Two bids tabled for Liverpool FC

At least we know none of our players will be getting elbowed on Sunday.

Hicks's interview on SSN was hilarious, the man's a fucking idiot.

"we spent $300m on players, $150m net"..."we spent £300m on players, £150m net"

So first of all it was $300m, then £300m.

Their actual net spend on transfers since February 2007 is £13m. Absolutely miles away from what he was claiming.

For anyone interested here is the list of transfers we've made under Hicks & Gillett:


Lucas Leiva £5,000,000
Mikel San José £270,000
Sebastian Leto £1,800,000
Fernando Torres £20,200,000
Yossi Benayoun £5,000,000
Ryan Babel £11,500,000
Emiliano Insúa £1,300,000
Martin Skrtel £6,500,000
Javier Mascherano £12,400,000
Andrea Dossena £7,000,000
Diego Cavalieri £3,500,000
David N'Gog £1,500,000
Robbie Keane £19,000,000
Albert Riera £8,000,000
Glen Johnson £17,500,000
Alberto Aquilani £17,100,000
Sotirios Kyrgiakos £2,000,000
Daniel Ayala £160,000
Damien Plessis £1,000,000
JonJo Shelvey £1,700,000
Danny Wilson £2,000,000
Christian Poulsen £4,500,000
Brad Jones £2,300,000
Raul Meireles £11,400,000

Total £162,630,000


Peter Crouch £11,000,000
Mohamed Sissoko £8,200,000
Scott Carson £3,250,000
Mark Gonzalez £3,500,000
Craig Bellamy £7,500,000
Sebastian Leto £3,000,000
Álvaro Arbeloa £3,500,000
Paul Anderson £250,000
Gabriel Paletta £1,200,000
Luis Garcia £4,000,000
Robbie Keane £12,500,000
Andrea Dossena £4,000,000
Andriy Voronin £1,800,000
Danny O' Donnell £100,000
Djibril Cissé £6,000,000
Chris Kirkland £3,500,000
John Arne Riise £4,000,000
Anthony Le Tallec £1,100,000
Danny Guthrie £2,250,000
Steve Finnan £1,000,000
Sinima Pongolle £2,700,000
Mikel San Jose £3,500,000
Chris Buchtmann £700,000
Xabi Alonso £30,000,000
Nikolay Mihaylov £1,000,000
Yossi Benayoun £5,500,000
Albert Reira £5,000,000
Deigo Cavaleri £1,000,000
Krizten Nemeth £1,500,000
Javier Mascherano £17,500,000

Total £149,150,000

+/- -£13,480,000



btw i've only included transfers where a fee is involved, so the likes of Cole and Jovanovic aren't listed for that reason.

Yeah Hicks is one monumental cunt. I've tried to like him and really it should be easy, but he is one massive fuck tard.

I reckon this must be at least the 15th time you've posted this list of transfers in the last couple of years, what is the obsession with desperately trying to prove that you haven't spent much money.

actaully it's the fisrt time i've ever done it. The only other time i've listed players/transfers was when i compared the team Houllier left behind with the one Rafa left behind.

Also, there's nothing "desperate" about it, it's pretty clear for all to see.

Its not as clear as that though in reality, sure making a list of players you bought and sold and using the difference seems clear on paper, but one, god knows what the actual figures were for all those transfers and two, there are so many more factors to be taken into account including at the very least interest on and against payments, exchange rate fluctuations, agents fees, wages and bonuses, at the very bottom line you really can't say, well we spent this amount of money on players in 3 years on figures that were quoted in tabloid newspapers and we sold all these players for these figures quoted in tabloids so our nett spend for the 3 years is £14 million, and yet we got ourselves into £200 million pounds worth of debt, despite gate receipts, tv revenue and all other marketing stuff, its just really basic and obviously completely false..

I'm not disputing any of that, what i am disputing is Hicks's claim that they spent £150m net (£300m gross) on transfer fees.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/nov/02/john-henry-liverpool-takover

Liverpool's new owner, has not given any written guarantee that he will not offload his costs of taking over Liverpool on to the club.

Henry and his 16 partners in New England Sports Ventures made that commitment verbally before the takeover, to clear the £200m "acquisition debt" loaded on to the club by the previous owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and not burden Liverpool with servicing their own purchase.

However in a detailed email Henry sent to the Guardian this week answering questions about the takeover, he said the Liverpool board, chaired by Martin Broughton, never asked for a contractual commitment from NESV not to load any of their acquisition costs on to the club in the future. "I don't remember anything being discussed along these lines," Henry said, "except that there was a desire for all of [Liverpool's] debt to be removed except stadium debt."

A spokesman for Broughton and the former managing director Christian Purslow, who voted to sell the club to NESV based largely on Henry's assurance that no "acquisition debt" would be loaded on the club, said they had not asked for written guarantees because such future commitments are not strictly legally enforceable.

Hicks and Gillett said in their own official offer document when buying the club in February 2007 that the payment of interest on their £200m borrowings "will not depend to any significant extent on the business of Liverpool". But subsequently they did make the club pay the multi-million pound interest costs.

Henry told the Guardian that he and his partners have, as they agreed before the takeover, paid off that £200m, and not substituted it with their own borrowings. "The simplest thing to say is that we removed all debt but the stadium debt," Henry wrote. "LFC is not servicing debt other than stadium debt."

Royal Bank of Scotland, to which £150m of the £200m was owed – the other £50m was owed to Wachovia – confirmed that it has now been repaid. That leaves Liverpool with a remaining debt to RBS of £37m, incurred on the plans to build a new stadium on Stanley Park, which NESV is now reviewing.

In his email Henry, who was in Liverpool today to meet Roy Hodgson, players and club staff and officials, declined to explain how NESV raised the £218m total cash required to buy Liverpool, and whether any of it was borrowed.

"I have certain obligations to my partners regarding confidentiality of a private company and in not disclosing our financials publicly," he said. "LFC discloses its financials annually, so monies going in and going out are disclosed. But I'm not going to disclose NESV financials or financing information."

However, detail in his email, and answers he gave to a Liverpool fans' website, www.redandwhitekop.com at the weekend, suggest that NESV did borrow some of the money to buy Liverpool. He suggested to Red and White Kop that the £218m was partly raised from the NESV partners personally and partly from borrowing.

"We have some very successful partners – some of whom are big [Premier League] fans – and we are well-financed internally," he told the website. "But NESV has always had debt, from the first day we purchased the Red Sox."

He added that seeking a financial return is part of NESV's business culture, and the partners can make a greater profit – the Internal Rate of Return – if they do not make the initial investment wholly with their own money, and instead borrow part of it. "We have some partners who look at Internal Rate of Return," he explained, "and almost demand that we have debt as a consequence. Debt increases IRR."

Henry, though, clarified this with the Guardian, saying only one NESV partner "is driven by" IRR, and "always sought higher IRR through borrowing". But he said that partner has been overruled: "The rest of us have preferred paying down debt."

Although he has given no written guarantee that NESV will not saddle Liverpool with the cost of their own takeover, Henry pointed to their ownership of the Red Sox and other sporting ventures since 2001, saying they have taken no dividend out and paid no financial return back to partners.

Describing Liverpool as a "big challenge," he said they were not seeking to take regular cash profits out of the club, but could make money "some day (hopefully a long time from now)" if they have done "the right things day-to-day" and the club becomes worth more as an asset to own.

we already knew this anyway, there's nothing new there at all.