AnfieldRoad.com/ January: Hicks out/March: Hicks in?

If you want to see a flip bigger than Lua Lua’s you need to check out Jim Boardman’s blog. In the space of three short months he has gone from calling for the removal of both Hicks and Gillett to just about the biggest friend Hicks has got on the blogosphere.

A Selection of Article titles and extracts from AnfieldRoad.com - January 2008 - on Hicks and Gillett.

Huge interest payments will cripple Reds

“Tom Hicks got his PR firm to confirm last night what we’ve known all along - Liverpool Football Club will be paying the interest on the loan he took out to make himself richer.

Under these owners the club is in a mess, the future of the club is on a tightrope.

We’re gambling on Champions League qualification, and even then on relative success in the Champions League. Without it, we are in serious danger of following the same path Leeds followed. And don’t for one moment think “it can’t happen to us”, because it can.

And the chances are that Hicks and Gillett will have ridden off into the sunset long before it gets to the Leeds stage - they’ll transfer the debt onto the club’s assets, pay off their own loans and disappear.”

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“We’ve got to get behind the players and the manager; they need us now more than ever. Those dissenting voices on phone-ins and message-boards who think we’re going to be alright under Hicks after all need to sit back and think about what’s really going on.

The owners will bail out as soon as they see a threat to their existing assets - we’ve got to do all we can to bring that threat forward.”

Be wary of Hicks spin as he fights for Reds support

“Liverpool supporters need to be careful in the coming weeks that they don’t fall for the PR spin that will undoubtedly be served up by Tom Hicks as he aims to get Liverpool supporters falling for his stories and promises once again.

He’ll use the promise of a fancy stadium and the so-called £17m signing of Javier Mascherano to boost his claims that he cares about the club, hoping that we soon forget the lies and deceit of the past few months in particular, but that have been there since the day he first spoke of his plans for the club nearly a year ago.”

Hicks admits past DIC talks despite past denials

“Three of Liverpool’s last five matches have seen the Reds score an own goal, but it’s the joint owner, Texan millionaire Tom Hicks, who seems to be scoring most own goals.”

How Reds owners mislead fans over transfer funding

“Liverpool’s owners borrowed £298m to take the club over, of which they spent at total of £218.9m on buying the shares and paying off the debt. There are few clues as to where the other £79m went, or what the extra £52m they are trying to borrow now will go to.”

Hicks laughs as refinancing draws nearer

“The Tom Hicks propaganda machine rolls on relentlessly as he moves closer to getting the loans he needs to continue with his unwelcome control of Liverpool Football Club.”

Hicks excuses fail to convince, time they moved on

“Tom Hicks has today made yet another bungle in his long list of errors and misjudgements since taking over at Anfield with the nowadays silent George Gillett.”

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“The owners’ plot included wining and dining both Klinsmann and his wife Debbie, Klinsmann being told he’d be the perfect for the club should Benitez either leave the club or be fired.

Hicks admitted that an offer was made to Klinsmann - but claims it was purely an “insurance policy”. He now says that Benitez has his full support. Unfortunately his word means very little these days.

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"This time they’ve gone too far. Already there is deep-seated anger from more and more supporters at the way they are handling our club. And already fans are discussing ways of making this known to the owners. It should also be made known to the financial institutions the owners are speaking to, because they need to know that the owners are not what they make themselves out to be. They’ve not got a clue how to run a football club, and there is a serious risk that the club’s status will fall under their ownership."

 All in all these owners stand to ruin this club. It’s only a matter of time before they remove their rubber masks to reveal they are actually Neville Neville and Norman Whiteside."

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"Time they left. Time the financial institutions were warned - there’s a vote of “No Confidence” in Hicks and Gillet.”

Desperate Hicks makes desperate claims

“Tom Hicks has gone off on one again, or so it seems. Gone off into one of those wild fantasy worlds where he vehemently denies something or other to do with his ownership of Liverpool Football Club. All around him are great big pointers to whatever he’s denying being actually true, yet he stands there and says it isn’t."

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"One day we might laugh, maybe, if these dark days ever end. One day we’ll probably laugh at him, as we come to terms with whatever was left behind when he does finally leave. It seems doubtful we’ll ever laugh with him. For now his attitude causes anger and the kind of resentment that meant his son Tommy was unable to sit in an English pub near Anfield and talk to fans.”

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There was more of the same in February but in March he decided that in fact he had been conned. What will be noted from all of the above is that Boardman’s anti Hicks and Gillett sentiments are virtually exclusively based upon actions or statements attributed to the two owners or their PR people.

Incredibly in the passage of merely a month Boardman claims that he now considers himself to be have been misled by lies and spin from DIC when writing in January. He has decided that doubt must be cast on all of these (his) nasty slurs against Tom Hicks who might, after all, be Liverpool Football Club’s saviour if only he can get the (still nasty) George Gillett to sell him his Shares. DIC, he reckons, must be viewed with the gravest of suspicion because they want to buy the club so badly they are prepared to pay more to George Gillett than Hicks can afford. DIC are also unwilling to come clean, says Boardman, with all of their corporate strategy and future plans for the club?

Conned??? Jim Boardman by DIC or us by Jim Boardman? On a postcard please.

