Strictly Business
By Steve Kelly
Issue 66, Autumn 2004
I’ve become quite the little media whore on the quiet. I do a weekly column in an Irish newspaper about the Reds, which last season might as well have been subtitled “Gerard Houllier: Demon, Fool or both?”.
As the club started to insert its collective tongue down the back of Shinawatra’s shorts, the man from the ‘Telegraph’ lifted a quote from the article in TTW&R 64. It ended up in almost every paper, sparking a spate of demands for further soundbites. Weird, isn’t it? When we win 3 cups in one season, none of the buggers came anywhere near me. Hmmmmm.........
TV being the singularly unimaginative medium that it is, someone at the BBC thought it would be a wizard wheeze for me and Rogan Taylor to discuss the deal. You’ll never guess where.........yup, in a Thai restaurant! I know a fabulous little Italian place, so if anyone wants to start a little Berlusconi rumour feel free. Anyhoo, I declined the invitation, and apologised to Rogan (that’s one meal I owe you).
During the summer, he gave my number to a chap at Radio 5 who was doing a piece along the lines of “what’s gone wrong with Liverpool?”. He was coming at it from a business angle. Now, regular readers will find this a bit strange but sometimes I find talking to outsiders about our current deficiencies unsettling – treacherous, almost. I mean, it’s okay that I’m telling you what’s fucked up about the club because you’re not going to spread it around. We’re Reds together, what we say to each other goes no further than these here pages. Right?
The guy called me, and after 30 minutes he had one thought on his mind. Actually, he probably had two: “does this **** ever breathe in?” was one (unexpressed) and the other was “I can’t tell whether you’re anti-Moores or not”. Maybe I was in a good mood. The decision to sack Houllier and bring in Benitez had certainly made a lot of fans happier than they would have been.
But in all honesty, I genuinely believe that every Liverpool manager since the halcyon days has had more than adequate funds. The key role at any football club, even from a business perspective, is that of the team coach. The chief scout also has a big role to play, because Football (like any other business) operates successfully on one golden rule: Buy Low, Sell High. All too often, we’ve done the reverse.
I had to laugh at the theme of the programme in any case. Okay, ‘This Is Anfield’ and we are judged by a higher standard than almost everyone else – but it occurred to me that 80% of the listeners would be sitting there shaking their heads in disbelief. “Oh yeah, this decade really is turning into shit for Liverpool isn’t it? 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 5th and 4th. Four cups. 5 trips to Cardiff. Three Champions League campaigns. Just managed to attract one of the greatest coaches in Europe. Oh boo hoo hoo. Poor old Anfield, however do they keep themselves from slashing their wrists” etc etc.
While such cynicism is understandable, it’s water off a duck’s back. I don’t even have to defend my/our stance. We are one of the greatest football clubs in the world, it’s beyond dispute, and for us not to have won our domestic championship for 14 years is a poor state of affairs. As I hinted before, I’m not sure this is entirely down to Moores. True, he’s as much use as a chocolate teapot for coffee drinkers who are allergic to chocolate – but a club ultimately stands or falls by the judgement of its manager.
It’s an equation I’ve mentioned before, largely because I never tire of thinking about it. It gives me an incredible glow all over. We bought Keegan for 30k in 1971. We sold him for 500k six years later, and used the profit to buy Dalglish. We bought Rush for 300k, sold him to Juventus for 3,3m and got him back a year later for 3m. So do the maths: apart from their wages, everything Keegan Dalglish and Rush did for Liverpool, they did for nothing. We may even have made a slight profit! That’s 514 goals scored, countless goals created, inspiration that cannot possibly be quantified and (in Kenny’s case) the chance to witness a Legend that will warm the coldest of cockles for generations to come.
It is that ingenuity, genius perhaps, that fuelled the (still) unparalleled success of Liverpool FC. I’ve isolated three cases, but I could have named many others. Even before we found the likes of Hansen and Nicol in the frozen north, we’d won Europe’s most glittering prize. Nine of the eleven heroes of Rome were completely unknown until they wore the red of Liverpool. At some unremarkable stage in their development, somebody (usually Shankly, sometimes Paisley or the late, GREAT Geoff Twentyman) had foreseen greatness in the winger at Skelmersdale (Heighway), the right back at Northampton (Neal) or the goalkeeper at Scunthorpe (Clemence). Liverpool’s Boot Room, now usually the target for ridicule for harking back to “ye olden days”, had nurtured from youth level the likes of Ian Callaghan, Tommy Smith and Jimmy Case.
