Liverpool FC officially for sale

Soldato
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Just saw this on Sky Sports News on TV, only source I can find is a Daily Mail article at the moment - I'm sure more will come up about this in the morning though



American owners admit they will cut a deal for club with £237m debts

American millionaires Tom Hicks and George Gillett have taken their first step towards selling Liverpool.

The Premier League club's co-owners have hired investment bank Barclays Capital to find potential investors to ease the financial crisis at Anfield. But, significantly, they have also indicated for the first time that they would sell the club for the right price.

The move will delight underpressure manager Rafael Benitez, who knows his spending plans have been badly affected by the £237million debt built up by the owners, who are unpopular with the majority of Liverpool fans

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...an-owners-admit-cut-deal-club-237m-debts.html

Sky Sports News reporting that some tabloids may be covering stories that Liverpool may sell Torres/Gerrard to clear debts too. Though I don't believe that at all.
 
The only way the yanks were going to get any sort of investment in to the club was to at least sell a stake in the club & they turned down £110m for a 40% stake a few weeks ago. So really its not that much of new news unless they are both willing to walk away from the club for the right price BUT i cant see that happening any time soon unless the banks force a sale for the club.

I am a Liverpool fan an if Gerrard comes out & says he wants to go at the end of the season & he says he is going to play aboard i will be happy for him. He has given so much to the club he should go where he can win things BUT i will be ****ed off if he want to another club in the premiership.

But as for Torres he can stay for another couple of years at least before he goes back to Spain
 
The only way the yanks were going to get any sort of investment in to the club was to at least sell a stake in the club & they turned down £110m for a 40% stake a few weeks ago. So really its not that much of new news unless they are both willing to walk away from the club for the right price BUT i cant see that happening any time soon unless the banks force a sale for the club.

I am a Liverpool fan an if Gerrard comes out & says he wants to go at the end of the season & he says he is going to play aboard i will be happy for him. He has given so much to the club he should go where he can win things BUT i will be ****ed off if he want to another club in the premiership.

But as for Torres he can stay for another couple of years at least before he goes back to Spain

well of course they would turn it down for 40% , that kind of money (from the owners eyes ) is worth around 25%

Think you will have one more season with Torres IF you dont make it back into the CL for the 12/13 season, Im not sure how dedicated he would be looking into a second season of Europa league at best

Plus also I reckon they probably want one buyer not several - 25% sold might make it harder rather than easier to sell the remaining 75%
 
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It appears Barclays have rescued Liverpool by financing £300m of debt?

Isn't that a conflict of interests given they are the sponsor of the premier league?
 
Rescued? You make it sound like they are just about to go under.

Sell up and move on, let someone else guide the club back to wear it once was
 
This is hardly new news. We have been looking for an investor to take over for many many months now. It's just re-hashed lazy journalism.

The biggest news story is the potential appointment of the current BA chairman and life-long Chelsea fan on the board. You couldn't make it up if you tried!! What those two idiot owners are playing at I do not know...

In terms of Barclays and the conflict of interest, it isn't. They just sponsor the league and that is where the commercial relationship ends.
 
Before the stories about Barclays refinancing the RBS debt broke, the only thing new was the potential appointment of BA's Chairman. The stuff about Barclays Capital is hardly news; like YSMN says, the club's been for sale for years, Barclays Capital is just another bank that's been hired to find a buyer.

The interesting stuff is the Barclays refinance; when interviewed a few months back, Purslow made it pretty clear that RBS or any other bank would want the debt paid down further before they'd take us on. According to the article in the Times, not only has the debt not had to be paid down but it will go up to £300m with a further £60m of capital being injected into the club.

I suppose this makes more sense of the Broughton (BA Chairman) appointment; although not official, it's clear that Purslow was appointed by RBS to run the club as a condition of the last RBS refinance and it would now appear that Barclays have done the same with Broughton.

Until more details regarding the terms of the refinance come out, it's difficult to know exactly what's going on but my gut feeling is that the Yanks have managed to get themselves another ~12 months breathing space and that if nobody meets their valuation then this time next year we'll be going through the same **** (like the last 2 years too).
 
This made me laugh

"Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez is demanding up to £80m for a transfer kitty to revive the club's Premier League fortunes next season. (Sunday Express)"

See this the other day he was saying they need money to spend if they want to progress, so I did a quick google to see what he has had and done with it and this is what it returned.