Fulham 0 Liverpool 2

I know it is not the end of the season yet and we will need some heroic individual performances if we are to pull off a sixth Champions League trophy, but I already have Javier Mascherano down as my player of the season. Another masterclass today and even though I watched the match on television in a pub you could see the little chief's class on and off the ball. Masch is the only defensive player I have seen for a long time who gets the oohs and ahs of a striker. Some of the interceptions and tackles are so well executed you can't help jumping out of your seat. 

Anyway a comfortable win and you are left wondering whether we would have been in with a shout had these second string elevens performed like this when Rafa was rotating the squad earlier in the season. It took today's  selection just 9 minutes or so to gel and take effective control of the match. Whether this was because the likes of Pennant and Voronin are conscious of the need to impress as the season and the long transfer window approaches or if it is just that they have had a season playing together in the training sessions is arguable.

The first team players on show hardly put a foot wrong, Sami and Skrtl both had good games. Both goals were saveable had Keller been more on his game but we were well capable of moving up at least two more gears had we needed to. With the goal and the assist I'd go with Jermain Pennant as mom. 

Is Ground Share Really Dead?

Let's get my opinion out straight away. I hate the very mention of this idea. Why bring it up now? Well it comes down to the bits of info coming out on the Hicks/Gillett bust-up. Gillett was never an outright opponent of ground share, he wouldn't rule it in or out. Hicks has always gone for broke when building stadia for his sports teams. I am asking myself questions about the possible reasons for such a complete about turn in the relationship between the two americans and the stadium design figures large in them.

In the few statements Gillett has made he talks darkly of Hicks' use of the media and his "version of events". The economic environment has changed radically since the first Hicks stadium design was completed. We have had one return to the drawing board on cost grounds since but I am left wondering if the project still is a "stadium too far" for the resources of Hicks and the club. Is this the nub of Gillett's beef with Hicks? If such an ambitious proposal is forced through will the fans be told, once it is near completion, that the economic realities facing the club mean that the question of sharing the ground has to be revisited?

Hicks will feel confident he can get popular support for the project, most fans love it and the design is radical and would make the club stand out from the crowd. Whether he can obtain the finance without straining future revenues of the club too far is another thing. I pose the question, is this a bone of contention between them with Gillett viewing Hicks as being deceitful in conning the fans into thinking they can have both the big new stadium and all the player signings deemed by the manager to be necessary to get us back to the top and keep us there?   

Will we get the Owners we Deserve?

Someone once said that, in general, people get the governments they deserve. Populations under tyranny are usually acquiescent until maybe a low ranking military officer or professional assassin gets the job done with a bullet, bomb or coup d'etat. It is very rare for the mass of people under the jackboot to do something about their plight. The Philippines and the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos is the only exception I can remember.

Democracy is well established in the UK but it still seems to me that apathy rises to a height when it is time to vote whilst public concern and anti-government feeling rises to a peak right in the middle of a term of office. hence we get turnouts of less than 60%. So 40% cannot be bothered to get off their arses to vote but you can bet they are the most vocal in their complaints.

What's my point? Well in the last few weeks Hicks and Gillett have dragged the club through the mud with their public points scoring and, given the time of year, crucial part of the season - Hillsborough Anniversary etc, you might have expected this to rebound on them bigtime. I am a nutter for all things LFC and try to keep up with what is being said on all the various blogs and sites but all I detect is a rise in the number of fans who just want this mess to go away but don't want to support more active fans trying to get something done about it.

The messages are various; from "stop all this its making my brain hurt" down to "Hicks makes sense let's give him a couple of years then if he fails to keep his promises we will get him out" They all add up to appeasement. the parallels I drew above are uncanny. Like Neville Chamberlain with his "I've got a piece of paper signed by Mr Hitler so we will be fine" and "What do we know of Czechoslovakia? It is a far away country of which we know little". The same messages are coming about Hicks and DIC. Lets stay with Hicks because we have no guarantees about DIC? My head hurts when I read stuff like that!

So are we going to bend over and let Hicks and co. continue to royally roger us or are we made of better stuff and we will continue to try and get some degree of control and dignity back for the club. I hope so. There are positve signs, reasons for optimism if you like, One fan who started a petition calling for Hicks to go got a personal phone call so it shows the Texan is affected by what activists do. The fans's hatred is a factor or why would he bother trying to affect it, also Gillett maintains his 'I will not sell to Hicks" stance and DIC have not gone away.

This is an appeal to all those who wish we had a change of regime but have not made their opposition known. Get on a forum or write to the Echo, sign the petition do something. As we reach the endgame of this terrible episode for the club an extra push right now could tip the balance.

Hicks; Bumbling Fool or Malicious Manipulator

I must have been expecting too much. That interview with Sky could have been a turning point for Tom Hicks; instead I'm left wondering if he is in reality so insular in his thinking " England, that's not far from Europe. right?" that he can only see the LFC problem in US franchise terms. What kind of advisors does he have? Is he taking any notice of them. It seems that whenever he is interviewed, only a couple of questions in, ego takes over and the editor in his brain, which should intervene between brain and mouth, shuts down.

Take this recent interview with Sky. A one year extension for Rafa? Who was that supposed to impress? Certainly not Rafa who has a right to feel he has served his apprenticeship and deserves a contract long enough for him to fully implement his plans. The fans, who were the target audience of this PR exercise will also not feel a one year extension is a convincing enough endorsement of the manager a vast majority of them revere. 

