catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Yes great points on both and spot on as usual.
On the 1st point, this is the difficulty of the PL and in essence why FSG were the big players in the ESL (along with United to a degree, who lets face Liverpool are merely servile lapdogs for). The long terms trends are already that City and Chelsea are dominating English football, and move forward another 10 years, that's where it's heading. They must look at Arsenal are now and fear it's where they end up. To a degree we are hit with similar pressures but in a different way. if we played in Germany, we are probably in the CL regularly now, on account of being able to muscle in financially. It's one of the peculiarities of what is happening.
I actually think their plan was to press the re-set. They gave Klopp a season or 2 longer with the squad than they hoped, but he has thrown them under the bus last summer (before very quickly winding his neck in). But they've let a squad grow old together and a lot of the value has gone.
As for this academy, I must admit I have no idea where that even came from. They are not renowned for an academy and haven't been for about 25 years. They went nearly 2 decades without bringing through a single player who made 50 league games. City and Chelsea are known as big talent producers. Then you have like a United who don't have the same talent but have brilliant pathways. They have neither. They go on about that Curtis Jones, he's another poor mans Mctominay or whatever. They throw huge sums of money (agents fees, wages and sign on fees) at young players, and barring the occasional eye catching sale (always well below the reported value) it is mainly money down the drain.
I think FSG were sensible going for a re-set, but as you say the two big problems with that are if you end up re-setting below 3/4th. Once you start falling beyond that, it starts to become very difficult to fight your way back in consistently. They also completely lose the fans as well, who are completely unrealistic about their club. They view them as some sort of domestic super club. They are a team who have won 1 title, in very dubious conditions in 32 years. It's 0 leagues in 31 years in normal seasons that don't have a 4 month break and aren't played in July. That's their level now. They are not a City, a Chelsea a United in size. They're not even an Arsenal in all honesty who won 3 leagues in a short space of time.
Those unrealistic expectations they have will be petrol on the fire if they have a period of consolidation, and could make what could be a period of needed re-adjustment into one of crisis (as happened under Hodgson, where they nearly bankrupted their own club) with reckless spending.
