I've kept thinking about this move for him, and in my mind it had a link with something my son is doing, putting his spare wages in to crypto currency speculation. Bear with me, as I had no clue how that stuff wasn't just a sort of wild west of speculating. To some extent it still is, but the money involved means there are lots of big players doing big money things - undoubtedly to some extent because real banks print money when it suits them, and some of the major governments in the world are no more trustworthy than currency companies, to put it mildly, so a lot of serious money has opted out of the old school systems. What I in the end figured out was that you have to get a sense of what type of investment instrument each currency is. There's around 200 that should be taken seriously. Who started it, what can it be used for beyond speculation and what are the funding levels, how has it performed so far, what will affect it in the near future. It then occurred to me that modern football at the highest level has similarities.
I also had a look at some of his post match interviews as Rangers manager to feed in to my thoughts. I've always had this blood sweat and tears kind of view of him as a player, so I expected a Keegan at Newcastle kind of manager of him. He came across as much more of an orchestrator than I expected, with decent man management skills already. Then you start to remember his youth coaching job at our place, which means he has some exposure to the data analysis, conditioning, micro understood fitness levels, red zones etc, all that this far in to the Klopp era stuff. Then you remember that Purslow is at Villa, and that their owners are worth 10 times what Brighton's owner is, there or thereabouts, probably around double what Henry is worth, with the possibility that all of FSG put them almost on a par, at best. I think he goes in to Villa as the first proper 21st century manager they have ever had. It will be more like Houllier going to Arsenal than his later excursion to Villa. His success is unlikely to be as influential as Ged was, as the financial playing field is not as level. The excellence of the best machine still meets the battering ram of financial clout from even bigger players. Nevertheless, Stevie and Purslow will get as near to the current Liverpool model as they can. The players will be like the Rangers lot, will have seen his on the pitch excellence as a standard to strive for. The instrument to invest in is there, and they will operate like a mini Liverpool, which will, with the rub of the green, get them in to the middle of the table. That is a very comfortable place to be in the football world these days.
