Will Jeff Bezos fit with ‘DNA ethos’ of Liverpool? And other questions…

It feels like an easy question to answer but can Jeff Bezos fit in with Liverpool and their DNA.

We also have more mails on Spurs, Aston Villa and Newcastle, but start with some Marcus Rashford.

How do you solve a problem like Marcus?

Ian Watson raises some valid points in his article about Rashford and the predicament United are in; it really feels like a damned if you do and damned if you don’t decision. The best outcome for both parties may have been a clean break, with Rashford moving to Barca and off our wage bill; but it wasn’t to be and sure, where would be the fun in that? It’s a quandary and I am struggling to land on a definitive viewpoint, so need to flesh out some pros and cons.

When on form, Rashford can be electric. Essentially, we are talking about a player who is likely to score or assist every other game, and his best season for us (22/23) saw him start 46 games, score 30 and provide 9 assists – that’s a world class season. He scored against Liverpool, City, Arsenal and Chelsea that season, and hit the onion bag in every round but one of our march to victory in the League Cup. Perhaps as important to our current squad, he often played up top that season and can definitely do a job at providing competition to Sesko/Mbeumo up front and Cunha/Dorgu on the left. What’s not to like, “sign da ting” am I right?

Well, hold your horses there boss, let’s remember there was a reason we split up in the first place. His head dropped, he looked disinterested and there were a couple of questionable off-field decisions. The lad’s work rate is also dubious; to give an example, Cunha was involved in 12.6 ground duels and made 0.8 interceptions per 90 mins last season – Rashford had 9.1 ground duels and 0.2 interceptions. Naturally, Barcelona likely defended less than us but even taking his last season in the PL (24/25), he had 8.0 ground duels and 0.4 interceptions. Note that in the 20/21 and 21/22 seasons, the number of ground duels he had was similar to Cunha (11.0 and 11.5 respectively) so he can do the dirty work when he wants to. He will need to get back to that level of tracking back and pressing or he has little chance of starting regularly for us – even up front, Sesko had 11.3 ground duels for instance. Put simply, this team works its collective asses off so he will need to work his off to get near the starting 11.

Then the question shifts, can we afford to carry an impact sub or squad player who is getting paid £300k per week? And this is not a financial question per se, this is a squad happiness question. If I’m Cunha, Mbeumo, Dorgu, Sesko heck even Bruno and I’m looking at someone who is getting as much as me, if not multiple times more, and not putting in a full shift, I’m going to ask questions.

So that would be my starting point for Carrick and co – is he giving 100% in training day in day out? Is he working hard off the ball? In fact, is he working the hardest off the ball to justify the massive wages we are paying him and setting an example to the rest of the team? Because if not, then get rid. This is not a talent issue; this is an attitude and effort issue.

I think he can be reintegrated and it can be successful, simply because this squad is different and you get the impression that any player not hitting standards will not get away with it. The fans will also welcome him back after a goal or two (we’re a fickle bunch). Carrick knows the player well, played with him (Rashford actually scored the winner in Carrick’s last game) and briefly managed him – he will know the standards that need to be met and how important a decision this could be for his tenure. Ole’s decision to bring Ronaldo back, albeit under massively different circumstances, arguably contributed to his downfall (another story for another day).

Nobody said it was going to be easy; so, over to you Michael. Garey Vance, MUFC

Keeping an open mind on Bezos at Liverpool

Not written in for a bit but felt inspired to respond to the understandable mailbox question raised by Mr Northampton Town about Mr Bezos getting involved with the Liverpool ownership.

On a 1-to-10 pleasure scale upon hearing the news, I’d say it was about 3 or 4. Not particularly enamoured by the thought of involvement of another ruthless, if deep pocketed, capitalist in Liverpool’s ownership, but certainly not preparing the protest placards just yet.

We have to remember the, at times, somewhat traumatic US ownership model that we have been operating on under across the last 20 years or so – that leveraged finance model that Hicks & Gillett brought effectively started to prize the heart out of the club, leading to the need to need to sell our high end talent each season just to fund their annual interest bleed/greed – that’s why I personally have a lot of sympathy for Man U fans at the moment who continue to suffer from the Glazer bleed, taking something like £60m out of the club each year (I could be misguided on those numbers … don’t shoot me !)

But thankfully we were freed from those dark clouds in 2010 as FSG stepped in to brighten the mood and just as importantly provide the funding and vision to help move the club forward (to start scratching and clawing our way back up from the bottom of the perch).