And when the quality players became available, the “cash no object/100% guaranteed success” stars, enough money had been stored away that it was no financial hardship to sign them. If Arsenal didn’t want Ray Kennedy or Newcastle were prepared to accept mere money for Terry McDermott – players who should really have been beyond price – that was their misfortune and our good luck. We reached a level that even Celtic could not keep their demigod striker happy once he knew that we wanted him.
Souness, Johnston, Lawrenson, Barnes, Beardsley. Expensive players who were no risk whatsoever. All great things must come to an end, and in a way bringing Rush back began the decline. We did not need him, Aldridge had been exceptional and the 87/88 side is still spoken of in hushed tones. Ending Rushie’s Italian nightmare smacked a little of showing off, doing it because we could. Veron Syndrome! There was something karmic about the huge number of injuries we had, though no one remembers them because of the 96 fatalities later that season. Swiping Glenn Hysen from a dithering Alex Ferguson was also asking for trouble.
Although 90/91 wasn’t great, we still achieved a high points tally. It was no disgrace to lose the title to an Arsenal side that lost only one league game (not much has changed, has it!). We had by now become accustomed to Evertonian whines about the (ahem) ‘Heysel Effect’, merely pausing to list the huge number of shite footballers that had worn the royal blue since 85 and mentioning their 1987 title (bit of a delayed effect, then?).
As if to assist us in our 24/7 arguments with the bitter blues, along came Graeme Souness to immediately prove our theory. We had said all along that if Liverpool bought poor players, sold good ones, made mistakes in fitness and lacked inspiration, we would no longer dominate English football. No sooner had he arrived than he made his presence felt, spending an unnecessarily large sum on Dean Saunders and Mark Wright. The ‘big splash’ had worked in Glasgow, so Souness thought it would work here. It helps if you buy the right players, mind, and it’s hard to imagine that Derby County would have been relegated if two of their players had actually been worth five million pounds (chickenfeed now, a king’s ransom then).
Right on cue, almost as if there had been a pact with the devil, United and Ferguson became inspired at the exact same moment Liverpool became inept. This was pre-Moores, I hasten to add. By the time the ineffectual Noel White moved aside, Moores was handed full command in a battle that was already lost.
When discussing the perceived business deficiencies of LFC (and I’m certainly not daft enough to think there aren’t any), it’s interesting to compare and contrast our early-90’s team with the players that ended United’s 26-year wait. It makes me angry just to even think about it. Schmeichel James, Parker Jones, Irwin Dicks, Bruce Piechnik, Pallister Ruddock, Kanchelskis Walters, Giggs McManaman, Ince Stewart, Keane Redknapp, Hughes Rush, Cantona Saunders. In 11 individual battles, how many would we win? Two? Three at the most?
And there is no single player that we can say “we couldn’t afford him and only United could”. Not one. Where the ‘wealth gap’ might have made a difference is when Ferguson bought numerous duds and was allowed to spend even more until he started getting it right. I’m sure it would be incredibly spiteful to mention the name of Ralph Milne at this point.........so I won’t.
The greatness we achieved in the 70’s and 80’s contrasted sharply with United’s relative lack of success. For a long time, they simply bought whoever happened to be flavour of that particular month – especially strikers; Wyn Davies, Ron Davies, Ted McDougall, Lou Macari, Garth Crooks, Alan Brazil, Peter Davenport. Joe Jordan and of course The Great Gary Birtles.
Now, as if by magic (black magic, probably), United had all the ingenuity in the world and we were buying one dud after another. Christ, we even bought our very own hopeless forward from the very same club! Nigel Clough had a few great moments, most notably and ironically against United themselves, but for the most part he was a waste of space and quite definitely a waste of cash. It was money we could no longer afford to lose.
We were saved from obscurity by a number of factors. Roy Evans was a good manager, who stopped the Souness rot – and Steve Heighway was beginning to bring through some extraordinary talent from the Academy. It was always felt that if United could harness their superior spending power to a quality manager, they would be a threat. That still should ‘only’ have left us in second place, however – and not the 6th, 6th and 8th that Souness managed. Our buys were, for the most part, rotten beyond belief. As Roy began to utilise the young talent at his disposal, United’s own youth policy began to kick in and they retained their superiority.
The concept of The Balance Sheet was alien to the silver spoon-fed chairman, a man who had probably never heard the word ‘economise’ in his life. Unlike previous chairmen, he did not seem to chip in with his own views. As far as he was concerned, if Graeme or Roy or Gerard said the player was quality then that was all the proof he needed. Similarly, if Peter Robinson or Rick Parry came to him with a business idea or new revenue streams or whatever the fuck they’re called – would David actually know whether they were good or bad? The image that is handed down to us is that he probably wouldn’t. We can’t know for certain, but it is the perceived dithering of Moores (a supreme example being his ultra loyalty to managers that everyone else knew were finished) that presumably sparked the interest of Radio 5. I’ve been to one AGM, and I can’t say there was any evidence to the contrary. Others have told me the same thing.
And no doubt Moores’ image was also partly responsible for the support for Steve Morgan at the end of last season. Balancing the books, running the club in a business-like fashion – this would be music to our ears, and who better to play it than the local lad made good? It’s been driving me mad for about ten years. Anfield has become the football equivalent of a car boot sale. Expensive items bought without thought or purpose, dumped as cheaply as possible as soon as we’d got them. The length of the list of expensive flops that had to be sold just to get them off the wage bill, and to stop their mediocrity from infecting the rest of the squad, can scarcely be believed.
Even the great season under Gerard was littered with similar discrepancies. Camara and Song were sold to ‘arry The ‘at, and nobody seemed to care if we got much back. Ziege was brought in despite the cost and controversy, only to vanish within a year. Barmby was even more expensive and even more controversial, but again was on his way after two years for almost half the price we paid. A million here, two million there – sooner or later it all adds up and it turns out that you can’t buy the player you really wanted because you weren’t so careful beforehand. 10m for Diouf: couldn’t we have signed Duff for 13m? We definitely could have bought Anelka for 12m.
So by all means make more money, but to me it smacks of the “throw enough mud and some will stick” approach of Chelsea. It encourages lazy thinking, and your advantage is soon lost. Even if it does succeed, what’s the point? Where’s the achievement? Why don’t they nip down to the nearest silversmith, have a copy of the Premiership trophy made and have “Chelsea 2005” engraved on the bottom? It amounts to virtually the same thing.
While I was waffling on about the 70’s and Shankly, I just know some bright spark was reading it and thinking “yeah, but it’s a different game now”. Oh yeah? Two words: Arsene fucking Wenger.
Before anyone accuses me of selectivity, I am fully aware of Jeffers and Stepanovs and Luzhny. Wiltord, despite scoring some important goals, did cost a lot and his contract was allowed to run out. That is all overshadowed by the good stuff. Six names stand out in the recent history of Arsenal: Henry, Vieira, Pires, Campbell, Overmars and Anelka. I estimate that they cost Arsenal about £30m for the lot. Two were sold for 40m, and the others would probably bring in another £100m if Wenger were stupid enough to want that (which he isn’t). So he’s added well over £100m to the value of the playing staff, what I suppose we have to call their “assets” nowadays. There’s also the small matter of the trophies these players have helped him win.
So people will obviously stress the importance of the manager on the football side, but on the business side he is also the pivotal man at the club. He can make or break you: get the wrong man in, and you can be as fiscally sound as you like. You won’t remain that way for very long. It was incredibly sly of Houllier to whine about the power of United and Chelsea in the transfer market, and conveniently forget to mention Arsenal – with their ground just over half the size of Old Trafford, with a national and worldwide fan base that does not even begin to compete with United’s or ours.
There is no such thing as “the good old days”. What worked before works now. Is it any wonder that Arsenal have overtaken United? Ferguson has become fat, lazy and complacent. Over one hundred million pounds has been spent on five players, with varying results. The Horse has supplied goals, but Veron didn’t create them. Forlan was a joke, Ferdinand’s recklessness has cost them big time, and the list of Little Jason’s in-no-way-bent-no-siree clients simply takes the breath away. Long may it continue.
Morgan will play on the business angle, especially on balancing the books, and rightly so. Modern fans may want to consign the achievements of Shankly to history, but from December 1959 (Liverpool: halfway down the second division) to May 1964 (Liverpool: champions of England) we saw a rise of 30 league places – and not a single penny overspent in the transfer market. Shankly turfed out the underachievers, brought in the first giants of the modern Liverpool and built a platform for future greatness. The ‘in’ column matched the ‘out’ column, to the penny.
Is Steve Morgan the man to bring that kind of ingenuity/ parsimony back to the club? There are those who say he couldn’t really do any worse, but it would be wrong to underestimate Moores, especially when he holds nearly all of the cards. Didn’t he say something at the AGM about considering his own position? The dismal season, the poor football and an even more dismal 60 points should surely have brought him to only one conclusion. No sooner had Houllier been pushed onto his sword and Rafa brought in, than the fans soon forgot about the AGM and the ridiculous ‘loyalty’ that has seen three consecutive managers outstay their welcome. He’s not as stupid as he looks, but maybe we are?
