Liverpool FC Forum

[zarababe]

Great - no statement on the official website to back the manager and now this - these people won't forget or let lie - I think the fans at Anfield and we need to continue to back the manager vocally as  already done so magnificently

[puroresu]

Liverpool owner Tom Hicks has accused Anfield manager Rafael Benitez of behaving petulantly in the recent dispute over transfer policy.



The American also fears the players were suffering from an inferiority complex in the recent defeat to Manchester United.


The comments, in an interview with Sports Illustrated, risk reviving the tension between Benitez and Hicks and his co-owner George Gillett.


Hicks revisited the row over transfers, which saw Benitez accuse the American duo of failing to understand the European transfer market.


"We wanted to see what we could do with the players we had already bought," said Hicks. "We just wanted to see if the team was going to gel. Then he (Benitez) went to a press conference and kind of pouted and answered in the same way 20 times: 'I'm focusing on my team.'


"The media made up everything from that point forward. They made up that we were going to fire him, that I told him to shut up, that there was a battle between Benitez and the Americans. It's really funny to watch."


Hicks was dismayed at the players' attitude against United at Anfield when a 1-0 defeat left Liverpool off the pace in the Premier League title race.


He said: "Our team played like they mentally didn't think they were good enough to win. They played tight."

**************

This is on skysports now. This rumour does not seem to go away. I feel nervous for next year.

why start this all up again?  things aint right no matter what the club says.

[skatesy]

The media is just trying to stir again.

[red37]

Melodrama 

[KOPMATT]

Fair to say just as things do appear to be looking up on the pitch, These two clowns from The US make us look like a bloody pub team. Liverfools is not short of how i feel about it all and it's bloody embarassing to say the least, one minute they treat Rafa like dirt the next the promises that they made the club and share holders before the takeover they've broken. I bet Mr.Moores is fuming with it all! Coz i bloody am!
I've just read the Hicks/Rafa story on todays Sky sports teletext and am totally dismayed by it!!
WTF is hicks upto apparently reigniting the war of words with Rafa?? Is he determined to oust him from the managers job or what? It certainly seems that way to me.
It also seems that Hicks has all the mouth and Gillett appears to just go along with whatever Hicks says as he's not really said alot in my opinon other thatn thefact that he knows how to smooth an arguement as he's been married for 40 or so years! Big bloody deal!
Bout time they put up and shut up as so far other than a few dollars they spent over the summer have practically backtracked over what they  promised and try at every oportunity to un dermine Rafa & the team!
This is the UK boys not the Us where the owners do what they want and say what they want.
To be honest they have made us look like fools in the press, as they're having a field day over this.
All the problems that appeared to be there when the Glaziers took over at The Munsters seem like back page news compared to our problems. You don't hear any of the  that we're having comingf out from the theatre of wet dreams! I'm sick of it!
IMO Rafa is the best man for the job and needs to be allowed to get on with it and not have these two especially HICKS sticking his friggin nose into a topic which from what I can see he knows  all about!
C'mon Rafa & the boys keep up the good work and prove to the Yanks that must back you, coz you've more than proved yourselves to me!



YNWA!:

[112-1077774096]

once again i say some of you are jumping to conclusions and slating the owners for no reason, the fact thay benitez was behaving petulantly seems to evade some of you and its benitez who decided to play it out in the press, but some of you seem to thing rafa is beyond critcism so lets all blame the owners for our woes because the press have said something about them, some of you need to grow up, maybe the press release below will help you, it has no sensationalism in it so hopefully that will help

this is the actual press release that was sensationalised by the british press that sadly some of you buy into and start panicking


Liverpool co-owner Hicks hails 'terrific' Benitez and says manager has backing. England (AP) -Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez has the full support of the team's American owners heading into the second half of the season.

"We like Rafa. We think Rafa's terrific,'' co-owner Tom Hicks said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. "We put all that behind us.''


Following a string of lackluster results early in the season, Benitez questioned in October whether Hicks and George Gillett Jr. understood the transfer market. Hicks said Benitez should concentrate on working with what he had.

"We did have a disagreement and we did ask him to focus on the important games coming up instead of worrying about spending more money for more players,'' Hicks said from his Dallas office. "We wanted to see what we could do with the players we'd already bought. ... We just wanted to see if the team was going to jell because at the time we'd had four draws, we got beat at home by Marseille, so we had a big concern.''