Then there is the question of his desire to buy out George Gillett. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that although George Gillett does not want to sell to him he, Hicks, was going to make him, like it or not. What does that indicate about his style of management should future issues with club staff or Manager and players comes up?

Hold on though, he hasn't got the funds himself to buy out Gillett and the fact that he talks about other investors tells us no lending institution regards him as safe enough or having assets enough to lend him the cash for Gillett's shares.

Hicks says he wants to lead a group of investors who will relieve the club of all debt apart from the normal working capital needs. How would that work? Hicks is in debt for virtually all of his share of the recent refinancing package. These mystery investors though are going to back Hicks up with real money whilst  he retains a majority, according to Hicks. So in less than 18 months time when the current loans are due Hicks will stump up at least 51% of the then value of the club in real money or loans secured on his own assets. If Hicks can't do it now how will he achieve it then, is the credit crunch going to melt away and the shackles come off the lending institutions in that time scale OR is this all BS , pie in the sky, which can neither be proved or disproved  BUT is what the fans want to hear?

Rick Parry gets another load in the neck in public. To describe our overall performance as a club in the Parry years as a disaster is way ott. I use the term "overall performance' because as CEO that is what Parry is accountable for. The playing side reports to him just as the marketing and administrative wings of the club do. He has overseen the recruitment of Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez and we have won a fair few trophies, so there have been plusses. To put down our falling behind Man U solely down to the marketing side is naive. We are at least 3 major signings behind which is down to the funding situation not to Rick Parry's admin. failings. Rick Parry remember remains an employee, accountable to the Board of Directors and as such does not enjoy the same freedom as Hicks to defend his position in public. Hicks knows this hence the bully boy tactics.

On to Klinsmann. Classic diversionary strategy here. The real question to be answered and not put in the interview is, who offered Rafa's job to Klinsmann? No way was it done at the first meeting when the full Board was present. It can only have been done at the meeting in Hicks' place in California. We know it went that far because Klinsmann said so. Hicks doesn't want this question put because he knows it will negate all the cosying up he has been doing with Rafa. So Hicks keeps harping; "Gillett was a friend of Klinsmann's he set the meeting up" to deflect awkward issues.

The window dressing, the family in the background, the family's regret at not being able to come to Anfield for the half dozen times a season he can tear himself away from Dallas; all may be sincere but may be down to the PR boys or the Sky producer. Our fans regard football as essentially a man's game and a retreat from family or job concerns so this kind of embellishment is unlikely to wash. Against possible sincerity you could put the anecdotal evidence of some fans who post the gossip that as far as young Hicks and his mates are concerned, LFC is a drinking club with a football problem. Also the paparrazi did Hicks and son no favours in catching them looking bored stiff and stifling yawns at the Arsenal away CL leg.

Once again Hicks either wont answer questions on or is having none of the veto time limit. Some fans claiming legal knowledge say that there is no way a contract provision that allows Hicks to perpetually block Gillett is legally sustainable. So either, Hicks is bluffing and hoping that other financial needs will force Gillett to the bargaining table or, there is a specific time limitation on his pre-emption rights and he is upping the ante, lashing out at Parry and Gillett in an attempt to force the issue before time runs out.

All in all Hicks could have done much better with this interview. He could have come completely clean with the fans, pleaded for a second chance and laid out properly the substance behind his grandiose plans. He missed the opportunity not out of a bumbling accident prone inability to stick to his script, but because, in my opinion, his manifest unpopularity is hindering his attempts to convince the mystery investors to back him and all this new "man of the people" stuff is a callous attempt to get enough fans on side until he gets what he wants.

Remember, that throughout this interview the emphasis was not on how we are going to re-establish ourselves as the No 1 team in the country but on how he is going to put the club's debt situation and shirt-selling capability back on track. 

Not for me folks I'm not buying.

Speaking up for Rick Parry

We've all had a go at Rick Parry in the past, some of us have had good reason for anger when you think back to the ticket fiasco for the Athens final. I have joined in as well but to have a go is our privilege as fans, it keeps these guys honest. However, the stuff in that letter from Hicks and the abuse Parry has had in the media and on various fans forums and blogs seemed to me to be kicking the guy when he is down. I've had a good think back over my own criticisms of him and now think that he has not had a fair shake. Hicks exaggerated Parry's failing for his own reasons, he needs the fans on side so he thinks us suckers will swallow whatever he puts down.

The Klinsmann business and Rick Parry.

When this news came out the fans’ reaction was one of complete incredulity not about the fact that there was a succession plan being discussed but at the name of Klinsmann. How could anyone who had the least knowledge of this club or English football consider Klinsmann as a suitable replacement for Rafa Benitez? Rick Parry’s name never came up in fans protest posts on the subject nor was he quizzed on it because it was assumed, I’ve no doubt, that the CEO who effectively recruited both Gerard Houllier to succeed Roy Evans and subsequently Rafa Benitez to succeed Houllier could not have supported the appointment of such a complete rookie. Yet the credence given to Rick Parry by his detractors when accused by Tom Hicks of being one of the prime movers is - Nil! Hicks version and his assertion that he was merely a facilitator of the meetings - supported without challenge. 

