Tomkins Take n the situation
So, Julian Ward didn't last long after Michael Edwards, his predecessor, quit last season. The equally important Ian Graham is also said to be going. I had heard that various senior scouts wanted to quit in the summer, and still might.
This has all been going on for a while, it seems (based on what I’ve been hearing on the grapevine), and was an additional reason I suspected a couple of weeks ago that FSG might be willing to call time as running the club just got a whole lot harder.
The smart-thinking backroom that they created had lost its influence, with the best manager in the world and his talented assistant no longer on the same page as all those who brought them many of the great players (that they then helped turn into world-class players).
All the success has led to the disintegration of the unity and shared thinking that helped the rise. Sooner or later there will be a culture clash between the hands-on staff and those who work in offices or travel around scouting.
Managers face the greatest pressure and scrutiny (but also the greatest praise and remuneration), and often seem to want total control (which is understandable), but which in the massively complex modern football ecosystem, means they can lose sight of the bigger picture. The buck stops with the manager, so it always makes sense that they start to demand more control.
The possible wisdom of this in 2022 is different, however, from decades ago, when football management was simpler.
So, Julian Ward is leaving at the end of the season; like Michael Edwards, “to take a break from football” which is not a coincidence. Dr Ian Graham, pivotal to the appointment of Klopp along with Edwards, is going too. Will Spearman, a super-smart thinker, is also apparently on his way.
Liverpool have – or should that be had – world-class data analytics and scouting people, and they were being ignored. Or at the very least, no one was seeing eye to eye. Relationships often break down over a longer period of time; it need not be anyone's fault, which is why we now have no-fault divorces. But you often get irreconcilable differences over time, even if you start out as close allies.
It feels a bit like Brendan Rodgers vs the transfer committee all over again: manager does brilliantly, then increases his say on transfer targets, then club signs a load of duds (not that this last part has happened – the signings have still been good). This, now, is different in that the club were just not agreeing on who to sign, how much to pay, and so on; as well as why so many older players have been kept.
Another difference is that Klopp is the best manager in the world, but he relied on picks like Mo Salah, Andy Robertson and various other left-field bargains who were not his choices.
FSG, and Mike Gordon in particular (who worked so closely with Klopp), seemed to see the precocious, gifted Pep Lijnders as the Reds' future (and a couple of years ago I'd have agreed 100%, before all this turmoil), but it seems that Lijnders – for whatever reason – has rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way. As such, the internal dynamics have collapsed.
Gordon has now moved away from football operations, Edwards is gone, Ward and Graham and others are going, senior scouts are said to be unhappy, and as such, it could be a good time to sell the club, with arguably the joint-greatest manager Liverpool have ever had (in a three-way tie with Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley) clearly un-sackable – and rightly so! – but the entire club apparently at loggerheads over major issues; and as the team – filled with older players the manager wanted to keep (and he even wanted to keep other 30-somethings) – ages-out and needs regeneration.
Perhaps Klopp can now bring in his own back-office staff, but after seven years, has he got the emotional distance to make super-canny decisions?
So many great Liverpool managers (Kenny Dalglish, Rafa Benítez, and Bill Shankly circa 1970) eventually, after years in the gladiatorial arena, lost sight of what was going wrong, with the pressure distorting their thinking. Loyalty to older players, or internal conflict (and in Dalglish's case, the addition of the aftermath of Hillsborough), end up distracting them.
Equally, no one knows what the team needs more than Klopp and Lijnders, in terms of their ideas and what they specifically want. They work at the coal face; they see the players up close, and know what they need.
But are they the best judges of recruitment? – with Klopp's greatest strength always his low-ego ability to divest responsibility.
Now there's the uncertainty of a sale and the uncertainty of almost the entire recruitment structure "lost" at a time of high recruitment requirement, and the only thing left standing by the summer may be Klopp, Lijnders and some players – with the owners, two directors of football, the director of research, various analysts and scouts, half a dozen older/fringe/out of contract players, and perhaps an entire medical department (given the injuries), all possibly gone.
It feels like utter carnage, but it's been brewing since last season, and reached a head in the summer. It felt like the air had been cleared, but perhaps fresh recruitment disputes have arisen, as the January window beckons.
The upside – if there is one – is that a total reboot may bring fresh ideas, fresh cash (albeit let's hope not via dodgy or reckless sources), and some unity behind the scenes.
Even if the new people aren't as good as the old people, it might help just to all be in agreement again (or at least, respectful disagreement with productive creative tension).
But Liverpool are also losing so much talent, whose cleverness helped in the rise to the very top. A lot of knowledge is being lost.
Of course, once the club was up for sale, it felt like things were going to have to change in several ways. New owners may want to put their own stamp on things (this could be good or bad), albeit the timescale – a sale can’t be quick – could mean disruption for the rest of a season that was improving but still on a knife-edge.
These new resignations only add to a sense of turmoil. It's not necessarily full of bile and bitterness, but it's the end of a cycle.
Great success often lead to rifts. The best bands often break up after their masterpiece, or the album that finally breaks big; or at least, they splinter off into silos.
The drummer wants to start writing the songs; the two main songwriters no longer collaborate – maybe no longer even able to tolerate sitting in the same room as one another – and have to write their own stuff; the bass player, who cannot sing, wants to do lead vocals on three tracks; and everyone thinks they can manage the band better than the manager, and produce the records better than the producer.
For a while, Liverpool had it all. Now, it's all in a fragile state of near-collapse.
But things also come and go, and what falls can rise again. Change is stressful, but it can go either way. Any collapse gives the chance to rebuild, and while it can of course spell disaster, it can also be better than muddling on in dysfunction – where nothing gets done, and things drift.
I'll always back Jürgen Klopp, as he's the best thing about the club. He’s not just elite, but super-elite.
It's just that I liked the whole band, and wanted them to stay together, get along like a close-knit family, and write new hits as good as the old hits. Now, it’s into the unknown…
