Liverpool joined the elite despite their owners while Manchester United are in a mess because of theirs.
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Liverpool are proof that money is not everything
I always find it perversely funny when the latest article proclaiming the death of football because of the Big Whatever-Arbitrary-Number-the-Writer-Chooses appears – as happened on this site on Monday – but it has become even funnier and more perverse in the last decade. Why? I hear you ask. Well, it’s simple. When Liverpool (who were expected to finish fourth or lower this season by the vast majority of pundits, including on this site) were bought for £300m by their current owners they were quite literally minutes away from going into administration. Their next few seasons were spent in the doldrums trying to sort out their wage bill and completely rebuild. I believe I’m right in saying that when they won the Champions League, their wage bill was still the fifth highest in England.
Far from being one of two harbingers of the death of football, Liverpool are a sign that although it is incredibly hard, it is possible to usurp clubs with more resources than you do by good management, canny ownership, and hard work. Even now, they don’t have closed to the resources of Manchester United or (dependent on new owners) Chelsea. Let alone the other harbinger of doom Manchester City.
Now, you might – rightly – say that Liverpool had an advantage that most other clubs don’t, with their history ensuring a fanbase which allows growth more easily than others. In which case, I’ll just point out Man City and Chelsea who didn’t have that comparable worldwide fanbase but lucked into their own advantages instead.
Ever since the Big Conveniently-Chosen-Number became a thing, the number has only got bigger in England. That is primarily because despite what Johnny Nicholson likes to opine, England do a far, far better job of sharing the wealth…
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