The letter inviting Rick Parry to resign. 

If there is a documented case of Rick Parry ever having been caught lieing to the media or in private briefings I am unaware of it. Yet this unimpeached integrity counts for nothing when he states on camera and for the record that he learned of the contents from family members. Again the credence afforded him by some on fans forums and blogs- nil. Hicks or his son have been reported to have had a hand in getting the contents of the letter wide publicity but , it seems, the only thing written about is on the dubiousness of Parrys’ claim the he didn't see it until later.

So what,it might be said, Parry has only himself to blame, he was at the meetings with Klinsmann, hasn’t he screwed up and cost us the chance to be as big as Man U in marketing and merchandising and lost us transfer after transfer target. What, apart from assumption and gossip, is the evidence for this and has it been challenged in the interests of balance? Not that I can read.  

I believe there is another view that in fairness and the interests of balance should be put. Those are the only reasons I intercede on Rick Parry’s behalf as I am not a hypocrite and do believe he has not been a patch on Peter Robinson as the club’s main interface with the world outside the club and indeed with the fans. My antipathy however is based on what I know to be the case over issues like the ticketing fiasco and the lack of communication for long periods on the stadium.

So what could have been offered to counter the “exaggerated” case against him? On Klinsmann people close to Parry are said to protest that he was ordered to the meeting in New York. We don’t know what the agenda for the meeting was or whether it was formally set up and minuted. If you believe what is flying around on this more will come out eventually, who knows? My point is, it is entirely logical and indeed acceptable for a succession plan to be considered at that stage and by such a senior gathering. It is surely within the responsibilities of the CEO to have in place a contingency plan should a serving key official resign or need to be replaced. I heard no criticism of our CEO when the succession of Roy Evans by GH and GH by RB was smoothly handled, it being obvious the the succeeding manager had to have been approached while the incumbent was still at his desk. 

And what might have pushed succession planning to the fore? Results at the time of the Klinsmann approach were going well and hope remained that we could put in a challenge for the Premier League title. There was a vocal minority of fans anti-Rafa because of “rotation”, still is for that matter albeit less vocal recently, but there is no suggestion that this figured in either of the joint-owners’ or Parry’s thinking. So logically there are two issues which could have impacted: first the possibility existed of an early exit from the Champion’s League and second there were renewed rumours of an approach from Real Madrid to Rafa. In my view the first is a weak argument and would have been low in Parry’s evaluation of risk. The teams in the group were eminently beatable and Rafa’s track record in Europe gave grounds for optimism that we would eventually progress. The second point was though, worthy of consideration by Parry and he will have been conscious of the coincidence of the appearance of such stories at times when Rafa’s stock at the club needed a fillip. So a fair argument is possible that Rick Parry was acting prudently in making sure the contingency plans were up to date. 

How to put a case up to counter the transfer and marketing accusations is, I’ll concede, more problematical. All I can offer is a similar unsubstantiated opinion to the “Parry cost us Ronaldo, Malouda and Walcott” stuff taken as proven fact by some fans. Despite the funding problems of the late Moores era Gerard Houllier was generally able to obtain all of the players he targeted. Rick Parry was instrumental in obtaining the signatures of Diouf and Diao before those players took part to good effect in the World Cup that summer. Their subsequent failure and the setback the waste of valuable funds represented cannot be laid at Rick Parry’s door . Gerard Houllier must take responsibility for that summer of lost opportunity. The cumulative effect of those purchases and the clubs’ inability to raise additional revenues without recourse to the private wealth of David Moores could not have made Rick Parry’s job easy when it came to fulfilling promises made to Rafa Benitez when he was appointed (by Parry it should be remembered). 

Rafa Benitez did not openly express any dissatisfaction with the funding made available until the comments after the Athens defeat. Those comments were pointed clearly at the american co-owners and when they were repeated at the time of the mid-season transfer window, Tom Hicks reacted famously and Rafa lost the deals for a senior player plus two frees from South America that he had targeted. none of this was due to prevarication on Parry’s part. The money was not going to be made available nor was any preparatory work allowed until the co-owners flew in for their end of year visit. Subsequently Sissoko was sold, for silly money some say (kudos to Parry?) and Skrtl obtained with change from the Sissoko proceeds.

The Mascherano affair is still open to question. Rafa claimed all was well and terms had been agreed from as early as November but the deal was signed off much later after the official transfer window had closed. Was that down to sluggishness or lack of ability on Parry’s part? Or, was it due to the fact that the co-owners, having already fallen out with each other, would not sanction the fee, leaving Parry to perform financial gymnastics to sort out the portion of the overall fee payable to Joorabchian. I know what I believe and it does no discredit to Parry. 

So what are we left with to justify the charges against Parry. We signed Pennant instead of Malouda? We don’t sell enough shirts in the Far East? We’ve only opened one shop outside Liverpool? On the other hand we successfully transferred Torres and Babel in, deals arranged by Parry with the new owners only involved in signing the cheques. It doesn’t add up to grounds for instant dismissal in my view nor for the “he goes or I go” stance Rafa is said to be adopting. So those are my grounds for viewing the references to Parry as exaggerated. You can argue with my "case for the defense" but you can't argue with his right to have one. 

The Height of Insensitivity?

