Liverpool owners face one of the most potentially defining periods of their near 13 years at the helm of the Reds this summer.
While the club’s pursuit of Jude Bellingham is now seemingly at an end, with the Reds priced out of a move for the 19-year-old Borussia Dortmund midfielder they have for so long been linked with, the need for significant surgery to a team, in particular a midfield, that has laboured badly this season has not diminshed.
Whereas a summer of two or three senior additions might have been par for the course in recent years, with a likely exodus of out of contract players and a need to refresh a jaded side, five or six will likely be required, all of them expected to make an impact.
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For Fenway Sports Group it means a significant outlay of funds, and with the investment into the club through the sale of a portion of FSG’s shareholding in the club looking increasingly promising to arrive by the summer, it will be a capital influx that will aid that effort in no small part.
If a minority partner does arrive it will likely be with a longer term plan in play, potentially even for a full takeover in the coming seasons but for the present it would allow for the freeing up of funds at a time when the club’s finances next season will be challenged in a way that they haven’t been for some time due to the almost certain absence of Champions League football, something that was worth more than £100m to the Reds for the 2021/22 financial year.
The sale of a partial stake in the Reds by FSG will aid spend, but it isn’t a well they can continue to visit whenever there are fallow periods. There is also a need to make sure that the funds that are created by a partial sale are invested wisely given that there won’t be a step change when it comes to Liverpool’s approach to their transfer business. That is, in part, why their pursuit of Bellingham this summer looks to have ended.
Liverpool’s approach under FSG in the market has been both lauded and derided. On one hand it has demonstrated a way to both put a successful product on the pitch and have a strong balance sheet by placing faith in data in recruitment. On the other hand it has been viewed in more recent times, especially given the accelerated spend of their rivals, as being something that can no longer be relied upon to maintain a competitive side year after year.
It is, however, a strategy that likely won’t change and having funds available for a rebuild will still see them lean on the methods that helped them create a great team and achieve remarkable success in the first place.
When speaking exclusively to the ECHO last month, Liverpool principal owner and FSG supremo John W. Henry said as much when asked about the Reds’ approach to the market this summer.
“Investment in the club is never for the short-term,” Henry said.
“This approach has been successful over the long haul with patience necessary from time to time.
“We continue building at Liverpool Football Club in a responsible manner. We’ve seen many football clubs go down unsustainable paths. We have and will continue to focus our attention on investing wisely in the transfer market and we remain incredibly proud of our squad.”
Liverpool head into this summer needing to recruit a new sporting director with Julian Ward to depart at the end of this season. It will be Ward and the recruitment team in situ at Anfield that will be tasked with identifying the players who the Reds could go for this summer.
But there will be no major pivot from closely monitoring spend to splashing the cash. It hasn’t been how the club has operated for more than a decade and it almost certainly won’t be changing in the near future.
Billy Beane, the man credited with pioneering the use of ‘moneyball’ in professional sports through his adoption of Bill Lewis’ method while Beane was general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, is a man who Henry has long admired and respected. In fact, in a scene depicted in the 2011 movie ‘Moneyball’, starring Brad Pitt, Henry had sought to make Beane the highest paid GM in the sport as he attempted to bring him to the FSG-owned Boston Red Sox. Henry wanted Beane’s method of delivering success through identifying value in the market to come to Fenway Park.
The technique was adopted by Henry in Boston through Theo Epstein, and it helped bring four World Series to the city after a drought that had lasted 86 years. In Liverpool, too, when FSG arrived they spent the first two years piecing together a recruitment team that relied heavily on data, and one that still does.
That model has been challenged to a greater extent recently as money has talked louder and louder with each passing season. Bellingham’s profile seemed ideal for Liverpool, but the numbers to make it happen look to have ended all hope of getting him at Anfield, at least for this summer.
Beane, who has applied his philosophy to European football in recent years, acting as an advisor to Dutch side AZ Alkmaar and being part of a multi-club ownership group, was speaking to club executives at the European Club Association (ECA) General Assembly in Budapest, Hungary, last month.
There he likened Liverpool and them keeping pace with Manchester City in recent seasons as being “the closest example I can think about” to the Oakland Athletics, according to Off The Pitch.
Beane, who had been part of the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) RedBall, with RedBird Capital Partners founder Gerry Cardinale, that had been in talks with FSG in late 2020 before RedBird decided to invest privately in FSG in March 2021, taking 11 per cent for $750m, also had a warning that major spend in the market and a focus on the numbers to make the project work could not go hand in hand.
“The challenge for big clubs isn’t cash,” said Beane. “The challenge for big clubs is a lack of talent. You can’t be a hybrid.”
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