Reading Between the Lines on Deadline Day

• The owners’ sabermetric ideals have really yet to be tested, as our total net outlay on transfers yesterday (including Babel to Hoffenheim) was less than 2 million pounds.

• This transfer window is most likely to last to see spending to this degree due to the financial fair play regulations due to start coming into account with the summer transfer window.

• We are building the basis of a team that will be with us for years, contracts are more meaningful to FSG than previous regimes.

• A steady stream of young British talent is appearing in our transfer dealings, which will be very helpful in years to come with our homegrown quotas.

First and foremost, how refreshing is it to see the funds from the Torres sale being invested in the squad rather than going to some monolithic interest payment on a debt we never wanted to bring on board in the first place?  The £35 million deal for Carroll along with the reported £10 million offer for Charlie Adam represents the whole of the initial £45 million received from Chelski.

While it’s true NESV/FSG are believers in the cost efficiency and statistical analysis of transfer policy, if you look to their track record in Major League Baseball (of which I am a huge fan) they have never shied away from paying for what they believed to be proven talent.  Just because you can identify sleepers hiding in the weeds doesn’t mean it should necessarily be expected that the shining lights of a special player already producing at the highest level would be dismissed out of hand by an oversized price tag.  For all the bargain signings they make, the owners make certain to mix it all together with some big ticket items as well.

With that said, I’m not sure Suarez and Carroll can even be put into that pot simply because the Torres fee meant we were spending house money that we already had.  As I posted above, we spent less than £2 million all together so that leaves us with an extra striker at essentially no cost.  Nothing we are intending to do in the summer has been affected by these signings, other than the fact we won’t have to be dealing with that mess then so that it bleeds over into next season.  I think it’s best we took care of our business now.  This summer will be the first window to count toward your balance sheet when the financial fair play rules kick in a few seasons from now.  They will be judging your losses on a 4 transfer window period essentially, so all players bought in this window escape those rules when they do finally kick in.

Essentially, I believe this means we may never have seen an offer anywhere near £50 million again.  It shows too through Tottenham’s huge offers to strikers as well as the Chavs buying what they consider their spine for the next 5 years yesterday as well.  Everyone was sneaking under the gun, and personally I’m glad that we did.

We now currently have two strikers on the right side of 25 signed for 5 1/2 seasons, setting us  for the foreseeable future in the area that will always remain the most coveted: goals. Pepe Reina too is signed for that length of time currently, giving us at least 3 out of a possible starting XI for years to come.  I think you will all agree that building a chemistry and an understanding is the focal point of any successful side.  When you look at Barcelona and Manure you see players who have been in the side together for years, not a squad recently assembled and learning each other’s tendencies they way we have perhaps had too much of in recent years.  We lost our coherency with the departure of Alonso, and are just now starting to regain any sort of constancy in our midfield that still requires some patching in the summertime.

This 5 year period of Carroll and Suarez will allow for the development of a true partnership, and we’ll only truly be able to judge these acquisitions then after they’ve built that partnership and their own legacies at Liverpool Football Club.

One signing that received little to no coverage yesterday was our signing of young Conor Thomas from Coventry City. Here we see the sort of deal NESV will come to be known for (and we’ll all love it), an U17 England international midfielder no one even knew were in for until he was signed.  With a paltry initial fee due in the summer, most of the value here for Coventry will only come to fruition should Conor blossom as both clubs expect him to do.  If you also keep in mind Danny Wilson, Jonjo Shelvey, Yusuf Mersin, Daniel Pacheco etc. you will realize that along with any other potential starlets in the Academy we have the makings of a healthy pool to select our homegrown talent from on all of our registration sheets in years to come.  We’ll never have to make do with a squad size of less than 25, and currently as these players develop it allows us talent that doesn’t have to take a place on those lists as of yet with U-21’s allowed to an unlimited nature.

Here’s hoping to a 4th placed finish after winning 12 of 14!