On the Anfieldroad.com blog a poster claiming to be a friend of Tom Hicks jnr has been up to high jinks for the last few weeks winding up the anti-Hicks posters on the blog. All good fun until yesterday. Most of the regular posters gave the ownership crap a rest yesterday out of respect but there were posts on the memorial service and the article by Jim Boardman on the 96 is the best you will ever read and should be printed out and put on every seat at the next Anfield match. 

But I digress. This joker calls himself Texas-dawg and he responds to most comments on the ownership threads so must read all the articles and the comments. He can't have missed the ones on Hillsborough and the time of the service. What does he do? At 2.54pm and 2.58pm yesterday on he comes with posts on Hicks. he keeps it up later in the day despite one regular pulling up him for posting.

Now as this guy has reveled in his connection with the Hicks crew you could wonder whether he runs his posts and the stuff he reads on the blog by young Hicks. I don't know but would give Hicks the benefit of any doubt. He may be a stone cold businessman but nothing he has done would tell you he would stoop so low as this so-called fellow Texan. 

Some questions need to be asked because although this day might mean zilch to some others it does mean something to us. Now we've got no right to impose respect on people not connected with our club but hey there have been posts of sympathy on the Man U and Everton sites too, for which our respect by the way, so is it too much to expect this from this Texas-dawg. 

 

Bizarro World

Remember the old Superman comics when he went into a parallel universe? That's how I feel reading the new rash of posts on various sites saying perhaps we have to settle with Hicks. None of them actually makes a case for Hicks. What they do is show how Parry Moores and Gillett are the real villains and DIC? Well what do we know about them? They might borrow they might not keep Rafa, the sheikh might not be a real fan etc. Its like because they have not given assurances on these matters they must be planning the worst. Weird logic or what?

It's an altered reality. In this “reality” to blow the whistle is more heinous than the lies and wrongdoing being exposed. Where David Moores and Rick Parry after months of dignified silence finally speak. Moores in exasperation at the circus he sees playing itself out daily and Parry in the face of appalling public humiliation yet on some sites their deciding to hit back in kind is ridiculed and condemned as hypocrisy over the “Liverpool Way”.  

Even today from the Echo we get more reinvention of history. Remember the “Gillett is the bigger villain campaign” by the Hicks crew, weren’t we assured that the Klinsmann business was down to Gillett already knowing him and that Tom was just along for the ride? Now we find that Hicks was the one to hold the in depth one-on-one session with Klinsmann at his home and further that he has been seeking Klinsmanns’ input on LFC team issues since. Yet on the blogs the emphasis is on who let the cat out of the bag and why would they do that? Not on the lies and backstabbing nature of the “lesser of two evils”. And all this is a way of doing business that we must resign ourselves to? Why? because a case is made to prove the others are Hitler we should settle for Mussolini because he makes the trains run on time? As I said an altered reality!

Another Day, Another Leak, Another Crisis

If it was happening at any other club we would be in fits laughing. But it is our club that is providing entertainment for our rivals on a daily basis. as hard as Rafa strives to get something worthwhile out of the season so the clowns above him work just as hard to undermine all he achieves.

This current revisit of the Klinsmann business seems a simple enough matter of Hicks retaliating for Parry's defiance in going into work and garnering support from both Gillett and Moores. The leak of the fact that Parry attended the talks with Klinsmann could only hurt Parry in the eyes of the fans and Rafa. So to me it is a no brainer as to where it came from. As the CEO at the time Parry would have been told to attend the meeting. To refuse to do so would have cost him his job. How do we know it wasn't Parry or someone close to him who leaked news of the approach to Klinsmann to Rafa back in November when the whole circus kicked off. Think about it, Rafa found out that Klinsmann had been tapped up up but there was no mention of Parry. The source of the leak either did not know of Parry's involvement or was protecting Parry and simply wanted to warn Rafa of what the two owners were up to behind his back.

This is a real crisis for the club and a time when all fans need to make there support for the manager and the squad known. regretably we still have posters complaining that time is spent "moaning" about the mess these americans have gotten us into and why don't we concentrate on the team etc. Its like, your only supposed to use one brain cell at a time and can't do both. At the Man U match I was sat in the main stand and at half time the guys around me were discussing then ownership mess. One guy sat there reading his paper until just before the second half kicked off and said "You people don't have any right to go on about our owners, the club belongs to them end of. Anyway nothing can happen without the FA's approval so what are you worried about" We were gobsmacked. 

These people are like the idiots who never vote in a general election but moan like f*ck when the country goes down the pan. Of course there are fans who just want to go to the match on Saturday then go home and forget about football until next week but when posters come on sites trying to stop more involved or concerned fans expressing their concerns then that only helps the likes of Hicks who only wants yes men around him at the club and sucker fans who pay any price to watch the match in a shiny new stadium.

Liverpool 3 Blackburn 1

A comfortable win and Rafa will be pleased that Blackburn presented such a feeble challenge after Tuesday's exertions. Another fine 90 minutes from Skrtl and it is a tribute to him that Jamie Carragher now seems to have total confidence in him. Arbeloa and Aurelio are Rafa's preferred choice when we need to add an extra attacking dimension. Stevie and Torres are the form attacking duo in the Premier League just now and today was a gilt-edged show from them especially in the second half.

