Liverpool FC Forum

[tubby]

i.n deluded some of those fans

[Reg]

What wrong with a Cardiff style stadium shared with the Blue Noses?

Juventus/Torino, AC Milan/Inter share great stadiums with their rivals. Is our rivalry any more intense than these great clubs? Lets get the best stadium in the country and worry about it after that.

Be honest, Evertonians will always feel that its our stadium not theres simply because we'll be the only ones to bring home the cups. I'm for it.

[tubby]

Benitez meets with Dubai groupDec 12 2006




By Chris Bascombe, Liverpool Echo

 



RAFA BENITEZ has held his first meeting with Liverpool's prospective new owners, but details of their plans to restore the club to the top of the English game are still on hold until DIC complete their takeover.

Benitez met Dubai International Capital chief executive Sameer Al Ansari following the Reds' 4-0 thumping of Fulham at the weekend.

Even though it's been emphasised an Abramovich-style assault on the transfer market is not the intention of the new owners, speculation has mounted since the announcement of the £400m Dubai bid about how much Benitez will have to spend on players in the future.

With the process of due diligence ongoing it's still too early for any such revelations, even to the Liverpool manager.

But Benitez has been assured the investment group have a far-sighted view of the future.


"I have spoken to the people. It was a very nice meeting, but we didn't talk about the details of the takeover," explained Benitez.


"They've made it clear they want to do the right things for Liverpool in the future and this will not be a short term deal. Their idea is to make Liverpool a success in the long-term."


It's highly unlikely there will be any significant impact on Benitez's transfer kitty in January, when it's inevitably tougher to sign top players anyway.

But Benitez has been assured the investment group have a far-sighted view of the future.


"I have spoken to the people. It was a very nice meeting, but we didn't talk about the details of the takeover," explained Benitez.


"They've made it clear they want to do the right things for Liverpool in the future and this will not be a short term deal. Their idea is to make Liverpool a success in the long-term."


It's highly unlikely there will be any significant impact on Benitez's transfer kitty in January, when it's inevitably tougher to sign top players anyway.


"I'm not someone who looks at the table every week, but clearly it's better for us to be in the top four now."

------------------------------------------------------

So it looks like its more or less a done deal now if there already discussing plans with Rafa.

[RedBlood]

I cant wait for this buyout 2 go through and with rafa being impressed with the meeting its obvious they've told him there will be money 2 spend on new players aswell as a stadium an clearing up debts.

we will have all the ingrediants to rule the football world, a world class manager, world class fans, a world class stadium and a few world class signings to add 2 our already strong squad

i cant beleive some people see this as a bad thing

[The Manhattan Project]

http://www.bolton.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=41667

The news that Liverpool are about to be bought by Sheik Mohammed and his buddies should come as no surprise to anyone - the club has been hawked around for a while now by Rick Parry on behalf of the Moores family.

There may well be good reasons for it. Apparently, you need lots of dosh to compete in the Champions' League (though, since it's only 18 months or so since Liverpool won it, I'm not sure that argument washes). Maybe Liverpool are feeling left out of the big boys club, having seen both Chelsea and Manchester United gain billionaire owners.

Many Liverpool fans are resigned to the takeover. They don't exactly want it but they know it's going to happen and they can't stop it.

So is it a good thing for all these clubs to pass into foreign ownership? No idea! There are good things about the investment culture and bad things. It's probably taking the clubs away from their fans even more than before. And what happens when the investors get bored or their returns nose dive? How soon before a club is asset stripped?

These are questions that can only be answered over time.

One thing's for sure, though. £450M of investment won't make Rafa Benitez a good manager and no amount of investment in new players will win the Premiership for Liverpool with that clown in charge!

The above post is rendered entirely irrelevant because of the presence of a single word:

bolton

[Lando_Griffin]

Anyone in favour of a shared ground just hasn't thought it through.

Imagine the cleaning bills after the bitter b*stards have had a match (knowing full well it's LFC's match next):

There'd be sh*t everywhere.

And once they'd walked out, there'd be skidmarks all over the place.

[The Manhattan Project]

I wouldn't want a shared ground.

Look at the Rome stadium, it's carved up like a turkey.

North stand is Lazio (far-right fascist lunatics).

South stand is Roma (far-left commie lunatics).

