Plenty of Liverpool fans will believe that FSG have pulled off a masterstroke by luring Michael Edwards back to the club, although one Sky Sports reporter has claimed that it’s the 44-year-old who’s ‘played an absolute blinder’.
The Reds’ new CEO of Football was initially approached in late January but declined LFC’s interest, although a follow-up attempt from John W Henry and Mike Gordon proved successful.
Edwards isn’t returning to the sporting director role that he held previously, but will instead oversee senior football operations at Anfield.
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Speaking to GIVEMESPORT, Dharmesh Sheth suggested that the 44-year-old may have been clever in how he used the interest of other clubs, in conjunction with Liverpool’s desperation to bring him on board, to ultimately get what he wanted.
The Sky reporter said: “Michael Edwards looks like he’s played an absolute blinder here. It became very public that Chelsea and Manchester United had maybe held talks with Edwards.
“Liverpool had wanted him back long before this appointment happened this week, but I think it was in the same job that he was in before in that sporting director role, and I don’t think Edwards was interested in that.
“He might have been getting a promoted opportunity, ahead of a sporting director, to oversee things elsewhere. So, maybe Liverpool thought they had to act, and he’s effectively now become FSG’s chief executive officer of football, overseeing all of the football operations at Liverpool.”
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Edwards made his name as a shrewd negotiator when he was Liverpool’s sporting director, overseeing some of the best transfers in the club’s history and brokering lucrative sales for players who weren’t getting much of a look-in under Jurgen Klopp.
Therefore, it’d be no surprise if, during FSG’s courting of him, he leveraged the situation in his favour to arrive at a solution which’d satisfy both him and the Reds’ hierarchy.
His return to Anfield appears an even bigger coup in the context of Chelsea and Man United reportedly wanting to bring him on board. Imagine how galling it would’ve been for Kopites if we saw him taking a job at Stamford Bridge or Old Trafford instead, especially when Henry and Gordon had been coveting him.
Edwards has a big reputation to try and emulate now that he’s back at Liverpool, based on the success of his previous spell on Merseyside, but the future seems hugely exciting with the 44-year-old back at the club where his name became a byword for transfer market genius.