I was mucking about with an old LMA manager game last night, not one I've played for a while. Old football games can be a good snapshot of the past, we certainly debate costs, players etc across time periods enough.
I was thinking about our squad back then, as per their reckoning I hasten to add, and thought it was pretty good - with a few weak links of course, it's not as though we've had a flawless squad for some time (if ever)
Liverpool Squad 99/00 (according to LMA Manager)
GKs : Westerveld, Nielsen
CBs : Carragher, Matteo, Henchoz, Hyypia, Song
FBs : Bjornebye, Staunton, Heggem
MFs : Hamann, Gerrard, Murphy, Berger, Redknapp, Thompson, Smicer
CFs : Owen, Fowler, Camara, Riedle, Meijer
Not a bad squad at all, pretty sure I've remembered all or most of them - they start with 22 in the squad. How is it we never did more with that, perhaps the key is that we won a cup treble in 00/01 but never made the step up in the league. OK Gerrard wasn't the player then that he is now, but apart from our neverending problems with FBs and wide midfielders, there's a pretty strong spine and options - not many sides can boast a side with two strikers as good as Owen and Fowler.
Maybe Houllier believed in his own hype too much, in signing players like Biscan, Cheyrou, Diomede, Traore, Kirkland, Vignal, Diouf and Baros. At a crunch time the signings got worse not better, the extra few signings that could have resulted in a title bid never signed.
I also wonder, looking at Matteo and Thompson in the squad, whether we too readily dump our young players. Would the likes of Wright, Thompson, Matteo, Warnock, Mellor and a few others have been worse than some of the players we have now - or had then? Maybe not great, but give them a few games a season and they could make the squad strong. Some of our best players in the Premiership have been homegrown - Fowler, Owen, Gerrard and Carragher. While the rest might not be as good, doesn't mean they weren't good enough. Maybe they haven't gone on to greater things, but then they were hardly likely to join another club as big.