benno2

They didn't cost that though. Poulsen £4.55m, Konchesky £3.5 + Dalla Valle + Kakaniclic. All here.

Can't imagine how that didn't catch on.

Come to think of it, didn't Ashley try renaming St. James Park and everyone just ignored it?

Yep, thanks for correcting.

Have heard from some of The Times (not Sunday Times) journos on Twitter, that they had this mocked up and ready to run from 6 games in and then didn't adjust it for when they eventually ran it after 8. Schoolboy stuff and ridiculously poor for a newspaper of that supposed standard, but not necessarily part of an anti-Liverpool agenda.

Can you think of any club that has done this though? Old Trafford for a start would be absolutely ripe, or so you'd think. Utd are clearly staying there, so that's one of the issues resolved instantly. With their financial predicament, they're bound to have investigated it. It's not like the idea of naming rights is unknown to the owners, nor any half-witted football administrator for that matter.

Absolutely. But I mean all the decisions, including the process that led to getting Hodgson in.

There's no way we're going to get anyhting like our money back on Poulsen, or Konchesky for that matter. The sum of the decisions made in the summer have set us back a long, long way.

It also assumes that ticket prices are going to stay at the same level over 25-30 years. But DH does have a point that the start will be difficult. It's just like buying a house, you find it difficult and have to keep things tight at the start, but as your income grows over the period of the mortgage, things get easier.

That article doesn't necessarily mean paying big transfer fees doesn't work. Just that you have to spend your available money wisely. As well as listing the deals that go against this ethos, Smith could just as easily have listed those that did. I'm pretty sure the signings of Alonso, Sissoko, Crouch, Agger, Mascherano, Torres and Skrtel would qualify as being value for money measured this way, as they were all players signed at the right age and if sold, a profit could / would be made on all. Some of those signings cost a lot of money, yet were still judicious uses of our available cash. It should also be acknowledged that this sort of ethos is a part of what made our club what it is. Bob Paisley's signings would certainly measure up to this way of looking at things. We got into our pre-eminent position on the back of wasting very little money, buying well in the right age range and just as importantly, selling just at the point where the player's value starts to diminish in terms of playing output, but where his market value is still reasonably high. It's very unlikely that Carragher would have been given the deal he has under Bob. Another way of looking at it would be to say that given that the new owners acknowledge that comparative size of wage bill is an indicator of likely success, then their job is also to build the club commercially and financially into a position where we can afford the sort of wage bills of the current top 4. This also means not wasting money along the way though.

We signed Agger a week after Utd signed Vidic. Agger Vidic

Sure. But only if you sell them all, which is a risk.

I'd be one of those not bothering to be on the waiting list. That's mental, why wouldn't you want to tie up those sales if there's a market for them? Get the matchgoing habit built up. I appreciate that this is the thinking two years ago, but why wouldn't you just leave the same amount for general sale, i.e. 22,000 with say 48,000 season tickets, depending on the size of the away allocation?

No, definitely Agger.

Don't we have planning permission for 61k, but the second design of the stadium would take it to 73k without any change to the outer shape of the ground? I seem to remember the stand opposite the Kop was tiny in the first designs, but had a second tier in the latter. Therefore, you build the stadium for 61k but the structure for 73k and add the seats to take it to that if demand is sufficient and if further planning permission allows.

That's a veiled criticism of the tactics, not his team mates. At least how I read it.

You see, I don't get this. The stadium design was drawn up on the basis of a survey of the fans. So the fanbase had a way greater input in it than did H&G. Plus, it would be ridiculous to start again, spend more money on designs, more money and time on planning applications etc., etc. This thing has planning permission and it's good. If it's not feasible to renovate Anfield, we should look no further. That it unless there's some problem with HKS themselves, which given the stupid amounts spent on the design, I'm not entirely sure about how legit they are. Would they try to hike up the price for instance?

Cheers for that.

How would the compare with someone like Gary Cahill, out of interest?

Poulsen was good at Sevilla. But as Juventus and now we've found, his legs have gone and this was his main asset beforehand.

