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2010-2011 Football Thread

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Lord Blackadder said:
I find it odd that a bid would come now - if Hick and Gillette default on their loans surely the asking price for the club will drop?
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I'm no financial expert so I don't know the pros and cons of putting a bid in at this stage, but from the buyer's point of view, I suppose there's no guarantee of what the bank would do with the club after getting their hands on it – if they buy it later, what state would the club be in? Would any of its assets already have been sold off?

From Hicks and Gillett's point of view, neither offer apparently meets their valuation of the club but as the deadline looms they at least have an option to get some money from selling it. Their hands may be forced by the deadline, and the offer's on the table...
 
Jaffa Cake said:
I'm no financial expert so I don't know the pros and cons of putting a bid in at this stage, but from the buyer's point of view, I suppose there's no guarantee of what the bank would do with the club after getting their hands on it – if they buy it later, what state would the club be in? Would any of its assets already have been sold off?
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True, the bank has several options after the deadline passes and some of them are pretty grim from Liverpool's perspective.

Jaffa Cake said:
From Hicks and Gillett's point of view, neither offer apparently meets their valuation of the club but as the deadline looms they at least have an option to get some money from selling it. Their hands may be forced by the deadline, and the offer's on the table...
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Hicks in particular seems hell-bent on making a handsome profit, yet he seems utterly blind to the fact that he has mismanaged the club finances and the value has plummeted. lets not forget that Hicks and Gillette paid under £220 million for the club (including the existing debt), and have refused offers of £500 million. I repeat, they refused offers of half a billion pounds. Hicks wants a profit of 2-4 times what he paid. The club is in worse shape than it was when he came in, and his valuation is in dreamland.

I can't see him defaulting, but I can't imagine what he thinks is going to happen. It would be justice to see him lose money on the whole deal when it gets resolved, but the primary goal is just to see the current owners gone.
 
There's now a statement on the Liverpool OWS...

The Board of Directors have received two excellent financial offers to buy the Club that would repay all its long-term debt. A Board meeting was called today to review these bids and approve a sale. Shortly prior to the meeting, the owners - Tom Hicks and George Gillett - sought to remove Managing Director Christian Purslow and Commercial Director Ian Ayre from the Board, seeking to replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon.

This matter is now subject to legal review and a further announcement will be made in due course.

Meanwhile Martin Broughton, Christian Purslow and Ian Ayre continue to explore every possible route to achieving a sale of the Club at the earliest opportunity.

Based on comments on Sky Sports News a little earlier, it would seem that several members of the board were in favour of one or both bids, but Hicks and Gillett – who wield the real power in the Anfield boardroom – disagreed. It now looks as if the dissenting directors are being replaced by those close to the owners – one would obviously assume Mack Hicks is related to Tom Hicks – so there's clearly a spot of internal strife there, and it looks like the owners are circling the wagons...
 
It's a coup, plain and simple, but I'm not sure what they hope to accomplish. :confused:

If Hicks and Gillette want to at least break even they'd better sell now. But they seem totally disinclined to do that.
 
Liverpool board agrees sale to owners of Boston Red Sox

Liverpool Football Club is to be sold to the US owners of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, the club announced this morning, following an extraordinary boardroom wrangle that revealed the splits at the highest level of the club.

In a statement on its website, Liverpool said its board had agreed the sale of the club to New England Sports Ventures (NESV).

Last night the American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, were believed to have rejected the NESV bid, despite the three other directors at Liverpool being prepared to accept it. However the club warned today that the sale was dependent on the resolution of a legal dispute that saw Hicks and Gillett attempt to oust two directors.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/06/liverpool-sold-new-england-sports-ventures
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New club name: Merseyside Red Sox. :D
 
There's the old story of how Liverpool acquired their all red kit – originally they wore white shorts and socks with their red shirts but as Ian St John recounts in his autobiography...

'[Shankly] thought the colour scheme would carry psychological impact—red for danger, red for power. He came into the dressing room one day and threw a pair of red shorts to Ronnie Yeats. “Get into those shorts and let’s see how you look,” he said. “Christ, Ronnie, you look awesome, terrifying. You look 7ft tall.” “Why not go the whole hog, boss?” I suggested. “Why not wear red socks? Let’s go out all in red.” Shankly approved and an iconic kit was born.'

Ian St John – a true visionary. ;)
 
Despite it being the middle of the night, how long will it take Lord Blackadder to post?:)

They (Hicks) seem to be going ugly, certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth. However financially they were screwed and so somebody picked them up for a knock down price.

What's the fans feeling about the new owners? Everything I've read so far has been positive but based on experience I think there will be several suspicious supporters nearvous about more American owners.
 
Fret not, a loop hole is in place to potentially prevent Liverpool being docked points if they enter administration! Phew – three cheers for the Premier League!

