Believe Us. Melissa Reddy

       1

       A Club Divided

      ‘We are still in the process of reversing the errors of previous regimes. It will not happen overnight.’

       John W Henry

      Football was no longer enjoyable, no longer an escape. Liverpool Football Club were once ‘the greatest team the world has ever seen’, but they hadn’t been for a while. For 25 years, the club watched as others — chiefly Manchester United — displaced them as the cream of England. The obsessive desire to win the league increasingly began to wear on players and staff, while disillusionment enveloped the fanbase. Near misses were followed by complete fall offs. There were triumphs in cup competitions and moments to eternally savour, but it was never enough. By September 2015, according to one long-serving employee at their Melwood training facility, Liverpool had been reduced to a ‘bunch of parts that didn’t feel like they belonged together. It was a miserable place to be. You knew the fans were fed up, you knew the players were drowning and there was bickering among the coaching staff. Nothing felt right’.

      Liverpool had entered the month on the back of a demoralising 3–0 defeat by West Ham at Anfield, closely followed by a meek surrender and 3–1 defeat at Old Trafford to Manchester United. When manager Brendan Rodgers was quizzed about what was needed to change the team’s fortunes, his words were empty football-speak — ‘we need to want the ball more, we need to train harder’ — heightening the concerns of Liverpool’s owners.

      Fenway Sports Group feared the stench of the 2014–15 season, which featured an abysmal non-performance in an FA Cup semi-final exit at the hands of Aston Villa and ended with a 6–1 humiliation at Stoke City, would linger well into the new campaign. They circled the October international break as the perfect window to shred the script and start afresh. With the exception of the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park, which was the final fixture before the hiatus, there was a list of very winnable games coming up — with four at home — for Rodgers to earn a stay of execution.

      But Liverpool stumbled to a 1–1 draw at Bordeaux in the Europa League, before the same result at Anfield against Norwich City in the top flight later that week. Lowly Carlisle United came to Merseyside in the League Cup third round, with the hosts only scraping through on penalties after a torrid display. Toxicity filled the terraces at Anfield and it showed no signs of dissipating, especially not with supporters witnessing an unconvincing 3–2 win at home over Aston Villa, before yet another 1–1 draw in Europe, this time against little-known FC Sion.

      While events on the pitch could be filed under certified disasters, soundtracked by boos from the Kop, decisive action was being taken in the boardroom. Liverpool’s chief executive at the time, Ian Ayre, made a call in mid-September that would alter the course of Liverpool’s history. He dialled Marc Kosicke, the agent of Jürgen Klopp, which led to a Skype call between the men. A face-to-face meeting between the German, who was on holiday having resigned from Borussia Dortmund four months earlier, and Liverpool’s hierarchy was pencilled in for 1 October 2015 in New York — the day of the club’s lethargic showing against FC Sion. But more on that later.

      At Melwood, it was hard to escape the growing sense that Brendan Rodgers was on borrowed time. For some, it was surprise that the Northern Irishman was still in the job after the horror show at Stoke, which coincided with Steven Gerrard’s farewell game for Liverpool. Managers rarely climb out of the debris of such abominations unscathed, especially when large swathes of that 2014–15 season were best forgotten.

      Supporters, too, were shocked. As Neil Atkinson, host of the award-winning fan media collective The Anfield Wrap wrote, ‘If Rodgers wasn’t a man fighting with himself at the start of 2014–15, he most definitely was by the end — and the thing about fighting with yourself is that you will always lose.

      ‘Liverpool lost. They lost and lost and lost. And then Stoke. Stoke was the final straw – how can you trust the man who oversees losing 6–1? For those who were there, Stoke would live long in the memory. What do you do about that? How do you rebuild those bridges? To have kept him beyond that point now feels tougher on him than on us.’

      Deciding whether to stick or twist after the calamity at the Britannia Stadium was not straightforward. The owners had anticipated teething problems after the exhilarating but failed title tilt of 2013–14, which was followed by Luis Suarez’s departure to Barcelona. Despite the many controversies that surrounded him, Suarez had been the reference point and the fuel for Liverpool’s ambitions, and as Rodgers later reflected ‘the whole thing exploded’ when the Uruguayan moved on.

      Having blocked his move to Arsenal the previous summer, Liverpool knew Suarez would exit in 2014 and pre-empted it by tying him to a new contract with a higher release clause of £75 million. It was still a snip for a player of his gifts, but Barça snapped him up for £10 million less than that fee after he was suspended from all football-related activity for four months for biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini during the World Cup.

      Liverpool had a long time to prepare for life without their talisman but botched it. A process that started with priority target Alexis Sanchez joining Arsenal instead, was followed by next choice Loïc Rémy from Chelsea failing a medical, before the final pick was between an aged Samuel Eto’o and Mario Balotelli. Rodgers had publicly said he ‘categorically’ didn’t want the latter, but the maverick Italian was the player he got.

      Balotelli was one of eight new first-team signings bought to the tune of £107.5 million to cushion the blow of losing Suarez. It was neither the wisest approach nor the best use of the money given to the manager, and other members of Liverpool’s transfer committee were, as one senior staffer put it, ‘not in the same book let alone on the same page’ in designing the squad.

      With so many incomings, FSG understood there would be a reset of sorts. Adam Lallana was part of that mass recruitment drive during the summer transfer window of 2014, the midfielder costing £25 million from Southampton. He recalls how arduous his debut season was. ‘There were so many new players signed: a lot of different cultures, characters, languages and playing styles all coming together,’ says Lallana,