It’s easy for us footy fans to only think about the short term.
When the squad’s thinner and more unbalanced than Twiggy on a bender during a crash diet, and you know the new manager’s going to work them harder than Klopp in his heavy metal phase, you’re allowed to get a bit of a sweat on. A club like Liverpool FC should be challenging for the league, not limping to qualify for Europe with no left foot.
You can’t blame our fan media for concentrating on this. It’s what we can see now and we don’t even know what the team will look like in a few years’ time.
Some have also pointed out that the suits upstairs are trying to build a squad to win as many big pots as they can long term. But I’ve not seen anyone really explain why this is the best way forward for a club that doesn’t outspend its rivals. Or how it might work.
So I’ve put fingers to keyboard to try and fill that gap.
Lessons From History and the Springboks
In the last few years this has been one of my favourite subjects to write about. There are so many examples in so many sports, from Shankly’s great teams of the mid 60s and mid 70s, to the one built on Manchester United’s class of ‘92, to Klopp’s all-conquering heroes.
Right now, we have the South Africa rugby team who won the 2019 and 2023 world cups and are still the undisputed number one. Ten years ago, the same players were repeatedly humiliated when they were consistently selected together at an early age. But that long term policy was so successful that the Springboks are now enjoying their greatest era since at least the early 50’s.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Years of work by genius statistical nerds GAIN LINE Analytics has found that cohesion is the number one factor (once you remove money) to achieve prolonged prolific success. It’s widely accepted research – dozens of teams from elite leagues like F1, the Premier League and Super Rugby use it.
How Cohesion Works
Keeping it simple, cohesion grows when athletes play together for a long time. They build a telepathic understanding and spur each other on to keep improving. They know how to get the most of each other’s strengths and cover their weaknesses. They develop team spirit to get themselves through the tough times.
Talent is vital, but cohesion takes it to another level. Were those two schoolboys on the 86 bus to Speke in the late 50s really two of the most talented musicians and songwriters in the world? Maybe, maybe not. But it was all those skill and character building years in Liverpool and Hamburg, alongside their mate John and later Ringo, that built the most successful band of all time.
It’s all pretty obvious when you think about it, but it’s amazing how many teams totally ignore these principles. Like Manchester United churning through managers and players as if it’s Pac-Man on a sugar rush.
I thought that Chelsea’s youth policy might pay big dividends, but not when it keeps selling so much of its best homegrown talent.
How FSG Made It Work With Klopp
Ideally you want them all playing together from an early age, but you don’t often have enough elite talent coming through the same development system at the same time. So how can you make it work?
The basic strategy is to get the best difference makers you can over several years, along with the right platform players, to form a coherent team. The players should have at least another five or ten years of elite performance left in them and unnecessary churn should be avoided.
City had a huge financial advantage when building Pep’s squad, and the money was invested wisely. A net £1.1b went on players, and who knows how much on creating a system tailor made for their truly elite gaffer.
It was almost impossible to compete against so much savvy spending, but Liverpool gave it a very good crack. They didn’t splurge nearly as much on Salah and Co, but they were very innovative.
None of the other big clubs were using such sophisticated football analytics back in the mid 2010s. FSG identified undervalued platinum talent, missed by their top competitors, and about to move into their peak years. It helped that just about the ideal manager for this sort of project became available at exactly the right time.
Building Klopp’s Champions
We need to remember how mediocre the results were, as slowly but surely they put together their champion squad. Gomez, Milner and Bobby in 15/16 (8th.) Matip, Mane and Gini in 16/17 (4th.) Mo, Robbo, Ox and VVD in 17/18 (4th and a Champions’ League final.) The ultimate pieces were Ally and Fab in 2018/19 to win the Champions’ League.
Thanks to their huge budgets and excellence, Real Madrid in Europe, and oil-fuelled Club 115 at home, usually had the edge. But in most other eras that team would probably have won four leagues and two or three European Cups. Those 97 and 92 point second places in particular deserved so much more.
All this despite two seasons wrecked by multiple injuries.
