Will Liverpool repeat Tottenham's transfer market mistakes from a year ago?
“I asked for a table and they bought me a lampshade,” bemoaned a frustrated Rafael Benitez toward the end of his three-year tenure at Valencia, just weeks before he became Liverpool manager. It’s a statement that perhaps Brendan Rodgers can relate to this summer.
The £75 million sale of Luis Suarez to Barcelona means Liverpool are indeed in the market for tables ahead of the new season. The Anfield club has lost their best player and now Rodgers must find a way to fill the Suarez-shaped hole that has been left in his team.
Where would Liverpool have finished without the Uruguayan last season? It’s a purely hypothetical question, but not an entirely unreasonable one. Without his 31 goals from 33 games it’s safe to presume a second place finish might have been beyond them. So how exactly will Liverpool compensate for the loss of Suarez?
Last year’s Premier League runners-up look set to spend close to £100 million, with the signings of Adam Lallana and Rickie Lambert from Southampton, Lazar Markovic from Benfica and Emre Can from Bayer Leverkusen already completed.
Loic Remy is also reportedly close to joining the Anfield club from Queens Park Rangers, bringing Rodgers’ recruitment drive up to a tally of five players. But is he signing the right players?
Rodgers’ plan was always to use the transfer market this summer to give his squad the depth it desperately lacked toward the end of last season. But Rodgers never accounted for the loss of Suarez.
The Liverpool boss must reassess what he’s looking for in the transfer market. Of the four players he has signed this summer how many will actually make the starting line-up? Markovic perhaps, but even his inclusion would require a formational shift from Rodgers.
In terms of improving their starting 11, Liverpool have done very little with the £65 million they've already spent, instead choosing to pragmatically plug gaps in their squad with astute, if not bombastic, signings.
It’s an approach that draws an uncanny comparison to how another Premier League club dealt with a high profile, big-money departure last year.
Gareth Bale’s sale to Real Madrid last summer set a precedent for how not to cope with the loss of a star player. Rather than use the world-record £85 million fee they received for the Welsh winger to find a direct replacement, Spurs decided to spread the cash evenly across the squad.
Roberto Soldado was bought for £26 million from Valencia, with £30 million splurged on Erik Lamela from Roma, £12 million on Christian Eriksen from Ajax and £10 million on Etienne Capoue from Toulouse.
On the face of it, Spurs had reinvested the Bale money wisely. They needed a striker, and in Soldado they had signed (at the time) Spain’s number one frontman. Eriksen was regarded as one of the most exciting young playmakers in Europe, with Lamela a shimmering star of Serie A.
But nobody came close to replacing what had been lost in Bale. Spurs failed to recognize just how important Bale was to their team. He wasn’t just their best player, but the embodiment of the club’s identity under Andre Villas-Boas.
With Bale, Spurs were on an upward arc but when he left for Real Madrid he took his X-factor with him (using it to win La Decima in his first season in Spain).
Great teams are defined by the great players that break the order. Look at Lionel Messi at Barcelona, Arjen Robben at Bayern Munich, or Suarez at Liverpool. Bale was Spurs’ difference maker and without him they were no different from the rest.
Liverpool have to be careful not to follow a similar course. The Reds have waited a generation for another shot at the league title. They can’t afford to do a Spurs. Not this season.
Just like at White Hart Lane, Liverpool identify and sign transfer targets by committee. “We have a head of analysis, a head of recruitment, a first-team manager and myself,” club CEO Ian Ayre explained about the inner workings of the Anfield transfer board. “All of those people are all inputting into a process that delivers what a director of football would deliver.”
So how has the committee performed since Rodgers’ appointment two years ago? Well, it has done a good job of identifying high-level targets, the problem is that other teams have beat them to the signing part of the process.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan was made a transfer target while at Shakhtar Donetsk, but the Armenian joined Borussia Dortmund instead, where he has since impressed. The same happened with Willian and Mohamed Salah, with both players ending up at Chelsea rather than Anfield. While a move for Diego Costa, who has also signed for Chelsea following a hugely successful year at Atletico Madrid, also fell through.
Increases in commercial and television revenue, as well as the income from participation in this season’s Champions League, means Liverpool have a new-found financial flex, but thus far Rodgers has refused to exert such strength in the transfer market.
Speculation linking them with truly world-class talents like Marco Reus and Arturo Vidal has remained just that; speculation. Liverpool might be in the Champions League but their signings this summer have been distinctly Europa League.
In what has turned into a pivotal summer for Liverpool, Rodgers needs to make sure that he gets more tables than lampshades.