The Midweek Maxi #13: Must-Win Perspective, Political Persuasion & Dishonourable Board Members
Our new Liverpool FC weekly compendium. News. Stats. Views. Debate. Links. Data. Insights. Delights.
To read about why we’ve replaced Free Friday with The Midweek Maxi, see the intro to the first edition.
So far the bumper weekly roundup is going down extremely well with paying subscribers:
This week:
Excerpts and links to the different pieces we've published across the TTT Substack network, prior to the paywall kicking in;
Then, some of the best comments from the site this past week;
Next, Daniel Zambartas’ bumper LFC News, Media & Transfer Round-Up;
And then finally, bit of Midweek Moby (the TTT stalwart, not the beautiful bald middle-aged man), for the third mini-article of new writing within this week’s Maxi.
Job done! (Oh, and it’s also a discussion thread for the issues raised.)
Note: the Maxi may exceed the email size limit on Substack, but the whole piece can be read online by paying subscribers.
TTT Network Roundup
Links and excerpts to articles on the various TTT sites, which are run by different people and require separate subscriptions to this, the TTT Main Hub.
The Main Hub
An important message about the ethos of TTT, something which has been cultivated over many years and is vital to site and one of the main reasons there are so many long term subscribers.
But also, success has its cycles, and that includes running out of energy at times.
Attributing all success to the brilliant and transformative Jürgen Klopp is a similarly black-and-white idea, when FSG brought the "Moneyball" approach to Liverpool that saw them appoint Damien Comolli, and with Comolli came Dr Ian Graham and Michael Edwards, amongst others.
Comolli proved a bad fit, but it was the right kind of idea; and Graham and Edwards – his analytics guys – were key in Liverpool buying better players, and more vitally, key in the procurement of Klopp, as was FSG's Mike Gordon.
It wasn't an accident, nor was it a foregone conclusion that you can just go out and get Klopp. Manchester United had already failed. Klopp liked Mike Gordon, and Mike Gordon is part of FSG.
FSG's analytics guys also talked Klopp into buying Mo Salah instead of other targets, and Klopp's football helped take Salah to the next level, and vice versa. Ditto some other players, too.
So I will not allow these kinds of illogical arguments on the site.
Sparing Klopp of all criticism is also wrong, albeit he gets things right at a level that makes him one of the best the game has ever known.
You can criticise, but within the framework of knowing that no one else could do better; acknowledge Dunning-Kruger, and carry on.
Yet the transfer cockups last summer were a mixture of issues after the club stumped up £84m for Aurélien Tchouaméni, only to lose him to the sport's apex predator. The money for a midfielder was there, clearly.
(As it was for Jude Bellingham this summer, until the situation changed, with Liverpool finishing 5th, making it less tempting for the player and less affordable for the club; and the overall package for the player growing ever greater in terms of wages and signing-on fees, as, yet again, the apex predator snuck in.)
Klopp got stuff wrong last summer, and earlier in the season, but he's human; as is anyone else connected to any sport. You earn leeway in life.
While also critical of some of their decisions, I was generally defending FSG well before the Reds won the league, the Champions League, all the cups, and had three of the best seasons (points-wise) in the club's history, along with the near-title of 2014 and two more near-Champions League successes, where in the Premier League at least, a club facing financial investigations has been the winner each time Liverpool finished 2nd. (In Europe, it was finishing second to the apex predator, Real Madrid.)
As 'positive' as I can be labelled, I never expected Liverpool to surpass 90 points in the Premier League (let alone do so three times), nor reach three Champions League finals.
But the Reds' two best seasons also came on the back of almost no spending those summers, because the spending was already in the team. People said it was reckless and negligent and insane to not buy players in the summer of 2019 and 2021, when Everton presumably won the transfer windows on the way to possible financial ruin.
Indeed.
The Zen Den
As the must win pre-season comes to its climax, with the only thing that matters being the results and prestigious trophies rather than preparing fitness and tactical understanding for the upcoming season (according to the Twitter-sphere anyway), here’s a brilliant piece from Paul on perspective as the real football approaches.
Despite losing the Ashes – in part due to a Test they were going to win being rained off (Manchester, eh?) – the captain Ben Stokes noted: “I said to the players in the dressing room, ‘The reward for your work isn’t what you get, it’s what you become’. I think what we’ve managed to become is a team that people will remember.”
There's been this sense that England are just about the vibes, and that all the talk of being remembered as entertainers is nonsense; history remembers the winners, not the losers. (And the next Test was won, so they drew the series but the urn goes to the team who had it at the start of the series.)
Jonathan Liew wrote a couple of Tests ago that, “Australia can hold aloft the old Ashes trophy – silly little red thing, one for the traditionalists, take it home if you want. Stokes, meanwhile, can brandish the Vibes Urn, a giant gold-encrusted amphora filled with Red Bull and kebab meat, a real trophy for real men. The open‑top bus parade starts at 2pm the following afternoon.”