Benitez, in his fourth season as Liverpool's manager, is trying to lead the club to its first English league title since 1990.

"Quit worrying about adding new pieces,'' Hicks recalled telling Benitez. "Let's make sure the pieces we have work well and that you can win.''

From there the tensions were stoked up by the media, according to the Texas native.

"He went to a press conference and kind of pouted, and answered the same question 20 times, `I'm focusing on my team,''' Hicks recalled. "And then the media made up everything from that point forward. They made up that we were going to fire him. They made up that I told him to shut up. They made up this battle between Benitez and the Americans. It's really funny to kind of watch.''

Benitez, a Spaniard who coached Liverpool to its fifth European Cup title in 2005, attributed part of the problem to communication, citing the difficulty of conveying information by e-mail and on the telephone. All said the misunderstanding was behind them after Hicks and Gillett met Dec. 16 with Benitez and chief executive Rick Parry at Anfield.

Last summer, Liverpool spent more than 50 million pounds (US$103 million; euro69 million) to acquire players. Among them was Spanish striker Fernando Torres, who has scored 15 goals in 18 games in all competitions.

"I know in England they're very careful to make sure you have a separation of who coaches the players and who signs the contracts for the players,'' said Hicks, who also owns baseball's Texas Rangers and the National Hockey League's Dallas Stars. "The manager does the recruiting, develops interest, decides who he wants to recommend and then in our case we approve it or not and then we turn it over to the CEO to negotiate.''

Hicks said he enjoys dealing with players and staff of different nationalities on Liverpool but said language barriers can crop up.

"He's Spanish. He doesn't speak English great,'' Hicks said of Benitez. "We have guys on our team that speak English that are hard to understand because they're Scousers. We have Spaniards; we have Argentines; we have Brazilians; we have Norwegians; we have Scots; we have Irish; we have English.

"So it's easy to have a communication issue. We had a small one with Rafa. It got blown totally out of proportion. We spent 2 1/2 hours after the game. It's behind us, and nobody's looking back.''

Hicks thought the Anfield crowd was a little subdued during Manchester United's 1-0 victory but attributed that to the nature of the match.

"I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a little more exciting atmosphere-wise,'' he said. "But I think our team played like they mentally didn't think they were good enough to win, played tight. But, either one of those early chances had gone in, it would have been very different.''

Since then, two straight wins lifted Liverpool back to fourth in the Premier League, nine points behind first-place Manchester United and with a game in hand ahead of Sunday's trip to fifth-placed Manchester City. The side rebounded in the Champions League and faces Inter Milan in the knockout phase in February.

A 2,000-strong pro-Benitez march staged outside Anfield before last month's 4-1 victory over FC Porto sent an emphatic message across the Atlantic.

"They felt like they needed to protect one of their own,'' Hicks said. "They wanted to protect Rafa - that part you have to admire.''

The 61-year-old Hicks, who took control of Liverpool with Gillett last spring, is aware his American background generates suspicion among skeptical fans, particularly those who fill the 72 rows of the Kop. It took him time to learn Liverpool's history and tradition.

"My involvement happened relatively quickly, so it wasn't like I had been studying this for months and months,'' Hicks said. "I did not have any appreciation of what the Kop was and how the Kop is really the soul of the club, and the serious responsibility the members of the Kop feel about their role. It is their club.

"The last family had it 51 years, and it's been around 115. Hopefully, we'll have it for a long time as well, custodianship.''

While Manchester United has expanded Old Trafford to 76,000 and Arsenal moved from 38,000-seat Highbury into 60,000-seat Emirates Stadium in July 2006, Liverpool has been trapped by the economics of Anfield, where there are just 34 luxury suites and few amenities.

The club intends to build a new stadium in nearby Stanley Park. Before the sale, the Manchester firm AFL drew up a proposal that Hicks termed "obsolete'' and "too small.'' Then Dallas-based HKS proposed an expensive, futuristic stadium and rushed it through for city council approval.

"Normally you would go through a longer process and do all your value engineering and adjustments before you would made an application and everything else but we didn't,'' Hicks said. "And it turned out it came in initially at a pretty significant overrun to what we had budgeted, so we have been going through a very aggressive value engineering.''

