Chelsea don't really pay crazy wages under Boehly. And under Abramovich, sure, it contributed to their attractiveness, plus London is a big factor in my opinion as well, but you realize Liverpool can't afford to match United/City/Chelsea wages, right? That's another giveaway of them not really being a top 5 club in the world. Their wage bill says a lot.
They play in a smaller stadium than most truly big clubs, especially before the expansions. In 2015 Anfield was just over 40k capacity.
They have less money than most other big clubs.
Liverpool isn't really an attractive location either if you consider where the other "big" clubs play: Manchester, London, Milan, Munich, Barcelona, Madrid, Turin, Paris.
Look at the list of their biggest legends: Do you think that they're anywhere near Barca, Madrid, United, Milan, etc. in this regard? Both in quantity and quality. I don't think so. Especially outside of the UK.
Considerably less fans worldwide than United/Chelsea/Arsenal/other European heavyweights like Barca/Madrid/Italian big 3
The bulk of their success came before football became a global phenomenon. That's the biggest reason why it is the way it is IMO. The stuff I wrote above is mostly a result of that.
Also, you mention it yourself, they're recent CL and PL winners, and yet their pull and attractiveness was nowhere near what it should have been in their "modern era peak", so 2017-2022, if they were as big as their supporters believe they are. United signed Pogba, Ibrahimovic, Di Maria, Falcao, etc. without CL football, and many more big names even in our "banter era"...do you think Liverpool could do that? When is the last time that one of the biggest names in football and/or one of the most sought-after world class talents decided to join them over someone else? It's probably van Dijk and that was 6 years ago, before that, probably Klopp, 9 years ago by now? I get that it's not their MO, but even if it was, they couldn't pull it off. And how many players did they get just because of Klopp in the last 9 years, that they otherwise would've probably missed out on?
Don't get me wrong, they're a huge club, especially historically, but they've never really had a dominant era in the last ~35 years and the longer that goes on, the more it will show. They aren't at the level of Madrid, Barcelona and United. You can place them in the next tier after those 3 maybe, but definitely not at 4th or even 5th place. If one of the London clubs have a 10-15 year long dominant period where they win everything several times, whilst Liverpool only get their habitual 1 major trophy per decade, their status will degrade even more. And for United, it would probably take another decade, or even 15-20 years of not winning a PL/CL trophy for their number 1 in England status to be in danger. And that's very unlikely with even just semi-competent owners in place.
Last edited:
