🔴 EOTK Insider Opinion: Barca's financial disaster highlights importance of Liverpool's sustainable model 📉

There's a lesson to be learnt from the Spanish giants

€200m in debt and needing to clear that figure just to register new signings.

Barcelona’s financial woes this summer were pretty dire to begin with (and that’s putting it mildly!) and have been utterly exacerbated by news of talismanic midfielder Lionel Messi’s departure.

But imagine for a moment that this set of circumstances wasn’t plaguing the Catalans but rather was present in the red half of Merseyside.

Not so long ago, prior to FSG’s takeover from disaster duo Hicks & Gillet, there was a time when the terrible spectre of administration loomed large over Anfield.

Outright disaster was thankfully averted in that instance. However, Barcelona’s continued struggles do highlight the advantage of FSG’s sustainable policy amidst criticism from the fanbase over the lack of transfers beyond Ibrahima Konate this summer.

Whilst the spending of our league rivals increasingly evidences the widening financial disparity between Liverpool and certain clubs, it’s worth taking a break from using an unlevel playing field as a bat to smack our owners over the head with and stepping back to look at the bigger picture.

Should we be capitalising on a world-class side by investing in our second string to ensure that injuries won’t be our downfall for the second season running? Yes, of course.

On the other hand, however, Barcelona stand as the perfect example of where reckless spending (without the finances to back it up) can get a European heavyweight.

If unshackled spending was the only solution, sides like Liverpool and, most recently, Lille, would have no chance of turning the tables.

Admittedly, Manchester City have hardly been bereft of success in the English top-flight, winning five of the last ten titles compared to our single entry from the 2019/20 campaign, with Ligue 1 little more than PSG’s playground in the last nine years.

Though we’ve had a relatively quiet summer window, we can’t fault the owners for failing to financially back the club.

The investment in new contracts for key stars from Trent Alexander-Arnold to Alisson Becker is a statement of intent, if not quite as out there as City’s ‘rules be damned’ approach to the window.

We’d be lying if we said we wouldn’t want to be in a position in which we could exercise our financial muscles so freely but the reality of the situation is that we’re far from being uncompetitive as is.

Had an unfathomable array of injuries not utterly compromised the team structure and left Jurgen Klopp without his first-choice centre-half pairing (a loss that would have crippled most) neutrals would have backed us to stand a good chance of retaining the title.

Our end of season run last term very much illustrated that point, with Fabinho’s return to the midfield and a reliable (if not quite world-class) centre-back duo steering us back into the top-four spots.

In our final ten league games, we picked up 24 points from a possible 30. By comparison, only Manchester City came close with 21, closely followed by fellow top four rivals Manchester United (20) and Chelsea (18).

A full-strength Liverpool side is more than capable of not only going toe-to-toe with Manchester City and their points tally but also beating them out to the big trophies.

That’s not to say that investment in transfers isn’t important, nor that Liverpool will fail to do so as and when is critically required.

As fantastic as this team that Klopp has helped build is, we’ve got a number of stars who are steadily approaching the point of decline.

Like all great teams, there will come a time for a rebuild and it will be a gradual process of disassembling and replacing certain parts of the German’s well-oiled machine.

According to James Pearce of The Athletic, that process could start as early as next year, with the likes of Jordan Henderson, Thiago Alcantara and our first-choice front-three all set to be in their 30s.

But when we’re tempted as fans to point to our rivals across the M62 and complain about our lack of transfer activity, we can also quite easily spare a glance at Barcelona and observe living, breathing proof of the dangers of overextending oneself.

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