We seem to have suddenly discovered how to take set pieces. We threatened from all of the ones awarded to us but maybe that was down to the poor opposition. Babel still cannot get the trip which is odd in an athlete his age. Whatever, it was the right substitution at the right time and that is another departure from Rafa's norm, earlier in the season he would have waited another 10 minutes or so. Benayoun played well in the time he was on and as usual Kuyt more than earned his corn. 

Almost a training game really, the drama was introduced by the referee. How many times have we seen a ref bottle his first big decision and have problems from then on. I had to laugh at the commentator at half time talking about a disallowed goal - the flag was up, the whistle had gone and reina simply allowed the shot to pass him!

Management for Dummies, by T. O. Hicks. Chapter 4: Performance Appraisal

Conventional management wisdom has it that a performance review of a CEO should be carried out at Board level in private with the employee (CEO) present to discuss his/her performance against benchmarks, targets and competencies. I don't think this gets the job done and I will demonstrate the method I advocate by means of a case study:

Liverpool Football Club

Background: The CEO was hampering club progress so needed to be canned asap.

Form of Appraisal: Issue a letter affording the CEO the opportunity to resign.

Venue: No need for a formal meeting. Leak the letter to the media so that it's terms are in the public domain before the individual can react.

Performance against Benchmarks: As detailed in the letter 

Performance against targets:        ditto

Competencies: Ignore as you wouldn't be getting rid if he/she had any

Comments by jobholder:     of no particular relevance

Keep Your Eyes on the Ball not the Trouble in the Crowd

There is one issue preventing our club moving on from the current mess, Hicks won't sell. We need to focus on making it impossible for him to maintain that position. Recrimination about Parry, Moores and the rest of it are merely a sideshow. Gillett wants to sell but not to Hicks and by thwarting Hicks he is acting as an ally. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" never was more apt than in this situation.

I guess that the sustained enmity of the majority of fans against Hicks is a factor in his inability to convince anyone to help him raise funds to offer to buy out Gillett. Proof of that lies in the obvious attempts of his useless PR people in infiltrating the various websites with pro-Hicks posts. This has backfired spectacularly and there are signs of desperation, as the days count down, in Hicks lashing out at Parry. The counter-coup is gathering strength and Hicks knows he is losing his grip on our club.

Those fans tiring of the whole business and wishing it would settle down should recall what this week means to us. What more contempt could be shown for our club, our history and our fans than to plunge the club into more controversy at the very time we wanted emphasis to be on our fallen fellow fans and their grieving families. 

Nineteenth Hillsborough memorial

Sobering to think that this was 19 years ago and yet those heartrending scenes are still fresh in the memory. Turbulent times right now for our club pale into insignificance at the scale of the loss of loved ones in such circumstances. In being at one with those grieving families I also remember the support and sympathies of those outside of and even of rival clubs, Evertonians in particular. The emotional occasion at Anfield this season when Z-cars theme was played and Rafa’s embrace of another grieving mother also attest to the spirit these tragedies should reinforce in us. RIP YNWA

Moores Hits the Right Notes

The interview in the Echo today was fascinating in that David Moores came down firmly on the side of both Rick Parry and Rafa whilst soundly castigating both the warring owners. It could be asked why he waited until his main ally in the club became embroiled in the morass before speaking out after all the fans have been suffering this circus since the Rafa/Klinsmann business came out last year.

I would also argue that to bleat about the old "Liverpool Way" is a bit pointless after months of all sides using the media to influence events. Surely David Moores isn't claiming it would have been better if all this nonsense had been kept behind closed doors. None of it would ever have happened had a proper due diligence been done on hicks and Gillett. According to Doug Ellis it only took him a phone call and a quick google search to establish that Gillett didn't have the finances for Villa. It appals me that Moores can say even now he knew little about Hicks even whilst handing the club he loves over to him. Did he take Gillett's word on Hicks? Was that the "Liverpool Way" to hand over our club to strangers?

Having had my moan I do say that with this frank interview David Moores is coming in from the cold. He covers the main issues openly yet behind his words I get the message, these two have to go asap and we should worry about who comes in once they are on the way out of the door. It is obvious to me from the way the order of battle is shaping up that most people at the club are desperate to see the back of both of them but that Hicks in particular has shocked them with his plans to bleed the club dry.

 

Time to put the Holy Trinity first Mr Moores

David Moores has agreed to talk to the Liverpool Echo in an interview to be published tomorrow. This is the opportunity fans have waited for and David Moores owes it to us to be frank and comprehensive in his answers to the questions put to him. The Echo need to be open and tell their readers whether any preconditions were imposed by David Moores in agreeing to talk. 

For David Moores it is a chance to put the record straight on so many issues and he knows our mettle, if he is straightforward he can regain a lot of respect. We want the facts as he sees them we don't seek to have him dress anything up in diplomatic doubletalk or evasive answers. He holds the chairmanship and this period of his tenure has been disastrous with only the ability of our manager and the efforts of our players have kept all the nonsensical behaviour of our owners from adversely affecting results.

Rick has grown a big pair

I watched the brief interview with Rick Parry this morning on SSN and I've got to say I was moved. I am going to start here with an apology to him for any post I have made which contained personal insinuation or attack. I can't recall having done so but if I have I am sorry. 