Has their subsequent ownership been perfect ? … No – you can’t say that with the leading role they took with the horrific European Super league concept and scored own goals regarding one of two things around covid and ticket pricing – but I am not throwing the baby out with the bath water on this one … they have been overwhelmingly positive for the football club I love.

And now Jeff B appear to be chucking his baseball cap in the ring.

Before I can pass judgement on that, we really need to better understand what his motivation is for getting involved, ensuring that is aligned to the DNA ethos of the club from a fan perspective. Then he needs to be judged against those statements in terms of delivery, but we also need to recognise that he isn’t going to be the guy cracking the whip and driving the stagecoach here (more the rich passenger being carried along inside …. but what do I know).

So let’s keep an open mind (but with a slanted head and squinted eye).

RHT/TS also asked about the Araujo deal. I personally see it as a relatively shrewd move.

He effectively will bring experienced cover at centre half whilst also being able to operate at RB – both areas that we are short on (.. but we appear to be a little light squad wise for everywhere bar where Barcola would want to play !). Covering those defensive gaps with a loan enables Liverpool to prioritise their more limited transfer kitty on other areas of the pitch – we need aggressive legs in midfield.

Araujo did suffer from some bad errors in latter times at Barca (which makes him all the more perfect fit for being a replacement option for Konate !), but let’s hope he see this as a real opportunity to kickstart his career again and knuckles down accordingly. Only time will tell.

Liverpool have had some pretty awful loan deals across recent years so let’s hope this is the one that bucks the trend.

Excited now for the season ahead – Iraola will win the crowd through style of play, but we are set to go on a bit of a performance rollercoaster I feel. There will be highs, but I also expect to lose a few dodgy ones, which means I’m not seeing a genuine title challenge … but that’s not vital to me … I want to stand on the terraces and feel the fight and attacking verve of the team and I think we’ll get that. Sparky, LFC

(can see a lot of value in Camavinga for us with the rough price being quoted in the media).

VARsenal and Liverpool/Spurs trade places

I defend to the last inch VArteta’s incredible ability to get VArsenal playing football of the highest quality! The tactical innovations which have transformed the game. The ability to move the ball methodically up the field, gain set pieces and corners, tactically position their players, and have the players score … touchdowns and field goals!

Yes, VArteta has turned VArsenal into a tactically amazing football team … american football. Watch him have his players grind the ball yard by yard towards the corner, then position his special teams around his corners and set pieces – linebackers for blocking and running backs / wide receivers to aim for the aerial ball. VArteta has truly transformed the beautiful game! From simple mesmerizing football played on grass, to the ugly american football marked by collisions between athletes who put their bodies on the line, fighting tooth and nail to squeeze the ball over the goal-line.

[end sarcasm. So heartfelt i had to write this twice lol]

Cynical jokes aside for a cynical team…

I was just wondering if spurs and lfc have traded places?

Spurs: charismatic manager, retaining skeptical previous departees, attracting all manner of useful/ talented players, plugging long-standing squad gaps, achieving wholesale transformation, bringing optimism and hope to supporters

Lfc: takeover talks (again), chasing the highest rated footballers without notable successes (albeit notable success last season), lots of unplugged squad gaps, filling some with reject loanees, lack of direction in the front office (michael edwards newly departed, richard hughes strongly linked to saudi pro league), supporter gloom over the state of squad and more importantly, over the intentions of owners to cash out and turn the club over to potential owners with questionable experience if not intentions …

Fingers crossed it’s just a minor pessimistic spell. Gab YNWA PS i have to reiterate that i’ll never be anti-FSG. They rescued lfc from potential administration and relegation in 2010, then successfully stewarded the club without much debt these 16 years. Got a great coach, supported him mostly with appropriate spending, got a great data analytics team. Sure we could have won more if we had spent more, but other than moneybags city and chelski, we’ve been more hugely successful than anybody else since fsg took over. Ask any rival fans if they would have wanted to trade places .. even VArsenal’s.

Yet more Spurs anger at Villa fans

I’m afraid that, as a Spurs fan, I’ve been triggered by Kevin, Villa’s email!

Before I get into it, I’d just like to say that Villa are one of the great English football clubs, and I genuinely wish them every success. Great manager, great fans, a great stadium and, clearly, Black Sabbath’s final ever concert is better than anything Spurs will ever have at ours!

However, I think a fair bit of history has been rewritten to support the “poor us” narrative.

