Peter Moore served as Liverpool’s CEO when the Champions League and Premier League were won under Jurgen Klopp.
Former chief executive Peter Moore has admitted that Liverpool must make ‘hard decisions’ about who will leave the club once Florian Wirtz is through the door.
The Reds remain in negotiations with Bayer Leverkusen about signing Wirtz for a club-record fee. An offer of up to £113 million has been rejected, with an increased bid expected.
But to help balance the books, it is suggested that owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) will want to offload some members of the squad to help pay Wirtz’s fee and wages. Liverpool have already spent circa £60 million for Jeremie Frimpong and Giorgi Mamardashvili - from Leverkusen and Valencia respectively - while AFC Bournemouth left-back Milos Kerkez is on the radar.
Liverpool have sold Caoimhin Kelleher to Brentford for up to £18 million, while £10 million has been raised to allow Trent Alexander-Arnold to join Real Madrid to compete in the expanded Club World Cup.
Darwin Nunez is one player who could leave after playing a bit-part role during the Premier League title triumph, with Harvey Elliott and Kostas Tsimikas among other fringe members of the squad linked with exits.
Moore served a Liverpool’s CEO between 2017-2020 and still avidly follows the club from California. And the Liverpool-born businessman - who worked for Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Reebok before his Anfield role - says that ‘brilliant’ FSG will stick to their self-sustainable model backed by data.
What’s been said
Speaking on talkSPORT, Moore said: “The thing that worried me a bit mid-season that unlike Jurgen (Klopp), who was never afraid of massive rotation, it seemed (Alexis) Mac Allister, (Ryan) Gravenberch and (Dominik) Szoboszlai and then it's a question of Luis Diaz playing as a false number nine but Liverpool played 55-60 games when it was done and how could you continue to put the same 11 players out all of the time?
“I think 3-4 key signings will be critical. There will be some hard decisions about who is going to leave and if Wirtz is real, I know my owners pretty well and someone is going to have to go to get the money and make room in the payroll.
“The ownership at Liverpool is very involved. They own the Boston Red Sox and deal in serious money for catchers and pitchers, $200 million contracts - they call it the puts and takes. Fans only worry about transfer fees; the rest of us worry about salaries and operating expenses. Michael Edwards, who was sporting director when I was there, and Richard Hughes, who has come in from Bournemouth, are doing a brilliant job managing all of this.
“When I arrived, my role was focused on the business, what I call the virtuous cycle. Let's win more games, more sponsors come in, we write bigger cheques, better players come in, we win more games, we get more sponsors which Liverpool's owners FSG do brilliantly.
“They have always said we're going to be a self-sustaining club and using data. There were four PhDs on the staff when I was there, analysing players and that's when you find a Mohamed Salah for £30-odd million. There are still great scouts; Barry Fallows and Dave Hunter were there and would go and look but the guys presenting to ownership, Jurgen, Pep Lijnders and the team were scientists. They were saying: 'You're looking for a left-footed right-winger, well we have Mohamed Salah who Chelsea didn't like and is now at Roma and fits the bill'.”
‘FSG are very bright, intelligent sportspeople’
Moore was part of Liverpool’s rise back to the European elite. He joined the Reds in February 2017 and was in situ when the Champions League, Premier League, Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup were won under manager Jurgen Klopp.
Moore believes that FSG’s ability to prise Klopp to Anfield in October 2015 when he was taking a break from football after leaving Borussia Dortmund the previous summer was a ‘masterstroke’. And he insists that FSG do not care about what other clubs are spending or how they are being run - and that includes the 115 charges that loom over Manchester City for alleged breaches of Premier League spending rules.
Moore added: “I arrived in 2017 and reported directly to FSG. I lived in Boston, I'm a Boston Red Sox fan even though I'm a Scouser, I worked for Reebok there and knew John Henry (FSG principal owner), Mike Gordon (FSG president) and Tom Werner (FSG chairman) very well and saw what they had done with the Boston Red Sox.
“This word moneyball was being kicked around at the time and that's what they do. These are very bright, intelligent sportspeople. Like a lot of owners that go into the Premier League, it's their first dabbling in high-level sports where there are hundreds of millions of dollars, euros and pounds at stake but FSG [had] blinkers on, this is the way we're going to do it. There is no chatter about Manchester City or whatever you think with the 115 charges. This is who were are and what we're going to do.
“Getting Jurgen Klopp at the time was a masterstroke when he was attempting to take a year off, managing the club albeit from 2,500 miles away. My job when I came in, it was a little bit to manage the fan-base, let's manage the people who reported to me as CEO because we have the best manager in the world and are going to build a squad. We have a forward line of Mane, Salah and Firmino who can challenge for everything and in a couple of years, there we are in Madrid winning the Champions League, in Doha winning the Club World Cup and in a season where we played the last game of football in England [before the COVID-19 pandemic] against Atletico Madrid.
“The week earlier, I got a call from Richard Masters where if we beat Everton and Crystal Palace at Anfield, you'd have already won the league in March, will you accept the trophy then? But we didn't quite get there.”
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