Good article from Tomkins today about the realities facing LFC and also Arsenal and Spurs in trying to break into the top 3 and win a league but it's long as usual so I'll post this excerpt which is relevant to my views on our ability to compete across all fronts. CL football will hurt us too but it has the benefit of massive amounts of wedge thrown your way to take the edge off.
Cups with a limited squad
In Rafa Benítez’s case I believe he takes his teams on so many extended cup runs it makes the league form harder to keep constant – because he always ends up with rescheduled fixtures and games crammed in towards the end of the season; and even the biggest squads can struggle there (and only at Chelsea has he had a big squad). This leads us into another area, in that silverware is important – but the cups (and particularly the Europa League) damage league form.
If playing games every three or four days increases the likelihood of injuries (and the famed AC Milan lab said it did), then to play 60-65 games a season means more injuries, which means you need a bigger squad to cope. But if you have a limited budget, you almost certainly cannot add both quantity and quality. You add quantity, and it’s spread too thin; you add quality and you don’t have enough fit and able bodies and risk losing all of your investment in one or two bad injuries. (Youth graduates are one answer, but they are often inconsistent, and that inconsistency then becomes the gaping hole in the squad.)
My sense is that even for an outside chance to win the title, Liverpool have to focus solely on the league, and use all of the cups for squad players and youth graduates, with Rodgers (or Klopp, Benítez or whoever) not even travelling with the team to cup games, but staying at Melwood to drill the senior side for the league fixture. But I don’t think any managers are ever keen on that, because they need trophies for their CVs – and some fans will want silverware and league success, because they think it’s 1986. And no one who pays to travel to watch games wants to see a shadow squad put out. It’s just that it might be for the greater good.
Managers want to win trophies, to instil a winning mentality. And the ‘problem’ is, when you finally get into the Champions League you naturally have to take it seriously – and then, of course, your league form can suffer, and you fall down the league table, perhaps out of the top four. The answer? Bigger, more expensive squads. Something which FSG can’t afford, and in Liverpool’s case, FFP won’t allow. The owners had a brief go, as could be seen in the spending of 2011 (Liverpool almost went into the Title Zone), but that was their first year in charge, and the only year when they could spend big and not fall foul of FFP. Since then it’s been far more complicated, with some expensive duds, some supposed duds who came good, and Luis Suarez, who came and then went.
In Rafa Benítez’s case I believe he takes his teams on so many extended cup runs it makes the league form harder to keep constant – because he always ends up with rescheduled fixtures and games crammed in towards the end of the season; and even the biggest squads can struggle there (and only at Chelsea has he had a big squad). This leads us into another area, in that silverware is important – but the cups (and particularly the Europa League) damage league form.
If playing games every three or four days increases the likelihood of injuries (and the famed AC Milan lab said it did), then to play 60-65 games a season means more injuries, which means you need a bigger squad to cope. But if you have a limited budget, you almost certainly cannot add both quantity and quality. You add quantity, and it’s spread too thin; you add quality and you don’t have enough fit and able bodies and risk losing all of your investment in one or two bad injuries. (Youth graduates are one answer, but they are often inconsistent, and that inconsistency then becomes the gaping hole in the squad.)
My sense is that even for an outside chance to win the title, Liverpool have to focus solely on the league, and use all of the cups for squad players and youth graduates, with Rodgers (or Klopp, Benítez or whoever) not even travelling with the team to cup games, but staying at Melwood to drill the senior side for the league fixture. But I don’t think any managers are ever keen on that, because they need trophies for their CVs – and some fans will want silverware and league success, because they think it’s 1986. And no one who pays to travel to watch games wants to see a shadow squad put out. It’s just that it might be for the greater good.
Managers want to win trophies, to instil a winning mentality. And the ‘problem’ is, when you finally get into the Champions League you naturally have to take it seriously – and then, of course, your league form can suffer, and you fall down the league table, perhaps out of the top four. The answer? Bigger, more expensive squads. Something which FSG can’t afford, and in Liverpool’s case, FFP won’t allow. The owners had a brief go, as could be seen in the spending of 2011 (Liverpool almost went into the Title Zone), but that was their first year in charge, and the only year when they could spend big and not fall foul of FFP. Since then it’s been far more complicated, with some expensive duds, some supposed duds who came good, and Luis Suarez, who came and then went.
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