Well it's certainly had a destabilizing effect on our plans to progress as a club over the last few years.
Which years would they be?
2009-2010 when we were about to go out of business at the start of the season then sold to FSG in October? The season that H&G sacked Rafa and appointed the Hodge? Sales out included Alonso but otherwise no one special. In came Aquilani and Johnson on big fees Maxi on a free and a lad called Raheem Sterling from QPR.
2010-2011 when we started the season under the Hodge with Poulsen, Cole and Konchesky among his great buys?.. and Mascherano left for Barca despite the obvious attraction of playing under Hodgson. And we finished the season under Kenny with Suarez and Carroll joining in January? Torres went to pay for them but we all know that he was on a downward spiral at the time.
2011-2012 when we started under Kenny who brought in Henderson and Ibe (good) and a few that weren't so good (Adam, Downing Coates etc) but we didn't really sell any big names apart from Konchesky, Poulsen and Meireles... (that's a joke). We had yet another change in manager when Brendan came in.
2012-2013 No big names out apart from Dirk Kuyt, Maxi, Aquilani but all were either offloading player that hadn't made it or were at the end of their careers. Players in included Sturridge, Coutinho and Joe Allen...
2013-2014 No big names out apart from Andy Carroll, Downing, Spearing and Shelvey taking a step down. Patchy buys again but include Sakho, Toure and Mignolet.
2014-2015 Obviously the big name leaving was Suarez and Pepe going to Bayern after burning his bridges by showing his knickers to Barca. Danny Agger went back to Denmark at his own choice. Patchy ins, although it's too soon to say how some of these will turn out but Can and Lallana show signs of being good Liverpool players, Origi was on loan and of the rest the jury is out.
2015-2016 Sterling obviously the big name going but other than that our best players (or at least our first team squad players) are signed to contracts and not likely to be sold - a lot of them bought in the seasons listed above (Henderson, Ibe, Sturridge, Coutinho, Allen, Sakho, Toure, Mignolet, Can, Lallana, Origi). And they are being joined by Gomez, Ings, Milner, Clyne, Firmino plus at least one other and a load of the surplus players will be sold off.
The pattern I can see there is an imperfect buying record under four managers and two owners where we keep the good players and the majority of sales are about clearing out the mistakes and good players who've reached the end of their usefulness for Liverpool. There are three anomalies in there - Alonso, Suarez and Mascherano (sold by Hodgson who had no fucking clue what to do with him) who were all top players for us at the highest level who went on to play for one of the top two teams in Spain and win shitloads of trophies. Then there's Sterling, who is a different kind of anomaly. A talented young player and a great prospect who, with his agent saw an opportunity created by City's shambolic buying policy to cash in on their desperate need for young homegrown players and make a move for silly money.
Otherwise we have been building a team over the last few seasons and not constantly selling off all of our best players. A selling club would have Henderson, Coutinho and Ibe on the market with new young talent coming up ready to be sold on the next cycle...but they aren't.
There's a separate conversation to be had about our buying power and attractiveness but 'selling club'?... No, I don't think so.
