What if the Premier league had refused G&H takeover of Pool?
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Here to win! NESV complete £300m Liverpool takeover and promise to make them kings of Europe
We are here to win.Liverpool's new owner John W Henry will travel to Merseyside to meet manager Roy Hodgson and his players on Saturday and tell them: I’m here to win the Premier League.
Another day of twists and high drama in the battle for Liverpool ownership ended at 4.30pm on Friday when Henry’s American company New England Sports Ventures paid the £300million needed to wrestle control from the discredited Texan duo of Tom Hicks and George Gillett.
On Friday night Henry immediately convened an emergency board meeting in the London offices of Liverpool’s solicitors Slaughter & May to discuss the way forward for a club who are third from the bottom of the Barclays Premier League ahead of Sunday's Merseyside derby at Everton.
It is understood Henry will head to Liverpool’s training ground, where he is expected to address the club’s players this morning and meet manager Hodgson, who earlier in the day pleaded publicly for time to turn his team’s season around.
Henry talked of his new acquisition to the media gathered outside Slaughter & May, adding: ‘We have a history of winning and we will do whatever it takes. I am proud and humbled to be here and we have a lot of work to do.
‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to have finally done this deal. I have no idea about how much the deal is worth as at the moment I can hardly tell you what day it is.’
After a day that saw a final, desperate bid from Hicks and Gillett to thwart the deal fail, Liverpool’s creditors, the Royal Bank of Scotland, signalled they had received the £237m owed to them late in the afternoon.
Henry spoke only briefly to say that he won’t be present at Sunday's derby game — preferring to attend a home game at Anfield first — and stopped short of making any firm promises about how much he will spend on players or when he will commit the club to a new stadium.
He added: ‘It is too early to say what we are going to do. We are not here with a lot to say but we will be doing a lot of listening. We have a lot to learn but our actions will speak for themselves.’
Henry confirmed he had not borrowed to complete the deal. He was flanked by chairman Martin Broughton and chief executive Christian Purslow, who between them saw off the challenges of Hicks and Gillett in the courts this week. Broughton will remain as chairman in the short term but, having been appointed by RBS merely to arrange a sale, it is thought unlikely the chairman of British Airways will be asked to extend his involvement with the club.
He was cheered by Liverpool fans in London on Friday, and said: ‘Every football fan knows that the most nerve-wracking way of winning a match is by penalties. But the important thing is we have won and we have got the right result. I will stay on as chairman in a transitional role as the new owner decides how he wants to run the club.’
Earlier in the day, manager Hodgson was asked questions about his future as he looks to beat Everton and bring relief to a side who have won once in the Premier League this season.
He said: ‘It’s a sad day for everything if, after a bad start of six or seven games, people think the solution is to find someone else with a magic wand. We all know a magic wand solution doesn’t exist.
‘I would be very disappointed if, after such a short time to do the job, people decided they wanted to get someone else in. I know I can turn the situation around. But I will have to be given support and I will have to be given the patience to do it.
'I have a three-year contract. If someone wants to get rid of me, presumably they would have to pay it up.’
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win EPL and kings of Europe ???????
time to start looking for next buyer lah....................and make sure it's an Arab raghead this time................
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liverpoo is getting more n more stupid!!!! this john henry guy is not as rich as poo fans might think.its gona get worst for poo.
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needs time to tell........
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This John W Henry is world player of the year from another planet?
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he cant be serious. winning the premiership now requires a lot of money.
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Talk nia... No need money one. But Typical American style.
Talk big big , later fall jialat jialat.
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Originally posted by CannyOng:
Talk nia... No need money one. But Typical American style.
Talk big big , later fall jialat jialat.
that suit liverpool so perfectly.liverpoo is a club that only talk big,but lose damn bloody jialat jialat.every year for 30 years,liverpool fans, players n stinking legends say liverpoo will surely win the league.look where liverpoo now??relegation candidate!!! -
i believe they'll once a better offer comes in. æ— æœ¬ç”Ÿæ„�ï¼�ï¼�
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you'll never know. Condemn on John Henry when he just completed the take over is ridiculous. And what happens if he really did it? I mean come on, give him and Roy Hodgson some time (like a season or two) before anyone starts saying, "same old typical owners that will fail for sure..." blah blah blah etc. comments.
