Liverpool Set for SHOCK £65m Pair Exit as Things Take a Turn

[Peter R]

http://bleacherreport.com/tb/b5ZN1


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Liverpool Set for SHOCK £65m Pair Exit as Things Take a Turn for the Worst at Anfield

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114 comments by Steven Constable on September 20th, 2010
Anfield co-owner wants to heap yet more misery on the club he has helped to bring to the brink of ruin.
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Reina & Torres Set To Leave Liverpool As Tom Hicks Plots £280 Million Buyout Of George Gillett’s Shares But No Funding Of New Signings Or Stadium – Report
The power struggle at Liverpool is set to account for Pepe Reina and Fernando Torres, a report claims.
In a move that will certainly add to the despair among Liverpool fans, Tom Hicks is set to gain sole control of the Anfield club and thus delay its sale by two more years, possibly triggering the departures of key players Pepe Reina and Fernando Torres.
Despite Liverpool fans’ contempt towards him, Tom Hicks is on the verge of striking a £280 million deal with the Blackstone/GSO Group to buy out partner George Gillett.
Hicks told the Reds’ board that the refinancing agreement will be signed by October 1, a move that will give the American until 2012 to find a buyer.
And in a detail that will deeply concern the club’s fans, the GSO deal does not include any cash injection for transfer deals or plans to build a new stadium.
Hicks delivered the news in a three-hour board meeting in London on Wednesday. (Goal.com)

This is not good news for Liverpool supporters at all. If this story is accurate the Merseyside club could be heading for a bigger fall than the American owners have already taken them on. Tom Hicks seems intent on sticking around and even though it is blatantly obvious that he has helped heap a ton of debt onto the Anfield club he still has wants to inflict yet more misery on the club.
It had been hoped that on October 6th the Royal Bank of Scotland would take the club off Hicks and his partner in crime, George Gillett, as a result of non payment of interest on sizeable loans but now it appears the Texan has no intention of leaving quietly.
The effect of selling Spanish pair Fernando Torres and Pepe Reina would clearly be disastrous but Hicks is clealrly looking at a quick financial windfall as opposed to the bigger picture and it is clear now that the next month will be one of the most important in the club’s rich history.

[Peter R]

By 2012 the team will have been relegated (at this rate) and the value of the brand will have been severely impaired.

[Sir X]

Rafa is more than genius .....man jump ship before the psycho took over, when this man is done with the club weeping , moaning and gnashing of teeth will be like a normal thing a daily ritual drilled into our pshyche.

How much pain can you bare , well after this you will know pain.

[Peter R]

I'm in a very negative mood about this season so far...now these jokers effing around just to enrich themselves even more at whose expense? I wonder if Hicks an Gillette can say "Leeds United"...

[Sir X]

Liverpool must turn to O'Neill......Sack Roy NOW !
Fri Sep 24 08:50AM

Martin O'Neill's dad once said that his son should be willing to down tools and walk to Glasgow if he got the chance to manage Celtic. The venerable Northern Irishman may not be willing to swim across the Mersey to wash up at Anfield, but there is apparently a ferry that will get him there.
If club captain Steven Gerrard is declaring publicly before the end of September that the best Liverpool can manage is a challenge to reach the top four, then there is something far, far wrong. Not that the man in the street is unaware of the depressing issues misting over Anfield when such a privileged club have not won their domestic league in over two decades.

If Liverpool can find a new owner to rid the club of the rotting Tom Hicks and George Gillett partnership, two decidedly dumb, classless Americans fixated by cash, and bring O'Neill in from the cold as manager, then Liverpool can yet rescue some meaning from a season that began unravelling long before they were emptied out of the Carling Cup by Northampton Town.

The accepted wisdom is that it is easier to find a job when you are in a job, but the Premier League obeys no such laws of logic. In the brutal business of professional football management, it can be easier to find a job when you are out of a job. If you are an unemployed O'Neill, it seems like you have never had it so good.

