Another season without Champions League football beckons Liverpool after a disappointing campaign in which they've suffered for lack of firepower.

It's now 25 years since Liverpool last won a league title. They've rarely looked as far away from doing so as they do this season, without involving Graeme Souness or Roy Evans. They've rarely looked as capable of breaking the duck as they did last season.

That fall from title contenders, one home win against Chelsea from lifting the crown, to the disjointed bunch we see now, apparently not even capable of making the Champions League spots, has brought about much soul-searching and finger pointing. Mario Balotelli and Dejan Lovren have been frequent scapegoats but attention, and pressure, now seems to be turning on manager Brendan Rodgers for the first time.

Liverpool's American owner, John W Henry, also owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team, where he has long subscribed to the 'Moneyball' ideals of Oakland Athletics' GM Billy Beane, who has frequently tried to poach and offered colossal amounts of cash to tempt him — to no avail. Given that, any speculation around the future of the manager seems surprising. For all the poor signings, questionable man management, and weird, wishy-washy management-speak David Brent-style bullshit Rodgers has been prone to this season, he and his owner will blame the 'failure' (it's all relative) of this season on simple maths.

Liverpool were absolutely irresistible at times last season. They scored 101 goals in the league, sticking six through Cardiff, five through Norwich, Tottenham, Stoke and Arsenal and four through West Brom, Fulham, West Ham, Everton, Swansea and Tottenham again. The 6-3 at Cardiff, where their defence collapsed, typified a Kevin Keegan-style approach of simply trying to outscore the opposition when everything else went to cock.

But they had the players to do that. Luis Suarez, in particular, scored 31 goals in 33 league games. Daniel Sturridge got 21 in 29. Suarez was sold to Barcelona last summer after he'd had another nibble on a fellow professional during the World Cup, while Sturridge has been fit enough to start just seven league games this season. Take away those 52 goals from their total last season and you get 49 — which is almost exactly what Liverpool will end up with this term having scored 47 in the Premier League so far.

Simply put, you would have expected Liverpool to be 50 goals worse off than they were last season having lost two players who scored them 50 goals, and they have been.

Where Rodgers and Liverpool do deserve criticism is what they did with the Suarez money. The Moneyball principal says that in a world where Man City have a Sheikh and Chelsea have an oligarch, you'd be foolish to try and go toe to toe with them to try and sign players like Suarez once they've proven themselves and are worth catastrophically large sums of money. You buy low, and young, and sell high, and old. You don't go looking for one player who can get you 31 goals with the Suarez money, you go looking for three who can get you ten each.

What Liverpool did last summer was somewhere in between — buying the up and coming, somewhat unproven, players but paying premium fees for them. Lovren, at £20m, looked a particular folly at the time, with no hindsight at all, and so it has proved. More than twice what he's worth. Mario Balotelli, with all his baggage, at £16m looked panicky. Lazar Markovic cost £20m. Only the £10m they paid Leverkusen for Emre Can can be considered any kind of value. In short, Liverpool spent £113m and didn't address either the problem they had last season — dodgy centre backs — or the issue the Suarez departure would inevitably cause — who's going to score?

It was said by Jamie Carragher and others, with plenty of justification, that Liverpool missed the boat last season. With that team, and those strikers, in that form, with no injuries, and no European football, and Man Utd, Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea all having off seasons, they'll never get a better chance to win the Premier League. Qualification for the Champions League, the money that brings, and the money from the Suarez sale, created an opportunity this season almost as good, and they've blown that one as well.

With a long overdue expansion of Anfield now underway, and not coming for free, and no Champions League football next season to draw signings in, who knows when they'll have another opportunity even half as good.

Links >>> Official Website >>> This Is Anfield — blog and forum >>> Liverpool Echo — local paper >>> LFC Online — blog and forum >>> Anfield Red — blog >>> Anfield Online — blog and forum >>> Kop Talk — blog and forum >>> Anfield Road — blog >>> Paisley Gates — blog

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TacticalR added 21:40 - May 1 Thanks for your oppo profile. As we found out many years ago, you can't simply replace one quality player like Ferdinand with several average players and get equivalent value. It just doesn't work like that. On top of that it seems that although Liverpool nearly won the league last season, the Suárez and Sturridge goals merely hid all the other problems.
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francisbowles added 12:50 - May 2 Oh how they must wish they had taken a gamble on Remy at £8 million!
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