Ok.. we’ve had a very bad fortnight in terms of football and results. The European games were nothing to write home about and in the PL, we lost 5 out of very winnable 6 points. Europe is looking tough, let alone Champions League. Chelsea won last night to go further ahead but the title chances of MU getting 19th depend on a very inconsistent Arsenal. Tonio has had some thought provoking conversations about it all and I would not try to recreate all that text here.
Let’s talk about the worst case and then I will try to create a good case.
What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe that we finish 6th or may be further down in 7th. We miss Europe. That’s obviously not the end of the world. FSG came in in mid-season, so did KK. The damage had already been done and we never thought we would get 6th in the first place. We always knew that rebuilding would take longer. While there’s no Europe, I’m not going to miss Europa too much to be honest. The competition is second rate and does make you feel it’s second rate. The logo, the colors, the anthem, the days, the structure, the participants.. I mean I’d rather not play. It’s money for sure, but then as a fan, it’s not my place to worry about it. I hope FSG get that sort of money and more with new sponsorship deals. And then comes summer. We sign a few more people. Some deadwood is shipped out. Some stars come in. And we look like a good side. Champion side! Would that take away this season’s misery? Hell Yeah! Moreover, no Europe would keep our team fresher and less injury prone and I’d say it’d be a good time to get the 19th. Not all gloom, eh?
To talk about a good ending to this season as well, here are the remaining PL fixtures of the teams 3-6 (format – versus, home/away, expected points). Of course these are a little optimistic but you have to be optimistic if you need to cover 10-11 points in as many games.
Manchester City- P 28 | 50 points
WAFC, h, 3 | CFC, a, 1 | SAFC, h, 3 | LFC, a, 0 | THFC, h, 1 | BRFC, a, 0 | WHU, h, 3 | EFC, a, 3 | SCFC, h, 1 | BWFC, a, 0
Final points: 65
Tottenham Hotspurs – P 27 | 47 points
WW, a, 3 | WHU, h, 3 | WAFC, a, 3 | SCFC, h, 1 | MCFC, a, 1 | AFC, h, 0 | WBA, h, 3 | CFC, a, 1 | BFC, h, 3 | LFC, a, 0 | BCFC, h, 1
Final Points: 66
Chelsea – P 27 | 48 points
BFC, a, 0 | MCFC, h, 1 | SCFC, a, 3 | WAFC, h, 3 | WBA, a, 1 | BCFC, h, 3 | WHU, h, 3 | THFC, h, 1 | MUFC, a 0 | NUFC, h, 0 | EFC, a, 1
Final Points: 64
Liverpool – P 28 | 39 points
MUFC(h), SAFC (a), WBA(a), MCFC(h), AFC(a), BCFC(h), NUFC(h), FFC(a), THFC(h), AVFC(a) – may be drop a couple of points against Arsenal at Emirates but win all others. All are winnable since the tougher opponents would be playing at Anfield. For some like ManCity and Newcastle, we ought to win considering what happened in the reverse fixtures. We’ll ofcourse win on Sunday the only problem is that Vidic would not be playing for us. Anyway, the point is to make atleast 27 points out of the remaining 30.
This is just one of the hundreds of scenarios. I didn’t post them here to bring debate on individual games. I know some of it is optimistic, but not unfathomable. Winning 9/10 is quite an ask but what the hell, I’m not talking about Fulham or West Brom; it’s Liverpool!!
Another pertinent factor here would be for teams like Spurs and Chelsea to keep playing in other competitions like the more exacting Champions League. I certainly don’t want them to win but the more they play, the more their players tire and more chances of injury (and no, I’m not a sadist).
Finally, what if all this would mean that ManU would win the 19th? I’d say – Big F**king Deal! We’ll just go ahead and win the next two.
my favourite writer by far
Kaushal, two things I wanted to comment on. Not going to Europe may not be a big deal, but the Club looks at loosing big money. Standard Chartered, to begin with, has not coughed up Stg 80 million to see us play just in domestic football. Therefore there is a financial predicament here which will have its effect.
Secondly, its very sweet of you to say let Man Utd win the 19th and we’ll go and win the next two. Fact remains, with all the love I have for this Club, that we have not won it in 20 years and there is no indication that we will be in a position to challenge in the near future, at least that’s how I see it.
Fourth place is not obtainable with a boozed up goalie like Reina and past it primadonnas like Gerrard and Carragher.
Hey Tonio.. fair points. But as I said, I’ll let the owners worry about finances. Although, what I personally feel is that they bought the club for £300m (possible only circumstantially, else would be much more expensive) considering that there would be substantial reinvestments required in the squad as well as some opportunities lost. So, I would like to believe that the financial predicament is a part of their budget. And, didn’t we win Europe 21 years after winning it in ’84? I think we can. But my point is that we shouldn’t worry about who’s going to win it if we don’t.