Liverpool Players In Since Summer 2004

Josemi Rey (£2,000,000)
Antonio Nunez (£1,500,000)
Luis Garcia (£6,000,000)
Xabi Alonso (£10,700,000)
Mauricio Pellegrino (Free)
Fernando Morientes (£6,300,000)
Scott Carson (£1,000,000)
Antonio Barragan (£240,000)
Boudewijn Zenden (Free)
Jose Reina (£6,000,000)
Mohamed Sissoko (£5,600,000)
Peter Crouch (£7,000,000)
Godwin Antwi (Unknown)
Miki Roque (Unknown)
Jack Hobbs (£150,000)
Besian Idrizaj (£190,000)
Mark Gonzalez (£1,500,000)
Paul Anderson (Player Exchange)
Jan Kromkamp (Player Exchange)
Daniel Agger (£5,800,000)
David Martin (£250,000)
Robbie Fowler (Free)
Craig Bellamy (£6,000,000)
Gabriel Paletta (£2,000,000)
Fábio Aurélio (Free)
Jermaine Pennant (£6,700,000)
Dirk Kuyt (£9,000,000)
Nabil El Zhar (£200,000)
Jordy Brouwer (Undisclosed)
Francisco Durán (£66,000)
Ronald Huth (Undisclosed)
Álvaro Arbeloa (£2,500,000)
Lucas Leiva (£5,000,000)
Mikel San José Domínguez (£270,000)
Sebastian Leto (£1,800,000)
Fernando Torres (£20,200,000)
Andriy Voronin (Free)
Yossi Benayoun (£5,000,000)
Ryan Babel (£11,500,000)
Charles Itandje (Undisclosed)
Emiliano Insúa (£1,300,000)
Martin Skrtel (£6,500,000)
Javier Mascherano (£17,000,000)
Philipp Degen (Free)
Andrea Dossena (£7,000,000)
Diego Cavalieri (£3,500,000)
David Ngog (£1,500,000)
Robbie Keane (£19,000,000)
Albert Riera (£8,000,000)

Total spend: £189.866m

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/columnists/david-maddock/The-FACTS-show-Liverpool-boss-Rafa-Benitez-has-had-more-to-spend-than-anyone-bar-Chelsea-and-he-still-can-t-get-it-right-article293073.html

He has bought absolute pap with the money he has had, its not the lack of money its his **** poor skills at buying people.
 
[ASSE]Hinchy;16340026 said:
Yes some of those signings are poor, but find the list of players he has had to sell to fund a lot of those signings before you judge him.

Name some - the only big name ones that were there before he came to the club I can think of were Owen and Riise. In my opinion, he's sold as poorly as he's bought. Selling Arbeloa for £3.5m, and buying Johnson for £18.5m isn't good business at right back. There's no way that Johnson is worth £15m more than Arbeloa was,and he spent last summer complaining that he had no money!
 
Ooo look another jump on bash Rafa/Liverpool FC bandwagon thread.

Pretty sure the thread title and OP has nothing to do with Rafa's good/bad signings so why not try to keep atleast one Liverpool thread on track?

Oh, and just because a newspaper says someone demands £80m, it really doesn't mean it's true, but yet again another chance to jump on the anti-Rafa bandwagon!
 
[ASSE]Hinchy;16340026 said:
Yes some of those signings are poor, but find the list of players he has had to sell to fund a lot of those signings before you judge him.

Dont fall for the net spend Red Herring.

If I trade my car in thats worth £1500 to buy a car thats worth £20,000 I've still used £20,000 worth of my assets to buy it.

If that car then turns out to be utter crap, it still cost me £20,000 worth of my assets.
 
Dont fall for the net spend Red Herring.

If I trade my car in thats worth £1500 to buy a car thats worth £20,000 I've still used £20,000 worth of my assets to buy it.

If that car then turns out to be utter crap, it still cost me £20,000 worth of my assets.

What about when you trade your £500 car in to buy a £1000 car, then trade that in to buy a £1500 car and that for a £2000 car? You've spent £4500 but you've never had more than £2000 to spend at 1 go; in other words, what you've just said it total nonsense :)

Whether you think it's the right way of doing things or not, the 'total amount' Benitez has spent is down to a high turnaround of players.
 
What about when you trade your £500 car in to buy a £1000 car, then trade that in to buy a £1500 car and that for a £2000 car? You've spent £4500 but you've never had more than £2000 to spend at 1 go; in other words, what you've just said it total nonsense :)

Whether you think it's the right way of doing things or not, the 'total amount' Benitez has spent is down to a high turnaround of players.


Not quite, If Benitez had only bought one player a season, starting with josemi rey, at 2 million, ending with Fernando Torres at £20,200,000, then your argument would hold water.

It doesnt ring true when he turns around £30,000,000 worth of transfers every season on 8 or 9 different players.

Fact is, he has been gash in the transfer window, and in 6 years he has signed 4 players of any quality (Reina, Torres, Alonso Mascherano) and one of those he couldnt tell was his best player and tried to ship him out to fund a transfer for Gareth Barry of all people.
 
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Not quite, If Benitez had only bought one player a season, starting with josemi rey, at 2 million, ending with Fernando Torres at £20,200,000, then your argument would hold water.

It doesnt ring true when he turns around £30,000,000 worth of transfers every season on 8 or 9 different players.

What difference does it make if he's turning over 1 player per season or 8? He's never had anything like ~£200m to spend at once therefore to imply that our squad should be worth ~£200m because that's what he's spent in total over 6 years is utter rubbish.

The total amount any manager has spent is totally meaningless because it has no reflection on how that money came about and the timings of when the money was raised and spent.
 
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What difference does it make if he's turning over 1 player per season or 8? He's never had anything like ~£200m to spend at once therefore to imply that our squad should be worth ~£200m because that's what he's spent in total over 6 years is utter rubbish.


Because 8 x £2,000,000 = £10,000,000
1 x £10,000,000 = £10,000,000


He could choose to spend what money he has spent, on fewer, higher quality players than the raft of complete crap he has done.
Its not as if his policy has resulted in a drastic improving in quality of the squad, is it?
If he signed fewer, higher quality players he could still of still traded up, but with a marked increase in quality each and every time.
 
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