And never underestimate the superstitions of football fans, either. Better the devil you know? There’s something to be said for it. I know a few City fans, and once you get past all the usual Manc crap about Scousers they’re alright. I can turn them all deathly pale in seconds, and all I need are three little words: Forward With Franny. Peter Swales was no great shakes admittedly, and howling at the gates urging on the no doubt ‘massive’ mob of dissatisfied Citeh fans was none other than the bog roll king himself. A few years into his tenure, and Francis had a whole new market for his product! Manchester City fell two divisions, having employed some of the worst managers in their history – and that takes some doing. I’m not saying the same will happen if Steve Morgan gets his hands on the club, but it would be unwise to assume that somebody who made millions in business can automatically run a big football club. We can excuse Peter Johnson of course, as he can always claim to be a Red Saboteur.
Whoever finally gets to control the destiny of LFC must be made aware that we can, and must, do better. I reckon it’s a pipedream to even think about duplicating past glories, though. What, seven championships in 9 years? 4 European Cups in the same period? Dream on. Those days aren’t coming back, and maybe it’s time to reassess our history? How did we become the most successful club in England?
When both the championship and the European Cup seemed to be our divine right, we had what the poets would no doubt call a Holy Trinity: Bob Paisley, John Smith, Peter Robinson. Each of them masters of their profession, but more importantly they knew a little about the others’ jobs too. They went to see players together, and while Smith would certainly not have had the nerve to tell Paisley about football he would know if he was watching a class player or not. If everything was right, and no-one had any doubts, they would act decisively. Many older fans deplore the boring, dragged-out nature of modern transfers, harking back to a day when LFC did their business in private. Add the diligence and expert eye of Geoff Twentyman, and it is no wonder we dominated the game.
It is hard to imagine David Moores fulfilling a similar role. He has supplied the money, but has he ever said no to a manager? You would hardly think so. So the recent ‘trinity’ adds up to two, Parry and Houllier. The former’s relative inexperience, and Gerard’s growing power after three cups and a life-threatening illness, weakened him when it came to making the BIG decisions that needed to be made. Once Houllier went off the rails around the time of the ‘plateau’, the new Trinity was weaker still.
Parry has found an excellent replacement in Benitez. It may all turn out wrong in the end, but he would have been on every Red’s shortlist and to prise him away from the Spanish champions is a major coup. Perhaps the rise of Morgan may indeed renew a formidable threesome (ahem) to rival the 80’s. A chairman has to know when to keep out of it and when to step in. Not even Shankly got his own way on transfers all the time, and while that has been passed down to us in the mythology of boardroom idiocy/lethargy I prefer to think of it simply as good business sense. They weren’t 100% sure because Shanks hadn’t completely convinced them, so the message was stark and simple: “go back” “think it through” “only when we’re all convinced will this move take place” - and who’s to say that it didn’t inspire the great man to new heights of ingenuity?
As for the scouting system, it is perhaps unfair to cast too much doubt on the likes of Ron Yeats and Alex Miller. I heard a story long ago that Rowdy recommended Tore Andre Flo to Evans at a ludicrously low 500k, but it was Roy who passed on the deal. Ultimately, the manager will make the final decision. You’d have to ask yourself just how much attention the likes of Gerard Houllier is going to pay to anyone else’s opinion, anyway. We know of Twentyman’s great expertise, but we never found out about players he suggested who weren’t up to scratch because Shankly and Paisley simply didn’t buy them. There were press stories last year about an Irish scout who tried to send Robbie Keane, John O’Shea and Damien Duff our way – to no avail.
It has been suggested that Heighway has little time for non-Merseyside players, but in all fairness the talent supplied from Youth level can hardly be said to have held the club back. In many ways, the likes of Carragher McManaman Fowler Owen and Gerrard have helped paper over the cracks of our muddle-headed policy at the more expensive end of the scale. It is imperative that we improve in this area, and hopefully Rafa will be a little more aware of what’s going on at the Academy. Steve Warnock’s early progress and the team v Millwall are a good start.
So we’re back to the sound business habit of buying low and selling high – and you can’t get lower than “nothing”! The 90’s should have taught us this, and two of Roy’s signings make it clear as crystal that the club was becoming lazy and ineffectual. Stan Collymore was scoring goals and playing well for Southend. Forest took a risk with £2m, Stan blasted around 50 goals in two seasons – then we stroll up and go “oh yeah, we’ll have him – how does £8m sound?”. For the sake of not having a scout going round with the ability to spot these things, £6m extra was spent. McAteer was a local lad, a Liverpool fan for crying out loud, playing in local non-league football. He eventually began to shine at Bolton, and we spent nearly £5m. So within the space of two months, Roy spent £13m on two players that could have been brought in for a mere £2m two years earlier. A far cry from the days of hanging around Scunthorpe to snuffle out Clemence and Keegan. This is the expertise and dogged persistence that Liverpool have lost, and all the Thai deals or builders’ investments or movie millions in the world won’t give it back to you.
