daredevil I don't know about the second best team. Pool have Allison, van Dijk and Salah who are not only CL and PL title winners, but also arguably the best players in their respective positions in the world. Saka and Saliba are worthy contenders but still have it all to prove.
Second best by squad valuation which is what I was talking about. Think it is important to grasp that although players such as Allison, Van Dijk, Salah etc are highly revered and of course brilliant in their roles, that's also because these are players that have won something.
I think so. To move away from this criticism of setting made-up deadlines for success, we have to relate performance back to the trajectory of investment over time, especially versus FFP versus revenue and the blurred boundaries of the five year contract cycle.
Performance caps future revenue, which caps future squad investment, which caps future performance … this leads to a multivariate dynamic in which if performance is not improving, you will eventually have to invest less.
We went through a great player retention phase last season, so we now have a bunch of guys who'll be threatening to slip out of contract around 2026–27. My take would be we need to be winning major trophies by then, if not then due to FFP and stagnant revenue growth, we'll likely have to accept an interim, lagging drop in performances and results as we invest at the younger, cheaper end of the market to rebuild the squad again—a new Project™.
That's the non-arbitrary timeframe, most of the rest is just fans being needy little bitches. We missed a truly great opportunity by not winning the league last season. If we'd managed that with this young squad, we'd be talking dynasties and a golden age.
