TONY EVANS, FOOTBALL EDITOR _Here is Tony's take of events.
It is now a week since the great Liverpool deadline day fiasco. Yet again, infighting and absurdity reign in L4. Take down ‘This is Anfield.’ Replace with ‘This is chaos.’ The worst thing is that it was so easily avoidable.
Until January, Brendan Rodgers will have to cope with only two seasoned strikers, Luis Suarez and Fabio Borini. Neither looks like a 20-goals-a-season man. Andy Carroll was sent to West Ham United with the belief that Clint Dempsey would sign. It didn’t happen so Liverpool are very light up front. Unless, that is, a free agent can be found.
The names that have been bandied round make Dempsey, at 29, look like a whippersnapper. Michael Owen, Emile Heskey and Alessandro Del Piero were all suggested as stopgaps. That they struggled to find clubs was for a reason. The angst at Anfield was mirrored by mirth elsewhere.
Most of the supporters’ anger has been aimed at Fenway Sports Group. There is a presumption that the American owners did not want to spend money, leaving Rodgers short of manpower and firepower. The sad truth is different. Even FSG’s fiercest critics can seethat it was not simply a money problem. Liverpool entered September with unspent cash in the transfer kitty. It will be a long four months before that war chest can be invested in players.
How did this happen? Who is to blame? It is hard to point the finger at an individual. This was c**k-up by committee.
Once Rodgers was appointed in early summer, it was always going to be a window of transition. Dirk Kuyt, Maxi Rodriguez and Craig Bellamy all left the club, their fading talents making it sensible to move them on. But with them left goals. It was crucial to add more.
Rodgers, like all managers, wanted to reshape the squad in his own image. It is only right that he feels that way. He will take responsibility for results and should build around players he trusts. Even so, it was a big mistake to signal to the rest of football that Andy Carroll was surplus to requirements.
Across the game, Liverpool have developed a reputation for buying high, selling low and overpaying players. It predates FSG and is one of the big issues they need to address. Yet everyone knew the Ł35-million striker had no value to his new manager. It did not place the club in a position of strength in a marketplace where any sign of weakness will cost you millions.
There were others that Rodgers did not want: Charlie Adam, Jordan Henderson and Joe Cole among them. It’s hard to blame him. Adam and Henderson, along with Stewart Downing, were last summer’s signings. Their main contribution was helping to get Kenny Dalglish the sack. Cole was bought by an overexcited and inexperienced executive during the tail end of the Gillett and Hicks era and is likely to cost the club more than Ł25 million over the four years of his contract. It would be easier for a huckster to sell the Brooklyn Bridge than to shift Cole.
FSG have struggled to come to terms with football – as John W. Henry, the principal owner, admitted to fans in his letter this week. Yet FSG have always had a clear vision about what sort of business they would like to do in the transfer market. They are keen on young players with potential resale value. This clarity of thought from Boston has been obscured by poor choices in employing the men to implement it. Damien Comolli overpaid for even the young players he bought. Eventually he was found out. But FSG believes it was the person, rather than the policy, that was flawed. It’s hard to disagree.
The owners were less keen on Dempsey than the manager. They struggled to accept that the only significant goalscoring target of the summer was the Fulham man. There must be, they believed, younger strikers out there with potential to grow. They also knew that Carroll could not be allowed to leave before he was replaced by at least one forward. Rodgers and Ian Ayre, the managing director, were expressly told that this situation should not happen.
Which makes the last-week meltdown even more shocking. Rodgers looked to have won his battle when a deal was agreed with Fulham for Dempsey with Henderson going the other way. It would have been against everything that "Moneyball" logic stands for – an Ł18 million youngster traded for an ageing striker - but it was sanctioned. It fell apart when Henderson refused to go to London.
Then everything collapsed. It looked like Daniel Sturridge was heading for Anfield on an initial loan with a clause to buy after a season. It was a bigger financial commitment than the Dempsey deal. As the transfer neared completion, Carroll went to West Ham. Then, at the last moment, Rodgers vetoed the move. One day was left in the window.
Dempsey appeared to be the only option. Unfortunately, Tottenham Hotspur made a bigger bid and Liverpool were left with egg on their face. The owners were even more flabbergasted when Rodgers was quoted as saying that the Carroll deal was “99.9 per cent finance”. It looked like Boston had forced the loan through. The fanbase went into uproar.
Rodgers, like all managers, was desperate to get his man. However, he was clearly working to a different agenda to FSG. This is the biggest worry for Liverpool in the future. The lines of communication failed.
Which brings everything back to FSG’s biggest mistake. The owners cannot run the club – never mind a transfer window – from Boston. The need for strong leadership at Anfield is shown more starkly with every crisis that occurs. Ayre is not chief executive material. As football administrators go, he is a pygmy, even in an area that has few giants. He should have been the bridge between owners and manager. So why did everyone drown last week?
Henry’s response was the letter. The things that stood out from it were the acceptance that FSG have made mistakes in their two years of ownership and the emphasis on the long-term health of the club.
Football is a tough business. Lots of things about it do not make sense – especially to someone with a background in American sport. The game here can be ugly and it encourages dishonesty and duplicity. In the States, there are entirely different ethical problems for owners but dealings are much more transparent.
FSG have not been hands-on enough. They know that. They need a greater presence on Merseyside, or employ someone they trust to make the ownership work properly. There are signs that they recognise this. Tom Werner, the chairman, was at the Premier League meeting yesterday and is one of the driving forces in trying to bring an extra level of Financial Fair Play to the top flight. Werner has allies in Manchester United and Arsenal – in matters of football politics, it is better to be on the same side as United than against them, as the Suarez incident showed.
Werner’s involvement - and he was forthright in exchanges with clubs like Manchester City, who are against wide-ranging regulation - backed up Henry’s assertion in his letter that FSG are at Anfield for the long run. Rumours have circulated that the Americans are looking for a buyer for Liverpool and that the cost-cutting of the summer was trimming the fat for a sale. There is no evidence for this and Henry, in particular, is desperate to make a success of the club.
If that is to happen, the disconnect between owners and manager needs to be fixed – and quickly. Rodgers is FSG’s appointment and they will back him to the hilt. However, even more than cash, the manager needs someone in the boardroom with the ability to convince Boston to go with his judgement. Equally, Anfield needs someone with the status to say no to the manager when Rodgers wants too much. Henry knows this. They need to find the right man. Yesterday. Anfield has drifted for too long.
Henry and FSG are not going anywhere. They will only spend in a manner they believe to be wise and this is no bad thing. The letter, quite rightly, claimed the club is healthier now than when they arrived.
They will be prudent. The manager had better get used to it, the fans too. They won’t be pumping huge amounts of cash in but, unlike Hicks and Gillett or the Glazers, they will not take massive amounts out. They should be held to account for their mistakes but last week was about wider issues.
The learning phase is over. The next months require action and progression. With strong leadership, comedy and chaos will be a thing of the past. It is time for action and for Henry to prove the letter was not just words.
