Two bids tabled for Liverpool FC

Liverpool Football Club tonight issued the following press statement:

The Board of Directors have received two excellent financial offers to buy the Club that would repay all its long-term debt. A Board meeting was called today to review these bids and approve a sale. Shortly prior to the meeting, the owners - Tom Hicks and George Gillett - sought to remove Managing Director Christian Purslow and Commercial Director Ian Ayre from the Board, seeking to replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon.

This matter is now subject to legal review and a further announcement will be made in due course.

Meanwhile Martin Broughton, Christian Purslow and Ian Ayre continue to explore every possible route to achieving a sale of the Club at the earliest opportunity.

Liverpool's shambolic season hit a new low on Tuesday night as owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett blocked the sale of the club and attempted to remove two key members of their own board.

Two new bids for the Anfield outfit were tabled earlier in the day, both of which have been described as 'excellent' by the Premier League club.

Liverpool's board were due to meet to discuss the offers and give the green light for a change of ownership, with both prospective buyers promising to pay off the club's £282million debts.

But in an astonishing move from American duo Hicks and Gillett, they turned down the chance of a sale and have now attempted to remove managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre from the decision-making process.
Excellent

A statement on the club's official website read: "The board of directors have received two excellent financial offers to buy the club that would repay all its long-term debt.

"A board meeting was called today to review these bids and approve a sale.

"Shortly prior to the meeting, the owners - Tom Hicks and George Gillett - sought to remove managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre from the board, seeking to replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon.

"This matter is now subject to legal review and a further announcement will be made in due course.

"Meanwhile Martin Broughton, Christian Purslow and Ian Ayre continue to explore every possible route to achieving a sale of the club at the earliest opportunity."

Red Sox

Sky Sports News understands that one of the offers has come from the owners of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, while the other is from a Far East consortium.

Hicks and Gillett are seeking a figure in the region of £600million but need to find a buyer before 15th October to repay their £282million loans to the Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia.

If they are unsuccessful then RBS are poised to take control of Liverpool, the asset against which the loans are secured, and sell the club themselves to recoup their cash.

The American duo have become increasingly unpopular with Anfield supporters, who blame their on-field woes on the behind-the-scenes bickering which exploded further on Tuesday evening.

New manager Roy Hodgson was appointed in the summer following the departure of Rafa Benitez but has come under fire himself after the Carling Cup humiliation at the hands of Northampton and Sunday's dismal home defeat by Blackpool.

www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11669_6430498,00.html

www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/latest-news/board-agree-proposed-sale

Get out of our club you lying bastards.

good news.

would have preferred a man city stylee super rich cunt taking it.

but u have to be realistic i suppose.

So the new owners will be yanks again? Do you guys think this sale will be good for Liverpool or do you think it will be as shit as it is now (hard to imagine that's possible)?

fernando torres being sold or not will be the first big crisis.

fans will be plenty pissed if he gets sold.

tom hicks is richer than this new guy according to the rich lists.

be interesting to see what happens regarding the stadium. ;D

at least they have red sox

Here we go again. That was probably the most common reaction from Liverpool Football Club fans waking up to news that a deal had been agreed in principal to sell the club to the 61-year-old American owner of the Boston Red Sox, John W Henry.

"No money for new players… pretty pointless this, to be honest," said one poster on the Red and White Kop fans' forum. Another was a little more barbed: "Load of shite. We want Arabs, Russians or Chinese!"

Negative assumptions of Henry's character are easy to arrive at. He's American. He has a Dubya smack bang in the middle of his name. One of the photographs doing the rounds at the moment shows him smoking a cigar big enough to choke an elephant and makes him look crass. We hear that he has had a successful sporting interest in baseball and if his takeover does go through his emphasis will be on preserving the club's heritage and maybe even redeveloping Anfield. We only need to hear the word custodian and we'll have a full house in Sceptics' Bingo.

After years of protesting against Tom Hicks' and George Gillett's ownership, including the burning of an American flag outside the Kop, it is easy to understand why Liverpool fans aren't taking to the streets in celebration. In matters of modern-day football club ownership, in which fans have no real influence, all we can do is hope for the best.

Whether the new owners are American, Chinese, Arabic or French, if they do not have any emotional connection to the club, doubts will always persist. And why not? The overriding reasons for foreigners owning Premier League football clubs these days are to do with money or ego. The days of the local businessman buying the club he loves and sacrificing his own money for a stab at glory are over.

The possibility of fans buying a Premier League club between them also seems to have closed. With many supporters already unable to afford tickets for matches, it is unrealistic to expect them to buy into the club they love instead.

Liverpool fans have long insisted that there is no value in the titles that Chelsea have won since Roman Abramovich's takeover at Stamford Bridge. So perhaps the news that Liverpool's potential owner is not a playboy from a far-flung emirate or a Russian oligarch should be greeted with a little more enthusiasm than has so far been shown. After all, can he really be any worse than Hicks and Gillett?

owned by a company whose only purpose in life is to make money from sport franchises. back to square one for them. than you god.

Funnt you should say that, because the Boston Red Sox' fans have all been saying the opposite. They seem really happy with their owners.

Clutching at straws much?

Based on the picture the man must be a complete don

but they would be because they've been successful lately and owners taking money out of the club is the normal thing in US sports franchises. its not the normal thing in european football. even if you are well run and free of debt now (presuming this thing goes through court and hicks and gillett lose) theres still a yank taking a profit out of the club.

its still pretty shit and not how an english football club should be run, its only good compared to the last two clowns.

its october and you don't actually have 9 points to deduct.
I am an evertonian. you are a revenue stream for a yank businessman. right now someone is doing sums to work out how much profit they can get out of you and into their own pockets each year.

How are you genuinly feeling about this at the moment Axe/Bob/Eddie other Liverpool fans...?