I found this a patronising, snobbish take on what England were trying to do, written by someone who sounds very insecure compared to someone like Stokes, who is reduced to an energy-drinks meathead. (In the three Tests that followed, England won two, and had a massive lead when the other was rained off, and England could have won the series 5-0, as the better team overall, but could also easily have lost it 3-1. That’s the fine margins of sport and, in this case, the most fine-margin Test series in history.)
Yet Stokes, unlike Liew, was the man in the arena.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
But hey, when it comes to gutless snark, Liew has Stokes beaten hands down.
I've been noting for 20 years – or at least since 2007 when the Reds lost the Champions League final in which they played better in (having won the won in which they were outplayed, albeit it was one of the best games ever) – that people remember Hungary 1954, Holland in the 1970s, and even on a lesser scale, Newcastle under Kevin Keegan.
The winners may often write history, but if we observed it, we can remember it ourselves.
I'll remember Mauricio Pochettino's Spurs side more than the one that won a trophy under Juande Ramos, not least as I can tell stories and talk about the players from the former, and how they went close to the title and the Champions League, and have no recollection of the latter whatsoever. I couldn't even tell you who played for them in 2008. If, as a Spurs fan, you yearned for 2008 and not 2015-2019, I pity you. (Even the trophy-less Harry Redknapp years were far better than 2008.)
As Liverpool fans we'll remember the Luis Suarez years, and the Fernando Torres years. Torres won nothing with Liverpool; but almost everything with Chelsea. So what? Who is is he remembered as being a great for? Whose hearts and minds did he win? Ditto winning nothing in his first years with Atlético Madrid. They idolised him.
This Red Planet
Here’s the next part in the ‘Football is Fucked’ series.
Forget dismembering journalists with a bonesaw; forget numerous violations of international humanitarian law - including killing 9,000 citizens in Yemen; forget being able to divorce your wife without her knowledge or consent; forget charging children for capital crimes and being sentenced as adults if they show physical signs of puberty; forget horrific and degrading treatment of migrant workers; forget corrupt trials without legal representation before being beheaded in public; forget asking for equal rights for LGBT people without being forced to have an anal exam or spend ten months in prison; no, the biggest reason you might not go and take the Saudi Arabian cash is because of your two French bulldogs are classed as dangerous in the country, for fucks sake.
And breathe…
The focus of this part is an academic study called ‘Football as Soft Power: The Political Use of Football in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’, which brilliantly outlines the historical context, the key differences between each nations’ approach to sportswashing, their past intentions coupled with their plans for the future.
Dynasty
This instalment of the series focuses on the period of unrest in the immediate aftermarth of the 2007 Champions League final in Athens, as Rafa Benitez’s relationship with the club’s American owners broke down.
Originally a series of articles written by TTT Subscriber Anthony Stanley, this series was first serialised on The Tomkins Times and then published by TTT as a book, called A BANQUET WITHOUT WINE - A Quarter-Century of Liverpool FC in the Premier League Era.
The Liverpool board were getting cold feet and with mounting fears that the deal would not go ahead and with previous deadlines having passed, Moores rang the DIC chair, Sameer al-Ansari, to express their concerns. The apparent response that Moores got from al-Ansari, an almost scathing ‘if you don’t commit to DIC by 5pm today, we’re walking away’ finally convinced the Liverpool chairman to change direction.
DIC were furious at the collapse, describing the club as a ‘shambles’ and the Liverpool board as ‘dishonourable.’ Moores claimed that ‘you’re not going to blackmail Liverpool Football Club. No one’s going to treat us like that, we’ll call your bluff.’ The result was that Hicks and Gillett were given practically a free run in the take-over saga but as John Williams noted in Red Men:
‘Moores might well have favoured passing on his Liverpool shares to the Americans for reason other than profit. After all, these were two identifiable sports benefactors from across the Atlantic, people who understood the global sports business and who had money to invest, but also had the club apparently at heart.’
In short, despite some fears and despite the club going against years of the oft-quoted ‘Liverpool Way’, the patrician, conservative history of the remnants of the Littlewoods empire, many embraced the idea, particularly when the two Americans played an expert charm offensive to the gallery of Liverpool fans in their numerous interviews with the media. Certainly, it was not viewed with anything like the alarm with which some Manchester United fans greeted the Glazer takeover of their club.
The Transfer Hub
And finally, a look at Chieck Doucoure from Mizgan.
Not losing possession frequently and being good at recovering them is a sign of a good defensive midfielder. Doucouré has that combination in good space along with Lavia in this table.
The Palace player is second to Fabinho in aerial duel wins and not far behind Lavia in ground duel success. He is leading the pack in interceptions and is almost joint-top in tackles made.
A good fit for Liverpool?
Given his profile and how Klopp wants his defensive midfielder to operate, Doucouré is actually a good fit for Liverpool. He is a proper disruptor of opposition attacks, does not shy away from duels and tackling and is physically strong. If the hybrid system continues next season, the 23-year-old wouldn’t be required to do any heavy-lifting in possession because Trent Alexander-Arnold will join him as a deeper-lying playmaker from right-back.
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