Liverpool spends £101 million this summer - How can we ever compete?

Liverpool's key summer signings

Defender Javier Manquillo, 20, signed on loan from Atletico Madrid

Striker Divock Origi, 19, signed for £10m from Lille

Defender Alberto Moreno, 22, signed for £12m from Sevilla

Striker Rickie Lambert, 32, signed for £4m from Southampton

Midfielder Adam Lallana, 25, signed for £25m from Southampton

Midfielder Emre Can, 20, signed for £10m from Bayer Leverkusen

Winger Lazar Markovic, 20, signed for £20m from Benfica

Defender Dejan Lovren, 25, signed for £20m from Southampton

We can't. 

Like i said before, If you're not in that little elite club of 5/6 teams what are you really playing for?

Blimey Obs. Haven't you seen a newspaper for the last 5 years?
Why would you even think we should or could compete with teams like Liverpool in these times?
Our time will come again but not quite yet amigo.

The only time we'll be able to compete is when the top teams get what they're after. Namely,a European super league. Then they'll tell us all to fuck off and go play in the shallow end.

The gap between the have and have nots in football is now just too wide for there to be any sort of meaningful competition between them. 

Until and unless every club is owned by some billionaire sheikh or some mega rich business tycoon it will only become more and more pronounced. The days of anyone other than a select few having even a remote chance of winning the premier league or even doing much more than struggling to stay in it once there are gone and won't come back in my lifetime.

If we ever get a super rich owner, then we may be able to compete with the top teams.  But even if we don't we can still beat anyone on our day.

The days of provincial clubs "competing" are long gone, occasionally teams can have an outstanding season a la Southampton last season but then the big guns come with the chequebook. The only hope of a competitive top division is if a genuine European League is formed and the likes of Chelsea, Man Utd etc leave their domestic leagues but up to now there seems little appetite for it amongst supporters, whether TV companies feel differently is another matter.

BoltonTillIDie wrote:If we ever get a super rich owner, then we may be able to compete with the top teams.  But even if we don't we can still beat anyone on our day.

FFP restricts how much owners can invest in their clubs each year.

Iirc, I think it is only something like £6 million pa.

To compete on the same terms as the big clubs now means we need to have the same sort of income streams they do - or until FFP is thrown out.

Perhaps FIFA should salary cap and transfer cap, everyone should be competing on a level playing field, it should be your coaching skills that bring success not how deep your pockets are, I know it will never happen, the big euro clubs would all spit there dummies out and take there ball home!!!!!

Back on my soapbox...... There are too many teams for the size of country.... basically league two and down are a waste of space. Too many little clubs with supporters that number in only a few thousand at best. What's needed are regional teams similar to in the USA. Current clubs in the same region combine together resources, fans, revenues. etc.  Never going to happen of course.....imagine telling Bury, Oldham, Wigan, Blackburn & Bolton fans that we have to support a new team...Northwest Utd. So instead we will all go under sooner or later due to rising costs.
Individual medium clubs like ours will never compete again with the big boys .... it's sad but it's law of the jungle.

wanderlust wrote:Blimey Obs. Haven't you seen a newspaper for the last 5 years?
Why would you even think we should or could compete with teams like Liverpool in these times?
Our time will come again but not quite yet amigo.

What's a newspaper?  They too are one step from the grave.  Still boggles the mind to see what the top clubs are spending and to think we could not afford the Juke who could not get a game before he played for us. As we all know, the Juke's price tag had a lot less numbers than any of Liverpool's picks. And as I suspect, Juke would have put away that last minute Cravies miss that would have given us 3 points yesterday.

I wonder how things would've played out if the Ref had given Gerry Taggert's goal against Everton at the Reebok all those years ago and we hadn't got relegated in that first season......?

Would we be as far up Shit Creek as we are now.....?

Who knows.......?

Southampton haven't spent big since the 70s but have rebuilt their financial base carefully on their youth development policy and the income it generates from sales - plus some astute purchases. They are a good team to watch and have got themselves into a decent position from where they genuinely can trouble anyone on their day.
It can be done but only by building the youth development brand, having very patient fans and managers who have bought into the idea of longer term benefit at the expense of immediate reward.
They do have a large catchment area from which to generate income from though with no direct competition.

