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How far away from the title are we ?

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Rosco

Rosco

Worse than Brendan
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I saw some article this morning quoting Danny Murphy who apparently on talksport said we're at least five years away from a title. Possibly even ten.

I'm not sure upon what basis he made the comments or how he justified them but i think its bonkers.

For me this season was about whittling down the squad and finding the core of the team that could take us forward towards a title. It's fair to say its not going all that well at the moment and things are possibly more uncertain now than before the season started. But i still think saying we're five years away from a title is over egging it.

I think teams have a natural cycle that they go through - which can be altered by good or bad spending.

We have a lot of nice complementary pieces in our team - Mane, Lallana, Firmino and you might even reduce Coutinho to a complementary player. In the right circumstances they're all good players but they aren't players you'll build around.
Same goes in midfield and defence. We have some good players and some good youth prospects to fill out the squad.

The challenge now is to nail down a couple of players we're going to build the team around. If we do that I think we're in a genuine title hunt within 2 years.
 
Before even reading what you said I was coming into the thread to say a title challenge isn't a set number of years away, but is probably about four players away.
If we don't recruit those players and keep bringing in tidy player of the same standard that we already have we won't properly content, regardless of time passing.
Recruit those right four player over the next two summer transfer windows and we should be ready to challenge then
 
Danny Murphy is usually thoughtful enough to make pretty sound sense. This is a bit of uncharacteristically shallow sensationalism from him which will get more attention than it deserves because he's a Red himself. We will obv.need to make the right choices (in which I include the need for the owners to finance those choices) but, if we do, I would positively expect us to challenge for the title within the five years, let alone ten, given where we currently stand.
 
That ten years figure is bullshit. That's almost saying that a club relies on it's youth players coming good and doesn't buy in any players.

Plus, it suggests that we're improving...
 
Until the team learns how to defend properly which could be any amount of time. I'm not sure we have the defenders or the midfielders to do that well enough and it will be pretty hard if we play the same way as it exposes the defence quite a bit.
 
I haven't heard / read what he said so it's hard to judge the context in which he said that but I can sympathise.

Saying we're 5-10 years away from winning the title is more or less the same as saying we're not going to win it at all the ways things are and it often does feel that way.

I don't think our squad is all that bad either - I've said before that I don't think we've got much in the way of dead wood - but we've been trying and failing badly to recruit these 'core' players for 3-4 years now.

Why are things going to be different this summer?

Do we have more money? Determination? Pulling power?
 
It's a fair question. I guess my hope is that Klopp will now be in a position to make a more convincing case to the owners, based on (a) more complete knowledge of the quality, or lack of it, of the players currently at the club and (b) the way the wind has gone out of our sails since Christmas.
 
keniget said:
I haven't heard / read what he said so it's hard to judge the context in which he said that but I can sympathise.

Saying we're 5-10 years away from winning the title is more or less the same as saying we're not going to win it at all the ways things are and it often does feel that way.

I don't think our squad is all that bad either - I've said before that I don't think we've got much in the way of dead wood - but we've been trying and failing badly to recruit these 'core' players for 3-4 years now.

Why are things going to be different this summer?

Do we have more money? Determination? Pulling power?
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What we need is better judgement in the market for starters.

We were rumored to be interested in Delle Alli but decided against him, we were hot on Christian Eriksen's heels when he was still with Ajax but opted for Aspas and Alberto instead and we've also heard more than whispers when it comes to players like Henrikh (now United) and Sanchez (Arsenal) players whom we for various different reasons lost out on.

We obv don't know the full story in any of the cases mentioned above, and maybe some of them they were always out of our reach (Sanchez in particular) but the players to improve us were out there and they still are - also within our financial reach (both Alli and Eriksen went for pennies) - we just have to single them out and then make the proper moves in due time. Something we've been amateurishly poor at for too long.

I have much more faith in us taking the right decisions with Klopp at the helm but a tumbleweed-window like the one we've had to endure in January obv didn't exactly boost that confidence. Summer is going to be ever so important for us, and as what seems to be the general opinion on here we are not that far off in my opinion either - four players of the right caliber in the right positions, combined with a few competent squad players/talented youngsters could potentially turn us into title aspirants again.
 
