Seeing John Henry and the FSG team on the pitch last night showed a club that has one purpose from top to bottom. A few of us were slaughtered for defending FSG in the early days - there was a thread a few years back sparked off by a Rattle piece (from memory) that dragged out a load of conspiracy and prejudiced nonsense about what FSG were about.
Smug, small-minded people who equate all Americans with corporate greed and that the only motivation for FSG owning a football club was as a Glazer/Kroenke style cash cow or an asset to flip as quick as possible. People who can't tell a hedge fund from a portfolio of sporting assets.
For them FSG wouldn't develop the ground, they wouldn't get a decent manager, they had no ambition to buy decent players... \
They argued that Liverpool should spend a fortune on a new ground despite all the evidence and logic being to develop Anfield and that FSG's decision to extend was down to lack of ambition. The evidence of Arsenal and now Spurs is that building a brand new ground impacts on player spending whereas the Main Stand development added seats and massively increased income while the club gets on with buying the best defender and best goalkeeper in the world.
And fuck me, would we have beaten Barcelona at 'Stanley Park'? or the 'Standard Chartered Arena'? The Kop may not be as big as Spurs' new 'Wall' but it has heart and a mystique that is unique in football. Of course it's the supporters not the concrete and steel that creates the atmosphere but why would you throw that away?
So anyway, here I am, sitting in Madrid airport with Virgil's face five metres high on the big news screens and pictures of the Liverpool end celebrating number 6. And that's on the back of LIverpool's highest ever points total and missing the league by one point from one of the richest teams on the planet.
FSG is owned by people who have made their money and now want to won winning sports teams.
One last point. I don't agree with the title of the thread. 'Moneyball' is misunderstood and isn't simply about 'buy low-sell high' to create income. It's always been about finding value based on analysis. That's exactly what Liverpool are doing as a recent article showed (it's been posted on here somewhere). Andy Robertson and Virgil van Dyck are both 'Moneyball' signings and according to the article, so was Klopp.
Big-spending clubs wouldn't have bought Robertson, and big-spenders would have bought an alternative to Virgil when the deal originally fell through because they wouldn't worry about writing off the fee if it didn't work out. Robertson and Virgil are both bargains, bought because their attributes add value to the team - Robbo as a good defender bought also a creator of goals, Virgil... well for being Virgil and changing the mindset of the defence.
So if any of those bells are lurking I'd love to hear from them and either defend their original comments or to accept that they were wrong. I won't hold my breath.
