For Liverpool, the transfer window isn’t even open yet and there are some people moaning that we haven’t signed more players. The fact that there are Nations League games going on and some players will have taken part in the Under-20s World Cup doesn’t matter to the whingers, who just like to have something to complain about at all times. That we’ve already signed Alexis Mac Allister should be a cause for celebration, but instead people are pointing to the likelihood of his £35 million fee as a stick with which to beat the football club. I honestly don’t know how such people aren’t utterly exhausted being so miserable all the time. Football is supposed to be an escape, a way to get away from the hardships of life for a short while. It is easy to forget that it is a leisure activity, with many instead allowing it to make them really angry when exactly what they want doesn’t happen. The transfer weirdos are definitely at the top of the list when it comes to things I’ll never understand, as I wrote about last week.
Every #LFC transfer window is the same: A moment or two of excitement, linked with dozens of players and then FSG realizes it all costs money and they do nothing. #FSGOUT
— Chris Siegel (@ecupurplehaze) June 11, 2023
Take Jude Bellingham, for example. It is clear that the club had an interest in him. I would also suggest that the player himself will have been giving the club indications that he’d like to play for us. In the end, though, the lure of Real Madrid proved too much for him to resist, as it has many players before him. There is no question that is annoying and if the club had been refusing to sign other players in the past in order to bring the former Birmingham City and Borussia Dortmund man on board then that is really poor management. At the end of the day, though, he’s made a footballing decision not to come to Anfield and that is life. Search Liverpool Twitter, however, and you’d think that Fenway Sports Group are only willing to sign players if they cost a fiver and are willing to pay them to play. People get so angry about it all that it leaves me genuinely confused about what it is we’re supposed to be doing with out time. That is especially the case when you bear in mind that there are real things to be getting angry about.
Money Can You Buy You Anything
Manchester City’s players are supremely talented. Of that there is little doubt. Pep Guardiola is arguably the best manager of such players in the world. It would be churlish to suggest otherwise. I would debate the idea that that makes him the best manager in the world, however. If you give someone everything that they could possibly need in order to succeed, the only story should be about when they fail to do so rather than when they pull it off. Manchester City should not have even been in the Champions League this season, on account of the fact that they were banned from competing in European competition by UEFA before the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ban. Despite the protestations of City fans that that proved that they were innocent, it was instead due to the fact that the rules that they had broken were outside the time in which the organisation was allowed to punish them. The ban was dropped, the club returned to the Champions League and the trophy was finally won.
Bit embarrassing that it’s taken City this long to win the CL, given they’ve been in cheat mode for 15 years.
In the meantime, Luton have worked their way from the Conference to the PL, with a squad that cost approx. 1/20th of a Jack Grealish.
Now that’s an achievement 🤷🏼♀️
— Lara © (@laazarini7) June 10, 2023
City is a club backed by the wealth of a nation, which means that they can not only afford the best players and a manager capable of training them, but also the best lawyers to stop anyone from talking too publicly about how they’ve done it. It is why Sky Sports has spent the season singing the club’s praises and and why BT Sport fawned over them during the final, up to and including Des Kelly asking for an autograph. The channels are terrified of City’s lawyers getting involved should the fact that they have been financially doping for years actually be mentioned. Even if a fan account like mine mentions it, a City fan will point out that the Premier League’s investigation into the 115 charges that the club has been hit with doesn’t include this season, as though cheating in the past to get you into this position has to be ignored once you’re there. If City hadn’t engaged in their financial doping, they never would have attracted Guardiola or most of their players. The playing field hasn’t been level for a decade.
It’s Sports-Wash Or Bust
The sad truth is that for the majority of football clubs, their only hope of being able to compete with Manchester City is if they become sports-washing operations. Manchester United have out-spent their city rivals, at least in terms of the money that we know has been spent on the books, yet haven’t been able to get anywhere near them since Alex Ferguson retired. Some would say that that is proof that it’s not about the money and to an extent that is true. Yet what the money allows is the chance for clubs to make mistakes and not worry about it. Had Erling Haaland struggled to adapt to the Premier League, for example, it wouldn’t have mattered. City could just have signed someone else without batting an eyelid. Even United, for all of their spending power, aren’t able to be so blasé about players failing to make an impact. It is why so many United fans are desperate for Qatari ownership to come in, allowing them to have to same lack of care when things don’t work as City have.
As much as United made childhood and young adulthood miserable, I’d take that a million times over. I hated Utd because they were legit brilliant and we were mostly a joke and, y’know, Mancs. The reason I abhor City is because they have killed people’s belief in the whole sport
— Chris Smith (@ByChrisSmith) June 10, 2023
City winning the Champions League means that football’s competitiveness is over. A team that has financially doped and broken the rules of the competition to the point that its organisers kicked them out have been able to use their financial power to get that over-turned and win it anyway. A side that is under investigation by the Premier League for 115 instances of financial impropriety has won the title five times in six years. Both competitions have become a joke as a result and there is no outcome of the Premier League’s investigation that will change that. If City are banned, with their titles stripped, then the last six years have been a waste of everyone’s time. If they aren’t, in spite of everyone knowing what they’ve been up to, then it will become a free-for-all for the likes of them, Newcastle United and a Qatari-owned Manchester United. Clubs will either need to bid goodbye to their morals and sign up with human rights abusing nation states or know they can’t win. This could be the start of the death of top level football.
