Poor little Liverpool?

No Jurgen, it isn't. 

I want to start this article by saying the following. I think Jurgen Klopp is the best manager in the Premier League. Despite the fact he often resembles an angry man that work on a fishing boat who has had a cosmetic makeover as part of a TV series and I think he'd probably be the kind of man who would pick up your kids and carry them about without asking you first, I genuinely admire his work (irritating as fuck as it is to say that.) I admire the fact that he's achieved things at clubs who aren't already winning stuff and outside of Mourinho, (who is a fucking legend for his ability to say mad stuff, purely to wind people up,) he's probably the only one of the elite managers I'd cross the road to hear speaking. I like him a lot more than I like sulky Pep. 

What I want to say though, is that the carping about the financial might of other clubs is difficult to stomach. It's what's to be expected as obviously, he's going to see things from his team's point of view and on a surface level, what he has to say is true. Liverpool are being left behind by the ability of nation states to spend and write off that spending in their accounts against dicey deals with minimal censure but when the massed ranks of 'this means more' #YNWA types flock behind their manager and holler about unfairness and appeal to someone to change things, my heart doesn't really bleed for them... 

As a fan of a club who have spent very little time at the top table in recent years (though, it has to be said, 1 year longer than some others) a team like Liverpool pointing out that it's unfair because other teams have more money to spend seems, well, a little, tiny bit weird.

It seems particularly weird when that man manages one of the clubs who were the architects of the system we now all live in and when that club also were one of a small number of clubs who also wanted to set up the genius idea of the Super League, a plan which would have ensured a club like mine (and likely the clubs of 90+% of the active fans in the country) were forever locked out of the bank of football. 

Liverpool have been a 'big name' since the 70s for sure, but in terms of outright financial might, their strength has grown immeasurably over a period where they went an awful long time without actually winning the league. The EPL has been good to them. 

There's no question that the money surrounding Man City and Newcastle is 'a bit dodgy if you think about it' but the idea that Man City and Newcastle are 'cheating' is an interesting concept to muse upon... 

Firstly, we have to wonder 'why would anyone want to sink so much money into a football club anyway?' 

1: The league that Liverpool helped set up has been extremely successful. It is the default global stage for football. The fact that people in far off countries see it as the ideal place to wash their money clean and buy a new reputation is exactly what the Premier League was set up for - monetising and marketing a brand - The EPL was about kicking away the restrictive shackles of 'old football thinking' and seizing an opportunity to run the game differently, according to financial, rather than sporting principles - it's a *bit rich* (pun intended) when one of the architects of that project is now moaning that money is ruining the game... 

2: The Premier Leagues' financial structures have been very successful in ensuring that really, (barring that one time Leicester's plucky outsider foreign billionaire owners broke the mould,) that it takes a nation state to challenge the elite. Without question, we've seen a few clubs dominate the top positions. Yes, the league is probably, over time, more competitive than other comparable leagues, but that competition has largely been between 4 to 6 clubs and far, far, far more often than not it's been Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Man City and a bit of Spurs who have claimed the top 4 spots. 

This is a country full of 'big' football clubs. Teams that attract huge followings and have a history of glory and trophies but outside of the 'big 6' only Leeds, Newcastle, Blackburn, Leicester and Everton have ever qualified for the Champions League. The Big six has qualified 88 times, the rest only 8 times and of those 8 times, only 1 time since 2005 (Leicester) 

Hi - I'm Randy Lerner - you may remember me from such programmes as 'When people aren't quite rich enough to compete, despite being richer than 99.99% of people can conceptualise vol 3' 

Looking at a football landscape like that, it's not really hard to see why it takes a nation state to challenge the success of the clubs at the top. For the last 18 years, the considerable additional wealth, sponsorship opportunities and global reach that comes with qualifying for Europe has been essentially boxed off by a small number of clubs. Unsurprisingly, this then gives those same teams an advantage domestically, as they can attract better players, pay more wages and then likely, qualify again for the competition and repeat the cycle. Yes, the top 6 is competitive, but it's a hell of a lot easier to qualify from a group of 6 with 4 places available than it is to qualify from a group of 20 when starting somewhat behind the rest... 

I think the point I am ultimately making is this - the Premier League is not a 'fair' concept and neither is the Champion's League. The structure of the Premier League has made it virtually impossible for the established brands to be challenged by outsiders from the division below. A club like Derby or Forest, Watford, Wimbledon or West Ham (all clubs that came from periods in the old 2nd division or lower to unseat or run Liverpool close in the 1970s or 1980s) would find it all but impossible to challenge the decades of financial advantage that Liverpool and their fellow elite clubs have enjoyed. 

A club like Aston Villa or Everton (who also unseated Liverpool at various points during their dominance) have palpably found it almost impossible to break into the elite, despite throwing sums of money at it which has threatened to break their clubs in various ways. Whenever I engage Liverpool fans on this, most of them just froth about Man City and seem to have little or no thought for the way their club outspends and outranks more or less everyone else. I don't deny that Liverpool are at a disadvantage compared to 1 or 2 other teams. What I find bizarre is that they don't seem to realise that they're a million times better off than most of the rest. 

'I suddenly don't care too much for money'

They'll rightly respond 'why should we be satisfied with being 'the best of the rest?' ' - which is deeply instructive because, essentially, this is the fate of just about every one of the 86 (and more) professional football clubs outside of the 'big 6' and a state of play we've put up with for a hell of a long time now.

I think, ultimately, what a Liverpool fan has to accept, is, if you expect anyone to give a fuck about your circumstance and whether you are being dealt a hand that is unfair (which, ultimately, I think you probably are), you have to give a fuck about the rest of us and accept that yours is one of the boots on our fingers as our clubs try to claw their way up a cliff edge that has got ever steeper by the year.

I don't really expect Klopp to have an encyclopedic knowledge of what happened in English football 4 or 5 decades ago. He's an intelligent, erudite and often interesting man but there is a considerable context here that we should be considering when weighing up the merits of his latest statement.  

What is happening to his club is that they are reaping a circumstance they, themselves, helped to design and create - a league that is ultimately constituted in a way that puts sporting competition second to financial considerations is never going to be able to turn away the multi-billions offered by nation states and frankly, had Liverpool and their fellow travellers wanted the game governed according to fair financial rules that fostered a competitive landscape, there's been ample opportunity for them to say so before now. 

This might seem like a load of old outdated things thrown out in spite according to some kind of anti-Liverpool agenda, but it's really part of a larger point. I do genuinely think Klopp is the best manager in the League (or at least, the best of the elite managers) and I think if football was built around competition then, what would probably happen is a team managed by Klopp would probably do very well indeed. If that team was Liverpool, then, yes, they'd probably win more titles than they have now because he's proven over his career that he can build teams with more than money. 

When we've reached a point where even the club who are possibly the ultimate 'brand' in English football are dissatisfied with the competitive governance of the game, it's probably time we had a decent debate about it... 

Lol, keep waving and smiling. It's a piece of piss. We just call it 'sponsorship' and no one does anything cos the whole thing was set up in the first place as a money grab and anyway, the game is run by the clubs and they just act out of self interest and all the fans do is bicker. It's hilarious. Keep clapping lads. 

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