The way I look at it, the only person that would feel undermined is Hodgson or another Englishman in his shoes, because they're not used to it. Let's say he goes and, for the purposes of this argument, a Pellegrini came in, he will be used to having a DoF signing players. He's worked with them before. At some clubs, Real and Bayern spring to mind, famous former players perform this role, but the managers/coaches know this and it's still them the fans go after first if results fail. If over a period of time, the DoF does a bad job and gets the wrong type of player in, then the fans will start to go at the DoF too. In none of these cases are the coaches undermined necessarily. I really don't think a Pellegrini would have a problem with this, it would be more out of his comfort zone for this not to be the case really. In other clubs, the DoFs are relative unknowns, but can still be successful. Those at Barca, Sevilla and Villareal to cite three successful ones are of this type. I'd have to think about this, but my first thoughts are not that the DoF is the coach / manager's direct line manager. I think it would be better for the coach to be answerable to the whole board. The DoF would be in charge ot a team involved in player recruitment and the whole of the rest of the footballing activities outside of the running of the first team and reserves. Regarding the energy question. I actually think that Rafa had it. But he had two collossal extra factors to deal with over and above that of Ferguson. Firstly, his relationship with the owners / board and their continuing shifting of the goalposts and / or slowness in acting. For the manager to out the intentions of the owners and survive so long thereafter takes some sort of human being and some sort of force of will. But it will also have taken up energy better put to other use. Ferguson either doesn't think there's any problem with the Glazers or he's too interested in the limited time he has left to think it's a fight worth having. Up until the sale of Ronaldo, he also had enough money to keep the ball rolling, which would link into that first part. The way the finances are structured, the worst of the effects are yet to come, if I've read informed reports of their financial situation correctly. The effects of this will happen after his departure. Rafa also had the worst PR of any manager we've ever seen. His introduction of new things like zonal marking and rotation, are anathema to a press and media lobby not known for allowing themselves to be shown how to do things or being open to new ideas. For the first three years of his tenure, we conceded the least amount of goals from set-pieces, but Sky only started to dig out stats on this once we started to fall back in this area. The reason we started to fall back was because our side got smaller and in any case, the zonal system had been adapted on a number of occasions since its inception but none of the pundits even noticed this. Meanwhile others copied, Ferguson has gone way past the 99 games Rafa went before naming two identical starting 11s in the league. But Sky don't mention this and the rotation label hasn't attached itself to him. Other teams use zonal types of marking at corners, Inter under Mancini did when they came to Anfield, Celtic under Strachan started to, but none of this ever gets picked up on. No, Rafa was the only loon that did it. He also didn't have the charismatic nature to come across as urbane like a Wenger or to enjoy the press games like Mourinho did. He thought the press and pundits were idiots and treated them as such, so they were always against him. The anti-Benitez lobbying which still continues, is incredible. But he would have been tough enough to see that through too. But it does take exceptional types of people to last out with all the responsibilities they have. It would be interesting to hear how he's enjoying being just a coach at Inter. If he has a good relationship with those buying and selling players, he might find it more enjoyable than his time here. The Italian press is likely to afford him more respect too.

Fair dos.

We also have a vastly different target market to Boston. Our problem is having thousands of fans locked out by lack of capacity. They want to pay the current rates but can't because there's not enough room. How do you change this? You build something much bigger. This virtually necessitates a move, but NESV may have decent ideas for Anfield, but it seems unlikely that this is viable going by what a lot of other posters here are saying. But our situation is not the same as with the Red Sox. They had a well-heeled clientele that were able and prepared to pay more for their gameday experience in better surroundings. So they set about making the facilities commensurate with higher ticket prices and increasing revenue that way. They had very few people that wanted to go but can't. Fenway didn't sell out before NESV's involvment very often. They made the team better too and so now they sell the stadium out. Having your capacity below, but not massively below the level of people that want to go means you can keep your ticket prices high. Only a very small percentage of our fanbase would pay more in better surroundings. Utd have been lucky with the location of their stadium, they were able to build it up bit by bit. We've probably done about as much as is possible for the location. A new ground seems the only way.

Okay, it's definitely not a theory, you're wrong about that, but right about a lot of the rest. This is the result of research over a long period as far back as information of payroll size is known and over a wide range of clubs, not just in this country. Clubs' wagebills were measured and put in order and then compared to their finishing positions and the correlations over time was uncanny. I never claimed that high rewards drove success and you're right about that. The market pays players what they're worth over time based on their performance and according to the research, the market is unerringly accurate. There are obvious exceptions in both players' pay and clubs getting it wrong of which Newcastle are the standout, as you rightly point out. This doesn't deny that decison makers are unimportant, they're crucial and Newcastle's have been unremittingly bad. Does that ring true? It does for me. The bigger clubs with the money to spend and the right people in charge, identify and attract those players performing well elsewhere and reward them correspondingly. Surprisingly, the research shows that the market is incredibly efficient in this aspect. Agents actually aid this process, as they have very good knowledge of the market rates and barter above that for their players but accept the market rate in negotiations. It also shows that transfer spend is a very bad measure of finishing position. Bad buys invariably end up not being played and their market value diminishes. The reasons for this are many. A lot has to do with the players' contracts and how long they have left to run. The value of the same player in transfer fee terms is massively different if he has 3 or more years remaining, less than two, less than one and at the end of it. We all know this, but the same player is valued massively differently along this continuum, his abilities and playing value don't change though. This is just one of the factors that distort this partiicular market and make transfer spending avery inefficient predictor of finishing position. Another is getting class players through from your youth system.