What has happened to one of England’s proudest clubs?
Next: Measuring Wayne Rooney's ever-growing legacy
The City of Memories and Hopes. That’s what the local mayor billed Istanbul as prior to the arrival of A.C. Milan and Liverpool F.C. for the 2005 Champions League Final. Liverpool fans certainly carried memories with them from Istanbul too, the issue is more that the hopes borne out of that night have been frequently shattered.
More from Premier League
- USMNT news: Balogun to stay, Musah to Milan, Ream wants promotion
- USMNT news: Dest to Fulham, Aaronson joins Union, Gold Cup roundup
- USMNT news: McKennie to Villa, Leeds departures, Sargent goal
- USMNT news: Pulisic to Milan, Musah to Fulham, Pepi to PSV
- USMNT rumors: Balogun to Chelsea, Robinson new contract, Pulisic to Milan
Turkey’s best known city straddles two continents, almost as a place where two worlds collide. For Liverpool, it has become a place where the present briefly blurred with the past.
The club’s status as England’s most successful team had been a source of pride for Liverpudlians for so long. Even to this day, although bitter rival Manchester United may have usurped them with their domestic success, the number five is what still sets Liverpool apart from their Premier League counterparts.
The winners of five European Cups (later known as the Champions League), Liverpool are a club with a remarkable heritage, history, pride, and a strongly defined identity.
A combination of glory and tragedy helps to set them apart from so many other teams. It’s what, to Liverpool fans and the people of that old shipping city, makes them so much more than just another football club.
When players pull on that famous red and white jersey, the fans expect them to carry the spirit of club legends like Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Emlyn Hughes, Ian Rush and Steven Gerrard.
In equal measure, the badge and the jersey represents and honors the 96 people who lost their lives in the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. The eternal flames that are captured on either side of the Liver bird in the current Liverpool crest act as a memorial to those who were lost.
In the time since that fateful night in Turkey, the only major trophies Liverpool have managed to get their hands on have been the FA Cup and the League Cup, both on only one occasion.
For a club with such a long developed habit of winning, that’s not good. What’s more startling is that even 2004-05 was an anomaly. Liverpool finished that season in fifth place in the Premier League, and had crashed out of the FA Cup in the third round earlier in the year, so their success in Europe wasn’t indicative of the club’s overall performance of play.
In that sense, you have to go right back towards the turn of the century to find a truly competitive squad, by Liverpool’s own very high standards. In 2000-01, they completed an FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup (now the Europa League) treble, and followed that up with a second place finish in the EPL the following season.
Since then, the highlights have come as surprises.
Over the last two decades, Liverpool hasn’t done enough to surround its great players with similar talent.
There wasn’t enough help for players like Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen. Steven Gerrard single-handedly carried the club for years. Then there are the likes of Fernando Torres and Luis Suarez, who burst on to the scene with Liverpool only for the club to be forced into selling them on to others carrying a more realistic chance of success.
The man currently at the helm tasked with turning things around is Brendan Rodgers. The Northern Irish man arrived at Liverpool after a successful spell with Swansea City. Rodgers had a clearly defined philosophy, something that Liverpool has lacked in recent coaches, for example, Rafa Benitez.
For many at the time, Rodgers was viewed as a coach with the potential to “save” British football. His ethos was based on building a squad with a significant home-grown presence and then playing positive, possession based football. Rodgers wanted his team to distance itself from the more physical and direct nature of British football; to instead play the game at a higher technical level, much like it was being played in Spain and Germany.
Ideologically this was perfect for Liverpool. Rodgers was going to bring them back to the glory days with a talented squad, with a distinctly British feel, playing the most attractive football in the land.
There are many reasons why it hasn’t worked out like planned. First of all, under Rodgers Liverpool has done a terrible job in the transfer market. Rodgers has spent just under £300 million and he’s only at the beginning of his fourth season with the club, yet there’s not a lot of real class to show for it on the pitch.
Players like Fabio Borini, Lazar Markovic, Iago Aspas, Mario Balotelli and Dejan Lovren have been unmitigated flops. Furthermore, those players highlight the problem with Liverpool’s current recruitment system too.
