DIC or Miskelly to takeover from Americans?

December 23, 2007

EDIT: Sorry spelt Bascombe wrong!

His Article:

LIVERPOOL face the shocking possibility of a second takeover within a year.

Anfield insiders believe American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett will be forced to put the club up for sale again to avoid financial meltdown just 10 months after completing their Mersey swoop.

And that has alerted Dubai International Capital, who were also interested in the club last February.

There are major doubts that Hicks and Gillett have the funds to pay for a £300million stadium on Stanley Park or even give manager Rafa Benitez a big transfer war chest. DIC were stunned when they were outflanked by Hicks and Gillett earlier this year but a fresh New Year bid is now a realistic prospect.

Hicks has denied considering diluting his 50 per cent shareholding but it's clear the financial demands upon the owners are beyond their expectations.

The Americans will want at least three times the £219m they paid less than a year ago. But as they have to repay a £298m loan by February, and have no deal in place to pay this debt or for a stadium, circumstances may soon give them little option but to welcome bids.

.................................................. ...

IF last week was a bad one for Liverpool on the pitch, their owners have been stumbling from one shambles to the next off it.

Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jnr breezed in and out of Merseyside with their usual charm but their smiles, handshakes, spin-doctored statements and guest appearances at Anfield legends' dinners belied deep concerns behind the scenes.

Humiliating backtracking over the design of their new stadium and an undignified showdown with their manager Rafa Benitez has been accompanied by revelations the American duo have been struggling to secure a £350million refinancing package.

Now plans are under way for Dubai International Capital to revive their interest in Anfield, oust the Americans and head off a potential catastrophe.

Kop fans, who have seen their team suffer a major blow to their Premier League title hopes with a defeat at home to Manchester United and then crash out of the Carling Cup at Chelsea, are also praying an over-valuation of the club by the Americans doesn't hinder negotiations.

Hicks and Gillett arrived promising stability, the preservation of Anfield traditions and a new stadium.

Yet, within 12 months, they have put in place a plan to sack Benitez against their fans' wishes, while making the club — and themselves — a laughing stock by unveiling an extravagant new arena they cannot afford.

What is even more worrying is that it is now the owners themselves who are under scrutiny by the banks who are refusing to finance their schemes.

Hicks and Gillett are having problems convincing lenders they have the personal securities required to attain the vast sums needed because they are either unwilling — or unable — to dip their hands deep into their own pockets.

Hicks and Gillett purchased the club with a £298m loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland last February. They now want to replace that debt with a further £350m loan from American bank Wachovia and a new injection from the RBS.

Crucially, they have been in talks to secure funds against the club's assets, breaking their promise when they bought out ex-chairman David Moores.

Rival

Anfield traditionalists, including members of the old board, are understood to be horrified by the recent developments.

The owners must still find ANOTHER £300m to pay for the stadium.

Although that's going to be less problematic, they still have no idea where this money will come from, opening the door for rival investors to make their move.

Liverpool spent five years scouring the world for an investor.

Having sold out, they weren't expecting the American owners to be in the same embarrassing situation 12 months later. Just last week, the club confirmed a new £400m stadium plan, unveiled amid some razzmatazz by Hicks, had been shelved because of its cost.

This has happened despite an estimated £1m spent on the redesign by the Dallas-based architecture firm HKS.

It was the News of the World who first revealed the divisions at Anfield regarding the inflated price of the stadium.

Hicks and Gillett have also alienated fans with their plan to sack Benitez, a plot they still intend to see through if they're in control at the end of the season.

What will come as an even greater shock to Kop regulars is the identity of the man they have targeted to replace him.

Former Germany boss Jurgen Klinsmann is the owners' preference.

A shortlist of candidates was drawn up months ago, including both Klinsmann and former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho. But Mourinho now appears to be a non-starter as he has ambitions to manage in Spain or Italy, leaving Klinsmann the new favourite for the post.

California-based Klinsmann is known to Gillett through his sporting contacts in the United States — and he is keen to return to England in such a prestigious position.

But faced with the choice of either keeping Benitez or the owners and their new German appointment, Anfield fans are certain to favour a fresh takeover at the club.

Klinsmann, 43, has no managerial experience in club football, although he led his country to the semi-finals of the 2006 World Cup as tournament hosts.