As said above, it's not how long a time we are away, it's how mbah signjngs. Four major ones for me. Top class keeper, CM, CB and striker. Add that the current squad and we could easily win the league.
If I had to put that into a timescale, i would hope we would get one of those per window or two every summer.
 
mom said:
As said above, it's not how long a time we are away, it's how mbah signjngs. Four major ones for me. Top class keeper, CM, CB and striker. Add that the current squad and we could easily win the league.
If I had to put that into a timescale, i would hope we would get one of those per window or two every summer.
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Is that the lad from Feyenoord?
 
It could be anything from 1 year to 50 years.

We need someone with vision, to see the real issues going on at this club.
 
50 years? Fuck that. I wanna see us win the title before I die of old age.
We won it the first season I started supported us. In hindsight I obviously bring bad luck to this club.
 
Murphy's often a downbeat character, and this is just lazily pessimistic. There are too many variables to allow someone to evaluate a squad, ponder the time and cost of new recruits and then come up with some prediction. In terms of quality and depth, Leicester were about 20 years from winning the league when they won it last season. We were about five years away when we almost won it with Rodgers. It's not a simple computer game,it's a real situation in which all kinds of things can happen. We could be a year away from winning it if we finally buy three top class talents in the summer, or we could be another 20 years. Who knows.
 
gkmacca said:
Murphy's often a downbeat character, and this is just lazily pessimistic. There are too many variables to allow someone to evaluate a squad, ponder the time and cost of new recruits and then come up with some prediction. In terms of quality and depth, Leicester were about 20 years from winning the league when they won it last season. We were about five years away when we almost won it with Rodgers. It's not a simple computer game,it's a real situation in which all kinds of things can happen. We could be a year away from winning it if we finally buy three top class talents in the summer, or we could be another 20 years. Who knows.
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Exactly this.
 
Time is irrelevant

It's how much money away from the title we are that counts

If we get new owners who invest a few hundred million into buying better players we could win it next season
 
manwithnoname said:
Time is irrelevant

It's how much money away from the title we are that counts

If we get new owners who invest a few hundred million into buying better players we could win it next season
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Money is relevant, no-one would say otherwise, but the fact of the matter is that we HAVE spend more than enough money over the past many years to become competitive over the course of a season. The main reason why we still aren't is because of HOW we've spend it.

Last season, for as fluky as it all was, Leicester won the Premiership with Arsenal and Spurs battling it out for 2nd. Three clubs that have spend remarkably less money on new players that we have for many years.

So yeah money is nice, and if we spend like £200M in a few successive windows we'd probably improve faster than if we only used £50M there's is just no guarantee is there, as money in itself can be wasted if there's no real plan to the spending or if it's used to buy players that won't gel or are actually rubbish.
 
There are no guarantees in football, but spending 200m rather than 50m obviously massively improves your chances of winning the title

City have shown that any fucker can win the league if you throw enough money at it
 
The time limit thing is all in the past. With the right money you can buy a title, just look at Chelsea and Man C.
We're about 4 top teams not caring about the league from winning the title.
 
manwithnoname said:
There are no guarantees in football, but spending 200m rather than 50m obviously massively improves your chances of winning the title

City have shown that any fucker can win the league if you throw enough money at it
Click to expand...

Juve City PSG all like to spend big and win it.... Arsenal Spurs Liverpool Roma Napoli Lyon Monaco, these clubs don't spend big and wonder why they never find themselves winning it.

99% of winning the league comes with the money & how much money you spend on quality players.
 
binomial said:
Juve City PSG all like to spend big and win it.... Arsenal Spurs Liverpool Roma Napoli Lyon Monaco, these clubs don't spend big and wonder why they never find themselves winning it.

99% of winning the league comes with the money & how much money you spend on quality players.
Click to expand...

Valid point that. Leicester showed you can do it without spending much money but that surely wont happen again for a loooong time.
If we are to have a chance of winning the title we have to get the player recruitment right and to get that right we have to spend some serious money. Not Utd/City amounts but more then we've done so far.

Monaco look likely to win it this season though. Roma and Napoli probably arent that far off but Juventus are so well run on and off the pitch that it is difficult. Probably one of the better run clubs in Europe.