"I'm very sad about the Villa manager departing because Martin O'Neill did a fantastic job, so I wonder what they're going to do next," said the Prime Minister and Villa fan David Cameron as he reflected upon a prime manager's decision to leave Villa Park last month.

After a week in which Everton, Liverpool and Manchester City were all bundled out of the Carling Cup early doors, Early Doors wonders what O'Neill is making of it all? More to the point, could O'Neill have chosen a better time to be out of work?

O'Neill left Villa after growing frustrated by the club's American owner Randy Lerner and his apparent unwillingness to support future ambitions in the transfer market.

Not that O'Neill would delight at a fellow man's misfortune, but Liverpool's defeat on penalties to Northampton has not exactly enhanced Roy Hodgson's prospects of keeping his post.

O'Neill once studied criminal law before realising he was a good enough player to win two European Cups under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest. He would find no case for the defence at Anfield.

If a new buyer emerges to wrench the club away from its American duopoly, Hodgson will surely be done for.

Not that ED does not admire Hodgson, but he is the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, to quote some ham actor out of Die Hard 2. Hodgson is a realistic candidate to replace Fabio Capello when he moves aside as England manager. O'Neill is the right man to replace Hodgson now.

O'Neill is the Liverpool manager in waiting, and bookies appear to agree with ED. He was this morning installed as the 5/2 favourite to be offered the post before the end of the season. Such an appointment will only happen if there is a change in ownership.

O'Neill is unlikely to be overly keen to work under another almost illegitimate American owner after Rafael Benitez recently described working for Gillett and Hicks as an endurance test. "The last year at Liverpool... I had directors who knew nothing about football, and you couldn't talk about football with them," said the Internazionale coach.

Of all the candidates out of work in the world game, O'Neill's name must feature on a wish list of any ambitious boardroom, but O'Neill is the perfect fit for Liverpool.

He is surely the outstanding candidate for a return to the Premier League, but there are not too many clubs who could tempt him. Casting a glance at the morning odds on who is ripe for the chop, there are not too many jobs out there that would placate O'Neill.

Roberto Martinez is a 2/1 favourite to be sacked by Wigan Athletic with West Ham's Avram Grant priced at 3/1 and Roberto Mancini, who seems to constantly work on the edge of a precipice, a 9/2 shot at City.

He would get the funds at City, but would he want to dance with the devil and work for whimsical Arab owners at Manchester City after their treatment of Mark Hughes and flimsy nature in disposing of managers?

You probably don't need reminding, but O'Neill won the Conference with Wycombe Wanderers, two League Cups with Leicester City, seven trophies at Celtic including an unfortunate runners-up place against Jose Mourinho's Porto in the 2003 UEFA Cup final before leading Villa to their first major final in a decade when they narrowly lost the League Cup to Manchester United last season.

ED loved attending O'Neill's pressers at Celtic Park where he mastered the art of saying a lot while saying very little. He is a dream manager in this era of spin and public relations.

After running Celtic and Villa, Liverpool are the only club where O'Neill could take a step up. There is no other club with greater tradition, history and a hunger for renewed glory than Liverpool.

O'Neill may be the favoured longer term option to replace Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford, but Liverpool could yet beat them to the punch. What a result that would be over their old foes. O'Neill would be an inspirational manager for Liverpool with the right chairman and the right backing.

Interestingly enough, O'Neill is also among the leading candidates to be wheeled in as a new pundit on the BBC's Match of the Day programme. Maybe that will be his next port of call until Capello leaves England, or maybe not. Something suggests the club game remains his natural domain. He has unfinished business with the Premier League

When you are wanting to put out a wildfire, you don't turn up with a hosepipe. For Liverpool, O'Neill is Red Adair.

It is time for change, it is time for O'Neill.

[Paul Marin]

This report is bogus in that Blackstone have already said they aren't going to back Hicks.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/20...verpool-talks/

Very sad times...let's hope the bank is kind to the fans.