“To have success you need to attract ‘big names’. To attract ‘big names’ you need big money. To attract ‘big names’ you need to keep your ‘big names’. To attract ‘big names’ you need to be offering regular Champions League football. To attract ‘big names’ in England you need to be a London or Manchester-based club. Everybody knows that in modern football these are the laws of gravity. They lead to an upward spiral of success breeding more success. The bad news is that in 2015 Liverpool fail on all five laws. This puts them into a downward spiral of disappointment breeding further disappointment. For Liverpool to succeed they would have to defy the laws of football gravity.” Tomkins Times

“The history of the balance of power in football can arguably be understood by one simple factor; money. For all the talk of the ‘glory game’ and clubs defying the odds, sustained success has overwhelmingly correlated to club wealth, a trend dating back to the early twentieth century with such figures as John Henry Davies of Manchester United and Sir Henry Norris of Fulham and Arsenal. Both took clubs from near extinction to the top of the First Division. Money is not an automatic guarantee of success of course – the history of the game is littered with those who’ve crashed and burned trying to raise themselves to the level of the game’s elite but failed, thanks to toxic combinations of ill fortune and bad management. But for sustained success money has always been a vital factor, a trend the wealth trap of the Premier League had only succeeded in exaggerating.” thetwounfortunates

“To week nine! We’re tantalisingly close to be able to make some reasonably confident conclusions from the fare we’ve seen and the early winners and losers are starting to shake out a little. One of the early winners- Leicester- produced a real sit up and take note performance in retrieving a two goal deficit at Southampton. With a relevant caveat about the effect of the score, to bombard Southampton with 22 shots in the final 52 minutes was some effort, especially given Southampton’s prior efficiency in rebutting opposition shooting and they duly got their just rewards with a late equaliser. As we will see later, sometimes styles clash and teams neutralise each other, sometimes the opposite occurs and you get an open game and sometimes shit just happens. Predicting this is not always straightforward.” Stats Bomb

“Anyone who follows Paul Grech on Twitter will know that he is a passionate fan of Liverpool (his recent purchase of a Jurgen Klopp LFC mug is testament enough) and so his book Liverpool’s Blueprint is an analysis of the clubs academy which gives a thoughtful insight into an area of the club which has its own folklore. The book is broken down into seven chapters which delve into how the academy fell into disrepair and was rebuilt by Rafa Benitez and, finally, how it runs in the present day. The recent appointment of the aforementioned Klopp and his philosophy on developing young talent would make a fantastic sequel.” Football Pink

“You know what the problem is? The problem is that Liverpool has no idea whether Liverpool is supposed to be fun. Jürgen Klopp, the club’s freshly unveiled new manager, is fun. Gegenpressing, the tiki-taka-on-MDMA playing style on whose groovy back he took Dortmund to consecutive Bundesliga championships in 2011 and 2012, is fun. The touchline repertoire of leaps, aerial punches, spins, and roundhouse kicks with which he air-guitars his teams to victory and rages against defeat is fun.” Grantland

“‘We’ve nothing to fear but fear itself’ – Franklin D’s great rallying call to the American people in the depths of the Great Depression. It’s a line that’s been on my mind since the horrible West Ham defeat. Naturally, it was amplified on Saturday evening as Liverpool played fear football again, lost again, and Twitter burned. Brendan Rodgers has the fear and it’s eating him and his Liverpool legacy game by game. And it’s sad. Remember ‘death by football’? Poor old Brendan is suffering death by football – but not his football. Instead, a football that goes against his blood.” Tomkins Times

“As much I’m looking forward to the Premier League’s latest Saturday lunchtime kick-off, I can’t seem to concentrate on the screen. It’s the BT Sport logo in the top-right corner that’s causing me the problem. As soon as I see it my thumbs take over in a flurry of muscle-memory. It seems like I’m not alone. Within minutes, Twitter’s trending topics reveal that the eyes of the whole country have been yanked from the big screen at the front of the room to the small screen in their hand. Michael Owen, it seems, gives us all absolutely no choice but to tweet about him. Indeed, by the time the weekend’s over, criticism of his commentary has already hit the back pages, with stories that are little more than the journalistic equivalent of a playground pile-on.” Four Four Two (Video)

“This is something of a make or break season for Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool. Even a man with his levels of self-confidence must realize that he could find himself out of a job if Liverpool has another season like the previous one. For all the various moving pieces involved in a successful soccer team, the buck ultimately stops at the manager. If a team with trophy-winning ambitions repeatedly fails to win any trophies, heads usually roll.” Fusion

“Philippe Coutinho’s stunning long-range strike gave Liverpool a late victory over Stoke on the opening weekend. The match was a lacklustre Premier League encounter until the Brazilian’s magic four minutes from the end. Former Liverpool man Glen Johnson could have put his new side in front in the first half, but skewed his shot over the bar from 12 yards out. Charlie Adam’s long-range free-kick almost sneaked in at the back post but was pushed away by Simon Mignolet.” BBC

“After the sordid love affair that culminated in a strong title challenge in 2013/14, Liverpool barely cast a furtive glance at the Champions League places in 2014/15. Their underlying numbers over the whole season provided scant consolation either, with performance levels in line with a decent team lacking the quality usually associated with a top-four contender. Improvements in results and underlying performance will therefore be required to meet the club’s stated aim of Champions League football.” StatsBomb