Of course the money matters, it would be futile to suggest otherwise. We can always use some extra cash. Wasn’t it Rockerfeller who said that enough money was “a little more”? It is not the most important thing however, and even if we build a new ground or even (God forbid) share it with the shite, the extra revenue will simply be a red alert to players, their agents and selling clubs. It will be swallowed up unless clubs take a stand and get back to basics like “performance related pay” and hoary old chestnuts like “value for money”.
There is also the possibility that the search for money takes you to some pretty unethical people and places. Sky pays us so much now that they can fuck about with us at will: who in God’s name wants to start the football season at midday in London? There’s also the small matter of pride, and some of the sucking up administered to the likes of Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney to make them stay at the clubs they ‘support’ frankly makes my skin crawl. Fat lot of good it did Everton. That’s before you even mention the phrase “extra-judicial killings”. Someone needs to draw a line in the sand, dude: “over this line, YOU DO NOT CROSS!” etc etc. Even if those steps aren’t taken, at least one thing remains constant in football: all roads lead to the manager. How well do you play? How fit are you? How committed and, yes, even “how rich are you?” – all of these minor questions are swallowed whole by one giant one: how good is the manager?
I’m not too worried about Liverpool’s future. I’ve seen the great times, and if anything resembling them ever came back I’d be made up. What has been established at Anfield is security, natural buoyancy that keeps us afloat and away from any real long-lasting harm. It would take a series of cack-handed, brain-dead managers to turn our fortunes around to the point where we would be squabbling publicly with the likes of Birmingham over the likes of Savage, to take one gloriously ludicrous example (out of so many!)
Just look at last season. It cannot be stressed enough how eye-gougingly bad we were during 2003/04, how inept and stubborn Houllier was, how poor our football was – but there we are in 4th place! Yes, we can criticise Moores for being indecisive, because the new man always has to put in the extra effort just to get us competing again. It’s like a marathon: you lag behind the leaders, you have to run that extra bit harder to get back up with the front-runners. Will you still have the energy left for a sprint finish? Moores has clung to this pathetic myth that Liverpool “do not sack managers”. What utter crap. Of course we do, unless you really believe in the recent ‘resignations’ – and until Souness came along, who would even have considered sacking his predecessors?
But we need to look at why we became the country’s best club. I know I’m biased, and I’m quite happy to narrow Shankly and Paisley’s place in the table of managers down to the top 2. Even neutrals would quite happily agree that we followed one all-time Top 10 manager with another – NOBODY has ever done that, and that played a massive role in our eventual domination. It’s easy to say “first is first and second is nowhere” when you can walk the walk, but it is absolutely pointless to say it when you can’t. These are different times, and all we should expect from the modern Liverpool is that we compete. Anything beyond that will be a bonus to be cherished.
The Chequebook has not worked for us, that has now become clear. It is time to get back to basics, our own basics, and the things that made this club great in the first place. They are not outmoded, they are not yesterday’s way. Gerard Houllier came very close by sticking stringently to the methods of the past. If United want to spend £30m on one defender, so what? We can buy two for £7m, and have them develop an almost telepathic understanding. Everyone wanted “the gems”, but Gerard got them. For all the flak he has received once Baros became the star of Euro 2004, he still bought him and for a ridiculously cheap fee too. Riise, Babbel, McAllister. Added to the Academy lads, these were clear echoes of The Liverpool Way of old. What a shame that illness and ego got in the way. If only he had accepted his limitations, as Howard Kendall once did when EFC promoted Colin Harvey, things could be so different today.
But as bad as we were last season, we have still attracted one of the modern coaching giants to Anfield. As the glory days recede, the Legend of those times grows and grows. In fact, one journalist said betting on Tim Henman to win Wimbledon was a bit like betting on Liverpool to win the league: although it was the romantic thing to do, it was also a waste of money. The final dig aside, did you ever in your wildest dreams think you’d see a journalist call Liverpool winning the league “romantic”?
That is the real legacy of Shankly and Paisley. We are not going away, and one day we will employ the best manager in the game once more. And it will have had little to do with shares, investments or corporate hospitality. It will have had everything to do with ‘Glory’.
We, as ever, walk on.
|
