Tom Hicks and George Gillett Battle For Liverpool FC
Pre Season @ Annfield Road
Anfield Awaits Court Rulling Over Red Sox Takeover.
Whilst Liverpool FC are experiencing some major problems on pitch, off pitch seems to be taking the limelight away from poor performance of some of the highest paid players in the premiership, with the battle for ownership now entering courts in the UK and potentially the USA as well.
Takeover aside, Gillett and Hicks will have the biggest uphill climb to even consider keeping tight hold of the club, based on their financial performance since they took ownership of the club not so many years ago. And with anger still on the faces of the supporters, I’m not sure even if they get to counter the takeover, that they will get any support from the thousands of loyal fans around the globe, let alone in the UK.
This whole situation only brings one major problem into the spotlight, which is businesses and people who buy into british clubs and companies who are not cash rich, taking them directly into debt upon takeover.
Liverpool was no different when Hicks and Gillett signed the deal a few years ago, taking the clubs debts to a record high, whilst still paying heavy payments to the Royal Bank of Scotland for what they borrowed from day one. In short, this meant that the income Liverpool was seeing from gate receipts, TV endorsements and retail sales was being swallowed up by interest payments to RBS.
And they are not alone, because whilst all this “pie in the sky” talking telephone numbers is bound around the media, we seem to be forgetting that Manchester United are in double the amount of trouble than Liverpool, with an average of 20% greater revenue into club funds.
This fiasco which is happening right now with Liverpool, should be an early warning to the FA that they need to get some tighter guidelines put in place to stop this ever happenening again.
We are still potentially days if not weeks away from the final outcome – let’s just hope that once it is settled either way, that the team and Roy Hodgson can buckle down and concentrate of performance related issue’s, before the fan base lose complete faith in what was not so long ago, one of the top 5 teams in Europe.
