Liverpool are going for it
They're spending big. They're comitting.
Hi, I had a bit of a disaster while writing this where I left my laptop bag on the train and couldn’t access anything. That’s purely my own incompetence, and thankfully I got everything back, but it did mean this took longer, sorry.
When Jürgen Klopp announced his planned departure in January 2024, owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) had one singular thought on their minds: Michael Edwards.
In the eyes of FSG, Edwards had been almost as important to Liverpool’s Champions League and Premier League title wins as Klopp. More than any manager or player, Edwards embodied the strategy FSG had hoped to install when they bought the club: data-driven, forward thinking, and totally unafraid of challenging orthodoxies. When reading his former Liverpool colleague Ian Graham’s book How to Win the Premier League, you really get the sense that most people he works with find Edwards to be an incredibly impressive individual.
Edwards and Klopp, both very strong personalities with a specific idea of how things can be done, clearly started to clash over time, which in part prompted the Englishman to leave Liverpool in the first place. But it was also obvious that Edwards didn’t want to spend his life as a sporting director. In the previous structure, Edwards and Klopp both reported to Mike Gordon, essentially “the Liverpool guy” at FSG and ultimately The Boss when it came to matters at Anfield. They would clearly debate issues and try to find consensus, but if manager and sporting director strongly disagreed on a decision, I imagine that Gordon would be the ultimate decider. Edwards left the club around the same time Gordon took a step back from day-to-day responsibilities, letting Klopp fill the vacuum as more of a British-style manager making all the decisions.
With Klopp gone, Liverpool needed an entirely new structure, and there was only one man FSG wanted to do that. Edwards didn’t want his old job, though. This time, he wanted Gordon’s job. He wanted to have full control of everything this time. He wanted to build a multi-club model. He wanted to be an executive. They gave him everything he wanted, and created a new job title of FSG’s “CEO of Football”. The investors in Boston are letting him run Liverpool and future football assets however he wants.
He put his mark on reshaping the club’s structure pretty quickly. His long-time friend Richard Hughes was hired from Bournemouth as the new sporting director, but it was very clear he’d be executing Edwards’ grand strategy. Arne Slot was hired as Klopp’s replacement, but most of the reporting seemed to suggest he’d be reporting to Hughes, under a more European-style structure. With such behind-the-scenes change, Liverpool struggled to make an impact in the transfer market last summer (not that it mattered). This time, though, Liverpool are going big. This is the window fans have been craving since 2019. Liverpool are building a new side right now, and at least so far, it’s been textbook Edwards. Unless, of course, they do an absolutely huge deal that totally changes things.