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England? KING of EUROPE? ANYONE SAW THE WORLD CUP? the "all talk loser action" losers who got THRASHED by germany, an unknown country? england, the founder of football as it is hasnt won the world cup ONCE. as it is, england's version of football is the most violent, foul-mouth and internationally frowned upon version. man, i detest english football...u read the news abt the guy who broke a newcastle footballer's leg in a crushing tackle but got off scot ffree cos the engllish referee said it was legal and even proper to do such a thing? the only thing good abt english football is its money. beneath all that so-called flashy 'footballers'(none of them even made it to world recognition in the international stage) and merchandising lies a lousy, untalented nation hidden beneath the fame it accumulated. did it win the european championships? no. look at statistics. its time we stop wasting our money on mere mud fights.
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paragraphs.......paragraphs pls.
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Originally posted by turbo_drift:
you'll never know. Condemn on John Henry when he just completed the take over is ridiculous. And what happens if he really did it? I mean come on, give him and Roy Hodgson some time (like a season or two) before anyone starts saying, "same old typical owners that will fail for sure..." blah blah blah etc. comments.
We condemm becos he never even look at the reality and remain firm on ground.To get things done, need time and careful planning. This kind of big cannon talk usually will backfired and only make yrself looks bad.
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Originally posted by Casopia-maplesea:
England? KING of EUROPE? ANYONE SAW THE WORLD CUP? the "all talk loser action" losers who got THRASHED by germany, an unknown country? england, the founder of football as it is hasnt won the world cup ONCE.
England was 1 time world cup winner.
Germany won more world cup than England, so regarding the "unknown country"....
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It's not so easy to spot cowboys in the wild north-west
"Agent Hicks and Gillett Mission Accomplished"
By Martin Samuel
Change? What change: Everton fans taunt Liverpool players over the club's ownership trials
Had George Gillett and Tom Hicks Takeover not been allowed...
Demonstrations in the streets around Anfield, a storm of cyber-protests and phone-in fury.
A YouTube video in which obstructing such a noble business venture...
Richard Scudamore would have been vilified, accused of standing in the way of progress, of favouring Manchester United and Chelsea, of needlessly obstructing the next stage in the evolution of Liverpool Football Club...
So what would have happened if the Premier League had done as asked, with all that lovely hindsight, and stopped Tom Hicks and George Gillett buying Liverpool?
Pandemonium, that is what.
Rancour. Demonstrations in the streets around Anfield, a storm of cyber-protests and phone-in fury.
Maybe a YouTube video in which obstructing such a noble business venture would be compared to seeing family members sexually assaulted, maybe with your eyes fixed open like Alex in A Clockwork Orange.
Do not kid yourselves that Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chief executive, or his pernickety legal team would have been held up as heroes.
They would have been vilified, accused of standing in the way of progress, of favouring Manchester United and Chelsea, of needlessly obstructing the next stage in the evolution of Liverpool Football Club.
There are a lot of what Americans call wiseacres around now, talking as if all true Kopites saw through Hicks and Gillett’s bluster from the start, but were betrayed by the inertia of the authorities.
They, presumably, were not the ones with the star-spangled banners, chanting ‘USA, USA’ on the day the damn Yankees rode into town.
The High Court heard that the former owners made impossible promises. Yet the Premier League were reliant on the same bold pronouncements as the club and its fans.
Early intervention: George Gillett (left) and Tom Hicks were hailed as saviours when they arrived, but what if the Premier league had refused their takeover bid?
Hindsight: Liverpool fans protest outside the High Court - yet they welcomed Hicks and Gillette with open arms
‘A great step forward,’ said former chairman David Moores.
‘Great for Liverpool, our supporters and shareholders,’ proclaimed former chief executive Rick Parry.
‘We have purchased the club with no debt on the club,’ announced Gillett.
His partner, Hicks, meanwhile, was owner of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise when they won the American League West Division in 1998 and 1999 and made Alex Rodriguez the highest paid player in the game.