Fook Everscum, the new stadium is LFC only!!!

[RedBlood]

id rather share my bed with elton john

[account deleted by request]

Moores the merrier at Liverpool's new era
Liverpool claim their proposed £450m takeover deal will not rob them of their traditional values.
David ConnDecember 13, 2006 12:30 AM
If we were not becoming weirdly accustomed to checking Forbes' billionaires list whenever a football club announces takeover talks, it would feel more bizarre, freakish even, to find Liverpool arguing they are a perfect fit for the investment vehicle of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai.

Yet ever since the news broke that Dubai International Capital is inspecting Liverpool's books in contemplation of a £450m deal, the club has been keen to stress that its proud culture, awoken in the Shankly-Merseybeat 1960s, formed in succeeding years of glittering success, then bonded in grief after the Hillsborough disaster, will not be hollowed by absentee oil barons looking for a dinar.

Club sources say that in the three-year search for the money to build a new 60,000-seat stadium with a projected cost that has risen to £200m, Rick Parry, Liverpool's chief executive, began to target Dubai investors because he believes the principality has been built with quality and an eye on the long term. Almost painfully aware of Bill Shankly's principle that there is a "Liverpool way" of conducting the club, with core values of respect, Parry and the chairman, David Moores, said they did not want it to become one individual's plaything, subjected to the short-term greed of stock market investors, or be lumbered with the kind of debt mountain looming over today's good times at Old Trafford.

So it might disappoint some that although the Sheikh is one of the world's richest men - check your Forbes - the £450m will not be chucked at a bunch of new players. The club will have to make money for the Dubai investors, which means more commercial activity and no guarantee that ticket prices will not rise above their present £30-£32 a match.

However, Parry is said to be encouraged that DIC and Sameer al-Ansari, its Liverpool-supporting chief executive whom he met for the first time at the club's Champions League victory in Istanbul, understand the culture. At Liverpool they expect to be winning league championships and for the manager, players and staff to attend the annual memorial service to the 96 people who died at Hillsborough. Despite falling behind in the Premier League era, Liverpool still pride themselves on being a traditional football club and not turning into a plc with a football department.

Moores is soaked in this mythology. The well-born son of the Littlewoods pools and retailing family looking, with his mullet and moustache, like one of Harry Enfield's caricature scousers, sees himself as a Kop-ite and has been suffering sleepless nights, we are told, worrying about selling the club.

Yet Moores is set to make a lot of money for himself if the deal goes through. Of DIC's proposed £450m, around £200m, which is likely to be borrowed, will be needed to build the stadium, and Liverpool's debts are around £100m. The rest, £157m, will be paid to the shareholders. Moores has 51% of the shares, so that means he will personally make a little under £80m.

To understand the wave of football club sales, it is important to see both narratives: the buyers, rich men or corporations believing they can make money from English football's global media rights, and the sellers, local chairmen-owners who bought their shares for much less around the dawn of the Premiership era. Then the clubs were still seen as temples of belonging, and making money from them was not what chairmen were supposed to do.

Moores worked for the family company for a while but he never reached a senior position. He then inherited part of the family fortune, including some shares in Liverpool. He is, by his own admission, not a businessman, was always more interested in music and football, and as a chairman is said to be desperately thin-skinned, always worrying what the fans will think. "He can get depressed by two hostile letters in the Liverpool Echo," mused somebody close to him, fondly.

When Liverpool needed money to develop Anfield post the Taylor Report, they rejected the stock market floats that were the fashionable way of raising money and making shareholders richer. Instead, in June 1994, Moores paid around £8m for 15,164 new shares in a rights issue that raised £9.3m.

He was the exception, an owner putting money in, but in negotiations for investment over recent years a full price has been sought. That, ultimately, caused the withdrawal of the bid two years ago from Steve Morgan, the property developer, hotelier and Liverpool supporter who believed more of his £70m investment for 60% of the club should go in as new money, rather than in paying millions to Moores and the other shareholders. Liverpool are not commenting while DIC looks at the books, but club sources say that although Moores stands to make £80m, it is not his main motivation.

That, we are told, has been finding Liverpool a responsible and nurturing partner, which they believe they have, although DIC is uncompromisingly commercial and will require the club to furnish the interest on any borrowings and generate a return. Parry believes it will look for this from long-term growth in the club's value, rather than taking money out annually in dividends.

