SHAMBOLIC. Ridiculous. Embarrassing. Shameful. Humiliating. Amateurish.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Almost every negative phrase in the dictionary could easily be thrown at our beloved Liverpool Football Club today, as the dust still settles on last night’s shocking statement ending our interest in defensive saviour Virgil van Dijk.
Let’s not forget either the demeaning apology, apparently delivered on our knees begging for forgiveness, to previous long-time feeder club Southampton.
How have we gone from a club on the verge (il – sorry couldn’t resist) of a bright new dawn, able to outfox the moneybags of Man City and Chelsea, to the laughing stock of the league in the space of three short paragraphs?
Only FSG and Southampton know the full story as yet, but such an unprecedented public humiliation surely cannot go unpunished by our American owners.
It appears that recently-crowned transfer head Michael Edwards, famous for his alleged love of spreadsheets, will be the fall-guy for the van Dijk fiasco. After Ian Ayre’s prolonged departure, Edwards was promoted to Sporting Director late last year, and since his time in the role has overseen a total of…one transfer in. None at all in the last January window, and only Dominic Solanke, for £3m a couple of weeks ago. Not the most auspicious of starts.
Edwards has taken some flak from Reds fans in the past for his background in analytics rather than practical football knowledge, with little experience of negotiating deals at the highest level.
In this case, it seems that someone at the club jumped the gun and leaked information to the press, before even having the courtesy to agree the parameters of a deal with Southampton. This is what led to the South Coast club yet again reporting Liverpool for an illegal approach (as they did with Nathaniel Clyne in the past too).
Clyne, obviously, still ended up making the move to Anfield, but the emphatic nature of Liverpool’s statement seems to end any hope of van Dijk handing in a transfer request and resurrecting a move.
To make the situation even worse, he will now likely end up at one of our main rivals – strengthening City, Chelsea, Arsenal, or worst of all, United. In fact, you could hardly blame him for thinking what a shambles our owners and senior management are, and that he is better off somewhere else.
Any role manager Jurgen Klopp played in this situation is not yet clear, but he is too important to the club, and regardless it is unlikely to have been he who briefed a select few journalists about van Dijk’s apparent eagerness to join us. The buck always stops at the top, and in this case, that is with Edwards, who has overall control of transfers.
This summer was supposed to be the one that Liverpool and FSG made the statement that they are ‘back’. Instead, the only statement they have made is a tacit admission of either illegal activity or incompetence, after a humiliating climbdown that will have far-reaching repercussions for a long time.