Both firms are to come back with new proposals and present them to the owners in New York on Jan. 9. Hicks says there will be 110 suites, and the ground will be ready for the 2011-12 season.

"We looked to make it as big as 80,000 but I think for our marketplace, probably the right size would be somewhere between 70,000 and 73,000,'' Hicks said. "That would be the third-biggest in England behind Wembley and Old Trafford.''

Hicks wants the Reds to be a dominating force again by the time the new stadium opens. Like many in England, he worries about the strength of homegrown players in the Premier League.

"The Premier League has become totally international,'' he said. "Let's make sure we have enough great English players to still have English players.''

He is working on bolstering ties with Major League Soccer and taking Liverpool across the Atlantic in the offseason.

"We're going to focus on bringing them to the U.S. and to Asia,'' he said. "I think we'll do the U.S. - we're working on not this summer but next summer (2009). We're talking to some MLS teams about developing a strategic partnership and training and cross-branding and co-branding that we could do together. I think that's a natural evolution.''



see when you read the actual report without ridiculous comments from journalists it doesnt look bad

[ivor_the_injun]

Hicks finds Liverpool experience quite different
RONALD BLUM
AP Sports Writer

LIVERPOOL, England — Tom Hicks walked into The Albert pub, and the celebration was on.

His son Alex had just proposed to girlfriend Portia Tuma on the pitch of the renowned 123-year-old ground that's home to Liverpool FC, and the group went off to lift a few pints with the blue jean clad crowd, under a ceiling filled with banners celebrating many of the world's well-known soccer clubs.

A few hours later, it was time for son Tom Jr.'s 30th birthday party, held at a long table lit by candelabra in Circo, a new hotspot near The Beatles Story museum, overlooking the River Mersey. And then, the next day, was the big match against Manchester United, the opener of a Premier League day that also included Arsenal vs. Chelsea down in London and was billed as "Grand Slam Sunday" by British media.

"It was kind of a special weekend," said the elder Tom Hicks, the co-owner of Liverpool, one of three Premier League clubs controlled by Americans. "I had my whole family there."

The fast-paced match was somewhat deflating for Hicks, who wore a red Liverpool scarf around his neck as the crowd sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" before kickoff. Manchester United won 1-0 on a 28-degree Sunday afternoon so raw that many players wore gloves, becoming the first visiting team since Everton from 1908-10 to post four straight shutouts at Anfield.

At the final whistle, with the sky turning a steely purple-gray ahead of the 3:53 p.m. sunset, the 3,000 or so visiting supporters in the Anfield Road Stand, surrounded by police in yellow vests and security in orange, sang out heartily: "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Oh what fun it is to see United win away!"

"I think our team played like they mentally didn't think they were good enough to win, played tight," Hicks said a few days later from his Dallas office, sounding more analytical than critical.

The 61-year-old Hicks has been a well-known figure in U.S. sports since purchasing the NHL's Dallas Stars in 1996 and baseball's Texas Rangers in 1998 from George W. Bush's group. And his profile increased when he signed Alex Rodriguez to a $252 million, 10-year contract before the 2001 season only to trade him to the New York Yankees three years later.

But nothing prepared Hicks for the notoriety he gained last spring, when he joined Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett Jr. to take control of Liverpool in a deal valued at $431 million.

They followed Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer, who bought Manchester United in 2005, and Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner, who purchased Aston Villa in 2006.

With a stadium in the middle of a neighborhood and a fan base that obsesses over its stars with constant love, admiration, condemnation and dread, the club is at the center of Liverpudlians' attention. Imagine the Red Sox Nation intensified many times over.

"There are two forms of ownership: There is legal shareholding ownership, and there's stakeholder ownership," said Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League. "They all feel they own it. And so while somebody may be the legal owner and the person who owns the shares, in a sense you're not really the owners. You're still only the custodians."

Liverpool has won a record 18 league titles in England, two more than Manchester United and five ahead of Arsenal, but Liverpool hasn't finished first since 1990 and has seen Manchester United — its neighbors a 60-minute train ride to the east — win the Premier League nine times since. Although Liverpool has won five European Cups, most among English clubs, just one of them has been since 1984.

