Strategy to refashion Liverpool as a major club

SOCCER:LIVERPOOL'S AMERICAN owner, John Henry, has criticised Chelsea for their extravagant transfer window spending, questioning the commitment of Roman Abramovich's club to Uefa's financial fair-play rules. Henry suggested Chelsea may be planning to "evade" the rules and called on the governing body to ensure they are strictly followed by all clubs. The fair-play rules, which require clubs to spend only the income they make and not rely on subsidies from owners, come into effect from next season.

“I was surprised Monday morning to receive an offer (from Chelsea for Fernando Torres) in that amount (€59 million) at the same time they were announcing such large losses (€84 million for 2009-10),” Henry said. “The big question is just how effective the financial fair-play rules are going to be. Perhaps some clubs support the concept in order to limit the spending of others, while implementing activities specifically designed to evade the rules they publicly support.”

Chelsea have insisted since signing Torres and David Luiz they firmly intend to comply with financial fair play and that the €84 million outlay was within overall progress towards cutting costs.

Henry, setting out his thoughts on Liverpool’s direction almost four months since his Fenway Sports Group bought the club by paying off the €237 million debts Tom Hicks’s and George Gillett’s “leveraged” takeover had loaded on to Liverpool, said he is committed to the club living within its income. “We’ve always spent money we’ve generated rather than deficit-spending and that will be the case in Liverpool,” he said, referring to the group’s ownership of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

That commitment to sound financial management was followed, not breached, Henry asserted, in the €42 million Liverpool paid Newcastle United for Andy Carroll. Henry said the fee made financial sense because Liverpool were only paying to Newcastle what they were to receive from Chelsea by selling Torres. “The fee for Torres was dependent on what Newcastle asked for Carroll,” Henry said, explaining that Liverpool wanted Carroll, plus €18 million, to replace Torres. Together with the €7 million sale of Ryan Babel to Hoffenheim, that effectively financed Liverpool’s €27 million signing of Luis Suarez, meaning the club bought two strikers but net, spent almost nothing.”

Saying Kenny Dalglish has “exceeded our expectations” as caretaker manager, Henry explained Liverpool retain ambitions to qualify for European competition this season, so insisted they had to sign a replacement striker, preferably Carroll, if Torres was to go.

“We weren’t going to write off Champions League and Europa League for the sake of someone’s happiness,” Henry said of Torres. “The striker position had to be filled, by someone who made sense for the long term.”

Henry explained how Carroll, even at €42 million, fits into FSG’s philosophy, which famously learns from the strategy honed by Billy Beane, the general manager at baseball’s Oakland Athletics. As described in the book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis, players are assessed from performance statistics, not solely by scouts rating how good they look. Henry said this did not mean they were not prepared to spend big fees on the right players, as the group has done when turning the Red Sox into a World Series-winning baseball team again. “We have been successful through spending and through securing and developing young players.”

That, he said, will be Liverpool’s two-pronged approach to rebuilding the squad, which will be financed only out of the club’s income.

Henry lavished praise on Dalglish, but he declined to say whether Dalglish is likely to be offered the job permanently. Henry said: “He has exceeded our expectations . . . It would be inappropriate to comment publicly on what happens beyond the end of this season.”

FSG is, Henry confirmed, studying the possibility of expanding Anfield rather than building a stadium on Stanley Park. “It’s not a coincidence the last two ownership groups could not get a new stadium built,” he argued. “What they proposed or hoped for just didn’t make any economic sense or they would have been built.”

With his first, extraordinary, transfer window done, in which Liverpool parted with English football’s most astonishing fee ever while spending nothing overall, Henry argued the new US owners’ strategy, to refashion Liverpool as a major club, is on course. “Our goal in Liverpool is to create the kind of stability the Red Sox enjoy,” he said. “We are committed to building for the long term.”