As I said our wage bill is/was £120m compared to Spurs' £90m.
Spurs are on the cusp of finishing in the top four and earning Champions League money while paying significantly lower wages than us.
It is about spending wisely not spending more.
I was thinking about this last night. You’ve (unfortunately) got to give Spurs a lot of credit for their development over the last 5-10 years. I haven’t looked into the real drivers of their success but certainly the aura of being financially savvy appears well founded given my brief analysis and highlights the gulf between LFC and them.
We've been absolutely shocking over the last 5 years. I went through the ins and outs of both teams since 2008 (its in excel so don’t know how to link), but the list of names is quite shocking. Highlights would be that Spurs have had a net spend of £23m versus our £78m. Big transfers (>£15m) include:
Liverpool
Ins: Aquilani (£20m), Glen Johnson (£15m), Henderson (£16m), Suarez (£23m), Carroll (£35m), Downing (£20m), Allen (£15m).
Outs: Carroll (£15m), Mascherano (£18.5m), Torres (£50m), Alonso (£30).
Total Ins: £252m
Total outs: £175m
Net spend: £77.55m
Tottenham (excludes Bale transaction)
Ins: Paulinho (£17m), Dembele (£15m).
Outs: Modric (£33m)
Total ins: £131m
Total outs: £107.6m
Net spend £22.95m
Happy to send anyone the full analysis and look its not perfect; just pulled the stats from
www.transfermarkt.co.uk so not really checked validity of data. Some key takeaways for me however include:
a) The various owners since 2009 have actually backed the club and have not “asset stripped if you like”. Yes they have reduced the wage bill but have been paying out transfer fees.
b) The club seem to be targeting players in the £6-12m range. This is actually a strategy that has worked for Tottenham. The sad reality for me of this strategy is that it basically admits that your not competing for top level players and are instead targeting “up and coming” players who still have work to prove but have the ability to go from being £6m players to £25-30m players. This shouldn’t come as a shock as the strategy has been well publicised but it will be interesting to see what happens when these players do make it and bigger fish come knocking. E.g. What will management do if Courtinho and Sturridge are the star players of the year, but we still end up 5th. XYZ club comes knocking and offers £35m for each of them. I don’t think this has really been tested out and will determine if we’ve become a “selling” club or not.
c) It’s obviously going to be difficult to compete with Man U, Chelsea, Man City.. and now potentially Arsenal (for various reasons) are in the market for proven world class players.
d) Liverpool have “wasted” an awful lot of money on poor acquisitions and player churn.
Focussing on this last point, I think the best example of this is players who have been bought and then sold within 2-3 years. You look at Liverpool and we've effectively thrown away £50m on churning distinctly average players.
Liverpool (in price, out price) Tottenham
Charlie Adam 9 5 Louis Saha 0 0
Joe Cole* 0 0 Rafael van der Vaart 8 10.3
Danny Wilson 2 0 Steven Pienaar 3 3
Christian Poulson 4.5 0 Peter Crouch 9 10
Raul Meireles 11.5 12.5 Sebastian Bassong 8 0
Paul Konchesky 3 0 Niko Kranjcar 2.5 2
Andy Carroll 35 15 30.5 25.3
Alberto Aquillani 20 0
85 32.5
* I left Cole in but appreciate there was little capital outlay. I couldn’t see any similar style players in the Spurs lineout.
When you look at the longer list of ins and outs this seasons signings aside (given their unproven), the only in names that are any decent have been Glen Johnson, Suarez, Courtinho and Sturridge.. and in the other direction we've seen Alonso, Torres, Mascherano, Kuyt and Reina leave and yet still managed to have a net spend of £78mn. The only hope I have is that Courtinho and Sturridge have been signed in the last 12 months and so we've hopefully turned a corner on that. For me its our recruitment that we really need to get right. If Suarez does go then hopefully we use that money wisely and equally lets hope Arsenal and Tottenham blow their newfound riches (if Bale leaves) on dross!
One final disappointment is that there’s been numerous comments on here comparing us to Tottenham (my own analysis above)…. What’s the club come too?? “How can we make our strategy as good as a team that win chuff all oscillate between4th and 6th. Disappointing.
As I mention above, lets try and take a glass half full approach; It does look like we’ve turned a corner somewhat since 2011. Over the last three transfer windows, our ins have been: Courtinho (£8.5m) , Sturridge (£12m), Yesil (£1m), Assiadi (£2.4m), Allen (£15m), Borini (£10.5m), Toure (Free), Mignolet (£9m), Apas (£7.2m) and Alberto (£6.8m). At the same time we’ve drawn a line in the sand and permanently shifted Cole, Adam, Aquillani, Carroll and then rightly or wrongly (lets not open up that debate) Rodriguez, Kuyt and Shelvey. Of our transfers, I think most would agree that Courtinho and Sturridge have been a hit, Borini and Allen still have to prove their worth (Allen less so.. but he was £15m), and then we’ll wait and see on this years crop. But it seems as if our scouting department may be getting their act together, and hopefully avoiding some of the wasting of cash on transfers and wages of non-core players.
Yes, there have been multiple poor decisions over the last 5 years but lets not get ourselves down. Where do we stand now:
- The past is the past with regards transfers, but we seem to be getting our act together; whilst its sad to see Reina go, the club have acted decisively and got in one of the best young goal keepers in for a reasonable price. We’ve been pro-active!
- We also need to remember that we had a great 2nd half to the season with these players. In the second half of the season we came 3rd!!!
- We are Liverpool football club. We’re not some small time club, we’re one of the most successful clubs in the world ever. We generate MASSIVE revenues; £189m in 2011/2012 and the 9th largest in the world. We get the cash in, we just need to use it wisely!
