The reality is that Fenway Sports Group were only ever going to consider Liverpool Football Club as their second-most important asset behind the Boston Red Sox. Not only that, but they were also aware that they were getting a distressed asset, which they could turn a profit on pretty quickly without a huge amount of investment on their part. Given the fact that they bought the Reds for £300 million in 2010 and it is now valued at more than £4 billion, it is fair to say that they have achieved their initial goal. Whilst some people might want to paint them as terrible owners, the reality is that they have been largely good owners who have helped the club achieve unprecedented success in an era when Manchester City’s sports-washing machine has been hoovering up trophies season after season. They have added such a huge amount of value to the club by making us successful on the pitch, as well as turning us back into a commercial behemoth off it.
John Henry's FSG have functionally sold Liverpool to a group including Jeff Bezos. The minority sale has an option to buy out FSG in a year for $8B.
FSG are a rumored bidder on the Vegas NBA expansion team and obviously also own the Red Sox.
— Ryan Bernardoni (@dangercart.bsky.social) 14 August 2026 at 19:29
It feels like that has shifted in recent times, however. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that the sale of nearly 40% of the club to a gang of billionaire miscreants is suggestive of an ownership group that is starting to think about the exit door. Whilst they will leave with a huge amount of money, the club that they are preparing to walk away from isn’t the well-oiled winning machine that it once was. The days of Michael Edwards pulling transfer rabbits out of hats are long gone, whilst being able to depend upon the managerial genius that is Jürgen Klopp is also no longer an option. Instead, we’ve become just like any other club that isn’t owned by a murderous nation state, bringing in a manager who is full of potential but hasn’t yet proven himself, whilst floundering around in the transfer market for players who will improve the squad without costing the earth. Now that the 2026-2027 campaign is underway, the cracks have started to show.
A Threadbare Squad
I have said countless times in the past that I am not going to be critical of Arne Slot or the Liverpool players for what happened last season, given the deaths of Diogo Jota and André Silva in the summer of 2025. I’m not quite as willing to offer the same level of mitigation to the higher-ups at Anfield, however. Their job has been to ensure that the Reds can keep rolling, almost irrespective of what happens off the pitch. They made the deliberate choice to call Arne Slot the ‘head coach’, suggesting that his role was limited to training and matches whilst the business of transfers was to be carried out by others. The theory behind that is that it means that the ‘head coach’ can be changed, but the systems in place to support them remain largely the same. Rather than putting together a squad that could continually challenge at the top of the Premier League, however, Richard Hughes et al appeared to go on an ego-fuelled shopping spree last summer.
Each passing day left of this window, Richard Hughes closes in on "Liz Truss levels" of incompetence.
The consequence he faces? Moving to Saudi and getting a massive pay check.
Lovely how being shit at your job at the highest levels only makes you more money these days 🙄
#Redsky #ynwa #FSG #LFC
— lfcviking.bsky.social (@lfcviking.bsky.social) 25 August 2026 at 11:34
Florian Wirtz was one of the most promising players on the planet when we spent a record fee bringing him in, so I’ve no real problem with the signing in theory. Similarly, Alexander Isak was arguably the most prized attacker on the market when we spent another record amount on his signature. The problem isn’t so much with the arrival of the two of them, so much as it is with the areas of the squad that have been ignored because of how much we spent on those two players, plus Hugo Ekitike. Given the injury-prone nature of Isak and Conor Bradley, as well as the bad injury suffered by the French forward, I think we’ve got a huge amount of work to do just to make the squad one that can begin to compete. Kostas Tsimikas isn’t good enough, we’ve sold Curtis Jones and Alexis Mac Allister looks like his legs have gone, so I think we need two wingers, a backup striker, a left-back, a right-back and at least one midfielder. It’s a shit show.
Issues Laid Bare Against Newcastle
It would be lovely to suggest that all of the problems of last season can be laid at the door of Arne Slot and moved on from now that Andoni Iraola is in charge. Whilst I do think that many of the issues from the 2025-2026 campaign have to be viewed in the light of the passing of one of their teammates and friends, the truth of the matter is that not everything wrong with this current iteration of the Reds comes down to a group of players mourning the death of someone. Rio Ngumoha is an incredible talent, for example, with bags of potential, but he was still just a 17-year-old when the match got underway at St James’ Park on Sunday afternoon. His potential should be turned to from the bench and in cup games, not from the start in a position that we’ve been used to seeing Mohamed Salah play. Lewis Koumas is another youngster who looks decent, but he shouldn’t be the answer when we need a goal in a Premier League match like that.
Every club is spending, getting stronger, building squads…. Liverpool? No we’re haggling, reducing squad depth and failing to addrsss the issues from last season.
This has the potential to be disastrous.
— Steve Harrison (@aintreeiron.bsky.social) 25 August 2026 at 10:57
Then there’s the continued lack of match-smarts that has plagued us for some time. It was fair to easily for Saudi Arabian-owned Newcastle United’s players to waltz through our entire team for their second goal, with not one of our players being willing to just take a yellow card in order to stop the attack. We have long struggled to have that killer instinct that the top teams have. You can’t imagine David Silva or Declan Rice being willing to have a player simply stroll past them on their way to goal without kicking them and taking the booking, for example. Of course, that is partly down to coaching, but it’s also about having a squad full of players with the right mentality, which we lack. We need depth, of that there’s no doubt, but we also need intelligence. I have grown so tired of watching Liverpool matches in which we appear to be entirely brainless. Maybe FSG will have one last spree in the transfer market before they go riding off into the sunset.
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