under FSG in recent days, with United's more than £200m net spend far outweighing Liverpool's £8m. It is an inescapable fact that Manchester United have significantly outspent Liverpool in recent years despite their chronic lack of on-pitch success, although the wage bill at Anfield has risen at a far greater rate in recent seasons to sit just behind the Red Devils.
But at United the ownership is reviled also, the Glazer family engaged in absentee ownership for some years now since their leveraged buyout of the club and accruing some £515m of net debt. But they have been willing participants in the transfer market, recent additions such as Casemiro aiding their improvement in recent months.
United has been a personal ATM for the owners, who have taken dividends out of the club despite poor performances on and off the pitch for years now. Most recently the Glazers shared a £33.6m dividend out of the club despite them posting a £115.5m loss for the financial year. Taking money out of the club isn't something that FSG have engaged in, the value to them the continuing rise in valuation of the football club itself and the opportunities that it offers to other parts of their business empire.
Transfer spend is king, though. If you are winning despite spending less then you are seen as reinventing the wheel and being forward-thinking, but to perform poorly and not spend is seen, understandably, as a dereliction of your duty as an owner that will set the club back years.
There is no silver bullet to Liverpool's problems right here, right now. You only have to look at the money Chelsea spent under new ownership and their own patchy form this season to see why they are so keen to pursue a strategy for the longer term, one that won't be able to focus on relentless high spend. The recent admiration shown by Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali for FSG when speaking at the Sportico Invest in Sports conference in New York demonstrated just where they see the path to follow for success.
There are no would-be owners out there who would be willing to relieve themselves of billions in return but nothing but the best for Liverpool Football Club. The motivation will either be political or financial, fans would make their own choice on which is more palatable.
The division that the ownership of FSG at Liverpool causes sees people either placed into the 'FSG Out' or 'FSG In' bracket, the former gaining significant traction on social media. There is seldom any room for rational debate about how to have meaningful conversations around ownership that, while acknowledging that there have been good things achieved, address the very real concerns that fans have around the lack of transfer spend that is required to make sure they compete and don't slide into another period of three decades without an English league title.
There can be no excuse for a lack of investment into key areas in either January or the summer, and an inability to do so would be counter productive to the longer term plan which very much has Champions League football and success at its core. These are discussions that will no doubt be taking place and the potential risk of inaction will have to be taken very seriously.
The long-term strategy that Liverpool had in place, the structure that existed, is something that has been used by other ownership groups as a model. The issue should be how to Liverpool pivot and address their own issues and rectify moments missed when they should have shaken things up without completely ripping up what made them such a force to be reckoned with, and the best team in the world for a good 18 months, and hitting the great reset button that seems counterproductive.
FSG's part in the European Super League plot in 2021 saw their stock reduced dramatically among fans, and understandably so. They are on shaky ground still, and while social media should never be used as a barometer for rational thinking among an entire fan base, the sentiment around the lack of investment at a key time should be taken on board.
There are a crucial few months ahead for FSG in their tenure as owners of Liverpool, a period that could shape what the next five or six years look like. Questions around the need to break from tradition of the past 12 years are valid, and the actions of the next nine months or so will give real indications to the what the future holds.
It is the nature of football fandom to catastrophise. There are clear problems with this Liverpool team at the moment, and a clear need for those in power to act. But there are no dream owners who will either float in and spend without posing some serious moral dilemmas over their intentions, or those who would want to follow a similar route in ownership to a group lauded across the Atlantic among deal makers and those with the money to invest in the Premier League.
This is already a testing season, and the answers that Reds fans seek likely won't be known until next summer.
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