One thing that I find a tad annoying about this whole media frenzy is that there are many, many more clubs up and down the land who are in severe financial difficulties due to mismanagement and incompetent ownership, but we hear precious little if anything about it. If it's not a Premier League club, no one gives a flying one. :rolleyes:
 
Jaffa Cake said:
One thing that I find a tad annoying about this whole media frenzy is that there are many, many more clubs up and down the land who are in severe financial difficulties due to mismanagement and incompetent ownership, but we hear precious little if anything about it. If it's not a Premier League club, no one gives a flying one. :rolleyes:
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I was having this exact debate with a colleague this morning. The time is right for the Premiership to be ejected out of England, so that the rest of the game in this country can recover. At the moment it represents nothing but poison to the rest of the English football hierarchy. Short term pain will result in a much healthier future for every club from the Championship down.

Let Manchester City move to Abu Dhabi and Liverpool to Boston. They no longer give a toss about their local fanbase, instead concentrating on building global brands for global TV rights. They won't be missed, not by me anyway.
 
Jaffa Cake said:
Fret not, a loop hole is in place to potentially prevent Liverpool being docked points if they enter administration! Phew – three cheers for the Premier League!
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Hmmm, they are pushing the boundaries of that one. In financial terms, voluntary insolvency is where the company is put into administration due to inaction of the owner in the company's interest such as illness, death or they have left the country and can't be contacted (I think the latter happened to Dundee FC when a previous owner ran away.) While Liverpool are being put up for sale by the board against the wishes of the owners (but deemed in the best interests of the club) the club would technically be insolvent due to the failure to repay or restructure the debt and in my opinion should be docked points (sorry LB!) But the EPL seemed to have overlooked that. However this is immaterial if the Bank of Scotland get their money or an agreement before 16 October.

Queso said:
I was having this exact debate with a colleague this morning. The time is right for the Premiership to be ejected out of England, so that the rest of the game in this country can recover. At the moment it represents nothing but poison to the rest of the English football hierarchy. Short term pain will result in a much healthier future for every club from the Championship down.
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There is a very similar feeling in Scotland regarding the Old Firm.
 
Last season we talked of the embarrassment to the self styled Richest League In The World™ if one of its member clubs went under – but that was Portsmouth who are small fry compared to Liverpool, one of the sainted four. The Premier League will want to retain Liverpool – their fan base is huge and lucrative – so if there's a loop hole to help improve their chances of staying in the division I expect it will be exploited.

Queso said:
The time is right for the Premiership to be ejected out of England, so that the rest of the game in this country can recover. At the moment it represents nothing but poison to the rest of the English football hierarchy.
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Fuzzy14 said:
There is a very similar feeling in Scotland regarding the Old Firm.
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If the 'big four' toddled off to set up a European 'Super League' with their counterparts from Spain, Italy et al, I'd be rather pleased to be honest. Let them fulfil their wildest dreams and let the rest of us get on with sorting out the mess they'd leave behind.

I think the Sky pundit team's pants might explode in delight if this ever happened though, which isn't a pleasant thought.
 
there are worse things than being owned by an american firm. the red sox have won two world series titles in the past 10 years and been in post season play more often than not.

i think being owned by a middle eastern or former member of a baltic state with a questionable background would be much worse... :rolleyes:

but i was referring to the fact that they are in nearly last place(18th) with only 1 win and 3 draws and 5pts. i fully expect them to be relegated without any additional point deduction... unless i've missed something ... ;)
 
Nieval said:
It my be my failing, but I can't tell if that comment is serious or sarcastic.
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i think it is sarcasm.

all in all i'd prefer english teams be owned by english people. but if i were english i'd prefer an american owner over the aforementioned...
 
Columbus 1 - 2 Seattle

It was a close game, and the odds were stacked heavily against Columbus, but in the end it took a goalkeeping error for us to lose the match. Massively gutted though. :(

As I predicted, Seattle came out attacking, and Columbus spent most of the match absorbing pressure and mounting the odd counterattack, and it actually worked because we scored first.

We would have gone into halftime with a 1-0 lead, but our keeper made a mistake by coming out way too far to make an ineffective punch, got caught out of position and gifted Seattle an equalizer. For most of the match we got skinned on the flanks regularly and in the end we paid for it by allowing a second goal. We hit the bar late on, but just couldn't get another goal.

Credit to Seattle, they came out attacking and it made for an exciting match. But I can't help feeling hard done by with this matchup: Columbus had to play in Seattle's home venue, on fake turf, with our second string keeper, against our old manager. Sigh.

As for Liverpool,

Very mixed feelings of course. As a "Johnny Foreigner" fan, my opinions won't really resemble all the Scousers posting death threats on message boards. From that perspective I'm thrilled that another American bought the club, because of all the "Yanks out" etc nonsense. As if a Russian or Saudi tycoon would have been better... I think that if Hicks and Gillette end up losing money on the deal, they got what was coming to them and nobody will feel sorry about it. Good riddance.

