Update news: Liverpool will have to work hard to keep up with Manchester City’s revenue, but the 115 charges will continue to loom over the champions.

Liverpool will have to work hard to keep up with Manchester City’s revenue, but the 115 charges will continue to loom over the champions.

Keeping up with Manchester City has long been a goal for both Liverpool and the rest of the Premier League.

The 10-point deduction imposed on Everton on Friday for one charge of violating the Premier League’s profit and sustainability regulations, as determined by an independent commission hearing, has understandably focused attention on Manchester City and the 115 charges that they will face for violating P&S rules.

That, too, will be brought before an independent commission, but with so much to sift through on both sides, it is unlikely to happen anytime soon, with the end of 2024 appearing to be a stretch.

For the time being, it’s business as usual, and Manchester City, treble winners last season after winning the Champions League, Premier League, and FA Cup, went into the international break at the top of the league, a position they’ve occupied for much of the last six years or so.

Liverpool’s 2019/20 Premier League triumph is the only one to have snapped the winning streak since 2017 for Pep Guardiola’s side, while Jurgen Klopp’s Reds have been the closest to breaking that stranglehold during the past six years, with the Reds just 15 minutes away from a title success back in 2021/22.

But after that successful season, where the Reds threatened an unprecedented quadruple right to the very end before last-day heartbreak in the Premier League title race and a Champions League final defeat at the hands of Real Madrid, 2022/23 was one to forget. It proved to be something of the end of an era, with greats of the previous five years having either moved on during the summer of 2022, as in the case of Sadio Mane, or see the campaign be their last in a Liverpool shirt, such as Jordan Henderson and Roberto Firmino.

Liverpool needed a reset this past summer, they needed to overhaul key positions with younger talent. That actually started in the January of 2023 with the addition of Cody Gakpo, before the summer saw the arrivals of the likes of Alexis Mac Allister, Dominik Szoboszlai and Ryan Gravenberch.

But last season’s fifth-placed finish in the Premier League saw Liverpool miss out on Champions League football for the first time since 2016, a season when they finished runners up in the Europa League. Since then the club have been to three Champions League finals, winning one. This season, though, it is back to Europe’s second tier competition, and while the target is very much to lift silverware in Dublin come May 22, financially this season is something that will show to have been impactful when the 2023/24 financial accounts are published in early 2025.

Liverpool’s accounts for 2022/23 will likely be made public in the first three months of 2024, with the season including the club’s fifth-placed finish in the Premier League but also the Champions League campaign where the club reached the last 16 before a rather humbling exit at the hands of Real Madrid.

But even though the exit was earlier than hoped for, and the finish outside the top four fell well below the standards expected of the Reds, from a financial standpoint in relation to competitive success it will still have yielded better results that what the current season will, even if the Reds win both the Premier League and the Europa League. That’s because the impact of missing out on the Champions League won’t truly be seen until the accounts for the 2023/24 period.

While some questions exist around whether or not they are legitimate title contenders this season, Liverpool look a strong bet to make the Champions League next season and right the wrongs of the last campaign. A return to European football’s elite knockout club competition will be a most welcome competitive and financial boost for the Reds should they achieve the aim this season.

But Manchester City’s financial results for 2022/23, published last week, show just how valuable the Champions League can be and highlighted that the gap between themselves and the current Premier League champions will likely grow before the Reds can start closing in once again