Liverpool’s MCO Plan Ends in Retreat

FSG shelve plans to create multi-club group

Two years of scouting, travelling, analysing and planning, all quietly shelved without a single outcome to point to, feels like an extraordinary squandering of time, energy and intent.

This wasn’t a vague idea scribbled in the margins. It was presented as central to the club’s future, important enough to bring Michael Edwards back into the fold, important enough to reshape roles and redirect focus across the football operation. Clubs were studied in detail, groundwork laid, resources committed, yet when the moment came to act, hesitation prevailed.

There is a lingering sense of what might have been here. Decisions deferred, opportunities weighed to the point of paralysis, ambition dulled by caution. The modern game moves quickly, rivals act decisively, yet Liverpool’s leadership appear to have spent two years circling options only to retreat from them all.

You can take issue with multi-club ownership model on principle, many supporters do, but that doesn’t excuse the absence of follow-through. If the model was deemed unsuitable, that conclusion should have come sooner, before so much effort was invested and before it became a defining reason for reshaping the club’s structure.

For FSG and those tasked with executing the plan, the message is muddled. For those observing from the outside, it raises uncomfortable questions about alignment, conviction and direction.

At a club where clarity once drove success, this feels like a costly lapse into uncertainty.

What all this means for the future of Michael Edwards, Richard Hughes ad Arne Slot is anyone’s guess at this stage. Would anyone be all that shocked if all three departed this summer?