“Liverpool have been shrewd in this transfer window (as much as I can regret these words in 2016). The fact that they’ve got most of the transfers done before the pre-season because Rodgers wanted the players to be together and train for a month before the season began, unlike last season, signifies that the Northern Irishman has some sort of a plan in his head. There has been a clear improvement in the squad and unlike last season, the focus is not merely on increasing the squad but also on quality. Roberto Firmino has been the pick of the signings for most people who cry for ‘marquee’ players, and the swiftness in which the Reds got that done was massively impressive. Not to forget, there has been a change in the backroom staff.” Outside of the Boot

“I went into this summer hoping that we wouldn’t try to do too much in the transfer window. Last season suggests that one player can make a difference (in this case, Suarez) – whereas multiple additions can move a team back into transition. I was very much hoping that we’d focus on doing one thing well in the window, rather than trying to solve every problem in the squad. The priority in my opinion was clear – we scored roughly half as many goals compared to the previous season (whilst conceding roughly the same amount). That needs to improve.” Tomkins Times

“Depending on who you talk to, Raheem Sterling is either a naïve puppet, an avaricious sell-sword or a plain old traitor. It’s been several years since a player’s desire to leave a Premier League club has become so acrid. All departing players can expect to be booed on their return. Sterling can expect the bilious depths of a football fan’s considerable ire, nothing less. But, however distasteful the whole affair has been, Sterling has perhaps been cast too lightly as the villain. By any measurement of decency and professionalism (even by the Premier League’s own stunted morality) Sterling has not behaved well. ‘Phoning in sick’ for training is grubby and juvenile but not, I expect, uncommon.” Football Pink

“Liverpool is a romantic club. There’s no two ways about it. Its history needs no introduction. The club’s honours are almost beyond counting. Some of the greatest managers, players and teams to have graced the English game have done so sporting the Liver bird crest. To this day, there is not a set of fans beyond Merseyside who do not feel a little pang of inadequacy as they hear the choruses of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ rise up at Anfield, or as they watch the Kop stand in fiery red as one. The club is a beautiful bastion of football folklore, a fierce and loyal community too. True romantic seeks football club, must pride itself on multiple European titles? Liverpool’s the one for you.” Football Pink

“You can see it in his first goal. He’s 19, wearing no. 28, a number reserved for fringe midfielders. The ball gets cycled back toward the midfield line from the right wing, and standing 50 yards from goal, he starts asking for it. He’s calling for it not because he’s open — he is — he’s calling for it because he knows he’s about to score.” Grantland (Video)

“Raheem Sterling’s agent, Aidy Ward, is doing his level best to take the spotlight off the performance of anyone else connected to the club, bar his client. So in some ways a few people at Liverpool might welcome the distraction, even if it is in many ways somewhat unpalatable. I have some sympathy with Sterling’s plight. Or rather, I did. Not any more.” Tomkins Times

“Raheem Sterling’s fragile relationship with Liverpool may be broken beyond repair when he tells manager Brendan Rodgers he wants to leave Anfield when they meet later this week. Liverpool have always been steadfast in their determination to keep Sterling despite the 20-year-old’s obvious and public reluctance to sign a new deal worth £100,000-a-week. Sterling, it seems, is equally determined to leave in a development which will come as another bitter blow to Liverpool as they recover from the impending departure of captain Steven Gerrard to LA Galaxy and the collapse of a season that saw them lose to Aston Villa in an FA Cup semi-final and fail to reach the Champions League.” BBC

“A lot has been written about Liverpool in the aftermath of their meek cup exit to a Sherwood-charged Aston Villa, and a nil-nil draw, thwarted by the full Pulis has done little to ameliorate the prevailing fan mood. The reasons given for this season’s “failure” have been extensive and variable with transfers, a lack of Suarez and Sturridge, too much tinkering with formations and even the fact that the 5th biggest club in the league is likely to finish 5th all being cited. The Liverpool fan base is huge and vocal and many thinkers and writers from the same generation have been brought up on a diet of success and quality throughout the 1970s and 1980s.” Stats Bomb

“Based on the law of averages, you will find that certain things happen more or less every summer, both in terms of transfers and squad evolution. And not all of them are good. While certain elements remain unpredictable, this very unpredictability is, in many ways, totally predictable. Mass clear-outs always seem like a necessity at times like these, but you then usually need to make mass purchases to compensate. And while that can sometimes work, it often doesn’t. The whole summer process is complicated, as I will now show, in what is a fairly long piece (think of it as a book chapter, if you’re allergic to long internet articles).” Tomkins Times

“Last night’s piece, “We’re All Gonna Die!” provoked a lot of debate, much of which took place on Twitter. There were a lot of interesting comments, plus the usual complaints. (And of course, the usual excellent discussions in the comments on this site.) I figured it’d be easier to write a (fairly) short addendum on here, rather than reply to various queries in a medium not suited to getting across complex ideas. Obviously the original piece was fairly long, but it deals with a pretty big issue; it wasn’t 4,500 words on why Alberto Moreno chooses to have a stubbly beard.” Tomkins Times