Tommok

Bints of Benitez?

You work with 30 journalists who are also debt specialists? That must be a roaring good read whatever publication it is you work for.

was it his accountant?

Even in victory, there is an inescapable feeling they are losing faith in their manager's increasingly deluded belief he will deliver it. And the 2,000 fans who stayed behind on the Kop echoed their heroes' sentiments. This line was in both online and paper versions, no?

From Beeb rumours Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez will allow £15m-rated midfielder Xabi Alonso to return to Spain in the summer, while John Arne Riise, Peter Crouch, Harry Kewell and Andriy Voronin will also leave Anfield. (News of the World)

From BBC site Chelsea have had a £15m bid for Palermo striker Amauri turned down, according to Corriere dello Sport, with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool and Juventus also interested in the player. (tribalfootball.com 1140 GMT) Not overly excited with him to be honest.

It might just be that the Spanish/Latin Americans are more often than not the best players out there though, no?

can't see why he'd leave Boro for Wigan??

Didn't you get the memo - we all love G&H now. Hating them is like, soo yesterday.

Judging by his perfromance for Villareal in La Liga at the weekend, he's still a decent player. To be honest nearly all of those players in the second list (except possibly JAR) are still in decent form.

Or perhaps we could do a march like the one the Rozzer's Foundation did through Central London today - they all had very smart matching white caps and took the day off work to do it and everything. Almost certain to change government policy in a stroke, I'll wager. Oh they also got their workmates to shut the roads off though - not sure we can stretch to that. Shall I get the red caps ordered anyway??

Am I to conclude that we have ruled out the effectiveness of effigy burning now?

Is right...and funny

I agree. But in terms of the bit in bold - I think Hicks does have enough money, he just doesn't want to spend it on LFC and perhaps more crucially, doesn't feel he has to.

I agree. This is surely the primary concern and the main reason for mistrust - they categorically said they would not do this a la Glazer but are now intimating this is their plan - that is unforgivable and I'm not clear why they weren't tied in to being prevented from doing this in the original takeover document. The issue of the stadium funding is largely going to be the same whoever is our owner - the club will pay for it and this is probably right. As for allowing money for transfers - G&H did imply they would give Rafa whatever he needed and this clearly hasn’t happened to the extent we, or Rafa would have liked and doesn't look like it will do. To be honest though all new owners promise much in this way and unless they are like Abramovich they seldom deliver to the extent the fans/manager might have wished. There is no guarantee that DIC will splash loads of money on the team beyond the fact they have said they will and they have the money to - but this does not mean it will happen. Added to the lies about the funding of the purchase, the treatment of Rafa and the way it has been openly discussed in the press is probably enough to warrant the backlash against G&H and the desire, which I share, to get them out - however I'm not certain that DIC will be quite the saviours everyone expects them to be. In any case G&H won't be in the slightest bit bothered by a 'fan's revolt' and will ride it out if they think they stand to make more money by holding on and selling later - no one is really clear at this stage whether financially they will be better to sell now or later but this is almost certainly the only thing that will sway them, not a well meaning demo this evening - although I do think our displeasure should be aired.

One point that is constantly being made on here is that if the team are not doing well, then we will not fill the new stadium, period. I wonder to what extent this is true - are we not the type of club that would still get big attendances even if we weren't doing great? I understand the argument for losing out on CL money if we finished outside of the top 4 but wonder if Hicks is thinking whatever happens, and no matter how much money he and Gillett give us for transfers (within reason), they will still make enough of a profit from ticket sales in bigger stadium to make it all worthwhile.

Nice summary Cobs - I think that it is everything in a nutshell

not claiming to be an expert in contract law or anything but surely if it was specified in the takeover agreement that the new onwers would have to take up some of the debt for the new stadium and not put it on the club and then did the opposite of that - they'd be in breach of that term of the contract? That is precisely the point of such a contract term - to help govern what happens after the takeover in this regard, no?

Not if they are still answerable in part to a board. A contract can say pretty much anything (providing its within the Unfair Contract Terms Act). It just sems odd to me that such a crucial concern of Parry and Moores and the club as a whole wasn't secured by a specific term in the takeover documents - I fail to believe this is not within the realms of contract law?

One thing confuses me about all of this. Given that one of the major concerns about a takeover has always been that we didn't want the new owners to saddle the club with all, or even a significant amount of, the debt for a new stadium - why wasn't this stipulated in the takeover contract? When they emerged, G&H were quick to draw the distinction between the way they would handle things and the way the Glazers did at United, I just don't see why they weren't made contractually obliged to adhere to these assurances???

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1779

just looked and can't find them

Presumably because he sees good potential for making a far greater profit by holding on and then selling up a little way further down the line. I get the impression we may have to face up to him being around for a while longer yet

Not a great advert for the Premiership that match though was it?

Well I was more surpised by it being majority owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.