Liverpool's courting of the German represents a further devastating blow to the popular Benitez, who the Americans seem intent on undermining at every turn. A gagging order has been placed on the Spaniard following last weekend's much publicised talks.

He was told he can keep his job until the end of the season, providing he doesn't criticise the Americans — either publicly or privately — for the rest of his tenure.

Benitez now finds himself working for a totalitarian regime who won't tolerate as much as a misplaced cough in any of his Press conferences.

The prospect of Benitez being immediately dismissed from the Anfield hotseat — a genuine possibility before his change of tack three weeks ago — has, at least, temporarily receded.

But Hicks and Gillett's pursuit of other managers underlines why they have failed to confirm Benitez's long-term position.

Now a critical few weeks lie ahead, where it is hoped several of those companies who were rivals to the Americans a year ago will re-emerge to save the club sinking any further into chaos.

As well as DIC, who were stunned by a last minute U-turn which denied their takeover a year ago, Northern Ireland millionaire John Miskelly has a long-standing interest in the club.

Save

Both parties would welcome an opportunity to revive takeover talks, and would guarantee supporters' backing by confirming the long-term future of Benitez.

A change of ownership would not only save the manager, more significantly, it will help restore and preserve the traditions of the Merseyside club which are currently under the most serious threat of its 115-year history.

Edited December 23, 2007 by fowler11

Coyler · December 23, 2007

Ah it'll blow over.

Ombudsam · December 23, 2007

man we are f*cked. we are so f*cked

billybunter · December 23, 2007

im just surprised that there arent more billionaires interested in buying the club.

Owen1978 · December 23, 2007

Who's fault is it that the club was sold to these muppets?

slapnuts · December 23, 2007

yours you c***

December 23, 2007

Reading in my eyes, tears with that.

CaptainXabi · December 23, 2007

While we're posting articles, just read this one from Canada on Gillett. One or two errors, but otherwise pretty decent:

http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...geRequested=all

The quiet American

STEPHEN BRUNT

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

* E-mail Stephen Brunt

* | Read Bio

* | Latest Columns

December 21, 2007 at 10:20 PM EST

Liverpool co-owner George Gillett has won over the local faithful with his ability to make people understand that his heart’s in the right place.

Liverpool co-owner George Gillett has won over the local faithful with his ability to make people understand that his heart’s in the right place. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Photogallery

* Gillett at play

The Globe and Mail

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND — The training facility of the Liverpool Football Club can be found in the Mellwood district, smack dab in the middle of town, but few mere mortals here have ever caught more than a glimpse behind its walls. A handful of fans climb on top of dumpsters to watch their heroes at work beyond the high, grey stone fence, and a small pocket of others brave the cold mist in the hopes that a player might stop to provide an autograph. One holds up a sign: "Stevie G — Help me get laid by signing a shirt for my girlfriend."

Stevie G would be Steven Gerrard, local boy, hero, Member of the British Empire, England midfielder, holy of holies. On the way out to Mellwood, passing a crèche set up in front of a local car dealership, the driver offers that's it's not the arrival of the baby Jesus they celebrate this time of year in Liverpool. It's the birth of that other saviour.

In big-time international football, training facilities tend to be about as welcoming as black ops military bases, gated secret places off limits to everyone but the true insiders. Even sportswriters don't normally get past the press conference room, where once a week the manager and a player or two offer their thoughts on a coming match. So this access is extraordinary.

We stroll past the dining hall where they're setting up for the players' family Christmas party, placing bright red crackers at every place. We walk past the swimming pool into the medical wing, where various players are having their sore extremities tended to. We are in the boot room, on a terrace overlooking the practice field, in the gym. Occasionally, someone seems a bit startled at the strangers' presence, until they note the identity of the tour guide: U.S. businessman George Gillett, the co-owner, the boss.

And finally, while descending the stairs toward the entrance, Stevie G himself comes into view, nicking a Christmas chocolate bar from behind the receptionist's desk, while fellow icon, fellow homeboy Jamie Carragher looks on. It is the stuff of a Liverpudlian schoolboy's wet dream.

Greeting their employer and his guests, the lads couldn't be more polite.

"Jamie," Gillett asks, "can you show them how you speak Scouse?"