First, the idea that ENIC “pumped a fair old amount of wedge” into Spurs in the (pre-PSR) 2000s simply isn’t true. Between 2000 and 2010, the owners put virtually no direct capital into squad spending or player wages. We didn’t buy our way to the top table; we operated as a self-sustaining business. Every penny spent came from player sales, TV rights and sensible, pragmatic management. The only times ENIC has injected significant cash into the club were £150 million in 2022 and £100 million in 2025, both during the PSR era, and neither of those sums is quite as seismic as implied.

Secondly, the idea that Spurs are part of some invitation-only “cartel” ignores what actually happened on the pitch. Between 2009 and 2026, Spurs finished in the top six in 14 of 17 seasons and qualified for Europe in 18 of the last 20. I’d argue that record alone puts us among the top six clubs in the country – you don’t stumble into European football for two decades by accident.

While Villa were playing in the Championship, Spurs qualified for the Champions League three seasons in a row and, of course, reached the final in 2019. In November 2017, we beat Real Madrid 3-1 at Wembley. On that very same evening, Villa were preparing to face Preston North End in the Championship. There’s absolutely no shame in that (PNE are another great English club), but it does illustrate just how different the trajectories of the two clubs had become.

Finally, blaming London feels a little convenient. Birmingham is obviously one of the UK’s great cities, with a huge population and no shortage of major music, entertainment and sporting venues. There’s no reason why Villa Park couldn’t be developed into a bigger year-round revenue generator if the ambition and planning were there. Spurs didn’t become what they are because they happened to be in London; they became what they are because they spent 20 years building infrastructure, commercial revenues and a long-term strategy.

PSR is clearly a broken system. Any system that encourages clubs to sell academy products for “pure profit” isn’t fit for purpose. But complaining because billionaire owners aren’t allowed to treat the Premier League like a cheat-code video game isn’t quite the noble stance it’s made out to be.

But I think the frustration is better directed at the Premier League than at Spurs.

COYS. Paul, Cheltenham

…Ok, I’ll be the Spurs fan that bites and gives some context.

First, the idea that Spurs simply had decades of unrestricted owner funding and then used that head start to become a “Big 6” club doesn’t really stand up to the numbers.

In 2008 and 2009, Spurs had very comparable revenues to Villa and Newcastle. Even through around 2013, the gap wasn’t enormous. Spurs were doing roughly £115m in revenue in 2008, compared with roughly £99m for Newcastle and £76m for Villa. Meanwhile, United and Arsenal were already operating at roughly £200–250m+.

What Levy eventually recognized — for all his many faults — was that Spurs couldn’t sustainably compete with United and Arsenal by simply trying to outspend them. The strategy was to accept a period of relative austerity, invest heavily in infrastructure, and build a stadium capable of generating substantially more revenue.

And the transfer numbers support that. From roughly 2008–2019, Spurs’ cumulative net transfer spend was around £140m. That’s roughly the same as Newcastle and substantially less than Villa, who were around £240m. Obviously, Newcastle and Villa’s relegations complicate the comparison, but the broader point remains: Spurs weren’t buying their way to the top.

The wage numbers tell an even more interesting story. In 2012, for example, Spurs’ wage bill was around £90m and Villa’s was roughly £83m. Spurs weren’t operating with some enormous financial advantage over Villa. The difference was that Spurs were consistently getting better sporting results from roughly similar levels of spending, which then generated more revenue and allowed them to reinvest.

And on the ENIC point, I think you’re confusing owner wealth with owner investment. ENIC certainly had enormous wealth, but Spurs weren’t built by ENIC repeatedly injecting hundreds of millions of pounds of equity. The new stadium was primarily financed through the club’s own resources and borrowing against its future revenues. ENIC’s major £150m equity injection came later, in 2022. Then there’s the London argument.

Yes, London is an advantage. Of course it is. But Tottenham isn’t Chelsea or Mayfair, and Birmingham is hardly some tiny provincial market. Villa have one of the biggest fanbases in English football, a huge catchment area, a major city, corporate customers, concerts, and the potential to host events such as NFL games. A purpose-built, modern stadium is a revenue opportunity in Birmingham just as it is in London — perhaps not to exactly the same extent, but certainly enough to materially change Villa’s financial position.

And that’s really the point of using Spurs as the example.

Nobody is saying Villa should literally replicate everything Spurs did. The lesson is that building the underlying revenue-generating infrastructure can change a club’s financial position permanently.

Spurs went from roughly £115m of revenue in 2008 to over £460m by 2019. They didn’t get there by ENIC writing billion-pound cheques for players. They got there through sporting success whilst not spending a lot, Champions League football, commercial growth and, critically, infrastructure investment.

