Liverpool look to Plan B in case of failure

A potential £20 million dividend from Uefa has been lost and, for all the beating away of its significance as the Merseyside club increasingly rely on their enduring fame and esteem to attract players, another year outside the European elite is a damaging blow. Not only will a large chunk of European transfer funds go somewhere other than Anfield for a third consecutive season, enticing players away from Champions League participating clubs becomes increasingly problematic the longer the club are outside the top tier. The League Cup has saved the season and the FA Cup may elevate it to heroic status, but failure to finish in the top four has made attaining the goal of Champions League qualification next season even harder. The answer, many anticipate, is for the owners, Fenway Sports Group, to provide another £50 million on seven new players this summer. But anyone expecting such a response without revenue that has not been generated by player sales or commercial deals has not been paying enough attention to the model favoured by club owners FSG. Principal owner John W. Henry and chairman Tom Werner could not have made their insistence on Liverpool being self-sufficient any clearer since they bought the club, which is why they coveted the top four so much. They knew it would strengthen their hand in future player recruitment and also make sponsorship deals more attractive, especially as they continue to pursue naming rights for the increasingly elusive new stadium. John W. Henry’s most recent statement underlined the pragmatism which pervades the ownership of the club. “Tom and I were attending the European Club Association meetings,” said Henry. “There are a number of critical issues such as Financial Fair Play and economic problems of clubs large and small that need to be addressed. "Just as the countries of Europe need a sound financial landscape, so, too, does football as a sport.” These are the not the words of a man who bought into English football because of an admiration for the economic hedonism of Sheikh Mansour and Roman Abramovich. Manager Kenny Dalglish will have funds to strengthen the squad, but not as much as he would had he led a late surge into fourth. Both he and director of football, Damien Comolli, are going to have to be at their most diligent and persuasive to find the bargains. They should get their first installment of £6 million this weekend when Alberto Aquilani is scheduled to play his 25th game of the season for AC Milan. In doing so, the Italian will trigger a sales clause in his agreement with the Serie A club, enabling Liverpool to offload him in a permanent deal in May. Although Liverpool will have to accept a staggering £14 million loss on the 27-year-old - for whom Rafa Benitez paid £20 million in 2009 - Dalglish will still be grateful for every extra penny as he works out where the majority of his transfer kitty will come from. Qualifying for the Europa League can also be worth around £6 million if a side makes decent progress, while there may be some profit if Lille decide to retain Joe Cole - another on-loan midfielder - in a permanent deal. Either way, there will not be megabucks around for Dalglish to resolve lingering problems such as how to get his team’s chances to goal ratio moving in the right direction. Dalglish’s own position has escaped major scrutiny, despite the distance between the pre-season Premier League target and the reality. But while Chelsea were ravaged by internal division and had to replace their manager, the opposite is true at Anfield. The memories of the latter days of Benitez’s reign and Roy Hodgson’s brief tenure when just about every level of Liverpool Football Club was prone to squabbling remain fresh. Dalglish’s restoration of a sense of camaraderie across the ranks is not underestimated when his broader contribution over 18 months is reviewed. Although his appeal for assessments beyond Liverpool’s league position and points tally is vulnerable to mocking, for those debilitated by the years of discord that preceded him, it explains why there is so much internal support for him to have another go at the top four next season.