Genuine question. Is there a better group of successful owners than FSG in the PL or other top leagues that someone can point to as being a model for FSG to aspire to?
Obviously not City, PSG, or Newcastle for obvious reasons.
Man Utd are also an obvious no, as are Chelsea's previous owners (I certainly don't think that Boehly is off to a great start either...). Spurs fans have plenty of issues with their owners and have zero trophies in the last 14 years. Arsenal have been a mess since the move to the Emirates, and I don't think any other PL club are really worth adding to the list?
Real Madrid and Bayern Munich are obviously very unique cases and have advantages that we don't have, while Barcelona are a complete basket case.
So what are we aspiring to exactly?
Personally I'm willing to give FSG a lot of credit for what we have achieved both on and off the pitch, and I think that the club is in a very healthy position moving forward. World class training complex, improvements to the stadium and associated revenues, huge growth in commercial revenues, investment in the wage bill to retain players, good core group of young players to build around, and of course the extension for Klopp.
Do they need to do more? Yes, I think that they do. We obviously need investment in the midfield area of the squad, and that will require money to be spent. But I think that the squad generally looks good in the short to medium term outside of that midfield area. We've done well with the signings of Jota, Diaz, and Konate for long term first team options, as well as signing very promising youngsters such as Elliot, Carvalho, and Ramsay (plus improving the Academy system). Keeping Salah was a great move for the club for a few reasons, and there is still plenty of life left in lots of key first team players (Alison, Robertson, TAA, VVD, Gomez, Jones, Thiago, Tsmikas etc).
Do we know for sure that it was due to a lack of funds that we didn't buy one or two additional midfielders this summer (which would be a black mark against FSG), or did the transfer team and Klopp just not think that the correct players were available for the long term and so chose to keep faith with what they have for now and invest that money next season instead? I guess we'll never know for sure if we could have bought both Tchouameni and Nunez, or if it was one or the other.
If people think that we have let the midfield group grow too old together or have put too much faith in injury prone players, is that an FSG issue or an issue with Klopp showing too much faith and loyalty in his group? Do people really want the owners telling Klopp who he should be keeping and moving on?
Obviously FSG's biggest black mark is the Super League fiasco (and I understand that some fans will never forgive them for that), but again, they weren't alone in that line of thinking and all of the top European teams were willing to sign up. I also think that the biggest reason for FSG wanting to join the ESL would have been because UEFA and the PL were seemingly powerless to stop City and PSG from flagrantly cheating and breaking the rules that they assumed would be enforced when they bought the club. That's not excusing them though, we should have steered well clear.
They are not perfect, and they need to invest some money in the next few windows to strengthen our areas of weakness, but it's certainly not all doom and gloom and things could be a hell of a lot worse, and honestly from reading some of the anti-FSG posts on RAWK you'd think that we were facing our 3rd or 4th year out of the CL, hadn't won a trophy in 10 years, or had been selling off our best players. It's definitely over the top IMO given what we have achieved on the pitch.