The transfer committee: time for some balance
So it’s the summer. That time of year when we feign interest in international football, Cricket and Wimbledon (the tennis that is, not the Dons!).
We count down the days until the LFC fixture list is announced, then despair when we get stitched up with a dreadful start again and then have to change everything after SKY & BT have stuck their billion pound oars in. And of course we scour every news story, however implausible, regarding who Liverpool might sign for the next season.
I don’t know what it is about this time of the year. Perhaps it’s being stuck in work on hot sunny days or not being in work when the monthly monsoon hits. Maybe it’s the return of the annual bout of hay fever. Or it could just be watching far too much Hodge-ball but this time of year doesn’t half turn us into a bunch of moaning grumps. And a lot of these moans seems to centre on Liverpool’s transfer committee.
It’s already begun this summer. The Liverpool Echo ran a piece yesterday highlighting the negative reaction to the players Liverpool are currently linked with. It’s fair to say that some people aren’t happy and they’re laying the blame squarely at the transfer committee’s collective feet.
The main criticism seems to be that the names aren’t ambitious enough.
Dreams of Marco Reus replaced with (thankfully unfounded) rumours of Andros Townsend would be enough to send most people into a rage. The players we are being continually linked with by respectable journalists seem to be Ben Chilwell, Sadio Mane & Piotr Zielinski. All good, young players. Very typical of Jurgen Klopp. What do people expect?
Perhaps if Liverpool had beaten Seville in May, things would be playing out differently. We’d possibly already have Mario Götze in the bag and maybe we’d now be looking at an attacking option as exciting as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang or Gonzalo Higuain. But the reality is that we do not have Champions League football to offer and we finished 8th last season. We can offer good money but others can offer significantly more. As ever, we are fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
In defence of the transfer committee, I think they do deserve credit for some of the recruitment over the past couple of years. Whilst it would be nice if it didn’t appear as though our scouts just spent six months on holiday in Southampton every year, Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Nathaniel Clyne all seem to be settled regulars in Liverpool’s first XI these days.
Emre Can, Joe Gomez and Divock Origi all tick boxes of young, hungry players who will only get better and you’d expect at least two of those to be regular starters for Liverpool next season. Last summer’s recruitment also yielded James Milner and Roberto Firmino, who both had fairly impressive first years for the Reds with more expected next season.
Admittedly there will always a Mario Balotelli, Christian Benteke or Iago Aspas shaped stick to beat the committee with and at times they do deserve criticism, but I think there needs to be more balance when discussing the transfer committee.
Of course, some will never be happy until Liverpool are announcing the double-capture of Lionel Messi & Luis Suarez from Barcelona but most Liverpool fans must surely now realise the problems the club currently has when trying to recruit elite footballers.
The committee is in place to try and fight smart. There will be gambles that do not pay off (Lazar Markovic) and gambles that do (Phil Coutinho) but whilst Liverpool is under the ownership of FSG, this is the way it will always be.
We know that Klopp is happy that the committee exists and I’m sure there will be players signed this summer which have been recommended and championed by committee members, but we’ve also seen Klopp’s influence on the players we’ve already purchased this summer. Both Joel Matip and Loris Karius look like astute signings who should improve our first team.
It’s also worth remembering that Klopp’s best work in the transfer market has always been signing less-heralded players for smaller transfer fees and developing them into better players for his team.
As ever, it’s not about signing the best player or the most expensive player. It’s about signing the right players for our team. We’ve got a world-class manager in place, let’s trust his judgement, get behind the players and hopefully the committee will get more right than wrong.
It would be nice to get Messi & Suarez though….