Dummies guide to owning Liverpool FC

My last blog on Liverpool FC was exactly a week ago. I knew nothing much would happen as it was an international weekend so other than worry about how injured our key players would come back from duty, there was no football to be interested in. Did you see the England game? My case rests.

Talking of cases resting there was a small matter to be cleared up and as one of my favourite bloggers, Paula at Battling On, asked why, when there was washing to be hung out on a cold Wednesday in October, I was so happy, I had to write this post.

As I write, there is a meeting taking place that could decide the future of my beloved Reds. It should be the culmination of one of the most turbulent periods in Anfield history. And it may even have reported the outcome by the time I finish writing.

But that is the end game. Where do you start. How about 1959 when Liverpool appoint a certain Mr Bill Shankly who built Liverpool "... up and up to be a bastion of invincibility". Or how about 1977 when a diminutive Wearsider called Bob lead Liverpool to their first European Champions Cup success, or 1978 when he won a second, or 1981 when he won a third. In 1984 an Ordinary Joe not only won The European Cup for a 4th time but added a league and cup success to make it a treble year.

Maybe the biggest turning point in Liverpool's history happened the following year when Joe Fagin, in his final match in charge of Liverpool had to stand and watch as the team he had steered to a second successive European Cup Final had to sit in a dressing room as the Heysel Disaster, caused by a multitude of factors, but one of the biggest being the hooligan element attached to Liverpool Football Club, unfolded on the terraces outside. 39 football fans died because a wall collapsed in the crumbling stadium after hooligans in Liverpool colours, stormed the pens holding Juventus and neutral fans. This was the culmination of a period in which football hooliganism was referred to as "The English Disease".

So English clubs were banned from European competition for an unspecified period whilst Liverpool were told that when other English teams were allowed back in their ban would continue for another five years.

Liverpool were at the height of their competitive prowess at home and abroad. The European ban made the English teams only able to compare against each other, but this lack of external competition surely lead to a lowering in standards domestically.

King Kenny took the managerial mantle straight after Heysel and steered Liverpool to a League and FA Cup double in his first season. In 1987 he replaced star striker Ian Rush with the most exciting team ever. Barnes, Beardsley, Aldridge, Hansen, Houghton, McMahon. Beautiful football. If you ever get to watch the Liverpool vs Nottingham Forest game in April 1988 at Anfield I urge you to do so. Even Brazil couldn't play purer football.

Of course it was another April game against Nottingham Forest that had a devastating effect on the club, the community and the sport. The Hillsborough Disaster signalled the start of the end of Liverpool's dominance of footballing matters in England. Yes they still won the FA Cup that year and narrowly lost the league title on the final kick of the season at home to Arsenal, brilliantly chronicled by Nick Hornby in his novel Fever Pitch. Yes we won the title a year later but we haven't won it since. In fact the 1990's was a pretty barren period for Liverpool with an FA Cup and League Cup win all we had to show for over ten years. I believe that Hillsborough affected events on the pitch as much as off it and that deterioration was difficult to halt.


So we move on to 2004. Gerard Houllier had tried to restore the glory years to Anfield but had reached his peak thee years earlier. The manager who had just won the UEFA Cup was brought in to try to take us to the next level. Well he missed out the next level and went and won the European Cup for a fifth time. Then went and won the FA Cup in the next season. At this time, Liverpool, who had been a family run club, with numerous small shareholders decided that to raise the finance to invest in the club, including the building of a new stadium, needed to generate additional revenue, the club needed to be sold lock stock and barrel. So Chairman and major shareholder, David Moores and CEO Rick Parry, put the club on EBay.

So who showed interest? Well the investment arm of the richest people in Dubai wanted to buy Liverpool and a silvery haired old duffer from America. He didn't seem to have much of a hope but George Gillette asked Tom Hicks if he fancied helping outbidding the richest family in the middle east and low and behold, the two aging Americans suddenly found themselves as custodians of the historic institution.