I stick to my opinion that Rick Parry has been a very poor CEO of our club and there is enough evidence (albeit anecdotal) of big signings missed, marketing potential unrealised etc, etc. to warrant him losing that job. BUT I admire Rick Parry the Liverpool fan which he undoubtedly is. It took a lot of bottle to go into work this morning in that calm frame of mind given that he had been told of the Hicks letter by his family who had seen it on the TV news.

At owner level George Gillett has today come out in support of Parry and also restated the Board of Directors voting position. (source; Daily Post article this morning)

It is also an indication that Rick Parry believes he has widespread support within the club as if not he would find it impossible to do his job under the cloud of  uncertainty. I hope we now hear from David Moores on this whole mess. Come on David it is time for good men to stand up and be counted.

Hicks asks Parry to do one

I wonder if the timing of this is due to the pressure coming from the need for substantial reinvestment in the team this summer. Rafa has stirred the pot in precisely the same terms as he did before christmas (One senior signing and two frees is what he lined up then but was slapped down by Hicks). This time Hicks knows he won’t be able to thwart Rafa so publicly. The money isn’t lying around in the club coffers and he famously doesn’t put his hand in his own pocket so more borrowing might be needed. Who would get in the way of more debt being loaded on the club? Rick Parry for one. Is David Moores the next in line for a letter from Hicks suggesting he might like to resign?

A day of developments

Hicks asks Parry to resign - Parry sticking to his guns - DIC decide to stand off until the warring parties sort themselves out one way or another and I get the following eMail from Rogan Taylor at ShareliverpoolFC.

Dear friend,

Work is continuing on our quest to bring fan ownership of Liverpool FC, and I wanted to give you a quick update, as well as ask for your help.

Our formal proposal to enable ShareLiverpoolFC to be an investment vehicle to enable us to bid for the club is on the verge of approval by the Financial Service Authority (FSA). This is a complex, yet necessary step in the practical requirements needed, and we thank our specialist lawyers, Cobbetts, for their work on our behalf.

The heart and soul of Liverpool FC rests in L4, but Liverpool FC would not be the global force it is today without the support we have attracted all over the world. So we continue to take the concept of the fans owning the club to our international fan-base around the world. Members of the ShareLiverpoolFC steering group have been meeting with key contacts from Norway, the US, Republic of Ireland and elsewhere, and I myself have just returned from Japan, where I was able to promote the concept on Japanese national TV and radio.

In the UK, we continue to attract national and local media coverage, though we need to keep our message in people's minds as the saga of Hicks and Gillett's ownership rumbles on, and DIC await in the wings. Only fan ownership can bring the club management run in the interests of the supporters and the community.

This is where you can come in. We'd like you to get on the websites and forums and talk about ShareLiverpoolFC, and the concept of fan ownership. Where people are discussing the ownership of the club on phone-ins, please get on the phone and talk about it.

We're serious about this project - that's why we're taking the time to get it done properly. You can help us keep the momentum going. Tell your friends, and get involved - let's do this together.

Best wishes

Rogan Taylor,

On behalf of the Share Liverpool Steering Group
www.shareliverpoolfc.com

RICK

This is my cyber pet. It is neither fish nor fowl, is good for absolutely nothing and changes colour according to who it wants to please next. I call it RICK.

The US paradigm

Reading posts on various fora from US based fans it seems to me that there is a basic difference in looking at acceptable business norms. How otherwise would posters who are obviously genuine supporters of the club and are concerned at its well being seemingly have difficulty understanding the implacable opposition of most of us over here to what Hicks represents.

Is it that in the US version of the loosely regulated free enterprise system entrepreneurs like Hicks are admired precisely for their freebooting cavalier approach. An oil analogy seems apt: for every gusher you have to sink 20 dry wells. The buy low sell high mentality is prevalent and the victims have themselves to blame for selling on the cheap. Institutions are transient for the most part anyway. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, you will get my drift.

In Europe probably and the UK definitely a different view is taken of the “soul” of an institution like LFC and we are more risk averse when it comes to threats facing our clubs.

There is also the custodianship versus proprietary ownership issue dividing us. We baulk at the “it’s my property I’ll do what I like with it, build what I like on it” approach. Are there not examples of US sports franchise owners simply upping sticks and moving the franchise, lock stock and barrel to another city or even state. We regard the owners of the shares, the manager and even the current squad as being of the moment, here for the time being, whereas the “Club” consists of timeless elements like the historic achievements, those managers and players who have achieved “legend” status and most important the fanbase.

CL. Liverpool 4 Arsenal 2

Comparisons are being made of last night’s match with the legendary St Etienne game and for extremes of emotion it is a fair comparison. Rafa’s use of Babel last night was inspired. He has faded badly early in the second half of the games he has started and has looked a fish out of water sometimes out wide. Rafa solved both these problems by using him as an impact sub and he also found himself in his favoured striker position for his goal. I felt both Babel’s and the goal Walcott assisted were down to the fatigue of the opposing players and not to any individual brilliance.Our back four were the unsung heroes especially in the first half when Arsenal were rampant. Skrtel had another blinding game, the experience of both Jamie and Sami was crucial and Aurelio had his best game in a red shirt. On the other hand we played the first 30 minutes without a mid-field. Gerrard and Alonso were off the pace and the extra pressure on Mascherano told. Thankfully the coincidence of Sami’s goal and Arsenal’s frenetic pace dropping allowed the midfield to regather.Both sets of players were shattered at the end testifying to the tension they must have suffered in the build up to the game. No yellow cards for us and I wonder if our midfielders were concentrating on this in those first 30 mins. The game was a wonderful ad for the sport not just the drama and the goals but the spirit it was played in.  

