I’m trying to see this sales rumor in a positive light. FSG is determined to run LFC in a sustainable way. But they have also realized that football finance has become utterly crooked at PL as well as on European scenes. They have worked hard and meticulously to bring LFC to its present level; but to keep it there, they need a generous amount of funds.
However, they can plough in 1-1.5B if they sell 25-30% of their stakes. Even if half that amount is invested in the squad over the next 4-5 years we will stay competitive at the very top.
I agree with you both. An outright sale would be heart-breaking for me, not because of a particular love for FSG, but because it would feel like a tacit acknowledgement that you can’t prosper in this sport through good management and smart decision making. The money is always going to speak loudest in the end.
When FSG bought Liverpool twelve years ago, the main attractions were clearly FFP and TV rights. The first of those was supposedly in place and the second was obviously thought to be attainable. On a level playing field, and with greater control of the fruits of Liverpool’s success and standing, I think Henry backed himself to more than compete with the Premier League, and I’d agree with him. I think what he failed to take into account it how utterly fucking dysfunctional and incompetent football is at governance level.
I was never as against the Super League as most people, because I always saw FSGs interest in it as a direct response to the failure of UEFA to enforce FFP and a move towards more direct control of TV rights (which wasn’t the case for all clubs - the Spanish clubs obviously needed the cash, City wanted legitimacy, Arsenal a rout back to the top table).
As soon as I saw John Henry making his apology, I suspected it might be the end of FSG. I thought that when Henry said there would be consequences this might be what he meant. If UEFA couldn’t control the game, and if they would not be allowed to get it under control themselves, they’d call it a day.
So, yes. I’d be sad to see them depart, because they’d take with them any hope that this can be done properly, of that there is any end in sight to the sportwashing, financial doping and corruption in the game. If I bumped in to John Henry in a bar after the sale, I’d want to shake his hand and say ‘Well done, mate. You gave it a fucking good go’
Fuck him. We can dress up the ESL monstrosity in whatever noble bullshit we want, but at the end of the day JWH was at the heart of wanting to band together with the clubs ruining this sport, lock the door behind them, and restructure things so they would all be guaranteed to line their pockets. Whatever token concessions they would make to the rest of European football / “The Pyramid™” were to be no more than bribes.
At the end of the day I haven’t seen any leadership from FSG that seemed truly focused on The Good of the Sport, only on issues that would give them control of the purse strings. The only credit I can give them was that they spared us the indignity of turning us into another plastic, financially doped bastardization of what we used to be. But I’m sure whichever owners are waiting in the pipeline will have no such qualms.
It’s been a long tenure, a lot has happened. Some great some not so. You bring up getting rid of Roy, any owner wouldv’e come to the quick realisation he was well out his depth and handed him his P45. The big turning point was them going all out to put a package deal together to entice Klopp to come.
But ultimately with all that said, under their ownership we have progressed and built our most formidable side since the 80s and gone on to win trophies we hadn’t done in decades prior.
I see no way to make it more valuable. Broadcast/streaming rights are largely boxed in. Matchday revenues have grown significantly, but Anfield is probably as big as it can get, and we know what the fans think about increasing revenue per seat. The European Super League was an attempt to capture more of the value that LFC’s fanbase produces, with the explicit complaint being both the PL and the CL right now direct much of that value to other clubs such as City, rewarding their use of outside capital to hijack profile. Commercial revenue can grow, but not the way it has in the past decade.
By contrast, costs seem to be able to grow quite readily, with the pace being set by capital flows from outside the game.
Our fans will be faced with a choice. Accept a new owner willing to spend what it takes, or drift downward to a club that is normally expected to finish 5th-7th, only occasionally finishing in the CL spots.
Important to remember in this fiasco is that the ESL ideas that were leaked were not in any way a fully fleshed out idea the owners were ready to move forward with. They were simply a framework they club owners were still discussing. For whomever it was to leak that was a major betrayal of trust, which is why everyone other than the skint 2 and Real disavowed it so quickly. What that mean though is you have Henry who on the one hand is seeing the governance in the game he was promised when he bought into it falling apart. Then on the other, the only partners he could lean on to help institute better governance in the game showing themselves to be self-serving snakes who will sell out their partners in a moment if there was a small benefit to themselves.
The super league was an inevitable reaction to the monstrous sums of money involved in football.
Top European clubs - one of which we positively demand to be - have to pay out huge sums in transfer fees on a regular basis, and carry squads of stars who all expect to be earning millions a year. Mo Salah is on 350k a week, and there are players now earning double that, if not more.
That might work for the oil clubs, but a club like Liverpool or Arsenal, carrying the wage bills that they need to compete, are only a run of bad luck away from financial catastrophe.
Of course FSG would jump at the chance to guarantee income. So would you in their position. Fans don’t have any qualms screaming JUST PAY THE FUCKING MONEY at John Henry on Twitter. At the same time criticising him for seeking to secure the means to pay the fucking money strikes me as a bit hypocritical.
This isn’t my position, though. I know that this final paragraph is more of a general thought than a reply directly to me per se, but there is a principled rejection that can be made to both sides of the coin.
I’m fine with drifting down the league. Can’t be arsed with artificial success. Being a Man City fan looks insanely boring, and I’ve met a decent amount of City fans who will quietly admit to not enjoying it as much as when they were in Division 1.
Don’t really care that much thesedays, just want to be able to buy into the club and team. Hard to do that when its an artificial and hollow shell.
But I think there is general lack of understanding that for clubs working within a budget the sums of money that are needed to pay for and sustain a place at the top are eye-watering, and paying those sums put puts clubs like Liverpool on a precipice.
I will watch, but with reduced interest and reduced willingness to pay for it. It ends up being similar to why I find it very difficult to care about the Bundesliga. It is a rigged game, even if the matches themselves are not. Bayern should win every year, they have vastly more resources and it is just a matter of whether or not they screw that up enough for another club having a great year to slip past them. Great story when it does, but not worth an annual subscription to watch every weekend all the years that it doesn’t. The PL will be a little more interesting for having more than one of those, but not much.
Absolutely, but what is the end point of that? Without a unicorn Jack Walker style manager who rather than spending his own money runs the club 200% better than anyone else in world football does, aren’t the only paths from there to either switch to supporting Tranmere or accept midtable mediocrity at best?
I remember several of my friends going through the same after the Glazer take over and I was skeptical of their new found love of the Newton Health ethos and support of local non-league football, but none of them have ever been back.