That is the distinctive, local dialect, and maybe if the question had come from someone other than the team owner, maybe if Carragher wasn't so easy going, it would have been greeted with all of the enthusiasm an African American might show if asked to demonstrate a few dance steps.

But it's also true that the more time you spend with Gillett, the more you come to understand the power of his simple, unpretentious charm. There's a sharp business mind there, and the deal-making nerves of a burglar, but what eventually won so many over in Montreal, what must win them over here, is the ability to make people understand that his heart's in the right place.

Carragher smiles and throws out a few lines, and everybody has a good laugh.

THE AMERICANS

They are nearly always referred to as "the Americans," an eyebrow-raised pejorative implicit in most every mention. Sometimes, for variety, it becomes "the boys from stateside," or something suggestive of cowboys or George W. Bush, but anyone reading the popular press instantly gets the message.

Who are Gillett and Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks to own one of the great English sporting institutions? What could they possibly understand of its glorious history, its distinct culture, its beating-heart importance to the local populace? Seven of the 20 teams of the English Premier League are now in the control of foreigners, so you'd think the xenophobic novelty would have worn off by now, and the league long ago became a massive, international television-driven business built to a large degree on non-English playing talent. The takeover of Manchester United by the reviled Glazer family, who never speak to the press, who rarely turn up at matches, who were burned in effigy by the club's supporters, was accomplished 2 1/2 years ago, and besides the Yanks, the league also has its Russian oligarchs and deposed Thai politicians and the rest.

But apparently there are clubs and there are clubs, and then there is Liverpool FC, with home stadium Anfield and its Kop seating area and the You'll Never Walk Alone anthem, with a trophy room unmatched in the English game. This isn't McCulture. This isn't like everything else. This is distinct. This is a big, global commercial enterprise, selling jerseys to the Japanese, television subscriptions in Nairobi, but it's first and foremost organic, of the place, and that can't really be bought or sold. At least for one of the Americans, all of that ought to ring familiar, having been down a very similar road before.

Gillett, a doctor's son from Racine, Wisc., whose businesses include ski resorts and meat packers and car dealerships, who has owned or owns television stations and newspapers, part of the Miami Dolphins, all of the Harlem Globetrotters and a NASCAR team, is on a magnificent roll right now. Only 15 years removed from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, when a credit squeeze forced him to walk away from the company he'd built and start again nearly from scratch, he is riding high on several fronts, food and automobiles and, most publicly, professional sports.

In 2001, Gillett purchased the Montreal Canadiens and their arena from the Molson family, after initially sitting back patiently and waiting as no one from within Quebec chose to buy the iconic franchise. It turned out to be a very savvy business decision: The rise of the Canadian dollar has transformed NHL franchises in Canada into sure-fire money makers, and the Bell Centre, playing host to acts from both sides of the great linguistic divide, is one of the busiest in North America. But Gillett has had to work hard to erase the stigma that came when the original deal was announced. (Habs' U.S. owner greeted warily: Gillett strikes $250-million deal, tells anxious fans the team will stay," read The Globe and Mail's front page headline the day the deal was revealed.) He has largely achieved that by hiring good, credible people to run the franchise, such as Bob Gainey and Pierre Boivin, and especially by letting the fans gradually get to know him.

Gillett is charismatic, he is humble, he is quick with a handshake and a smile, he is a listener, all great assets in his business life, and maybe, eventually, in Liverpool, they'll believe him and trust him and have faith that his goals and aspirations are the same as their own.

But right now, in the middle of a season where the club's on-field fortunes are teetering, Gillett is still very much "the other," and for some still very much "the enemy."

STAKES HIGH

This kind of week you just don't experience in North American professional sports. On Tuesday, the same night his Canadiens were mailing in a dreadful performance against the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Bell Centre, Gillett flew to Marseille, France, by private jet, where Liverpool was playing the local French club Olympique, in the last, decisive match of the first round of the Champions League. The stakes: claim victory, advance to the final 16, and pocket a television cheque for £13-million ($25.6-million Canadian), which could come in mighty handy once the player transfer window opens in January. (Not to mention that it would keep alive the chance to win a trophy that Liverpool has claimed five times before, more than any other English team.) Lose, and return home to dispirited fans, and to growing controversy.

Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez, who is still something of a hero for leading the club to the miracle Champions League win in 2005 and then back to the final last year, had suggested to reporters that he and "the Americans" weren't on the same page about buying players to improve the team, that "the Americans" perhaps didn't really understand the business of football, that maybe "the Americans" didn't really know the game. It's safe to assume Gillett and Hicks were not amused, and that Benitez's future with the club might have hung in the balance in Marseille.

They won, 4-0, Liverpool's most impressive performance of the season. Returning home to slightly-less-restless natives, the team prepared for a match against its most hated domestic rival, Manchester United, at Anfield. Still, a showdown loomed between the manager and the owners, a widely-reported meeting set to immediately follow the match. In Britain, where the sport is an obsession, where media competition is fierce, and where access to the principals is scarce, a little bit of information can be spun into a whole lot of column inches, with many a straw man erected and knocked down in the process. The looming face-to-face between the owners and Benitez was the week's big story (at least until Fabio Capello's hiring as England manager supplanted it), but there were also reports that Gillett and Hicks were about to abandon their plans to build a new stadium, and that Hicks was about to leave the partnership, perhaps to buy a club in Italy or France.

Though by and large, after the initial period of suspicion, Gillett's relationship with the press in Montreal has been cordial, he sounds like someone who feels badly burned — which is why, after an initial period of openness, he isn't talking to reporters here. "I hate to say it, because I used to own newspapers, I used to own TV stations, but as much as I love people and as much as I'm willing to sit down and chat with anybody, I'm really not comfortable with the media," he says. "They haven't respected and honoured with integrity understandings that I've had and the understandings that friends and confidantes and family have had, and I've seen some people hurt and damaged by that lack of respect and trust. I've come over here with some of that suspicion and I think it's been good. My normal instinct would have been to have been much more open."

No one in the wider world or the English press is going to see what happened over the next 48 hours. The previous Friday, there was a scheduled meeting between the owners, club administrators, and one of two competing architectural firms hoping to build the new stadium in Stanley Park, just across the road from Anfield, and only 400 metres from Goodison Park, home ground of Everton FC. (That would be the stadium project they are allegedly about to abandon.) Plans have been made slightly less elaborate in an effort to decrease the bill, but whichever design is chosen, it will still cost in excess of $700-million and push capacity from 44,000 to 70,000 or more — at least 20,000 of them in a new, still single-tier Kop — plus loads of suites and club seating, which will help accommodate the 71,000 fans on the season-ticket waiting list. A final decision on the design will be made after both architects make their pitch at a meeting in New York on Jan. 9.

(It is something to hear Hicks, in his drawl, speaking about the Kop, Anfield's famous end stand, as though he grew up there. He also owns the Dallas Stars and Texas Rangers, and on first encounter, is one of those cowboy-booted everything's-bigger-in-Texas characters who lacks Gillett's ease with the common folk.) The old Anfield will be torn down when the new ground is completed, but the actual pitch will be left as is, with good reason. Every year, between 40 and 60 Liverpool supporters have their ashes scattered on, or buried beneath, the green, green grass. Can't have them paved over.

Next comes a meeting with the contractors who will build the park, with plans to put shovel to ground in the summer of 2008. Lunch is spent with a transplanted American named Jeff Jones, who runs Apple, the company that manages the interests of the Beatles and their heirs. He and Gillett talk about the possibility of incorporating some kind of Beatles museum feature into the new park. After that, Gillett opts not to let anyone play fly-on-the wall while he meets a player agent, no doubt discussing what talent might or might not be bought, at great expense, to help Liverpool challenge in the Premiership and continue its success in Europe.

The next day, for a lark, there's a trip 30 minutes down the road to the new home ground of Manchester City, where what has long been the town's second side is enjoying surprising success under manager Sven-Goran Eriksson. (There are seven Premiership teams within spitting distance of each other in this part of Northern England, along with a large collection of smaller clubs in the lower divisions.) Today they're playing Bolton Wanderers, and Gillett will watch from the directors' box.

We are greeted effusively by Thaksin Sunawatra, the club's chairman, almost certainly the only owner of a professional sports franchise to have been deposed from his previous job (as Prime Minister of Thailand) by a military coup, and to have been condemned by Human Rights Watch for, among other things, his government's employment of torture. Even George Steinbrenner has never been accused of that. It's a great photo op, the new face of Premier League ownership in a single frame — a guy from Middle America breaking bread with one from Bangkok who knows he can't go home.