Sevilla are showing in La Liga that it is possible.
 
Some Arab or Chinese billionaires owners that will buy who the fuck we need that's how far off we are from winning/buying the league just like citeh,scum and the chavs have in recent years.
 
Rosco said:
The challenge now is to nail down a couple of players we're going to build the team around. If we do that I think we're in a genuine title hunt within 2 years.
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We can be in a title hunt if we can nail down 2-4 signings in the Suarez, Gerrard, Torres, Alonso, Carra, Hyppia bracket. If it is two signings, I think we will be in a title hunt like we were in 2013-2014 - under the right circumstances ( no injuries, no loss of form) and other teams having bad years etc). However, it will be a one off and most likely we will revert back to normalcy next year. While I do think it is possible, I think the chances of that happening is very less.

I think the more pertinent question for the club, what we need to do to be relevant at the European level on a consistent basis. While I agree with Brendan that we cannot consistently compete for trophies without huge investments, what we should do is atleast be better than Spurs. We may not be able to compete for trophies every year or qualify for CL every year, but whenever one or more of the rich four - Arsenal, Utd, City, Chelsea - falter, we should be ready to pounce. We can achieve that with good scouting and having a good footballing infrastructure in general, but not sure if the current footballing management of our club have the nous for it.

Look at Portugal. They are not a great international team. But since the rise of Ronaldo ( around 2004) they have been a team good enough to reach the quarter or semi finals of major international competition in a regular basis. Were they the most deserving team, no? But last summer, the chips fell in their direction and they won. What we need to is create a system where we are in a position to compete for the top 4 consistently and then in some seasons the randomness will favor us.

Look at Atletico Madrid : Torres -> Aguero -> Forlan -> Falcao -> Costa -> Griezman. In between they supplemented their strikers with Mandzukic and Villa who were not great but did contribute more than any of our strikers not named Suarez in the last few years. Same with their goalkeepers De Gea -> Courtouis -> Oblak. We still have not been able to find a competent replacement for Reina. Unless we figure this out, I don't think we will be able to consistently compete.
 
If we sign loads of good players in the summer, we are 1 year away. If we don't, we may as well be on Ceti Alpha 5.
 
When G&H left us in tatters, people said the same, then 2 or 3yrs later we nearly won the title. If it happens it's as like to be out the blue as being built up through good work.
 
Fucking hell!

Winning title isnt all about having world or top class players in the team. Its all about balance. I didnt hear anything about Leicester's magic winning team last season where 80% of their players wouldnt even get into our first team that won the title?

Why the fuck do we need another 5 or 10 fucking years to win the title???

I'd say Mourinho building his team strongly this season and they would be challenging or could be winning the title next season. Good manager, good tactics, formation, squad management, selection of players, etc would win us the title.

I dont see this in Klopp. Klopp is not the person to take us to the title. He's too soft. Talk too much. Hugging and kissing players aint going to get them work harder against bottom half teams. These players need bollocking! The team needs to stay compact. Attacking play for 90 mins aint going to get us the title!

Klopp needs to learn that this isnt a fucking Bundesliga! He needs to wake up!

I'd say, we wont win the title with Klopp! We need a fucking no nonsense manager who gives no fuck about players emotion! Give your 100% on the pitch or fuck off!
 
manwithnoname said:
There are no guarantees in football, but spending 200m rather than 50m obviously massively improves your chances of winning the title

City have shown that any fucker can win the league if you throw enough money at it
Click to expand...

Where were you when Leicester did it last season? Shut it!
 
binomial said:
Juve City PSG all like to spend big and win it.... Arsenal Spurs Liverpool Roma Napoli Lyon Monaco, these clubs don't spend big and wonder why they never find themselves winning it.

99% of winning the league comes with the money & how much money you spend on quality players.
Click to expand...
Finally, common sense prevails, not the veil of 'long-term' competitive plans.
Flood the team with scarily technical players, scarily physical players, scarily impenetrable keepers and park the bus becomes fck the bus. That's how to do it sustainably on the pitch, so we can spare ourselves from these fck us like a bitch 'balance shits'.

Sorry, rant over.
 
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