Incident in the Sandon - now that the spit has dried!

We now have eye-witness reports and statements from Hicks jnr and the Sandon management so we know that the initial picture painted by The Sunday Times and posters on these boards of Hicks jnr running from the pub in a hail of spit and ale was OTT. Someone spat in his direction, someone else threw the contents of his glass at the departing Hicks party, who were not fleeing but leaving normally to attend another appointment.

Over the weekend, before the truth came out there were posters on here doubting the seriousness of the incident, others questioned Hicks jnrs’ motives in going there. A minority of wilder fans thought he got off lightly.

The overwhelming majority of the response,though was of the sanctimonious, holier than thou kind, attacking other posters who did not outrightly condemn the reds in the pub for not letting Hicks jnr enjoy a quiet drink with his minders and ‘fellow fans”. We were told we should hang our heads in shame - we were dragging our club and the city through the mud , the club should identify them and ban them, blah blah blah... ... ...

Liverpool Football Club’s fanbase has within it representatives of every creed, nationality, social and ethnic group. We also have bigots and xenophobes of every stripe and all of the criminal classes from murderers to pickpockets, BUT and it is big but, so does every other Major football club in the land and every city, town, village and hamlet. The behaviour of the two cretins who showed violence towards Hicks jnr last Saturday is not defined by their accents, nor by the club they support. It is defined by their actions end of. If the government, local authorities and police forces of the country can’t control such mindless idiots nor limit the bully culture we live under, why should our football club have to do it?

If all 40,000 of us who attend the match were to walk on our knees from Anfield to the cathedral steps singing mea culpa and wringing our hands in shame, it would not affect the typecasted image we have. I feel for the members of the scouse diaspora who have to live with the shell suit jokes and all sorts of criticism when these incidents happen. The answer is not to come on these boards half cock attacking fellow supporters who are only suggesting calm thinking and a sense of proportion. The answer is to stand up : our club is going through difficult times at the moment but that is only temporary - our class however is permanent so stand up for your club. Similarly, our city has, for once in a long time, more positives going for it than negatives so stand up for your city.

Unfortunately such incidents will happen from time to time, but ashamed, not me, I didn’t do it, I abhor violence of any kind and to the extent that it is condusive to my teeth remaining in my mouth I would remonstrate with anyone acting like those two. Hicks had no right to expect a quiet dialogue with fans in that particular pub on that particular day in the tense circumstances that prevailed. The least he could have expected was to be asked some searching and pointed questions about his family’s involvement with the club, he is a director his own right after all, and be left in no doubt as to the strength of feeling there is on the issue. The violence he received was unacceptable.

Next time I hope we allow the dust to settle and the facts to be established before turning on fellow fans.

Can the Anfield crowd suss out a result in advance?

I think it was in the 60s the use of the Think Tank as a means of foretelling events or trends was instigated. Was it in Boston? The Hudson Institute and Gulbenkian comes to mind. No matter, the idea was to get together a number of experts in a particular field of study and have them deliberate in an intense discussion session session behind closed doors and try and agree what would be the most likely future developments in their field of study.

I remember that there were remarkable results reported when they had the group try to answer questions about the past. For instance they might have been asked to guess at the population of Egypt in the year 1066. Despite having only their brains to call on , no reference materials being within reach, they scored remarkably well, way beyond what would have been expected via probability theory! So they were getting within 90-95% every time so they would then move on to obscure questions about the present again with results beyond belief. So, the theory went, why could they not attempt to predict future events and developments?

Anyway, enough of the background, my point is that at Anfield on any matchday is gathered the most educated group in the world in terms both of football in general and Liverpool Football Club in particular. Is it feasible that such an immense aggregation of brainpower can take into account the various factors at play and collectively guess the outcome? Further does this explain the weird changes in atmosphere and home crowd mood from game to game?

Think about it, the great Champion’s League victories have been electric from before the kick-off. In Istanbul there was a feeling at half-time that all was not lost yet the crowd should have been despondent. Other games I can remember the atmosphere was dead from kick-off to final whistle and we got a performance to match it. The recent Derby match was a case in point. We did not get the second goal but there was none of the electric tension experienced at the Villa home game when you could feel the crowds expectancy that Villa would equalise and possibly win. So what comes first? Does the celebrated 12th man set the tone for the 11 players, when they come out of the tunnel, having already sussed out the result?

First Post

I have started this blog out of frustration with the situation on the various other sites dedicated to LFC. Many of them are infested with windup merchants and fans of other clubs bored with lack of action on their own sites or simply jealous of our achievements. Some are subject to the whim of moderators who resent views which are opposed to theirs. This can get to the stage where the forum becomes less of an interchange of fan views and opinions and more of a platform dedicated to a single strand of thought. I figured it would be better to commit my input to a separate blog which can be taken or left as the reader sees fit.