The Midweek Maxi #6: Fuck Sportswashing, Success Without Asterisks & The Return of The Transfer Price Index
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;
Andrew Beasley’s Weekly Stats Analysis, this week looking at The Transfer Price Index and how it relates to this season.
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.
TTT Main Hub
Paul, with one of his best summaries of a lot of us are feeling about football, for quite some time.
The Premier League, as a fair competition, stands as a total mess: sportswashers corrupt once humorous and self-deprecating Mancunian fans – who now wave plastic flags in a tax-payer funded stadium – with the club’s gulf-state owners (and their human rights abuses) threatening to spend more on lawyers than most clubs spend on players; in order to overcome pesky laws about massively overhyped homeland sponsorship deals that try to stop sport being unfair via the very sportswashing, financial doping and loading the squad with the kind of depth that allows heavy rotation with almost zero drop in quality. In other words, more than marginal gains – huge advantages – with illicit funding. And waiting for the 115 charges to finally be heard, as, at the other end, teams are relegated who do not have financial improprieties under investigation whilst the narrowest survivor does.
Fuck it, I’m out.
Jürgen Klopp’s fist-pump-pump-pump to the Kop after a win.
Fuck it, I’m back in.
Murderous state regimes welcomed with open arms (and by the once humorous and admirable fans who forgot their morals at the first whiff of billions), who claim to be part of a murderous government when it suits in a lawsuit in one country, but also nothing to do with that government when it doesn’t; and whose presence is not blocked due to the UK government playing global politics with football. Who will they get to sponsor them? Oh look, a Saudi business! – I bet that’s at market value. Oh look, how are they corrupting and dividing golf? Oh look, who now owns the top four clubs in their homeland? Oh look, who is offering ageing hamstrung defensive midfielders £86m a year but not paying the wages of its journeyman players? (Lewis Grabban is one of many claiming to not have been paid, according to the Athletic, which says “Players have seen wages go unpaid by Saudi clubs when injured and, in the worst cases, had contracts torn up and visas withheld.”) Oh look, if you still have a head to look with.
Fuck it, I’m out.
Bobby Firmino’s smile, after a no-look goal, and Bobby Firmino’s tears after saying goodbye when serenaded for what seemed like hours by fans who would love him just as much if none of the trophies he helped win were won. You can buy all the trophies and wave all the plastic flags you want, but you’ll never have what we had with Bobby Firmino. (Liverpool fans aren’t perfect, and there are plenty of dickheads in the fanbase, like any club. But at it’s best, it’s still special.)
Fuck it, I’m back in.
The Zen Den
With a similar focus after Man City’s treble*, Paul assesses the true value of trophies won under Klopp compared to Guardiola’s haul as the Citizens’ boss.
Apropos of nothing, drug dealers and racketeers can put their cash in banks and investment funds and earn interest – rewards – that appears washed. That makes them richer still, and they can buy things “legally” with that money, unless caught.
Or in City's case, it’s like (allegedly) attaching a special rocket booster to a F1 car, where everyone else has to use an engine. Yeah, great, whoopee, whatever.
“Lance Armstrong, Ben Johnson, Floyd Landis, Sun Yang, Martina Hingis, myriad East German Olympians, Calciopoli, Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Tonya Harding, BALCO ballers, Jimmy Gauld, Peter Swan, David Layne, Hansie Cronje, Tim Donaghy, Sylvester Carmouche, Saracens rugby club, ten current Chinese snooker players, Lord Beaverbrook, Maggie Thatcher – can you hear me?!”
You gave sport one hell of a beating!
Saudis, Qataris, and the Abu Dhabi owners of Man City, all accusing their critics of xenophobia if their methods are queried.
Now the Saudis are trying to ruin golf, too. (Not that I care about golf.) Divide and conquer, then unite in antipathy and where the conscientious holdouts get shafted with their own nine-irons.
And pretending to be the public arm of the Saudi government when it suits in one country's courts, and not in another. They've now bought all four of the top Saudi clubs, just to make that fun, and we have ageing, hamstrung defensive midfielders being offered £86m a year to join the league, along with even older strikers earning twice that.
Sport is becoming a farce, at breakneck speed. It's following the F1/pro wrestling model.
This Red Planet
Another chapter from This Red Planet, the book that this substack takes it name from, and here’s part two for subscribers to read if they haven’t bought the book! In this one Paul moves on from the dickheads and egotists - instead looking at the ageing goalscorers and the new look attack of the Reds’ front line, which is very interesting reading a year from its publication. Plus, don’t forget we’ve also added Gakpo - who Paul has written about extensively as well.
Just as I often bang the gong for the value of a settled side and squad (all that shared knowledge, understanding and camaraderie) – at least until it naturally ages out – this shows that you cannot just transport an elite goalscorer into another team and see him repeat his output. Sometimes the goal tallies can immediately go up (see Salah at Liverpool), but the general trend appears to be that even older strikers, who seem to defy the ageing process, benefit from time, and a team set up to suit their needs; and that, once moved to another arena, their age can quickly start to show. Once aged 35 or 36, there isn’t the time to spend two or three years settling and adapting; the whole point of United signing Ronaldo was to fire them to the league title immediately.
Many of these elite club goalscorers also have merely ‘very good’ international records; in part due to playing for less successful nations. Yet even Messi, Mbappé, Agüero and Benzema, for elite nations, are/were nowhere near as prolific as in club football: dropping to a goal every two-to-three games, when often at almost a goal per game for their clubs; Immobile is closer to one-in-four for Italy. (Of his 15 goals for his country in 55 games, the first was against Holland; the rest against Israel, Macedonia, Liechtenstein, Albania, Finland, Armenia, Northern Ireland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Switzerland.)
A settled setting, and consistent selection, can make a huge difference. Even ageing strikers can thrive if the team is set up to meet their needs, albeit a veteran striker’s impressive goal output can sometimes come at the cost of the team scoring even more goals without them. That’s always the key factor: is the team successful?
Dynasty
Chris looks back this week at arguably the greatest legend in the club’s history - Bill Shankly - and suggests their might be lessons to be learnt by Klopp, especially after last season.
Shankly realised that perhaps he had stayed too loyal for too long to the group that had brought Liverpool back into the First Division then won a league title, the club's first-ever FA Cup, then the club’s Holy Grail, and another league title in three successive seasons in the mid-1960s.
In Europe, in which Liverpool were just becoming annual qualifiers, the team had reached the semi-final of the European Cup at the first time of asking in 1965, losing controversially to Inter Milan, and then the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup the following season, losing to Borussia Dortmund in the final at Hampden Park.
At home and in Europe, the red star appeared to be inexorably on the rise. Except, as it turned out, it wasn’t. At least not for a while. Instead it just glowed rather feebly for six years, before bursting back into full technicolour glory.
Transfer Hub
Mizgan digs down into another Liverpool target this week, Manu Kone who has had strong links with the Reds in the past few weeks.
What can Koné bring to the Liverpool midfield?
The answer to this question is - a lot! Manu Koné is an elite ball-carrying and dribbling central midfielder who is adept at defensive work and tracking runners. His versatile nature as a midfielder means that Klopp can use him in different positions, be it as a left or right-sided number eight, or as a number six.
The good thing about the 22-year-old is that he is still young and will have plenty of room to develop. Under a manager who is an expert at raising the level of players, the Frenchman can become the next deeper-lying playmaker like Thiago Alcântara, but with better running qualities than the Spaniard.
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