Back in Liverpool, after his companions have retired for the evening, Gillett is wakened every 10 minutes into the wee hours of the morning by telephone calls from the Bell Centre. His Habs are beating the Leafs, and he wants to know every detail.

MONTREAL LESSONS

Gillett has learned plenty in Montreal. How to tread lightly around a distinct culture. How to accept the inevitable slings and arrows. How sports franchises with great histories are forever competing against their own glorious past. How the real equity in a team can't be measured in the number of luxury suites, but in the loyalty and passion of the consumers. Find a club where the game is deeply ingrained, where the fans really care and where they have cared forever, and the value grows exponentially. Still, as an outsider, there is no getting around the fact that you have to win over the faithful.

"We went into a relatively hostile environment in Montreal — culturally at least," Gillett acknowledges. "We didn't come from that community. A lot of the people knew that the club was for sale and none of the locals bought it so you obviously go in with a level of suspicion. What's wrong? Your first reaction is there must be something wrong with it.

"Rather than saying [to the fans] I come with the answer, I clearly don't. I think you'd be terribly presumptuous to come into a community like Montreal with 24 Stanley Cups and say I can do it better. I don't think we came with an answer. I think we came with questions."

They also arrived in the wake of another U.S. sports owner, Jeffrey Loria, who had bought the Montreal Expos from local interests when no one else wanted them, said all of the right things about being committed to the city and to making baseball work in Montreal, and then engineered the team's exit. Loria was cast as a cartoon villain, the cynical foreign opportunist. And now here was another American, apparently a friendlier one, but one whose motives were instantly called into question simply because of what had gone before. It is a pattern that has been repeated in Liverpool.

"For the first year in Montreal, more than half the articles were about whether we were like Loria or not," says George's son Foster Gillett, who moved to Montreal to help run the Canadiens, and is now a resident in Liverpool, working in an office next door to Benitez's so that the family has a full-time presence here. "It took us a while to stand on our own two feet and not be continually compared to these Americans who came before us. I think here, a lot of that was with the Glazers. I don't even like to say our names in the same sentence for fear that it gets written and talked about. We try to be very different. I respect the Glazers. I think they're a phenomenal family and they have unbelievable assets but I think we're different people."

Having been encouraged by the success of the Canadiens and bullish on the prospects of blue-chip professional sports franchises, Gillett began exploring possibilities in the Premier League several years before the Liverpool opportunity presented itself. Foster, a passionate sports fan, was a driving force (Gillett's other sons have followed their own hearts, involved in the real estate and the automotive sides of the family business).

"We started looking for clubs that had a very strong fan base that perhaps weren't as well developed as they might have been," George Gillett says. They made a serious pass at purchasing another club, which Gillett declines to identify, but which is widely believed to have been Aston Villa. (They lost out there to another American: Randy Lerner, who also owns the Cleveland Browns.)

Then, the investment banker with whom they had been working called to say that Liverpool might be in play. The team's owners had come to understand the economic necessity of a new stadium but couldn't finance it. (Of the rest of the game's big four, Manchester United had greatly expanded Old Trafford and Arsenal had the new Emirates Stadium, which in a non-salary-capped sport gave them a significant competitive advantage, while Chelsea benefited from the apparently bottomless pockets of owner Roman Abramovich.) Gillett liked what he saw: the fanatical supporter base that would surely fill every seat in a new park; the largely untapped opportunities available through new media; Liverpool's position as a global brand, second on the planet only to Manchester United, and first in many places; a television bonanza for the Premier League that it turned out lay just beyond the horizon.

Gillett's original bid finished second to one from Dubai International Capital. ("We lost to a country," he says.) When that deal collapsed, but with the price now inflated, he persuaded Hicks to come in as his equal partner. The two had worked together before in the purchase of the Swifts meat processing empire. They landed the team, for a reported purchase price of £220-million, along with the commitment to invest nearly that amount again in a new stadium.

Nowhere among the serious bidders was anyone from Britain. Asked to explain that, Gillett says that sometimes it's harder to recognize the true value of what's in your own neighbourhood, and speaks to the inherent risks of investing enormous sums in professional sports.

"It is a daunting challenge to think about going into a business where you don't have a hell of a lot of fixed assets," he says. "Your greatest assets walk out the dressing-room door every day. They're subject to illness and injury and god knows what."