Thanks Rana.
Kenny, based on your comments on virtually every post on this website since Sunday, I think you forgot to mention Kuyt. Gerrard is a legend. Reina was man enough to own his mistake. They’ll answer in the next few games. :-)
YNWA
Answering with 10 games left in the season is all very well, pity the first 28 games included 6 draws and 11 defeats.
It is big fucking deal them wining 19 th. Do you honestly think that we’ll win the next 2. Do you really. This year would have been easy to win as it will get harder from next year with M City and the Chavs having so much money to spend. But for Gerrard and Carrager wanting an english manager (mr Roy) instead of Rafa who knows what would have happened this year. With new owners to back him maybe this year would have been our year. But we’ll never know now. If we can get 50 million for Gerrard and Reina it would help us get some very good players and rebuild the team. And Carrager has to be droped too
Kaushal, I wish to remind you that at the end of the day, even if they are sports fans, FSG are business people. This, for them, is an investment first and foremost. They have invested quite substantially in a worldwide brand in which they have faith will repair their outlay. A run in the Champions League could bring a Club anything up to Euro 50 million in a season which is not joke! The financial implications here are serious and we should all try to be more realistic and less romantic in our valuations. Again, this is my personal point of view.
Bekim I don’t quite understand why you think dropping the only real faithful players we have i.e. Carragher and gerrard and Reims would help us in this late stage of the season, going against our key players is not the way forward for the club and I have to agree with kaushal, I think the loss of European football for one season is quite a reasonable sacrifice in order to get the club back on track. The only thing I see wrong with no European football is will top quality players heads turn toward us or a ‘basking in the glory’ scum team like United? It’s a hard thing to say whether no European football is best for us, but hey, we still has 10 or 11 games to go and a goal machine like Andy Carroll to work along side the top quality centre forward that is Luis Suarez so I wouldn’t count us out of the running yet.
Bekim, I don’t know if we’ll win the next two but it was about hope and looking up.
Tonio, talking financials is a long discussion but I’ll still try to present my understanding. When NESV bought a bottom-5 club, they obviously wouldn’t have assumed the £50m cash inflows from UEFA. If the stadia, assets, revenue lines were all in place, wouldn’t the valuation be closer to £1.5 billion? Take out the stadium part and the cost to own a fully functional, top the league LFC would have costed around £500-600m easy. Anyway, these are all very arbitrary numbers so let me leave them aside. All I want to say is that the initial purchase, reinvestment in squad, opportunities lost & costs due to past and current under-performances (including Roy’s payout) and facilities development (stadium) would have been a part of their 5 or 10 year plan. It would have been naive if these were not considered. Strictly from a business perspective, Liverpool as an investment would make them wait for atleast 2-3 years for substantial returns on investment without considering stadium investment.
Kaushal hold on a minute. What’s this ‘bought a bottom 5 club’ argument? Are you serious. You think that the value of the Club was based on the position on the table? I think you are completely out of order here!
Do you realise that the income from gate sales and progress in home/european competition forms part of the income considered in the future fair-play finance rules??? That is the money needs to generate to work well on the tranfer market. I honestly think you are missing the point here.
FSG will give stability to the Club no doubt, and apparently as promised the debts have been wiped off. It’s obvious that their investment was done and the return worked out over a number of years, that’s the way all investments work, but dismissing the important of the millions a club can make from european competition just because FSG can offer financial stability doesn’t hold up I’m sorry!
No sir, I only meant that the £50million Champions League wouldn’t have been in their cash inflow projections for the season 2011-12. That’s not the basis for valuation.
I am vaguely aware of the FFP. I also know that they are accumulated over 3 years. Also, PL money gets better the higher a club finishes. And that the Champions League money is substantially larger than Europa League money. It would make larger ‘financial’ sense to not be a part of Europa and consolidate a top-4 position in 2011-12.
It’s really not my place to assume what FSG is doing and what would be better or not. My understanding is internet based and might be flawed. The only thing that I mean in my post was that if we don’t participate in Europa but be in the top-3 or 4 next year, I wouldn’t be entirely disappointed.
don’t use that words :)
Guys, the scums have not won No.19 just yet. hopefully we can stuff them on Sunday and send them on a bad run just as we did with Chelsea. They have not won it until they have won it. ok.
Loss of European football will do us no good, I am not sure how many of you remember, things have never been the same since that disastrous night at Haysel & subsequently getting banned. Of course it makes me cringe when we end up playing S.B or the Napoli’s of this world when we should be locking horns with Madrid & Barcelona.
When we were eventually allowed back we looked light years behind the rest but eventually managed to catch up, should have really won the match against AC the second time around as well!