There isn’t enough patience. Liverpool is so keen to make the leap back to title contention immediately that the club is constantly overpaying for unproven or mediocre talent.
In this summer alone Liverpool has dug incredibly deep into its pockets for players with question marks hanging over them. Christian Benteke was a solid striker for Aston Villa, and he can probably be relied upon for 15 goals a season. Was he worth £32.5 million? Absolutely not.
Roberto Firmino was Liverpool’s other big investment of the summer. The 23-year-old Brazillian had long been touted as one of the best young attacking players in the world, but in reality he has yet to prove himself in one of Europe’s best leagues. Even in the Dutch Eredivisie, he never really set the league alight. £29 million is a lot of money to gamble, and from the early glimpses of Firmino there’s no guarantees that it’s one that will pay off either.
What Liverpool needs is pedigree and leadership to mix with those young players – to teach them what Liverpool is about, and to inspire them to higher levels of performance. That’s what Steven Gerrard did for years, but now with the club legend playing for the LA Galaxy, that leaves a significant void.
One of the smarter acquisitions that Liverpool made this summer was the signing of James Milner on a free transfer. Milner is experienced, reliable, and used to playing on the highest stages the game has to offer, thanks to his time with Manchester City, as well as with England.
If Liverpool were to take a leaf out of the book of their most bitter rivals Manchester United, they’d look to add more players of Milner’s ilk. Although it hasn’t dropped off quite as low in recent years, United is going through a rebuild of its own at the moment. There are many similarities in how the teams have approached that process, but it’s the subtle differences that really stand out.
In the same way that Liverpool raided Southampton for the services of Adam Lallana and Nathaniel Clyne, United brought in Luke Shaw and Morgan Schneiderlin from the South Coast. In the same way that Liverpool gambled on a young player like Firmino, United took a risk on Anthony Martial.
Where the two teams paths diverge, and the reason why the Manchester club’s rebuild is starting to look much more advanced, is because the Old Trafford club has added proven quality into the mix along the way too.
Champions League winner Juan Mata and World Cup winner Bastian Schweinsteiger: they’re the type of real difference makers that are needed at the highest level. The absence of players of their caliber highlights Rodgers’ current predicament too. His team has no real spine.
There are question marks over goalkeeper Simon Mignolet’s reliability between the posts, and Martin Skrtel and Mahamadou Sakho offer little more security or leadership in front of him.
In the middle of midfield, although he’s currently injured, Jordan Henderson has nowhere near the quality needed for a team with real ambitions of European or domestic success. The fact that he was made club captain following on from Gerrard’s departure should leave the Kop faithful with much to be desired.
Then up front, the club is still waiting for players to establish themselves. Philippe Coutinho is the creative brain of the team, and undoubtedly their best player right now, but he still needs a thoroughbred finisher that he can supply up front.
The problem for Liverpool is, if Coutinho continues to impress, how long can he be expected to stick around?
Rodgers’ tenure at Liverpool is bolstered by the fact that between seventh and sixth place finishes in the league in 2013 and 2015 respectively, Liverpool sandwiched in a real title challenge just falling short in second.
That gave the fans a taste for what they’ve been missing, for what they’ve longed after for so long, but in hindsight it’s hard to attribute too much of the success of that season to Rodgers. It was the Luis Suarez show, as highlighted by 31 goals in 33 league games, and in many ways it was the great Steven Gerrard’s swan song.
That near miss was little more than a false dawn for one of England’s greatest clubs, but it wasn’t the first one. Ten years on, it’s clear that the magic witnessed by all who were in Istanbul on that momentous night in the club’s history was a momentary phenomenon.
They weren’t watching a rebirth and the return to glory. Instead, it was just a brief blip in the path to mediocrity.
More from Premier League
- USMNT news: Balogun to stay, Musah to Milan, Ream wants promotion
- USMNT news: Dest to Fulham, Aaronson joins Union, Gold Cup roundup
- USMNT news: McKennie to Villa, Leeds departures, Sargent goal
- USMNT news: Pulisic to Milan, Musah to Fulham, Pepi to PSV
- USMNT rumors: Balogun to Chelsea, Robinson new contract, Pulisic to Milan