I’m well aware that this blog hasn’t been particularly active these past few months. I’ve been pretty busy with other things and to be honest, with the way we’ve played through large parts of this season I simply haven’t had the energy nor motivation to write anything. However, I don’t think I’d be doing myself justice if I didn’t say a few words about yesterday’s match and the wider implication of defeat at Wembley once again.
I find Gary Neville very annoying at the absolute best of times, but in what highlights I saw of yesterday I couldn’t help but agree with him when he said that “Jurgen Klopp’s kids have beaten Chelsea’s billion-pound bottle-jobs.”
To set a few things straight, we haven’t quite spent a billion pounds. Even if all of our add-ons are triggered I believe that the total spend will be closer to £850 million. If these are performance-related add-ons, I struggle to see how even half of them will be reached such is the dismal performance of so many of our signings. However, it goes without saying that this is a sickeningly large amount of money to be spending on players either way.
I’ve seen a lot of people getting frustrated at the narrative from Sky Sports that Liverpool were playing with a “young” team when ours was even younger. The average age of the two teams was as follows at the end of the game:
Liverpool – 24.09
Chelsea 22.60
Yup, ours is younger. Of course it is, we had a supposed transfer policy in place over the summer which prevented us signing anyone over the age of 25. Whilst there may have been a few injuries to our team, we weren’t too far away from our strongest XI. A Reece James inclusion aside, I’m not sure there’s any other players I’d have wanted to start for us yesterday. Liverpool on the other hand were missing key players such as Mohammed Salah, Alisson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Diogo Jota and Darwin Nunez.
Can you even begin to imagine what our team would look like without Cole Palmer, Dejan Petrovič, Nicolas Jackson and maybe Raheem Sterling? I think the only position we wouldn’t have a completely ridiculous downgrade would be in goal, although I do think that Petrovič is a level above Robert Sanchez.
Looking at the team Liverpool had on the field at the end of yesterday’s game, it’s a bit of a joke in all honestly. No disrespect to those players but Bobby Clark, James McConnell, Jayden Danns and Jarrell Amorin Quansah are not particularly well-known to the wider footballing world.
I think for a lot of people, they really struggle to find any connection to the current crop of players and I really do share that sentiment. It was kind of funny when we spent near enough £1 billion on a ridiculous number of players, it didn’t feel like real money. It felt like we were playing with Monopoly money but only now can you truly see the damage it’s caused when you see just how unbalanced and incomplete our squad is.
When I went on X (formerly known as Twitter) this morning, I saw a lot of Liverpool fans talking about La AXA in homage to La Masia. If you’re still confused, when they moved from Melwood to the Kirby Training Centre they renamed Melwood to AXA Melwood Training Centre and it’s now where their Women and Youth Team’s train. But anyway, in this context La AXA was referring to a number of their youth players pictured with the League Cup trophy after the game yesterday.
This really stung to be honest, because there’s a picture of Tino Anjorin, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Tammy Abraham, Reece James, Mason Mount, Billy Gilmour and Andreas Christensen with the Champions League trophy in Porto. Now, I’m not saying these players were all perfect, but it is simply incomprehensible that there’s just a single one of these left at the club now, and even then they’re injured 80% of the time.
But going beyond just that photo, who can honestly say that players such as Tino Livramento and Lewis Hall couldn’t more than do a job in our current side? It doesn’t make any sense to me, we had all the ingredients to a super team that should’ve been supplemented with a few world class signings here and there to plug gaps. Instead, we have almost nothing to show for what was a wonderful few years for our academy.
This policy of signing these young players to develop has got to stop. It’s like we’re playing a Football Manager save and have forbidden ourselves from buying players over the age of 23 and it is killing us. Buying young players is fun and can be very rewarding, but you have got to have the right environment for them to succeed in. Take Manchester City for example, they have a very experienced squad full of winners in every sense. They add young players to this from time to time and some do well, some don’t. Even bringing in young players to this perfect set up has no guarantee that they will amount to their high potential.
What we do is buy these young players and add them to a squad of slightly-older but still young players. There’s barely anyone for them to learn off and because of the outrageous fees we’re paying, we’re expecting significantly faster progress to results than will ever be achievable. Look at Mudryk, Palmer and Madueke. Three players that all occupy a similar position on the pitch. Palmer is effectively un-droppable and it gives the other two almost no chance to develop. What experience we do have, does not provide any real leadership. Ben Chilwell and Raheem Sterling as our two most experienced players yesterday says it all.
So, you can only imagine my frustration today seeing we’re now being linked to Benjamin Sesko. I like Sesko, he’s always looked good when I’ve seen him play in the Champions League. However, I struggle to see what good can come of adding yet another inexperienced player into a front-line of more inexperience. It is setting players up to fail. Ivan Toney is the person we should be getting linked to every day.
I thought Mauricio Pochettino had a good first half of the weekend. He called our the referee’s on Friday in his press conference and then followed that up with a well-written open letter to fans ahead of the game. The starting XI was one which pretty much everyone wanted. However, his in-game management was terrible and his comments after the game pathetic. Why on earth, with the power we had on the field in the second-half of extra time, were we happy to settle for penalties?!
In our group that go to games, I’m pretty certain that I am by far the biggest Poch-sympathiser. Even yesterday, we created five clear cut big chances as a result of his game plan and the players have to take their share of responsibility for failing to convert any of them. But, as I already said, the in-game management was horrendous and the subs he brought on looked like they couldn’t care less.
Yesterday was the chance for us to really start afresh and make a statement. When you look at this squad compared to the one that lost back to back finals against Liverpool at Wembley in 2022, it is unrecognisable. Yesterday offered us a chance to start again and really show we were making progress towards the vision our owners had in place for us when they took over but we bottled it. The club hierarchy, manager and players are all entitled to their fair share of the blame.
Regardless of the motivations of our ownership, what we’re seeing now is far away from what they envisioned when they took over the club in 2022. Nobody really knows what they’re trying to get from the club, money will be their primary concern of course but the mess they’re left with is guaranteeing them anything but a profit from the potential cash cow they thought it might be.
I couldn’t care less about the rest of this season. I know I’m not alone in feeling less and less attached to the the group of players that walk out in blue each weekend, but I just do not see where we go from here. You’d hope it can’t get any worse but honestly, I have no idea. What I do know is that six domestic cup final defeats in a row is borderline unforgiveable.
I’m pretty annoyed that I’ve found myself agreeing with a pundit whom I believe, for the most part is completely deluded in 99% of what they say but honestly after yesterday, the occasion was simply too big for these players. I’ve tried to be as balanced as possible when writing this but I’ve honestly just had enough of the current state of the club.
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