Football - #WengerOut

[ljkeane]

Meh, I've seen Liverpool win the Champions League and be competitive. Winning it again would be nice but what matters is winning the league, and being in the Champions League would almost certainly be detrimental to our chances of doing that.

[Consigliere]

Well Liverpool are guaranteed to be involved in European competition next season. The only question is whether it is CL or EL. As Liverpool found out last season and us this season, the fixture schedule doesn't do the team any favours if they happen to progress to the latter stages of the EL whereas your fixtures tend to be more evenly spread out for the CL. Besides, despite what a few might think, the CL is still the most prestigious club competition on the planet and quality players want to be involved in it. Qualification would make Liverpool a more attractive destination, helping the club to add some much needed depth as well as giving the club a better chance of holding on to their star players.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

3 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Pretty much. CL has been awesome this year for the most part and it would be a massive disappointment to me if Liverpool didn't get it next year. 

Coun't me in as a Pool fan who would love to see us back in CL regularly.I'm a bit surprised at some of my fellow fans here and their attitude towards CL. Not play in CL but finish as mid-table fodder every year?.Ok then.And somehow go from mid-table to winning the league?

[ljkeane]

31 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

And somehow go from mid-table to winning the league?

You mean like Chelsea just did? And Leicester the season before that and we probably should have in 2014?

[AncalagonTheBlack]

11 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

You mean like Chelsea just did? And Leicester the season before that and we probably should have in 2014?

You're comparing us to Chelsea? Chelsea who regularly qualify for CL and have players much better than us? And once-in-a-lifetime freakshow like Leicester? Good thing you're not our coach!

[ljkeane]

Just now, AncalagonTheBlack said:

You're comparing our players to Chelsea? Chelsea who regularly qualify for CL? And once-in-a-lifetime freakshow like Leicester? Good thing you're not our coach!

I'm pointing out that two of the last 4 sides to win the league have done so after clearly benefiting from not playing in Europe and it required Liverpool shooting themselves in the foot for it to not be 3 out of the last 4.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Just now, ljkeane said:

I'm pointing out that two of the last 4 sides to win the league have done so after clearly benefiting from not playing in Europe and it required Liverpool shooting themselves in the foot for it to not be 3 out of the last 4.

And i'm pointing out to you that's not how it works for majority of times.Forget the last 2 years.Convince me by showing examples from the last 10 years.The teams finishing regularly in top 4 and CL have the best players/squads.It means they have a better chance of winning league titles.Nothing is 100% guaranteed but it's much more likely to happen than if you're a mid-table team.

[Mark Antony]

Yeah having no mid week game didn't really matter at all this year so why would it next year? Getting better players would And CL is a huge attraction to the quality of player that woud help Liverpool. 

[ljkeane]

Hate to break it to you but we aren't going to have the best squad next season. We're unlikely to have the best squad for the forseeable future. We might possibly be able to scrape together the best starting team through astute buys and a serviceable squad but we're going to need an edge somewhere to win the league. Hopefully Klopp can provide some of that but not playing midweek games is one such advantage, and it's clearly been a big one in recent seasons.

[Philokles]

Leicester are such an anomaly - their success and method of success is unrepeatable. Chelsea's model is more emulatable, but is from a different starting point to Liverpool's. They already had a CL calibre squad that formed the bulk of a title winning side only two years ago. Three or four consecutive top-four finishes could build up a squad capable of challenging for the league and fund a financial model where a year outside Europe is weatherable despite a high wage bill. Then a new manager coming in to freshen up ideas coinciding with no distractions might create the perfect conditions for a title tilt, but it is risky as you could easily regress further. Either way, it requires a CL finish to begin with.

[Iskaral Pust]

I don't want Liverpool to miss out on CL and be a nobody mid-table team, and I much prefer it to the EL fixtures and travel, but I won't get to see many of their CL games because of how ESPN selects which games to broadcast, and I know it will drag on our PL performances that I can watch.  So as much as I want my team to qualify, selfishly I won't benefit much -- which is why I'm a bit ambivalent -- but more importantly I know doesn't fix our long term problems.  We're the fifth richest club in the PL, with Spurs breathing down our neck and Everton with a new sugar daddy, and we're an unfashionable city where players with choices won't want to live.  Even with regular CL qualification, we'll be outspent by other clubs.  To win a league title, we need to pull off an upset outperformance, which is less likely with European games. 

