It’s time we learnt our lessons and prepare for the inevitable.
“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.” – John Dewey
A sound piece of advice. And one that our club tries its best to not follow.
Liverpool are renowned for repeating past mistakes. Moreover, we never attempt to learn from them, never mind rectify them and the results are there for all to see; consistent mid-table finishes and a season of transition every year.
One such unresolved problem is the club losing (or at the risk of losing) its best players every year. That has to be dealt with.
If we are being brutally honest, LFC are no longer the ‘destination’ for players; we’re more of a stepping stone. The reality is, there are better clubs than us even in the Premier League, never mind Europe; clubs who consistently outperform us. Then there are the three superpowers (Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid). A whole tier of clubs who want only the best to play for them and who’re swift and ruthless in their approach to sign them.
Facts. We have some of the finest talents in Europe with us. They may not be the finished article yet, but they have the tools and the mentality to get there. We cannot keep those players with us for long. If any of the upper tier clubs, especially the Spanish giants, show even the slightest interest in them, they WILL leave.
In most cases, there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop the departures. It’s only natural a player will look to move forward in his career, play with the best players and win championships. An unpopular point of view; we cannot blame them for wanting those things. Supporters must realize that LFC, at present, cannot offer those opportunities. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow we must.
We aren’t the only club with that disadvantage. Sevilla, Atletico, Dortmund, even Southampton, to name a few, have to watch richer/bigger clubs take away their best assets. Yet, they manage to achieve or (in some cases) overachieve relative to their expectations.
In FSG’s era, we’ve have constantly lost our best players. Right from Fernando Torres, to Luis Suarez and even Raheem Sterling who wasn’t ready to make that big move. Inevitable moves, but the upside is we made huge profits on them. And that’s where the similarity with the above-mentioned clubs ends. While those clubs have clear contingency plans in place to handle the losses, we don’t appear to have any. We are always ‘reactive’ (and pretty bad at that) and not ‘proactive’. That needs to change.
We could do that by first identifying the players from the current squad who’re likely to be targets of other clubs. Phillipe Coutinho is the first player that comes to mind. There have always been rumors about Barcelona being interested in him, with Ronaldinho and Neymar encouraging him publicly to consider moving. Next on the list would be Roberto Firmino. Now, this is one of the very few players who scored 10 and assisted another 10 in the same season. He’s had an amazing debut season and it’s only likely that he’ll continue that form.
Emre Can is one of the most improved players under Jurgen Klopp and one with immense potential. Given his history with Bayern, there’s no reason why they won’t want him back in the near future. And finally, Daniel Sturridge. The only thing that has stopped multiple bids coming in for him is his injury record. But if he’s properly managed, like Klopp has, he will remain injury free and score 20+ goals. When that happens, there will be clubs from all over Europe, who’d offer crazy money for him, given the dearth of good strikers. LFC must ALWAYS assume that these players will leave soon, even if they say they don’t want to.
Now, what can we do about that? The first thing the club could do is renew all of their contracts, offering them better wages/ bonuses and insert mammoth release clauses. It’s the best way to make a player feel valued and happy, whilst protecting their market value and staving off interest. But as we experienced with Suarez, even contract renewals don’t guarantee their stay. And there are always clubs for whom release clauses don’t mean much. Still, LFC must do this anyway, as it increases our chances of keeping them.
Once we’ve done that, the next step is to start identifying potential replacements for all of them; players with similar traits and style of play. This must be done starting now itself, instead of waiting till they’ve left the club. We must estimate the transfer fee we’d earn from selling them and consequently scout players, who fall in the range of that estimated fee.
So, if we assume that Firmino would leave next summer for a fee of £35million, we must use this entire upcoming season to identify similar players who’d cost around the same or less. Likewise, we must do the same for others. This would increase our levels of preparedness and we can cope with the losses much better, should they ever occur.
This may or may not be a feasible approach for the club, considering it would require more resources than we have at our disposal and significant changes in our current structure.
It is certainly an expensive route to take. But the rewards are worth the investment. Such methods are why Sevilla won the Europa League thrice in a row, why Atletico reached two Champions League finals in three years despite having to change entire squads. Being proactive is one sure-shot way to achieve progress.
