Whilst I do agree with the general idea of spending it on less players, it sort of ignores the fact we had a pretty thread bare squad as it was last season and the fact we had a lot less games and fairly good luck with injuries helped up massively. We really haven't been in a position to just go out and spend all our transfer budget on one or two players.
To give an example, take Villa at home at the start of September. Markovic, Lovren and Balotelli started. Lambert and Borini came off the bench. If we'd of bought none of them and just signed one player then we'd of potentially of been looking at a pretty tiny first team squad to pick from.
First, my argument is mainly directed at the article and those saying we have no money to compete. I believe we do.
Yes, we'd need squad depth. But we could have solved that too. My point is, we're not running this tight budget that we like to say. It comes from both the club management and from people critisising the club. If we had a tight budget, we wouldn't have this situation. Things would look very different.
We could have had Coates, Ilori, Alberto and Aspas playing for us. Then there would have been little point adding Lovren, Balotelli, Borini and Lambert. But we've got all 8 players (let be some on loan), worth ~75M, doing the job that could be done by the first four, signed for ~25M. We have been reluctant to use Lovren & Co, so it wouldn't have made much of a difference.
Had we gone with that route, we could have had 50M to spend on a single player. Depth and quality. We would actually have had 4+1 options, rather than 4. We could even take half of that sum and get a very decent player (that is, sell Lovren, Balotelli, Borini and Lambert for a total of 25M and use it to buy one first team player). This is realistic. It's very much do-able, but we, for some reason, never want to take that step. Instead, we have eight players with no clear role and we wonder why we can't have money to spend.
People like to talk about how FSG don't invest, or how little money we have. There are simple solutions to the problems, solutions that would allow us to improve. Without pumping in more money. Instead we allow the problems to grow. We blame it on FSG. It's convenient and it's an easy way out. But if FSG added another 50M, I doubt it would change anything. We'd make the same mistakes again. We only need to look at Lovren, Borini, Balotelli and Lambert. There we have those 50M. We overspend, add players, keep some that we have no intention of using and then complain we need more money. Because we're repeating basic mistakes. And we try and say we're cautious, clever and we think long term. We're hiding mistakes. And then we're trying to say it's all because we have bad owners. I don't think that's fair.
We all know that we have a TC. We know we have (big, or even huge) problems with it. But, if we take a couple of steps back and view our situation from the outside, what would we see? We'd see owners that have improved our finances. They're rebuilding the stadium, something we have talked about for an eternity, without progress. Now it happens. And then we'd see a team that finished 2nd, invested heavily and went backwards. That wouldn't be classed as the fault of the owners. It would be classed as serious problems on the football side. Be it the TC's or the manager's fault. But it wouldn't be seen as a fault of the owners. That side however, is rather unpleasant for the supporters who like Rodgers and/or the football men at the club (including the TC here). Because that side of the story says that the owners and money men are doing their bit. The rest are not. So where would an outsider recommend the club to change leadership? The red alert light would be above the people in the TC, manager included.
By all means, we can have a go at FSG for increasing ticket prices. Have a go at them for not listening to how the atmosphere could be improved. These could well be fair arguments. Complaining about resources available - not so much.
If we were running a tight budget, what would we see? First, we wouldn't have ~25M worth of players off on loan. They'd be here and often included in the match day squad. We couldn't afford having them on loan. Nor would we be reluctant to use another 50M worth of players. We'd have no such luxuary. Instead we'd have a whole line of Academy players involved, providing depth. The likes of Brannagan and Williams would have played quite a few games. Wisdom and Ilori would have played. Ibe would have played a lot more and it's likely that Origi would have been brought in this season. Etc.
