Woefully short of cover in a number of key areas of the field, increasingly likely to lose another couple of players (including the pivotal holding midfielder Javier Mascherano), a sales process that looks increasingly unlikely to be completed before RBS could ostensibly call in the loan that the two American owners, George Gillet & Tom Hicks, have placed on the club and a manager who still doesn't know his best team, the club is not so much in a state of flux but in a state of decomposition, rotting from the inside out.
I'm hoping to complete a few blog posts on each of the topics mentioned above but let's first of all look at, in the eyes of the Sky-watching fan, the most important factor; transfers.
Transfer Spend (or lack thereof)
N.B. For the sake of simplicity, I have used the Reuters daily exchange rate of 0.8181 to convert EUR -> GBP. I accept that the exchange rate may have been different at the time of the transfer in question but have neither the time nor the inclination to convert at the exchange rate at the time - sorry :)
One of the major criticisms leveled at former manager Rafa Benitez is that his wanton spending weakened rather than strengthened the club. As a Liverpool fan living and working in Manchester, when the conversation turns to football, I am ribbed by Manchester United supporting colleagues and friends reminding me of Benitez's duds in the transfer market. We all know who they are; Robbie Keane, Andrea Dossena, Josemi, Jan Kromkamp and now, a fresh face to add to the list, Alberto Aquilani.
There's little one can do to defend that list aside from emphasise that when Benitez identified a player that didn't fit with his philosophy or wasn't the player he had hoped, he was quick to ship him out, accepting a small loss in the process, rather than allowing the player to stay with the club and depreciate further in value. Robbie Keane, for example, was bought in at a cost of £19.6m (according to transfermarkt.de) and sold for £13.6m - a loss of £6m (or less than what Man Utd. have recently paid for a player that Alex Ferguson has not even seen play).
The other key, and crippling, fact is that Liverpool have been operating a buy-to-sell policy for over two seasons now.
This year, there are only three clubs that have recuperated more than they have spent in the transfer window;
- Aston Villa - Thanks in no small part to the sale of James Milner to Manchester City (but, in fairness, also due to the tightening of Randy Lerner's purse strings).
- Sunderland - The sale of Kenwyne Jones to Stoke has contributed to Sunderland's net gain of £7.8m - Given the levels of spending at The Stadium of Light over the past couple of years I wouldn't be surprised to see this gain disappear come September 1st.
... and Liverpool.
Let's have a closer look at Liverpool's incomings and outgoings this year:
Coming in has been the morale-boosting acquisition of Joe Cole on a free transfer after his contact with Chelsea expired at the end of last season. Cole is a useful purchase and many would argue that in trading Yossi Benayoun to Chelsea (with £5.7m going in Liverpool's direction in addition to the Londoner), Liverpool have got the better deal. I'm inclined to agree. Yossi was a great player for Liverpool but I hope that, in Joe Cole, Liverpool have a genuine "playmaker" - someone who can unlock stubborn defences with a little bit of magic; a through ball, a flick, a long-range effort.
The much maligned Albert Riera has departed Liverpool to the fairer shores of Greece with Liverpool receiving a fee of just under £5m. In his place has arrived Milan Jovanovic on a free transfer. Jovanovic has looked promising on his first few appearances for the Reds and has endeared himself to the Anfield faithful with a memorable attempted diving header against Arsenal and a Jonah Lomu-esque palm off of Bacary Sagna. His goal-scoring record at his previous club Standard Liege is impressive and again, Liverpool seemed to have made a canny bit of business in shipping out Riera and replacing him with the Serb.
Diego Cavalieri, former back-up goalkeeper to Pepe Reina has been sold to AC Cesena for a fee believed to be in the region of £1.2m and has, in turn, been replaced with the acquisition of Brad Jones from Middlesbrough for £2.2m. A one million net spend for a goal-keeper who qualifies as home-grown and will be unlikely to get many games in any case is a good bit of business in my eyes. Aside from the loss of Diego's easy-on-the eye wife Daniele (Google, seriously...), his departure is unlikely to leave any gaping holes in the squad.
