Recently, I wrote a news article which focused on Ian Ayre talking about how the transfer policy under Fenway Sports Group (FSG) works and how it’s important to spend money carefully. One particular part of the dialogue irked me. It was this one:
“I stood on the Kop for many years as a fan, and like everyone else I’d love to buy all the greatest players, regardless of price.
“But, as we saw under the club’s previous ownership, things can all go very wrong financially; then people will hold you accountable for not running the club in the right way.”
Is Ian Ayre trying to say the club spent recklessly under Tom Hicks and George Gillett? Is that why the club were on the brink of administration, because of overspending?
Really?
The most that Hicks and Gillett spent on one player was £20.2m, for Fernando Torres. They spent a total of £172m on players but they also recouped almost £145m of that through sales.
According to Hicks the net spend was £150m during their reign – get your calculator out mate.
It is to Rafael Benitez’s credit that he did so well with the resources he had. Winning the Champions League, FA Cup and finishing as runners-up in the Premier League. The season after we narrowly missed out on the title to arch-rivals Manchester United, Benitez wanted some additions to strengthen his team but Hicks and Gillett failed to invest money for his top targets. He spoke about it in his book.
“Attempting to work in the transfer market that summer was almost impossible. We knew we would need cover and support for Fernando Torres, as David Ngog was still developing, and we had raised the cash to find it. The player we identified to fill that role was Stevan Jovetic, a young Montenegro forward playing for Fiorentina in Italy. The funds we thought we had available would also have stretched to another central defender, to provide cover for Jamie Carragher, Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger. The two players we had identified were Sylvain Distin, then with Portsmouth, and West Ham’s Matthew Upson, both boasting abundant Premier League experience. Signing one of those two, plus the tall, powerful, intelligent Jovetic, would have given Liverpool the squad we needed to build on the previous year’s title challenge, when we had run Manchester United so close.
“Liverpool, though, was no longer a football club. It was a business.”
The following season, the Reds finished seventh and Rafa left the club.
The Reds were hours away from falling into administration because of the series of financial mishaps from Hicks and Gillett, not because of the transfer policy.
So, I don’t think Ayre was right in saying that it was the previous owner’s transfer policy that got us into that mess. It may have been a throw-away comment, but to use that as an excuse for frugal spending is poor form.
I think most fans understand why FSG spend the way they do, we don’t need crappy excuses like that.