Manchester United had previously been taken over by an American family, who had borrowed all of the purchase price to buy the club. This obviously meant that the first call on any profits was to pay back the interest on the acquisition loan. Hicks and Gillette assured Liverpool fans that this wasn't the type of purchase that they would make. They also said that there would be a "spade in the ground within 60 days" in relation to a new stadium to be built. They also promised a new look at the stadium to make it grander. Investment into the team was also top of the priority list.

So we made our record signing when purchasing Fernando Torres in the summer of 2007. All seemed well. But hold on one second. Mr Hicks and Mr Gillette were plotting. They wanted to get rid of the manager who had won the Champions League two years earlier and bring in Jurgen Klinsman who had absolutely no club management experience, just because they could. Well they couldn't. The fans showed their displeasure and the Yanks were shown to be plotters of the highest order. The only move on building a stadium was the production of spanking new plans. No muck was moved and no spade was spaded. Not within 60 days and not since.

It eventually transpired that the acquisition was actually leveraged against the club. A complex business structure tried to hide this fact with a holding company for the club being a subsidiary of another holding company which was the sole asset of another Cayman Islands company which was a subsidiary of an American owned company. Still with me?

Hicks and Gillette had borrowed the bulk of the money to purchase Liverpool through the Royal Bank of Scotland. Yes, that's right. The RBS, owned by British Taxpayers. The money for transfers dried up as the interest payments on the holding companies, sucked up all of the profits that the solvent football club produced. Rafa Benitez had to sell his stars to buy other players. In a typical move, Benitez tried to sell Xabi Alonso so that he could buy Gareth Barry. Whether that was a good football move is debatable. The move eventually failed and Alonso stayed for one more season but was extremely unsettled. What it did do was signal that the big spending days were over.

Football was playing second fiddle to the power struggles in the club. Somehow,Benitez managed to produce a team that challenged for the title and beat Manchester United 4-1 at Old Trafford. He was given an extended contract and the responsibility of overseeing all football matters at Anfield including the reserves,academy and all scouting. Unfortunately, the rot had set in. Alonso as sold to create a transfer fund and the players brought in could best be described as good players but  not the ones that were needed. A seventh place finish meant the end of the line for Benitez. I think that he had gone as far as he could with the circumstances that he was forced to work in and he had started to worry about the power struggle more than vents on the pitch.

In the meantime, Hicks and Gillette had struggled to be able to repay the debts that they had incurred in acquiring the club. They had therefore agreed with the RBS to sell the club. As part of this process a company called Barclay's Capital (BarCap)were appointed to proceed with the sale and the board was reconstituted with a new Chelsea fan chairman, Martin Broughton, was appointed to oversee the sale.

This process has been ongoing since April 2010. Fans have never known where they stand and have given the owners and directors short shrift for most of the last six months. Then last week the waste products hit the air con.

The club made an announcement that the club had been sold to New England Sports Ventures. However, within a few minutes Hicks and Gillette said that they hadn't agreed to the sale and had sacked two of the independent directors and replaced them with Hicks Junior (or Hicks Minor as he was referred to in court) and another of Hicks' associates.

Thus this weeks court action. RBS took Kicks to court to prove that the reconstitution of the board was illegal. They have said that only Martin Broughton was allowed to reconstitute the board. After a five hour hearing yesterday, the judge returned to give his verdict this morning. The verdict was damning to Hicks and Gillette. It gave the entire verdict the way of RBS and the Liverpool independent directors, gave costs against the Americans and didn't open an appeal route.

So happy days for Liverpool and the board met tonight at 8 o'clock to discuss the sale, which was complicated by another offer which came during the wait for the court case. But as I have been writing this post, news ha come through that the saga continues. Hicks and Gillette have filed for an injunction in a Texas court to prevent the sale being completed. The board have released a statement saying that they have resolved that the sale to NESV will go ahead as soon as the injunction is dealt with.

But for now we go to bed knowing that the end game has just got slightly longer. Well if something is worth waiting for....