The RIDICULOUS double standard held against Liverpool

Liverpool are a massive club and everyone feels entitled to give their perspective on us.

Whether it be about sporting decisions on the pitch or transfer moves off the pitch, it feels as though the Reds are generally held to a higher standard of scrutiny than all the other Premier League teams.

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Of course, you expect a certain amount of attention to be paid to the most successful club in English football history - two more trophies than Manchester United - but there is a growing trend developing.

Primarily, it relates to Liverpool's transfer spending and the expectations that come from that, but in my view, each rival fans' perspective is one that overlooks the developments at their own clubs and when we look at the situations of Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea, there's a double-standard.

In case you're not sure where I'm coming from, let me walk you through what I'm seeing step by step.

Addressing the 'Liverpool don't spend' claims

If we look at the Reds' transfer spending historically, you will know that while several transfer records have been broken - Virgil van Dijk and Alisson in 2018 - the overall approach is one of frugal moves.

Young proteges are often purchased instead of the finished products and the academy products are trusted to hold their own when they get a chance in the first-team. Think of Trent Alexander-Arnold, Conor Bradley, Curtis Jones, Coaimhin Kelleher and Jarell Quansah as some recent examples.

The money received from Philippe Coutinho's transfer to Barcelona indeed paid for Van Dijk and Alisson's moves and fans have joked that this is where Liverpool get their money from.

But the general perspective that the club sells assets to buy new players is surely a fair one? After all, the net spend over the past five seasons, not including Hugo Ekitike, is £266.8m - around £53.4m per year.

Is that really the financial power you would expect from England's most successful football club?

Now your immediate comeback might be to suggest that the wage spending is far more out of control, and you would be entitled to make that claim, but in context it really isn't as bad as you think.

This season specifically, the Reds have definitely opened the floodgates, and to many it's quite a polarising thing to witness. A club going from a frugal approach to the transfer market, which proved to be successful, to now using their full financial power to compound their current position as reigning Premier League winners. Liverpool know there is an opportunity to build on our success.

Signing players like Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, Giorgi Mamardashvili and Hugo Ekitike is an ambitious strategy, given their expense, but they're all under the age of 24. Liverpool are setting themselves up for the future, so you can see the club's thinking.

So what's the problem?

Well, from where I'm standing, people aren't best pleased with Liverpool, not least because there appears to be a tinge of hypocrisy, since Jurgen Klopp spoke about the club's 'ceiling' back in 2022.

In the highly-quoted press conference, he said: "No one can compete with [Manchester] City and Pep [Guardiola]. You have the best team in the world and the best striker on the market [in Erling Haaland].

"We [Liverpool] cannot act like them, it's not possible. There are three clubs in world football that can do what they want financially... It's not a problem at all for me. I've heard now that the Newcastle executive said 'there is no ceiling for this club' and he's right.

"There is no ceiling for Newcastle. Congratulations. Some other clubs have ceilings."

Of course, now that Liverpool have opened the purse-strings, there is this massive underdog perspective that the Reds are supposedly trying to get everyone to believe. Although of course, this was merely an opinion that an ex-manager gave in response to a journalist's question. It's hardly the view of every Liverpool fan, and if we're honest, Klopp probably wasn't far wrong.

This summer's transfer spend is going to be around £250m, which is the first time the club has broken the £200m threshold in a window before and this is yet to include the major planned sales of Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez, alongside the other fringe assets that will struggle to make Slot's squad.

But let's provide some context for where Liverpool's spending ranks against their competitors.

What are everyone else's spending habits like?

According to BBC Sport, 'many teams have spent more than Liverpool in recent seasons'.

Since 2023-24, we can see that the club has spend £375m, while Arsenal have spent £376m, Brighton have spent £415m, Manchester United have spent £497m, Tottenham have spent £523m, Manchester City have spent £556m and Chelsea have spent £866m.

That's six higher spenders than us. Throughout that period, Liverpool have won a Premier League and an EFL Cup, Arsenal have won nothing, Brighton have won nothing, United have won an FA Cup, Tottenham have won a Europa League, City have won a Premier League and Chelsea have won a Conference League and a Club World Cup. It's wild how disparaging some teams' efforts have been.

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So what's the point of all this? Liverpool's spending this summer has led many rival fans to create the expectation in their heads that the Reds have to be successful this season, and while I think Liverpool will and probably should be, it says a lot about the double-standards in the modern game.

After all, despite the fact that the club has spent heavily after winning the Premier League by 10 points last season, the loss of Diogo Jota is unquantifiable on the players. It feels only right for us to merely observe how the team gets on in the upcoming campaign and react accordingly. Predicting the Reds to retain their crown is fine, but I'm finding it difficult to make that my season 'expectation'.

But over at Arsenal, there can't be any caveats in play. Mikel Arteta's side have finished second for three seasons in a row and they will have spent around £200m by the end of the summer - so what's their excuse if they don't win the Premier League. Since 2023/24, they've spent identical to us.

Likewise, Manchester City have won six of the last eight Premier League titles since 2017-18, with Liverpool taking the other two. Last season, their third-place finish was the worst of Guardiola's career and he's spent £310m on transfers since the turn of the year, so he'll expect to challenge.

And then we have Chelsea, who are now the 'World Champions' having won the revamped Club World Cup this summer. Since they were taken over by Todd Boehly at ClearLake in the summer of 2022, they have spent £1.4bn on transfers. If that doesn't warrant a title charge, nothing does.

So there we have the crux of the argument. Liverpool's spending - while it certainly is higher this summer than ever before - is still far below that of their competitors, and yet Liverpool are considered the favourites for the upcoming Premier League season and no other club has similar expectations. When you say it out loud to yourself it's laughable, but those are indeed the facts.

A double standard exists, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. Now of course, many rival fans reading this, if there are any, will still likely disagree with my point, which they're entitled to do.

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But at the very least, I think we all deserve to see a four-way title race in May 2026 and with any luck, we will do, but the expectations people have of Liverpool aren't going away any time soon now that Richard Hughes has decided that we need to go into a season with more than £12.5m spent.

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