Claudius wrote:
You keep saying Liverpool got things wrong like they are fluking things. Liverpool, Leicester and Southampton are clearly working well to a plan. They know the type of football they want to play and the types of players who will fit that footballing identity. They may have made mistakes at first, but they are on the right track now. I think Villa is another team that has pivoted in this direction.
I really suspect that we just never understood that football is like any other industry. You need to have competencies. You can't spend your way out of trouble.
City have won 5 titles in the last ten years. Liverpool 1. I am not suggesting they have fluked it. They got a top manager and they got the right players in. However, personally, I will compliment their organizational competency when they do it over a longer period. When the same people held in such high regard see the rebuild of the squad and stay on the top in the absence of other restrictions. No doubt Liverpool have done well, but I am just not sure they are some kind of the model yet, and even then, having followed football for long enough, there isn't a single model either. They didn't chance upon Salah and Mane. They put their money on them coming good, but this good? They put 70 Million odd on those two for their forward line, where they needed to strengthen after Suarez left, and we put 70 Million odd on Xhaka and Mustafi in positions we needed reinforced at a time when we had Alexis and Ozil at the top of their game. They got VVD alone for 70 Million, again a position they needed quality in, and we got Pepe for the same amount hoping he would be our Salah. Neither Xhaka, Mustafi, nor Pepe would have been bought without a plan though. They are not the kind of players that are purchased with no idea of how to use them. If anything, Ozil may have been one, who became available and was too good an opportunity to pass. Whatever the plan was didn't work because these players just weren't upto it.
