Friday, September 02, 2011

Comolli Hails Fenway Backing

Liverpool's director of football Damien Comolli has praised Fenway Sports Group for their "brave" approach to the transfer window.

Liverpool's American owners provided significant cash for the signings of Jordan Henderson, Stewart Downing, Charlie Adam and Alexander Doni early in the summer.

They supplemented those additions by bringing in Jose Enrique and Sebastian Coates over the last fortnight before Craig Bellamy arrived on a deadline day which saw four players moved on.

In the two transfer windows since taking over the club last October FSG have sanctioned about £120million-worth of signings, although they have recouped well over half that from the sales of Fernando Torres, David Ngog, Ryan Babel and - late on Thursday night - Raul Meireles to Chelsea.

Joe Cole and Christian Poulsen, both drains on the wage bill, were offloaded to Lille (on loan) and Evian (permanently) respectively.

And Comolli believes the way they operated in the window worked out almost perfectly, thanks to the backing he and manager Kenny Dalglish received from principal owner John Henry and chairman Tom Werner.

"It's difficult for me to put into words what they gave us throughout the summer," said the Frenchman.

"Their support was absolutely tremendous, in the down times and in the up times.

"When they needed to invest money we didn't think they'd have to, John and Tom were unbelievably helpful.

"I think we are very lucky to have these owners because people need to realize a lot of owners would have said the squad is too big so you need to reduce it, and then when you've done that bring some players in.

"But that was never the approach they had. They were happy to take risks, for us to spend the money, to support us and to trust us as well.

"I told them in the summer we need to buy players first and towards the end of the window there would be a lot of movement with players going out.

"They were very brave to accept that, having had no experience of a similar transfer window.

"From the outside it might be difficult to understand, but from my side their support was absolutely tremendous."

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