Perhaps we'll invest a lot more in our squad and trust our back-ups with the CL group games. 

[baxus]

15 hours ago, Consigliere said:

Not having CL football would have an effect on the quality of players you would be able to sign since the top players want to compete at that level. It would also impact your ability to hang onto your top players. We (United) have been able to attract players because we have the resources to throw around silly money in fees and wages. Eventually though even silly money won't be enough and continued absence from the CL will affect our ability to attract and keep hold of top players.

Yeah, and that's why so many top players sign for CL teams from Belgium, Netherlands, Greece etc.

Let's be honest here and say that money has become the main reason why players sign for clubs. If CL was the main reason, Chelsea would have seen at least half their squad leave last summer. It's just that teams out of CL must pay more for players. Of course, there are some exceptions.

14 hours ago, Horse of Kent said:

Couldn't disagree more that the Champions League is no longer the draw it once was.

I'd love seeing Liverpool in the CL, no doubt about that. There's just no substitution for the prestige of being amongst the European elite.

We sure have Arsenal a lot of crap for dropping out of the knockout stages immediately year after year, but we have to admit that playing in CL for almost twenty consecutive years is no mean feat.

[Mark Antony]

7 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Perhaps we'll invest a lot more in our squad and trust our back-ups with the CL group games. 

Flashbacks to Rodgers playing our b squad at the Bernabeu. *horror* . Nah if we get CL no way Klopp doesn't take it seriously.

[Consigliere]

2 hours ago, baxus said:

Yeah, and that's why so many top players sign for CL teams from Belgium, Netherlands, Greece etc.

Obviously I was speaking only about Liverpool's situation. Liverpool have far more financial resources than any club in Belgium, Netherlands or Greece. Yes, money plays a role but so does offering CL football in attracting and keeping hold of top players. There is little doubt that for a club like Liverpool having CL football to offer would make the job of attracting quality talent and keeping hold of their existing quality players a bit easier.

[Mark Antony]

Well that was predictable 

[ljkeane]

Well that was grim. Probably 70% plus of possession and other than the penalty, which there was really no need for Southampton to concede, never looked close to scoring. Without Mane Liverpool look so toothless.

[Iskaral Pust]

So glad I didn't get up early for that.  The 6-1 LC game is Klopp's only victory over the Saints so far.  They know how to fend us off. 

[Consigliere]

Mignolet should have been sent off too.

[polishgenius]

5 hours ago, baxus said:

Let's be honest here and say that money has become the main reason why players sign for clubs. If CL was the main reason, Chelsea would have seen at least half their squad leave last summer.

But there was a reasonable amount of certainty that Chelsea would get back in the CL this season. One season out isn't a huge bother for most players, but consistent inability to offer it is a problem.

Liverpool should be able to spend more money than they do, anyway, surely? Sure, Ed Woodward's monetisation of our international profile isn't very dignified, but it gets results in terms of the ludicrous money we can spend on players. Pretty sure Liverpool aren't that far behind- although they'll continue to fall off the longer they fail to offer CL football - but they've just not made use of it in the same way.

[ljkeane]

7 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Liverpool should be able to spend more money than they do, anyway, surely?

You'd think they probably could have spent more money last summer if they'd wanted to. The net spend really wasn't too much at all.

I think the owners are a bit gun shy after some decidedly hit and miss results on transfers since they've taken over though. Added to that Klopp doesn't strike me as a manager who's big on drafting in large numbers of players, he seems to like coaching and developing the players he has a lot more.

It looks like with no European football this season they made the decision to cut back on the size of the squad and concentrate on the core combinations getting game time together. They probably also thought they had better squad depth than has turned out to be the case. Can for large parts of the season in midfield, Origi and Sturridge up front and Sakho in defence all looked decent options at the start of the season and have been disappointments for whatever reason.