So what were the Premier League to do? They had no more information other than what was placed in front of them by the previous board and the new owners.
What would their reason be for blocking the takeover? A feeling in their water? Feminine intuition? Bad mojo? A hunch?
New England Sports Ventures are full of promises now. John Henry, the new owner, spoke poetically of rising at dawn to catch the light on a deserted Anfield and the locals lapped it up.
Again, he seemed genuine enough.
Are you new here? Liverpool's new owners (left-right) John W. Henry, Joe Januszewski and Thomas Werner speak with manager Roy Hodgson
He also talked more practically of investment and redevelopment and the supporters are foursquare behind both. Yet who knows what the future holds?
The supporters of West Ham United were once very excited about their Icelandic owners; Alexandre Gaydamak was considered a dream come true at Portsmouth.
Now imagine if the Premier League refused to take John Henry’s statements at face value and intervened in the NESV takeover.
Imagine if they placed a fresh raft of stipulations on the deal to ensure no repeat of the Hicks-Gillett fiasco.
Suppose they said that, to protect the interests of clubs and their supporters, all takeovers from here could not be made with borrowed capital, minimising the risk of leverage in the future.
And imagine if Henry studied this red tape with mounting horror, turned tail and fled?
Would Scudamore be saluted for his rigorous stance?
Would Liverpool supporters concede that nothing can be guaranteed, that NESV look to be going increasingly cold on building a new stadium and that a feature of their ownership of the Boston Red Sox has been a steep rise in ticket prices?
Would they buffalo.
Liverpool fans would be up in arms. There is the contradiction: everyone wants the Premier League to be football’s policeman, but only once a crime is committed.
Now we know Hicks and Gillett are charlatans, the cry is that they should have been stopped.
At the time, however, all Liverpool supporters coveted was a wad of dollar bills.
Only the names have changed. If the NESV takeover goes wrong, the blame will land at the Premier League’s door.
Why didn’t they do something?
The reality is, unless laws are being broken, what is there to do?
Scudamore can only hope that Liverpool’s current chairman is a better judge of character than the last one was.
After George Gillett and Tom Hicks had taken over...
Former chairman David Moores ‘A great step forward’
‘Great for Liverpool, our supporters and shareholders,’ proclaimed former chief executive Rick Parry.
‘We have purchased the club with no debt on the club,’ announced Gillett.
Hicks, was owner of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise when they won the American League West Division in 1998 and 1999 and made Alex Rodriguez the highest paid player in the game.
New England Sports Ventures are full of promises now...
They have "that experienced" in Sports business...
We have a history of winning and we will do whatever it takes...
The club is purchased and free of debts announced Henry.
Are Liverpool going for another full circle?
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Originally posted by Casopia-maplesea:
England? KING of EUROPE? ANYONE SAW THE WORLD CUP? the "all talk loser action" losers who got THRASHED by germany, an unknown country? england, the founder of football as it is hasnt won the world cup ONCE. as it is, england's version of football is the most violent, foul-mouth and internationally frowned upon version. man, i detest english football...u read the news abt the guy who broke a newcastle footballer's leg in a crushing tackle but got off scot ffree cos the engllish referee said it was legal and even proper to do such a thing? the only thing good abt english football is its money. beneath all that so-called flashy 'footballers'(none of them even made it to world recognition in the international stage) and merchandising lies a lousy, untalented nation hidden beneath the fame it accumulated. did it win the european championships? no. look at statistics. its time we stop wasting our money on mere mud fights.
china founded soccer, not england. -
Originally posted by CannyOng:
We condemm becos he never even look at the reality and remain firm on ground.To get things done, need time and careful planning. This kind of big cannon talk usually will backfired and only make yrself looks bad.
why not try to look on the bright side instead of condemning them straight away?
No point condemning this early seriously. what happens if he did it even if his mouth is too big? Since you said it need time and careful planning, then give them some time for god sake. Like as if john henry wants them to be king of everything within a season.
ps: i'm not liverpool fan. just feel like some of you slashing the new owner furiously when he have yet to settle down and let them have the chance to prove themselves.