Why Liverpool’s Owners Are Here for the Long-Haul

When reading an article late last week by the Mirror’s David Maddock, I was struck by how one-sided and badly thought out parts of his argument were.  As far as he is concerned our new owners will be gone before you can blink and their lack of outward involvement in the Suarez ‘affair’ only further proves this.  Early in his article, he says

“Chief among those avoiding their responsibilities during the months of raging controversy, have been the owners of Liverpool Football Club, and, in particular, their chairman Tom Werner and principle owner, John Henry.”

So as the chairman and principle owner respectively, Tom Werner and John Henry have a duty to speak out over this?  They have certainly been quiet about it but so has Damien Comolli and I have yet to read or hear Steve Clarke’s opinion on the whole affair but why should that be strange?  I mean, there is reason that large organisations (with Liverpool being no exception) employ PR departments, David, and it’s because they are experts at dealing with sensitive situations like this.  I’m sure Henry and Werner are very skilled at handling the press and have had the relevant training in how to handle difficult questions but it is certainly not their duty.  Has anybody asked for the Glazier’s opinions on this, or even United’s chairman?  I don’t even think Alex Ferguson has said more than a few words about it, in all honesty.

It wasn’t so long ago that our previous owner felt inclined to pop out in front of an open fire, wearing LFC branded cowboy boots, drinking from an LFC mug and airing the club’s dirty laundry on Sky Sports News.  It was the kind of behaviour we’d come to expect from our previous owners so the fact that our current owners are choosing to remain silent outwardly is fine with me.  Everybody down to Kenny Dalglish and the players have kept their mouths shut, unless asked directly by the media, and even then Kenny has been tight-lipped more often than not.  On the inside though, we have no idea what has been said, by whom.  For all we and the Mirror writer know, the two recent press releases from the club may well have had the owner’s hand all over them and I’m certain that they are more than aware of how the club may have damaged itself with the way this mess has been handled, regardless of where they stand on it.

As the journalist himself goes on to say, ‘Liverpool FC is not a corner shop’, and in this he could not be more right.  Which is precisely why the ‘shop’ owners don’t come rushing out with a broom to shoo off any stirring journalists; they let the people that they pay (most likely, handsomely) to handle press matters do that too.  Liverpool is a massive club but it is a modern club too and, as such, we have to be run that way.  As I said, our worst period in history – in terms of ownership – stemmed from Gillett and Hicks basking in the limelight of owning a genuine footballing behemoth.  They had no respect for the morals, history or dignity of the club and it showed, time and again.  However, the current owners have acted correctly, in my opinion, in keeping quiet in the press.

It appears that what he and a lot of others fail to realise is this: before the report was released to Liverpool and the media for their perusal, Liverpool were standing by a player they believed innocent. A player who felt he had not knowingly offended another and was adamant that he was the victim of an FA witch hunt.  As Neil Warnock said a couple of weeks ago, Liverpool have a right to back their player until they have seen all the evidence and are fully aware of how the FA came to their decision.  Since then, the club has backed down.  They will not appeal but they have made it clear that they do not agree with how the decision was reached and they feel that, rather than give Suarez a fair ‘trial’, they only ever had the intention of ensuring that Suarez was guilty and that he was, in fact, charged due to the ‘probability’ of whether or not he’d said what he is supposed to have said.  This is a very dangerous area and the FA may have set a very dangerous precedent.  Particularly as England’s captain Wonderful is yet to be charged and has some very clear evidence piled against him.

On the topic of Liverpool’s reaction and the owner’s silence, Maddock goes on to say:

“In Europe… there is a newly-formed suspicion of the club. In Asia and Africa, where allegiances are not so tribal as they are in the north of England, many fans are openly questioning their support of the club, and that is damaging to the core business.”

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And while it is likely that the club as a ‘brand’ has been damaged somewhat by this, he offers no proof of how our support in these key locales has been irreparably damaged, other than his own supposed ‘expert’ opinion.  Given the recent scandals surrounding the press, it is hard to take a journalist at his or her word anymore, particularly somebody that writes for a tabloid and without any real evidence to suggest this, I think it is fair to say that Liverpool has and will always have an enormous fan-base around the world.  If I was a fan from Asia or Africa and particularly from as close to home as Europe, I would take offence to his idea that Liverpool’s foreign fan base is small-minded enough to believe that the club is institutionally racist for backing a player they do not believe is racist which, for all intents and purposes, is effectively what he is saying.

Maddock goes further, saying

“In allowing this mess to develop, in putting back the cause of anti-racism so violently and in firmly anchoring Liverpool Football Club in prehistoric practices that have no place in 21st century business.”

I’m no legal expert but from my point of view, the Mirror sports writer is effectively making some serious libellous comments there, as the only ‘prehistoric practices’ I can assume he is referring to are just that: institutionalized racism.

Of course, in this sentence, he is referring to the inaction of our current owners and how this has planted us back several millennia and from this he infers that they mustn’t have any interest in the club because if they did they would’ve stood up and spoken out and in doing so become shining beacons of anti-racism.  So because they haven’t, they have no genuine, deep-rooted interest in the club and its’ long term image and future.  They are, in his opinion, here for nothing more than a cheap buy and a profitable sale; to make a ‘quick buck’ to use his own turn of phrase.  The hole he fails to see in his argument though is that, if that was genuinely their intention, and their inaction has so damaged Liverpool’s brand and stock globally, then they haven’t got a chance in hell of making this quick profit that they so desire.  Anybody with even miniscule business knowledge will tell you that a ‘global brand’ with a damaged reputation is not going to make anybody a quick profit.

As a Liverpool fan, I would’ve been far more concerned had Tom Werner and John Henry thrown Luis Suarez to the wolves.  That – for me – would’ve been truly representative of an organisation that has no intention of being in it for the long haul.  The fact that, rightly or wrongly, everybody from the very top down to the very bottom stood by Suarez actually gives me more hope that the owners are interested in taking Liverpool back to the top.  There is no doubt that they are also here to make money but they will also know that by allowing their most prized playing asset to suffer the brunt of the press’s rage would only have turned him against the club and they realise his importance going forward.

One last thing that Maddock has failed to take into account (or, in fact, to even mention) is the amount of money that the owners have poured in to the club since they took over.  Anybody that knows football will tell you that the previous owners who were intent on only making a quick profit put precisely £0.0p of their own money into the club during their tenure, whilst already we’ve seen around £115 million spent by the new owners, with £50 million recouped from the Torres sale.  However, with comings and goings we’ve still seen the owners lay down over £60 million in the last 12 months which few clubs have matched.  With them offering further backing to Dalglish in January and, should the next 5 months go as planned, in the summer it is hard to fathom that they have no interest in moving the club forward and are just after the quick return.  Only a fool would think that the sole intent of NESV/FSG was to bring Liverpool back to its’ former standing but after 12 months I feel much more confident in these Americans than I ever did in the previous two, as they seem to fully grasp that for them to make any money on this purchase they will need to invest before they can see a return and leading us into new glory years is paramount to that end. The silence from across the Atlantic during this time has done nothing to temper that belief in them, as the evidence to the contrary is far too compelling.

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