Kaushal you are right , we were bought at a bargain basement price, these guys are not stupid, I just wish to see them put
their hands in their own pockets unlike the last two idiots.
Kenny : Lets hope Reina is going to have one hell of a game on Sunday trying to impress Rudoplh Whisky Nose & rest of the rain deers, the financial benefits will be ours
YNWA
Carl. King Kenny and we all said no player is biger than the club when Torres went to the Chavs. Well Gerrard and Carrager are biger than the club as they run it.Reina is been making some noise for a while that he wants to play champions league football. Gerrard and Carrager were great for our club till now but when they play badly no one seems to want to say it. Instead we get the usual players getting the blame. Players like Lucas mostly.When Gerrard plays badly its allways the other players fault because they are not good enough to play.all i’m saying is that i think the time has come that Carrager needs to be droped because he’s not as good as he was and As much as i love Gerrard he’s not as good as he was either so if we got 30 million for him we would be able to buy some exellent players with that money and rebuild the team for the future. He will be 31 soon anyway. YNWA
What you can’t forget is that many players are lured to a club because of the potential to play in Europe. Take that away, even if it is ‘just’ the Europa League, and you can expect a fair number of players to ignore us for other clubs. The experience with Torres should perfectly highlight how narrow a player’s focus and vision can be, and right now the likes of Chelsea, United, Arsenal, City and Spurs are all more attractive propositions.
As for making up through sponsors, do you think a potential sponsor is more interested in a team who plays purely in the EPL or one who also spends some time getting them coverage across extra games in Europe?
I agree that we could probably get away with a season outside of Europe but I personally think it makes a top 4 challenge even more difficult. To be honest I don’t think we’ll make top 4 next season and I think we’ve still got a lot of work (and money) to do with this squad in order to get there.
Hi Bekim, do you rally think someone would pay 30million for SG? love him dearly, got him on my shirt & in my heart, perhaps the best place if he cannot rediscover his old form is not away from Anfield but back in defence where he started it all, I guess time waits for no one including our beloved SG, however please remember he still has an incredible footballing brain. You will no doubt recall our board of directors refused to pay £3mil for Sheringham , stating that it was too much for an over thirty years old player- BIG BIG MISTAKE, he single handedly got the scums the European cup as well as the bloody FA Cup in their unmentionable treble year. Food for thought?
YNWA
I do not care much for the results for the rest of this season what i think would be most beneficial for future seasons is giving the young fellas a run.
I would like to see Pacheco get a start Coady Robinson Wisdom and Sterling get a few games off the bench.
Everyone seems happy to want to spend squillions on players when what we need may be in our own backyard.
Very inconsistent arsenal? Tell me how can a team that hasn’t lost in the league since playing united in december been inconsistent. A team that has been top of the form table for quite some time. A team that well…… you get the picture.
I know there are labels in football and arsenal have a ton: soft (check disciplinary record as an example of why this season its false), weak defense( apart from the newcastle game we have not conceded a goal in the league this year. The stats on the koscielny-djourou partnership says it all, also sagna is quality and clichy plays better when someone with more defensive plays in front of him like nasri or gibbs), big game flops(beaten man city, chelsea and barcelona this season) and inconsistent to name a few.
You don’t get to 2nd place this far in the season by being inconsistent. This is a tough league and not la liga or the spl so the margins for consistency are lower. Just spouting out a stereotype is lazy and typical of people like the MoTD pundits because even if it isn’t true people who won’t know better will agree despite the reality being the pundits just didn’t do their homework.
If liverpool win or draw this weekend then have faith that united have a chance of losing out on the title to arsenal. Because united haven’t been very consistent by your standards either.
Any way , minor stuff after all. What is important is liverpool beating united this weekend. Had it not been for the last round of league games I would have reckoned liverpool had a good chance of getting into the champions league. However with chelsea looking to get back into the title race it looks a much tougher prospect. Though considering since the manchester derby that city have seemed to have given up on their title pursuit (was a strong team that played in the FA cup) they may slip off with the injury hit spurs.
Though i don’t think carroll will play a major part in the game i do believe liverpool at anfield will probably end up a home win. Without vidic or ferdinand you’ve gotta fancy players like mereiles or suarez (highly rate em both) to get on the score sheet. Though i dont think the whole 3 at the back thing will be great against united. Though the 532 (352?) provides liverpool with the attack in the wide areas using the closest thing to wingers they have, it would be really ambitious to suggest that glen johnson can get involved in the attack with uniteds wide players like nani and evra. Also uniteds attacks usually come from the wings with sometimes 2 up front as well which means having 3 centre backs wouldn’t work as well i reckon. So a 4411 would probably be liverpools best move.