Dallas won the 1999 Stanley Cup under Hicks, but the Rangers haven't even made it to the World Series. Liverpool's fans are counting on Hicks and Gillett to spend money for players that will restore the team to the glory days of Ian Rush, Kevin Keegan and Kenny Dalglish.

"I think the fans are very serious fans. They want to make sure Liverpool is a top side, and they're going to be skeptical of a lot of things until we do it," Hicks said.

An American accent is suspect these days in Liverpool, an urban area of 800,000 that will be one of Europe's cultural capitals next year. Several of the locals, known as Scousers for a local stew and their thick accents, ask Americans whether they know the owners and what they think Hicks and Gillett will do.

In late November, manager Rafa Benitez openly questioned whether the club was prepared to spend for players when the market reopens in January.

"They don't understand what the transfer window means in Europe," Benitez said. "They need to understand how difficult it is to sign players."

Benitez was told by Hicks to worry about games, not acquisitions. It became known as "The Rift," and before a European Champions League match against FC Porto on Nov. 28, about 2,000 fans marched from The Sandon pub to Anfield to support the coach.

"They wanted to protect Rafa. That part you have to admire," Hicks said. "We think Rafa's terrific. We put all that behind us."

After the Man. U. match, Hicks, Gillett and team chief executive Rick Parry met with Benitez. Everyone seems to be on the same page now, attributing whatever differences to the distance and language barriers.

"We wanted to see what we could do with the players we'd already bought. We just wanted to see if the team was going to jell," Hicks said. "And he went to a press conference and kind of pouted and answered the same question 20 times, 'I'm focusing on my team.' And then the media made up everything from that point forward. They made up that we were going to fire him. They made up that I told him to shut up. They made up this battle between Benitez and the Americans. It's really funny to kind of watch."

Key to everything is the stadium and how much debt the club will incur to build it.

Football has been played at Anfield since 1884, when Everton was the home team. That club left in a rent dispute and newly formed Liverpool took over in 1892. The current ground, which has a capacity of about 45,300, consists of four covered stands, the oldest of which dates to 1973.

There are the Paisley Gates and the Shankly Gates, named after former Liverpool coaches, with the famous sign, "You'll Never Walk Alone." And there is the Hillsborough Memorial, where fans leave flowers in honor of the 96 supporters who were crushed to death on April 15, 1989, before a Football Association Cup semifinal against Nottingham Forest in Sheffield.

The Kop, which rises in 72 steeply raked rows, is the club's soul and gets its name from Spion Kop, a hill in South Africa where British forces lost a battle during the Second Boer War in 1900. Liverpool's Kop once held 30,000, back in the days when fans stood on terraces rather than viewing from seats, but these days capacity is about 12,500. The screaming, singing supporters call themselves Kopites, and the roof acts like a megaphone that sends a wall of sound onto the field.

While Manchester United has expanded Old Trafford to 76,000 and Arsenal moved from 38,000-seat Highbury into 60,000-seat Emirates Stadium in July 2006, Liverpool has been trapped by the economics of Anfield, where there are just 34 luxury suites and few amenities. The club wants to build a new stadium in nearby Stanley Park.

Before the sale, the Manchester firm AFL drew up a proposal that the new owners hated. Then Dallas-based HKS proposed an expensive, futuristic stadium. Both firms are to come back with new proposals and present them to the owners in New York on Jan. 9. Hicks says there will be 110 suites, and team plans to move in for the 2011-12 season.

"We looked to make it as big as 80,000 but I think for our marketplace, probably the right size would be somewhere between 70,000 and 73,000," Hicks said. "That would be the third-biggest in England behind Wembley and Old Trafford."

Its fan base is worldwide. Before the big match, Liverpool had its first million-pound ($2 million) week of merchandise sales — and in England, clubs don't share licensing income.

Matches are beamed to Asia and the United States. Out in California, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane — a Tottenham Hotspur supporter — gets up at 4:45 a.m. to watch the EPL.

"I think I view it as a fan. I view it with fresh eyes. For me, I'm a neophyte, I'm been following it the last few years," said Beane, whose baseball owner leads the group that operates San Jose's new Major League Soccer franchise. "The more you watch it, the more you get an appreciation as a former athlete for the athleticism when you see the best in the world."

