One of the problems that's arisen as this club has evolved/regressed from a top tier to a second tier organisation concerns how it manages its assets. In the old days, the only players who wanted to leave us were 30+ and fading from the first team, so we were respectful of their long contributions and either let them go on frees or accepted a token amount for them. We just didn't have to think about sales. Even in Souey's time as manager, when the likes of Houghton and Beardsley went, it was for a bargain amount because there was almost a sense of disdain for anyone wanting to leave Liverpool. So the skill that most other clubs (such as Spurs) had developed over decades and decades in terms of squeezing the last penny from other, bigger, clubs when buying their best players had remained no more than a seed of a skill for us. And now that hurts. Really hurts. Because we simply cannot afford to be in any way a soft touch when it comes to sales. And we are. We still pay over the odds whilst selling under the odds. We can't afford that, practically or symbolically. Yes, Suarez went for a huge sum but it was still about £20m less than we wanted, so bamboozled was Ayre in the negotiations (hence Barca's gloating put-downs after the sale). And that was an exception. We're now like Spurs, but their slower, stupid brother. If you try to buy from Spurs you'll come out dazed, sans trousers, with an empty wallet and probably a dud for your squad. They're ruthless. They know it's a task to be mastered, a battle to be won. We don't. We're still in that nostalgic 'Oh, let him go,' daydream that's rooted in the 1970s. If you don't want to be known as a selling club, you first try all you can to hold on to your top players (we don't), and, second, if they force a move, you make the process for the buying club so draining, so ferociously demanding, that everyone thinks twice before contemplating trying it on at all (again, we don't). The club has to realise where it's at.
