During Jurgen Klopp’s tenure, Liverpool have established themselves as one of the very best
sides in Europe. They’ve won the Premier League and finished as runners-up on two
occasions. They’ve also won the Champions League and reached a further two finals.
But as things stand, their trajectory on and off the pitch seems very different.
What does the future of Liverpool football club look like?
When it comes to Jurgen Klopp’s managerial career, there is a curious phenomenon: in each instance,
he’s been at a club for at least seven years then left. In the case of Mainz, that was because
he’d been picked up by Borussia Dortmund, but at Dortmund he moved on after things got difficult in
the seventh season, and now at Liverpool he moved past the seventh season over the last summer.
In both of these more recent cases, a similar thing has happened. A formerly great team has
come off the rails. For Dortmund, this saw them falling to seventh place in the league
and losing in the DFB Pokal final to Wolfsburg. This season, Liverpool are currently eighth in
the Premier League with only an outside chance of finishing in the Champions League spots.
Why might seven years be significant in the life cycle of a Jurgen Klopp team?
The legendary Hungarian coach Bela Gutmann had a theory about this: “The third year is
fatal,” he is famous for saying about the life cycle of great football teams. Football writer
Jonathan Wilson has echoed this idea, claiming that “particularly with hard-pressing sides,
three years is the maximum lifespan of a great side.”
In the case of Klopp, himself an advocate of “hard-pressing” football, his Dortmund and
Liverpool teams seem to have gone through two life cycles. When it comes to the end of the second,
the question seems to be whether or not Klopp or the club have the appetite to build again.
At this point in time, Klopp seems adamant. Speaking ahead of the Merseyside Derby,
there was no uncertainty about his position:
“I will not and I cannot go,” he said. “I have too much responsibility and I want that.”
But as for the club itself, things are less clear.
First and foremost, there is the question of ownership. Back in November of 2022,
Liverpool’s owners Fenway Sports Group floated the idea of selling the club,
with the suggestion being that they valued their asset at around £4bn.
Since then, however, they have decided that it is not the time to sell the club outright,
instead opting to sell a minority stake. If they were to do this,
then a proposed stake of between 10 and 15 per cent would equate to between £400m and
£600m of investment if the buyers were to accept FSG’s £4bn valuation of Liverpool.
This would achieve two things: firstly, it would free up capital so that Liverpool
could undergo something of a squad rebuild in the summer; and
secondly, it would allow FSG to stay in charge. It is fundamental that Liverpool
hit their recruitment goals when the transfer window swings around.
This raises another potential problem. During the period where Liverpool looked like they
could be sold outright, it was announced that a couple of individuals integral to
the club’s recruitment process would be moving on. The news that Julian Ward,
the Director of Football, was leaving came as something of a surprise. His predecessor,
Michael Edwards, had only left himself in the summer of 2022. But on top of this,
it became clear that Ian Graham, the club’s Director of Research, was also leaving his post.
It has been announced that Graham is being replaced internally by Will Spearman,
who holds a doctorate in physics from Harvard University and who has worked at the European
Organisation for Nuclear Research. Spearman has been part of Liverpool’s research department for
four years, which offers some level of continuity to his predecessor. But both Edwards and Graham
were fundamental to the successes that Klopp has achieved at Liverpool, meaning that this is a huge
upheaval at a point in time where the club are entering an incredibly important transfer window.
And this transfer window is made more complex by the fact that Liverpool won’t
simply be looking to refresh their squad. In many respects, the club will have to rethink
the way that they want to play football going forward. Across the last few seasons,
the ongoing debate has been over whether Liverpool will move away from the intense style of play that
has seen them succeed under Jurgen Klopp. This season, they haven’t been able to maintain an
aggressive press across the field. Is it time to move on to something different?
With the club keen on bringing in an elite midfielder in the sort of stratosphere as Jude
Bellingham - a player who could command a record fee for a Premier League signing - they cannot
afford to go into the market with any lack of clarity about what their game model is. But with
all the uncertainty around Liverpool at present, clarity might not be so easy to come by.
So, what does the future of Liverpool look like? It feels like we are at a
sliding doors moment for the club. Whilst the likelihood is that the
club will weather this current storm and enter a rebuild phase next season,
there are a lot of moving parts. Between Jurgen Klopp’s immediate future, the ownership situation,
the infrastructure behind the scenes, and potential play style changes,
there has perhaps never been a more uncertain time at Liverpool since Klopp arrived in 2015.