Now, Newcastle have an enormous advantage Spurs never had: an owner capable of funding infrastructure directly without needing the club to take on anything like Tottenham’s level of stadium debt. If PIF wants to build a £1bn stadium, that is a completely different proposition from what Spurs had to do.

So I actually agree with part of your broader argument: PSR absolutely does make it harder for a wealthy new owner to replicate what Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour did. That’s not really controversial.

Where I disagree is that Spurs are evidence the system is simply a closed shop.

Chelsea and Manchester City proved that a club can break into the elite through enormous owner investment. Spurs proved another route exists: build the revenue base, invest in infrastructure, consistently perform, and let the financial flywheel develop.

If Newcastle and Villa are angry that the rules changed after Chelsea and City got through the door, I can understand that argument. But blaming Spurs for building a sustainable business within the rules doesn’t really make sense.

And calling Spurs “the cartel” doesn’t change the underlying fact that in 2008 Spurs were much closer financially to Villa and Newcastle than they were to Manchester United and Arsenal.

The interesting question isn’t whether Spurs were “lucky.” It’s why Spurs managed to turn that starting position into a £460m-revenue club while Villa and Newcastle didn’t — and whether PSR now makes it substantially harder for another club to do the same. Stephen

Putting Newcastle in perspective

I think you’ve probably described the Newcastle mood rather better than the original mood rankings did. I don’t doubt for a second that most Newcastle fans are excited about the new manager, the younger players and having a bit of edge back.

But some of the argument here feels like Newcastle are being asked to choose between being Bournemouth and signing Mbappé, when there is quite a lot of football in between those two things.

The APT point is the one I struggle with most.

I understand why Newcastle fans resent it, particularly given the timing of the takeover. But saying that “any revenue growth was immediately stifled” makes it sound as though Newcastle aren’t allowed to grow commercially. That’s not really what APT does. What it stops is the much more convenient route of using related party deals to create spending power at values that wouldn’t necessarily exist at arm’s length.

You can argue about whether those rules are good, whether they came too late for City and Chelsea and just in time for Newcastle, and whether they entrench the clubs already at the top.

All fair arguments.

But that’s rather different from saying Newcastle have effectively been told they aren’t allowed to catch up.

The Spurs bit is harder to take seriously.

Yes, they’re in London.

Obviously.

London is a rather useful place to have a football club.

But that doesn’t make the Tottenham model an illusion. They’ve spent an enormous amount of money building an asset that can generate revenue seven days a week, and then actually gone about generating that revenue.

Could Newcastle do exactly the same thing? No.

Does that mean Spurs’ commercial growth shouldn’t count because they’ve got the good postcode?

I’m not sure that’s going to survive much scrutiny.

And actually, I think the most interesting part of your email is the cycle you describe:

qualify for the Champions League, play more games, pick up injuries, lose players, miss out, lose revenue, and then find it harder to build the squad needed to qualify again.

That is a legitimate problem with the way football finances work.

The clubs already generating enormous revenues have a huge advantage because success produces more revenue, which produces more spending power, which makes further success more likely.

That’s the bit that deserves a serious discussion.

But it isn’t necessarily a “rigged” system. It may simply be a system in which history compounds.

The established clubs had years to build their commercial businesses, their stadiums, their global audiences and their European records. Newcastle have arrived later with the money to accelerate the process, but not the decades of revenue that come with it.

That’s frustrating.

It might even be unfair.

But I don’t think it means Newcastle are being prevented from becoming one of the big clubs.

And perhaps that’s why your last paragraph is the best bit.

If Newcastle fans genuinely feel invigorated by Howe going, the new manager, the young players and the idea of being hated again, then maybe we should stop telling them they are supposed to be angry because they haven’t become Manchester City overnight.

Go and be annoying.

Win some games.

Keep producing good players.

Build the stadium.

Grow the revenue.

And make everyone else work out how to stop you.

That feels like a much more interesting Newcastle mood to me than another argument about whether Spurs being in London is cheating. Gaptoothfreak, Man. Utd., New York (Probably wrong. Occasionally right. Always neutral.)

On the Beach

When reading the piece on the first players bought by rich owners it was interesting to see the name of Eddie Beach disregarded somewhat. Eddie performed brilliantly for Shelbourne away to Ajax last Thursday in a 3-1 defeat saving a pen and making several other quality saves.

He only recently signed for Shels and had played for Derry City earlier in the season.

Hopefully The Aul Reds can cause a massive shock this Thursday in Tolka Park