I agree, all the so called 'big' glory-hunters clubs need to fuck off to a separate euro league and splash the billions there. Im losing my rag with everything football at the min. 

Issue at present is, even if a club does have a good season in the premiership or championship for that matter beyond any expectations, the man united/citys, liverpools etc will just come along and buy your best players off you anyway, leaving you back in the shit. (think Zaha) 

A salary cap and more even spread of money would help - the TV companies will not let that happen though, they love the fact they can keep making the rich richer, due to the glory hunting cunts that 'support' these clubs buying sky sports every year because 'their' club is on nearly every week - the adverting revenue when they show these clubs is massive for them. 

Its all about money now - ive always said for years that, success is ANY league is now more or less directly relative to how much money you throw at it.

FFP was designed to address the imbalance but sadly it was badly implemented and only serves to harden the gap between "Big" clubs and the rest. 

I think a salary cap sounds nice on paper but it's against European Law to impose a hard number (eg 10K a week) and with so many clubs now being part of a company that has other arms it's not really possible to enforce one as a percentage of turnover either. 

For instance when Rugby League tried that very thing Wigan signed players for a nominal wage as players but then JJB Sports hired them as "consultants" on wages that no one else in the League could touch and it was technically legal. Of course everyone knew it was happening but there was nothing they could do about it because JJB used their "consultants" in their own adverts etc thus "proving" they were genuine employees. 

Unless European trading laws change significantly or football clubs willingly agree to impose such a thing (does anyone believe that the likes of City would be so altruistic? If so I have a nice bridge for sale  ) it won't change from within.

Surprised this is a thread to be honest, when has this not been the case? I couldn't care less to be honest, success is dependant on the size of club. If City win the premier league would their fans be any more jubilant than we would if we won the play offs? I don't think so. Like absolutely everything in a capitalist society there are a few very successful and then the rest. We're the rest.

bwfc1874 wrote:Surprised this is a thread to be honest, when has this not been the case? I couldn't care less to be honest, success is dependant on the size of club. If City win the premier league would their fans be any more jubilant than we would if we won the play offs? I don't think so. Like absolutely everything in a capitalist society there are a few very successful and then the rest. We're the rest.

City's fan base had trebled with success... 

Success they have had bought for them by some rag-head who actually wanted Man united but couldn't... so got city instead. 

The 'new' die-hard so called city fans disgust me. 

They should have let the twat rename them to whatever it was he wanted to call them...

I remember Stephen Fry being interviewed a few years back about his love of Norwich City. He said "When we lose we shrug our shoulders and expect it because we're Norwich but when we win it brings a joy we can't describe and lightens our whole week. There is no way a fan of Chelsea or Man Utd can ever feel the way we do because they expect to win and so they'll never know the absolute ecstasy that comes when you beat a team that noone said you could. I feel sorry for the fans of such clubs because all they can feel is something between "So what we won" and total despair because they lost. They only have half of the true experience of football and the poorer half at that." 

Comforting words for us fans of "small" clubs.

Reebok_Rebel wrote:

bwfc1874 wrote:Surprised this is a thread to be honest, when has this not been the case? I couldn't care less to be honest, success is dependant on the size of club. If City win the premier league would their fans be any more jubilant than we would if we won the play offs? I don't think so. Like absolutely everything in a capitalist society there are a few very successful and then the rest. We're the rest.

City's fan base had trebled with success... 

Success they have had bought for them by some rag-head who actually wanted Man united but couldn't... so got city instead. 

The 'new' die-hard so called city fans disgust me. 

They should have let the twat rename them to whatever it was he wanted to call them...

Fair enough... doesn't have much to do with my post though!?

luckyPeterpiper wrote:I remember Stephen Fry being interviewed a few years back about his love of Norwich City. He said "When we lose we shrug our shoulders and expect it because we're Norwich but when we win it brings a joy we can't describe and lightens our whole week. There is no way a fan of Chelsea or Man Utd can ever feel the way we do because they expect to win and so they'll never know the absolute ecstasy that comes when you beat a team that noone said you could. I feel sorry for the fans of such clubs because all they can feel is something between "So what we won" and total despair because they lost. They only have half of the true experience of football and the poorer half at that." 

Comforting words for us fans of "small" clubs.

Good post actually. 

Have you ever seen a man united fan when they lose? its rather funny.