Sustained Overperformance
That sustained level of overperformance from 2017/18 to 2024/25 more than made up for the mediocre results while squad building. Their analytics enabled FSG to pick up the world’s best front three for a snip, and gave them the confidence that, when they splashed out at the other end, they’d be snapping up the top goalie and centre half. All spread out over several years for cohesion and financial prudence.
By the way, I had to laugh when The Athletic listed the van Dijk transfer as one of the biggest overspends in Premier League History. Anfield Geeks 1, Transfermakt 0.
Arteta’s Arsenal have followed a similar path, albeit with slightly lesser results. They’ve also shrewdly built their squad over several years, with minimal key transfers out. Again that’s great for cohesion and it’s won them the league, but their net spend has been higher than their main rivals and they still haven’t cracked 90 points or won a domestic or European cup.
Is FSG Doing It Again for Iraola?
Liverpool are now about where we were at the dawn of the 70s, when Bill Shankly finally admitted that his first great team had come to its end. Heroes like Yeats, St John, Hunt, Lawrence and Byrne, who had taken the Reds from the second division to two titles and a first FA Cup, were thanked for their services. Ian Callaghan on the other hand seemed to play on forever.
There were no computer models in those days, when legendary Chief Scout Geoff Twentyman helped Shankly build his second great team. Once again it took them a few years to win the League, UEFA Cup and FA Cup, but look at who they gave to Paisley – European Cup winners like Clemence, Hughes, Smith, Thompson, Callaghan, Heighway and Keegan.
It’s the same as what FSG did for Klopp and is trying to do for Iraola. However, FSG 2.0 will be a lot more expensive than FSG 1.0.
These days lots of clubs use analytics, so it’s almost impossible for the boffins to reliably find world class attackers on the cheap. Instead, they’ve tried to identify the best available young-enough players in their top priority positions almost regardless of price.
At the same time they’ve made a lot of even longer term, less expensive signings. These are lads who are further from their peak but have a high ceiling. They can’t be so sure that this group will make it big, and it will take longer for the team to mature, but they’re cheaper than players with a fuller top level cv.
The Ultimate Aim – A Dynasty
We all know that Paisley’s story didn’t end with the players he inherited. He built a dynasty that ruled England into the 1990s with very few down years.
That’s the ultimate aim of FSG, who have upped their investment in renowned youth talent experts and given them a generous player purchase budget. This maximises the possibility of a seamless transition when the current twenty-somethings get old, as well as reducing the need to spend on reinforcements. As for cohesion, it will be through the roof if many of the current teenagers are still at the club in their late 20s and early 30s.
FSG is being absolutely ruthless in pursuing this long term approach, and achieving even moderate success this season is not a high priority. They don’t seem to mind if the house leaks while it’s being built, so long as it’s the best gaff in town when it’s finished.
At a time when Arsenal has just spent £109m on two 28 year olds, FSG won’t commit significant money – or a spot in the squad – for anyone who they don’t think will contribute significantly in the long term. Even if it leaves us thin and unbalanced in the coming campaign.
Risks and Errors
Of course good strategies don’t always bring success. And there is so much uncertainty about whether this one has been executed properly.
Will the deficiencies in the current squad lead to bad results in the short term? Will these lead to a failure to recruit the players we need and retain our best youngsters? And have we spent a huge amount of precious money on players who won’t fit into an effective system long term?
Was £125m too much for a striker who will be 27 this month? Will he ever be prolific and contribute more widely to the attack and defence? Was FSG foolish to abandon a successful system where an unselfish playmaker 9 and passmaster fullbacks platformed prolific wingers?
Is the £116m ten too lightweight for the Premier League and will he ever fit neatly into the squad? Can the £123m winger play fifty games a season and finish his chances? Will the diminutive wingback successfully play in a Premier League back four? Will enough of our young buys make the grade?
The questions go on forever and we won’t know the answers for years.
Conclusion
I don’t doubt that FSG has the right overall strategy. It gives us the best chance possible to repeatedly win the two trophies that matter for the foreseeable future. That’s what we all want.
It’s better to have short term pain followed by huge success, rather than continually challenging but failing. Most of us have lived through the long era between Hansen and van Dijk and it wasn’t much fun.
Of course, even the best strategy can fail if it’s poorly implemented. And we won’t know whether that’s happened until the house is built.