Anyway, I wonder if this deal will even go through and if so, how? (is it going to be a simple 3-2 board vote, with the non-owners outvoting the owners?) Will Hicks and Gillette be able to oust two members of the board? Assuming it does happen, it remains to be seen what the new owner's plan for the club is, or if he even has one. Perhaps he only bought the club because it was a steal. He's basically paying off the club's debt and getting ownership into the bargain.

As for the points deduction loophole, I think the Premier League are a bunch of cheats for bending the rules in favor of the big clubs. Everyone can see them doing it, everyone knows what they are doing, and the league just doesn't care. FIFA and UEFA should get involved. I think it's ridiculous that the full force of the rules gets applied to small clubs with little recourse, while the good-'ol-boys club of the top teams can flaunt the rules at will. It's simply unfair and, more to to the point, corrupt.
 
At least the Liverpool fans can reuse their "Yanks Out!" paraphernalia when they fail to win the Premier League next season and blame it on the new owners.
 
The latest news indicates that the sale will be decided in the courts and could take weeks. This is far from ideal...the Hicks and Gillette ownership of Liverpool is set to die a slow, agonizing death. Time is against them though, the longer they hold on to the club, the less likely it is they will escape a loss.

Also, I'm eager to hear more about what NESV plans to do with the club. In the short term, they need to pay the debt, and that seems built into the purchase deal.

Once they do that, however, they are going to have to try and win over the Kop. Will they sack Hodgson and bring in Dalglish? I can't see them spending a lot of money in January, the market is usually not very good then. The wise thing to do would be to pay off the debts, perhaps make one or two buys in January, and then plan on making a couple big transfers in the summer. If they plan to go ahead with a new stadium, they'd better make sure it happens this time without big delays.

This season is shot, nobody should expect anything from it.
 
As a brit living in the US, and having spent a few years living near Boston before I relocated I have to say that if the sale goes ahead then the Liverpool fans will be in for a very pleasant surprise. John Henry and his company don't just care about making money from a sports team, then actually care about the team winning.

They have been amazing owners of the Boston Red Sox and there is no reason to expect they would be any different with Liverpool.

I know that Liverpool fans are going to wary of another Yank owner, but they should have nothing to fear from John Henry.
 
swiftaw said:
I know that Liverpool fans are going to wary of another Yank owner, but they should have nothing to fear from John Henry.
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Despite hating the Red Sox (the most hateable team in MLB besides the Yankees), I have to agree that the Red Sox have a reputation for being a well-run club, and while Henry might not spend as much as the fans want, he will certaintly manage the clubs finances with better care than Statler and Waldorf did.

I see a lot of negative (and ignorant) comments from people on message boards who essentially demand that Liverpool must get a Roman Abramovich or Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan type of owner - people need to recognize that such multibillionaire, free-spending owners are complete anomolies. It isn't going to happen. Arsenal and Man U don't have the luxury of such owners either (and United could be in a similar financial position to us very easily). We need an owner who can stabilize the club and spend money wisely. Arsenal's new stadium was a very solid move economically, Liverpool should look to that model.

Of course, we still need to be shot of Hicks and Gillette. If the death struggle of their ownership drags on too long, perhaps Henry will lose interest and RBS will take over. Every day that the ownership situation drags on makes it that much harder for Liverpool to rebuild.
 
swiftaw said:
I know that Liverpool fans are going to wary of another Yank owner, but they should have nothing to fear from John Henry.
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He may be American, but he's not an American who's Hicks or Gillett. I'd like to think he'll be given a chance to prove he can sort things out, but make no mistake about it – Liverpool is an absolute mess from top to bottom right now, things aren't going to magically sort themselves out overnight. For all his experience at owning teams and making them successful – in both business and financial terms – he's got a lot of work on at Anfield. This assumes of course the sale goes through.

On the subject of nationality, personally it matters not one jot. Having local folk made good owning the clubs they supported as boys is nice from a romantic point of view but for me competence and integrity are what matters, not what it says on a passport. We've seen foreign owners in this country who have made complete pigs ears of clubs, but there are far more Englishmen who have run clubs into the ground than Americans, Europeans, Arabs or whatever put together. Hell, we've had our fair share of them over the years – ranging from the incompetent down to the outright criminal. :eek:

Lord Blackadder said:
United could be in a similar financial position to us very easily...
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I've seen some very gloating comments from some Manchester United fans on message boards and the like over the past few days, and I really think they'd do well to remember their own ownership situation.
 
I agree Jaffa. And with the spending of the Premier League reaching new heights of insanity, as well as the league's attempt to reach global markets, it should come as no surprise that foreign owners are gravitating towards Premier League clubs.

Assuming the Henry bid goes through, I have to imagine that most Liverpool supporters will be naturally cautious but mostly relieved that H&G are gone, and will give Henry a chance to state his plan and get on with rebuilding the club.
 
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