The Football Association, age-old guardians of football's values now cowering beneath the Premiership's wealth and power, says nothing about the implications of such takeovers. However, Uefa says it fears for the competitive balance if it comes down to which club has the richest billionaire.

At Liverpool the fans are monumentally sentimental, but they know their history and understand that money talks. The Shankly reawakening came only with the help of some Moores' money in the 1960s. Liverpool was one of the few clubs originally formed as a commercial venture. John Houlding, a brewer, was left with an empty Anfield in 1892 after Everton left protesting about the rent. He hired 11 Scots, all professionals, the "team of Macs," to fill Anfield and make money.

Critics of modern football's turbo-capitalism look to an ideal where clubs are member-owned and the money is shared more evenly. Liverpool fans are more immediately concerned not to fall further behind Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal and so far they appear persuaded that their heritage is not being sold. This was poetically expressed last week by one fan on the Red All Over the Land fanzine website:

"If you think old Shanks'd be turning in his grave, think again, get a grip lad, you're wrong. Behave!"

What outgoing owners received from sales

£93m

Amount Martin Edwards made from selling Manchester United shares between 1991 and 2004

£80m

Amount David Moores stands to make by selling his 51% of Liverpool to Dubai International Capital

£33.4m

Terence Brown's receipts from selling his West Ham shares last month to Eggert Magnusson and Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson

£24m

Amount Doug Ellis received from selling Aston Villa shares; £4m when Villa floated in 1996 and £20m by selling the rest to Randy Lerner

£17m

Paid to Ken Bates for Chelsea by Roman Abramovich, July 2003. Bates had bought Chelsea for £1 in 1982

david.conn@guardian.co.uk

[tubby]

Anyone in favour of a shared ground just hasn't thought it through.

Imagine the cleaning bills after the bitter b*stards have had a match (knowing full well it's LFC's match next):

There'd be sh*t everywhere.

And once they'd walked out, there'd be skidmarks all over the place.

Speaking of toilets does anyone have any pictures of what some of our fans done to Man Utd toilets. I remember one of a sink bring ripped from the wall and for some reason now it gives me the giggles. Someone please post that pic!!!!     

[red37]

the skip seems happier these days:

GERRARD - THE FUTURE'S BRIGHT

By Peter ORourke -  13 Dec 2006 SSN.


Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard believes the future is bright for the club as the takeover at Anfield draws ever closer.

The Reds are in advanced talks with the Dubai International Capital consortium about a takeover of the club.

It is believed the deal could see major investment made into the club allowing Rafa Benitez to strengthen his squad and compete against the likes of Chelsea in the transfer market.

Gerrard met some of the DIC officials last weekend and he is excited at the prospect of the takeover.

"I think the future is bright," said Gerrard. "There has been a lot of talk in the media of late about the takeover and I've been fortunate enough to meet with the people who are going to be taking over the club.

"I'm very excited. They assured me and the rest of the players that the club is going to be in safe hands and that the future is going to be really bright.

"The first thing they said was they were very interested in making sure the future was bright and that the club was going to be very successful on and off the pitch.

"That's what we wanted to hear."

and us stevie... and us   

[tubby]

Is it just me or is there such a sense of relife now knowing that a teamlike Chelsea will no longer create a monopoly out of the Premiership.

Its still going to be a battle and Rafa will have to work as hard if not harder but its nice to know that should a world class player want to play for us, the money will no longer be a problem.

[metalhead]

but i really hope it doesnt ruin the liverpool tradition!

It would be lovely to have a huge investment

[Paul C]

If Gerrard and Rafa have had chats with these guys then I'd expect the deal to be in very advanced stages, I think it will be sorted in the next 2/3 weeks

[RedBlood]

"I think the future is bright," said Gerrard. "There has been a lot of talk in the media of late about the takeover and I've been fortunate enough to meet with the people who are going to be taking over the club.

"I'm very excited. They assured me and the rest of the players that the club is going to be in safe hands and that the future is going to be really bright.

"The first thing they said was they were very interested in making sure the future was bright and that the club was going to be very successful on and off the pitch.

"That's what we wanted to hear."

The way he says ''....the people that ARE[U] going to be taking over....''  suggests its's a done deal