Friday 16 April 2010

Yanks Put Club up for Sale

Tom Hicks and George Gillett have announced that they are putting the club up for sale. The Americans, who have owned the club for three years, have finally decided to sell up 100%, causing renewed optimism amongst Reds fans.

Martin Broughton, a life-long Chelsea fan and Stamford Bridge season ticket holder, has been appointed as Chairman with the sole task of over-seeing the sale of the club to owners who can take the club forward.

In a brief statement for the club's official website, http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/, the Yanks said, "Owning Liverpool Football Club over these past three years has been a rewarding and exciting experience for us and our families. Having grown the club this far we have now decided together to look to sell the club to owners committed to take the club through its next level of growth and development."

This is the best news of the season for Liverpool supporters desperate to see these cowboys leave the club. In fact, it's probably the best thing that could come out of this season, even if we do win the Europa League in Hamburg in May.

Whilst being at Liverpool may have been a "rewarding and exciting experience" for the Yanks we can assure them it has been anything but for Liverpool supporters. During their tenure Liverpool have stood still in the transfer market and failed to build a new stadium. Moreover, debts have been piled onto the club which could threaten the long-term financial stability of the club.

Rafa has been repeatedly undermined by the owners, and has never received full backing in the transfer market. Over the last three transfer windows Rafa has had a net spend of precisely nil. He has been yoked with a "sell to buy" transfer policy, which was rapidly escalating into a "sell not to buy" transfer policy.

No manager can succeed with this level of investment, yet Rafa has been expected to achieve Champions League qualification every season and, so far, he has managed to secure top level European football season after season.

The Yanks time in charge has been riddled with lies. When they arrived in February 2007 they promised that the club would not be saddled with any debt whatsoever. They claimed that their purchase of the club wasn't a leveraged buy-out like the Glazer's purchase of Manchester United, but that's exactly what it turned out to be.

Liverpool's debts suddenely soared to £237 million as Hicks and Gillett borrowed money from RBS to purchase the club, and made the club pay the loan back, through the use of Kop Holding Limited.

Tom Hicks even made this insulting statement in May 2007, saying, "When I was in the leverage buy-out business we bought Weetabix and we leveraged it up to make our return. You could say that anyone who was eating Weetabix was paying for our purchase of Weetabix. It was just business. It is the same for Liverpool."

Clearly Hicks knows how to get the fans behind him! Comparing Liverpool to Weetabix was ridiculous and always bound to back-fire. No one has an emotional interest in Weetabix yet so many people care deeply about Liverpool Football Club. Even your average single celled amoeba could recognise that more people care about Liverpool than Weetabix, yet, somehow, Tom Hicks fails to see the difference.

On top of that, George Gillett, promised that work on the new stadium would start promptly after their purchase of the club.

He stated, during his first news conference after taking control of the club, that, "The shovel needs to be in the ground within the next 60 days and you will soon see a great big swimming pool being dug out on Stanley Park."

And yet, over 3 years later, building work still hasn't begun on Stanley Park. There aren't any builders or diggers, let alone any old men walking around in their swimming trunks taking an early morning swim!

Finally, after three years suffering under these horrible owners, who could have ruined the club and sent us scaling down the divisions in a similar fashion to Leeds United, Liverpool are likely to have new owners, and fresh investment, in the next few months.

One of the main criteria for any future owners is that they have to build a new stadium. Broughton said in an interview with LFC TV that any new owners would have to be "crazy" to end the plans to build a new stadium. Also, the fans will be looking for owners to invest in the side, give Rafa time to build a title winning squad and uphold the rich traditions of the club.

Hopefully Liverpool can find new owners as soon as possible so that Rafa can spend a significant amount of money in the summer transfer window.

After a desperately disappointing season, things are starting to look up at Anfield.

YANK$ LIAR$ OUT!

YNWA

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