If your subject matter is Liverpool Football Club, the task of being a writer has been no easy task in recent months, not least during the last 48 hours. On each occasion that you begin writing, you have to refer back to your news sources between paragraphs to ensure that your content is still accurate!
Supporters have experienced the same roller-coaster of emotions which sees the club precariously balanced, with its immediate future very much in the hands of the High Court.
Whilst there are few that are unaware of this, it is important simply to summarise the club’s current status in light of the last few days. Effectively, the Board of Directors at Liverpool Football Club consists of the following members:-
- Tom Hicks
- George Gillett
- Martin Broughton
- Christian Purslow
- Ian Ayres
On Tuesday, the board entered into a meeting to discuss offers for the club from New England Sports Ventures and an unknown Asian bidder. By a vote of 3-2, the board agreed to the sale of the club for £300million to New England Sports Ventures. However, Hicks and Gillett objected to this, and as owners, attempted to oust Purslow and Ayres from their positions, replacing them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon of Hicks Holdings.
Martin Broughton, given undertakings from Hicks and Gillett that they would not obstruct the reasonable sale of the club and similarly that only he could remove board members, continued the meeting to a conclusion that the sale could proceed given the 3-2 vote under the assumption that the owners could not make boardroom changes without his approval.
In the aftermath of this, Hicks and Gillett have launched proceedings in the High Court claiming that they stopped the sale with their removal of Purslow and Ayres, thus rendering any decision null and void.
At this point, is it me alone that would prefer to be writing and reading about footballing matters?
It really is fairly black and white at this point in that the High Court can either rule with Broughton and ratify the sale, or with Hicks and Gillett to negate it. They could, of course, adjourn and instruct both parties to provide further information or any ruling can be appealed by either party.
However, in the scenario of an adjournment or appeal, it would certainly NOT be heard before Friday 15 October, which brings another key player to the table in the form of the Royal Bank of Scotland. RBS has it in their power to foreclose on any moneys owed to them by the current owners, which stands currently in the region of £280million.
What this means, is that unless The High Court gives Hicks and Gillett an immediate ruling in their favour – and even then they would need to find the finances to pay their debtors – RBS have it in their power to put the club’s parent company, Kop Holdings, into administration, thus removing Hicks and Gillett from the equation altogether, at which point RBS could then sell the club to New England Sports Ventures.
I would suspect that Martin Broughton has considered this in making the decision that he did to push through the provisional sale in these circumstances. Whilst pleased and surprised at the positive stances of Christian Purslow and Ian Ayres, that of Broughton was less surprising. Beneath the rather soft, public school type,veneer lies a shrewd, resilient and ruthless business brain.
Continue Reading on Page 2 . . .
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Very well written and informative article
Most of this is common knowledge and if you dig and do you research and your a true liverpool fan then you will already know and understand whats going on and all or most of the hype around most crap that gets put to the public in all but most of this countries papers.
broughton said please take whats in the news as a pinch of salt, not many unless very well connected, would have know naff all about the red sox with regards to the them taking over at liverpool, kraft was linked yes that was global stuff and still does remain keen but the owners of the sox have come right out of the blue for 85-90 % of us, now thats worth writing about, not about the drival that every tom dick and harry wants to write about a club such as LFC.
SOONER WE HAVE NEW OWNERS WE CAN PUT TO BE THIS MEDIA, SCUM STUFF THAT INDEED HAS BEEN A HUGE PROBLEM TO THE IMAGE OF THIS GREAT CLUB, FANS WILL ALSO SETTLE DOWN AND TALK ABOUT FOOTBALL, AND THE CLUB WILL BE WELL RUN AND THEN THE REAL FANS CAN GET ON WITH DEALING WITH THE SAME OLD ANTI LIVERPOOL FEELING THAT THIS COUNTRY HAS TO LFC BUT AT LEAST WILL NOT HAVE OWNERS TRYING TO GET US TOO!!!!
Samuel Charles. On 4/10/10 you posted a comment. Until we sell this club fans should boycott games and demonstrate loudly outside the ground. Didn’t sound to me that you were calmly waiting for Broughton to go quietly about the business of selling the club. You’re missing the point – blogs are for us all to argue, and moan and tell the world our opinions are the right ones. I liked this article too.
A quote from another forum suggests something else…
“Ask the people of South Florida what they think of him… in particular the fans of the Florida Marlins. He pretty much used the Marlins as stepping stone to buying a title contender in Boston. The Montreal Expos were losing money and the owner wanted out. The Marlins were losing money and Henry wanted out. The Boston Red Sox were stuck in a losing rut, but still a marquee franchise and Henry had his eye on that team. Major League Baseball bought the losing Expos (imagine, the league buying a team from an owner) from Jeffrey Loria, so that Loria in turn could buy the Marlins from Henry. Henry then leveraged those two sales into the purchase of the Red Sox.
I’m sure baseball was happy (especially since it subsequently moved the Expos/Nationals to DC and sold the team) to new ownership. But ask the fans in Florida if they didn’t feel used by everybody involved. At the end of the day the whole thing just smacked a bit too mercenary for me to feel comfortable with him being involved with my club”.
Until the dust settles, we live in hope that this IS the right purchase…
YNWA
do you really think the new lfc stadium has cost an estimated 50 million pounds, when no building work has even been done ? but that amount went out of the club it seems. that is only one item, add to this the debt repayments.
Is it possible to boycott watching LFC matches at home?all
fans must unite & have their opinions heard.
We dun wanna get into administration. We dun wan G&H to continue as owners.We dun wan the sales to have to go to court.we want the sale to conclude immediately
i say, stop watching the matches at Anfield until matter resolved & G&H removed.
@tinydino Unfortunately, we don’t always get what we want. Any boycott would be futile now and would have had to have taken place months ago. The sale cannot conclude immediately until the courts have judged, and the only way we will go into administration is in the event that the judge votes in favour of H&G. This will most likely be decided before the next match at Anfield hence any boycott would serve no purpose.
@Matt @Jim @theoldkoproar @Red Side Thanks all for your thoughtful & constructive comments.
LFC will go into administration if G&H continue to block the sale & interest on debt is not repaid by 15-Oct.tat’s like a week away.not sure bout the court system in UK cos from i’m from, it takes months before anything is even presented to court let alone making a decision..
All fans shud go ahead wit boycotting anfield IF the sale din go thru becos of G&H..which means back to square one..