So why is he so gung-ho about the sports business? "Each person in life has their own comfort zone," Gillett says. "Some people jaywalk. And we see people dive across interstates. Other people only cross at the intersection and only do it with the lights."

In his life, in his business, he sometimes crosses against a red? "Maybe more often than I should have," he laughs.

That seems all the more evident, given the stories that begin to circulate in the next few days about a refinancing scheme sought by Hicks and Gillett in these tight-money times, about the owners and the club itself assuming significant amounts of new liability in order to kick off stadium construction. But Gillett has already explained, quietly, how in his business debt can be your friend, how the payoff of getting to the finish line in this case is enormous, how the risk, in gambling on a mass passion, might not be all that it seems.

TURBULENCE

Liverpool lose 1-0 to Manchester United, blowing a couple of good scoring chances in the first half, and being largely outclassed after that. (When the public-address announcer welcomes Hicks and Gillett to the owners box, the crowd reacts with rather muted enthusiasm, and when he goes on to inform the faithful that one of Hicks's sons had proposed to his girlfriend the day before in the centre of the pitch, and that she'd said yes, the glad tidings are hardly acknowledged.) The team's chances of challenging for the league title now appear slim, and the postmatch chorus of You'll Never Walk Alone from a half-empty Kop is more mournful than defiant. At the manager's press conference, the air is grim, and Benitez chooses his words extremely carefully.

"There was a misunderstanding and now we will talk about the future to know exactly what is the situation," he says. "It is important to clarify the situation. Maybe it is not so important to talk about names [of players] but the most important things is to talk about the decisions of each one for the future."

The owners spend another hour or so schmoozing in the directors' lounge with sponsors and significant supporters and friends before they slip off discretely for the great meeting: Gillett, Hicks, Benitez and Foster Gillett are the only ones in the room for what is reportedly a sometimes heated discussion that lasts for nearly three hours.

Afterward, a press release is issued, saying all of the right things about better communication and shared vision and letting bygones be bygones, but perhaps Hicks gets closer to the point when, arriving at the hotel bar that night, he says loud enough for anyone to hear: "Don't worry — we didn't fire Rafa."

At the same hotel, Gillett is later accosted by a perpetually-drunk Liverpool zealot from Iceland who has been hanging around all weekend, and who doesn't think much of American owners. (Over the past few days, he has also encountered supporters from Singapore, from Italy, from Norway and elsewhere, all of them here just to attend the match, testament to LFC's power as an international brand). He handles the situation diplomatically, just as he did with all of the Liverpool subscribers, whose angry e-mails about the Benitez situation Gillett answered with individual phone calls. It is obviously still a bumpy ride.

"I think that the cultural differences between America and England should theoretically be less than between an American and a Québécois," Gillett says. "But I'm not sure that they are. I think that maybe the French Canadians made it easier for us. Maybe the English situation was made more difficult."

Rumours swirl in the press that the stadium won't ever be built, that "the Americans" are looking for a way out, that Benitez's departure is imminent, that this great cultural disconnect will prove fatal. In the face of that, the Gilletts soldier on, battling to win Scouser hearts and minds, one at a time.

"Last night I went out with my wife and I had this nice young girl come up to me and she looked sweet," Foster Gillett says. "She introduced herself and then said, 'You stole my family jewels. You ran away with them. I don't trust you.' That's what she wanted to say. She got her minute with the Gilletts and she said we don't trust you yet. And I think that's fair. We have to prove ourselves, too."

Billy Dane · December 23, 2007

Surely we must be able to blame Rick Parry for this? Whatever it is......

Edited December 23, 2007 by le2red

fyds · December 23, 2007

A change of ownership would not only save the manager, more significantly, it will help restore and preserve the traditions of the Merseyside club which are currently under the most serious threat of its 115-year history.

And he knows this how?

Rafa has a history of walking away if he's getting seriously d*cked about. I don't see him looking to pack his sofa.

Rimbeux · December 23, 2007

CapXab, cheers for posting that, some good perspective from an outsider's point of view. Worried me to be honest though

Albertini · December 23, 2007

Another article from Bascombe in the NOTW this morning:

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/2312_liverfools.shtml

Hicks and Gillett arrived with the promise of stability - now they look a pair of

LIVERFOOLS

By Chris Bascombe