Hicks could have purchased Dallas' MLS franchise but decided not to. "In hindsight, I probably made the wrong decision," he said.

There's synergy to be gained with his U.S. franchises — Carlsberg at the ballpark, anyone? — but he doesn't foresee any regular-season matches being moved to the United States, just perhaps another preseason tour in 2009.

Other clubs could attract Americans. Stan Kroenke, who controls the NBA's Denver Nuggets, the NHL's Colorado Avalanche and MLS's Colorado Rapids, already owns 12 percent of Arsenal. Yankees senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner said in the 1980s his family was approached about purchasing one-third of Tottenham.

"We should have done it. It was at a time before the big money hit European soccer," Steinbrenner said, adding that the EPL still intrigues him. "I haven't ruled out doing that."

Scudamore welcomes the Americans.

"They bring sort of a fresh commercialism to it, which is always good," he said. "There's a degree of enthusiasm. There's a degree of positive attitude. There's a degree of can do. ... But I think all of them have been very cognizant of the fact that they don't know everything there is to know about football and, therefore, they've gone about it in a way that has been respectful to the other clubs and the traditions of the league."

But in the end, the mark of success will be measured in trophies. That's what the supporters crave. That's what drives everyone from the players to the fans in the highest row of the Kop.

"It is their club," Hicks said. "The last family had it 51 years, and it's been around 115. Hopefully, we'll have it for a long time as well."

[Kharhaz]

this is the actual press release that was sensationalised by the british press that sadly some of you buy into and start panicking

Couldnt agree more. It seems to me that a lot of people take whatever Bascombe writes as gospel and it must be true. Id like to see actual press releases like this one where the journalist in question doesnt tamper with what was actually said and portray there own twist so that people misinterpret what was meant. Not just Bascombe mind, everyones at it, and the amount of people who have ill feelings towards our new owners is simply down to the garbage the press are releasing.

[112-1077774096]

this is the actual press release that was sensationalised by the british press that sadly some of you buy into and start panicking

Couldnt agree more. It seems to me that a lot of people take whatever Bascombe writes as gospel and it must be true. Id like to see actual press releases like this one where the journalist in question doesnt tamper with what was actually said and portray there own twist so that people misinterpret what was meant. Not just Bascombe mind, everyones at it, and the amount of people who have ill feelings towards our new owners is simply down to the garbage the press are releasing.

thats the point i am trying to make and have been saying for weeks, when we hear it direct from the horses mouth that the ground wont be built or there are no funds then i will believe it, we are victims of the biggest press lie ever but people on here still believe the press before they believe the guys who have ploughed millions into the club

[Kharhaz]

Which makes the dont sack rafa protest and the petition online rather pointless. It shows our support no doubt about it, I signed it also to show mine, but it was all encouraged because of rantings from various journalists.

[LFC2007]

Exactly, comments from official sources without sensationalism tend to be accurate.

That would mean the moon landing and 9/11 conspiracy theories are tripe. 

[account deleted by request]

Yet more media spin from G&H, I prefer to rely on actions not words from these two now.

Words :- “We’re meeting after today’s game with planners. We hope we can reach agreement so that we can start work in the park by June,”

Actions - The stadium has been delayed for at least one year.

Words :-"This is not a takeover like the Glazer deal at Manchester United. There is no debt involved, and we believe that as custodians of this wonderful club, we have a duty of care to the tradition and legacies of Liverpool."

Actions - Trying to put the whole of the debt against the club including money borrowed for "working capital" and for transfers.

Words :- Rafa can buy snoop doggy if he wants

Actions :- ?

Words :- "They made up that I told him to shut up. They made up this battle between Benitez and the Americans"

More words " It is really time for Rafa to quit talking"   Sounds pretty much like they told Rafa to shut up to me 

[ruskiy playmaker]

I get the feeling that Hicks is just a rich mor0n.

[skatesy]

Which makes the dont sack rafa protest and the petition online rather pointless. It shows our support no doubt about it, I signed it also to show mine, but it was all encouraged because of rantings from various journalists.

And it shows how so many Liverpool fans have just been eating up everything the media has thrown at us. And they keep throwing more hoping that we keep eating it up.

[112-1077774096]

amazing, even now after reading the actual comments some of you are buying the tabloid garbage