FSG Has Been A Respectable Liverpool FC Owner

I saw West Derby Wanderer IV’s (WDW) post defending our record under FSG on a thread on the liverpool-rumours.co.uk web site and wanted to add a couple of thoughts.

I think WDW is bang on, and I find some fans’ constant negativity around FSG and the shoe-horning in of digs against them in any transfer discussion baffling. They’ve taken Liverpool FC from a floundering mid-table side that came perilously close to administration and hadn’t won the league in 20 years to comfortably the 2nd most successful team in the country over the last decade. Crucially, this is 2nd only to a Man City team that has seemingly been extensively breaking the rules over the entirety of that time. If you change 4 results from Jurgen Klopp’s era, we go from 1 Premier League title and and 1 Champions League title to 3 of both, basically matching the team that cheated for its generational level of success.

Over recent years, we’ve still managed to win almost every possible trophy and we’ve achieved this by investing smartly within our means rather than spending for the sake of it. We have still spent big when the club felt appropriate though, as seen with Alisson, Van Dijk and Keita or more recently Nunez and Szoboszlai. People may call me an FSG apologist, but I feel like winning big trophies without generally spending as much as the other teams competing is what every club should be aiming for and should be applauded as evidence of a well-run institution rather than seen as a stick to beat the owners with?

As WDW pointed out in his post, one only needs to look at some of the clubs that have spent big to see that more money does not always mean more success – over the last 5 years Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Newcastle United and West Ham United all have a higher net spend than Liverpool FC yet have achieved less.

This doesn’t mean that there can’t be valid criticism and FSG absolutely don’t get everything right. They’ve made bad decisions with the likes of the Super League, furloughing staff during COVID and ticket hikes, but they have also u-turned on most of these when fans have protested. There have been points where a bit more investment could maybe have helped Liverpool push on to defend a league title more successfully or compete on multiple fronts until the end of a season.

But most seasons we have challenged for the most major trophies – again, I believe the Klopp ‘changing-4-games’ stat above shows how tight the margins are. There have been…