Krisztián Németh, the promising Hungarian striker has joined Albert Riera in moving from the Club to Olympiakos. Many Reds are disappointed at this sale but I'm less inclined to be saddened with his departure. Nemeth was loaned to AEK Athens last year, making seventeen appearances for the Greek club, scoring only three goals in the process. To put things in perspective, former Liverpool striker and Lord of the manor of Frodsham Djibril Cissé is now plying his trade in Greece with Panathanaikos and has netted 29 goals in 45 appearances. To me, if Németh was of sufficient quality to have made it with Liverpool, he would have turned it on during his time in Athens. My only worry is a recent quote from his agent (taken from neiljjones on Twitter);
"Liverpool told us that it is not the question of quality but a financial
decision. As it is with others out this season."
If this is truly the case then it is worrying that Liverpool are relying on €1.2m player transfers to balance the books. Of course this could simply be typical agent posturing in order to portray his client in a positive light - I suppose we'll never know.
Nikolay Mahailov was sold in the January Transfer window to Dutch Club FC Twente for a fee rumoured to be in the region of £1.5m according to The Echo.
Phillip Degen has joined Stutgart on loan for a year whilst Alberto Aquilani has agreed a one-year loan deal with Juventus with the option to buy for €16m. This would represent a €4m loss on a player bought a year ago as Xabi Alonso's long-term replacement.
The Aquilani saga is a perplexing one in that the lad clearly has the talent to play for one of the best sides in the world yet two successive Liverpool managers have clearly not fancied him for one reason or another. Liverpool's new Head of Sports Medicine & Sports Science, Peter Brukner, recently declared that;
"Alberto's ankle, which was a problem last year, is now 100 per cent healed,"
So clearly the issue is not with fitness.
There have been rumours that Aquilani did not put enough effort in to training and that perhaps his mentality (a Rafa word if ever there was one) was not quite right on the field. Either way, I'm gutted to see us lose him and think that the overall creativity in the squad has been significantly reduced as a result. A €4m loss on a player that we signed as Xabi Alonso's would-be successor is a very poor piece of business and leaves us short of a central-midfield metronome that we sorely lack and, being the eternal sceptic when it comes to George Gillet and Tom Hicks, I'm not holding my breath that the club signs one before the transfer window closes.
Speaking of the two Americans, let's cast our mind back to an email Tom Hicks sent to a fan that had complained about debt, lack of transfer funds and the new stadium in January this year. Hicks, ever so economical with the truth, said;
"January is a poor-quality market. The summer window will be big."
I'm guessing Hicks was only referring to outgoings because a summer outlay of circa £10m can hardly be seen as "big", especially when it is offset by over £14m in player sales (and the removal of Aquilani and Degen's wages).
Danny Wilson and Jonjo Shelvey - two promising youngsters that can be put in the "ones for the future" bracket - have been brought in to provide back-up to the centre-back and central-midfield positions respectively whilst Christian Poulsen is undoubtedly the allocated replacement for Mascherano when he completes his protracted move to Barcelona (when they eventually stump up the necessary cash).
So, to sum up, we have three like-for-like replacements in Cole, Jovanovic and Jones, two purchases for the future in Shelvey and Wilson and a substitute for Mascherano in Poulsen who may do a similar job but, in all likelihood, will make the Americans a tidy £15m profit. How is the club meant to progress and compete whilst, at this time of wheeling and dealing at Liverpool, Chelsea sign a highly-lauded Brazilian central-midfielder for £17m, Utd. a promising centre-back for £10m, Man City nearly £150m worth of players over the summer alone, Spurs a new centre-midfielder for £9m...?
The club cannot and will not progress under the suffocating ownership of the two Americans. Debt repayments and profit margins come at the expense of squad investment and so long as they continue their stranglehold of the club, Liverpool FC will go backwards. In fact, let me re-phrase that - it's not that Liverpool will go backwards but that everyone else will move forwards whilst we stand still.
With Mascherano's impending departure, rumours of uphappiness in the Lucas camp and Inter's continued courtship of Dirk Kuyt, the Liverpool squad could end up looking very threadbare on Thursday morning training, September 2nd and Liverpool could be consigned to yet another 'has been' of English football.