This is the first time since the season when we almost won the league that we go into the summer on the back of a good campaign and with Champions League football to offer.
The following season flattered to deceive as Liverpool plummeted to 6th, this was mainly dude to an awful summer in regards to transfers.
Here are five things Liverpool can do this summer to progress and avoid another bad season:
- Don’t sell your best players
Losing Luid Suarez was catastrophic for the club. If you have one of the best players in the world and you want to win leagues, you have to keep him. Our whole system revolved around Luis and it showed at the start of the following season when the team looked like it lacked ideas and even an identity.
Philippe Coutinho, like Suarez, is rumoured to be subject of strong interest from Barcelona. He isn’t at the level that Suarez was but he is our main player, the player the team trust to win the game. Losing him will completely change the dynamic of our play and after a strong season where we need to push on, we should not be changing our play but evolving it.
Top clubs don’t lose their best player and a strong resistance will show trasnfer targets, clubs and most importantly our fans that Liverpool mean serious business.
2. Don’t sign players who don’t fit the system
I am, of course, talking about Mario Balotelli. The signing still baffles me. We went from one of the most motivated all action players in Suarez to Balotelli. Balotelli’s pressing and quick link up play was non existent. Two qualities which were fundamental to the electric style of play which got the kop bouncing in the 13-14 seasons. It wasn’t his fault, he was just the complete opposite of what Liverpool had and needed.
Liverpool eventually dropped Balotelli around December and played with Raheem Sterling up front in a 343 to get a ‘striker’ who could lead the press from the front.
Liverpool should never be in such a desperate situation when we had £75m and the whole summer to find a striker who is similar at least in goals or work rate to Suarez.
3. Always listen to the manager
This follows on from the previous point. Brendan Rodgers, after being sacked, did an interview with Sky Sports where he suggested that Balotelli was more or less forced upon him. He implied that FSG saw Balotelli as undervalued talent who could help Liverpool despite Rodgers voicing concerns. Reports from James Pearce also suggested Rodgers wasn’t all that keen on Lazar Markovic and Alberto Moreno and they were committee signings.
It has never been a good thing to sign players the manger isn’t keen on as it leads to tension between the boss and owner as well as players in the dressing room and unfairly the new player becomes a pawn in a political battle between manager and higher ups.
This should never happen again. Klopp and his scouting team knows what Liverpool need and FSG or the committee should not ever try to convince him to sign a player he does not rate or deems incompatible with heavy metal football.
4. Sort contracts out ASAP
If anything summed up what a mess the 14/15 season other than our position was it was our dealing with contracts. We went into the season with Steven Gerrard, Raheem Sterling, Philippe Coutinho and Jordan Henderson all down to their last two years or year on their deals.
That’s four key players who helped Liverpool compete for the league facing uncertain futures; it consequently created uncertainty at the club and worries amongst the fans.
Sterling situation was messiest him and his agent Ady Ward spent the season taking cheap shots at Liverpool and flirting with our rivals like Arsenal. There was the whole situation were Rodgers said Sterling signed a contract when he didn’t, the infamous BBC interview less said about that the better. It meant conflict between; the fans and sterling, Sterling and the club and fans and management for letting this situation escalate.
We could’ve avoided these contract sagas by getting them done in the summer as contract talks most often serve as a distraction during the season.
Liverpool has made progress since then with contacts with Lallana and Coutinho recently signing extensions. Emre Can is down to one year and Liverpool should sort out his future this summer.
5. Sign player who make an improvement to the first 11
Liverpool signed five players that summer but not one of them was really a significant improvement on what we already had.
The team needed to push on but the signings did not push us on, we panicked at the thought of needing a big squad with European football and just filled in the numbers and bought a host of players of similar quality or lower to everyone else.
Liverpool have to bring in players better than our current players so the current players can become the backup players rather than buying squad players then we can progress and create a squad which can challenge on all four fronts next season.
This summer promises to be interesting with the supposed £200m budget and with Klopp who has a unbelievable transfer success record as a manager.
If Liverpool can avoid the mistakes we made before, we will all enjoy a fantastic season next year.
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