Liverpool FC: Time to end this desperate crisis

Jan 21 2008 by John Thompson, Liverpool Echo

It is not just the supporters and other experienced experts who care about the club who believe there is a real risk of Liverpool emulating Leeds United – possibly worse.

When there is, it seems, a genuine prospect of the Royal Bank of Scotland claiming default on the current mortgage and re-possessing the property, who can blame them?

There is no doubt Liverpool fans are anxious to see the Dubaians allowed in to rescue their club from this situation. And if there is any doubt, the odds are it will vanish this evening with a clarion call to DIC spilling from the Kop.

It no longer matters how Britain’s most successful football club got here. Right now it doesn’t matter who is to blame and how.

All that matters is that a truly great European football club and its lost, bewildered and angry supporters, get out of here. And fast.

Tom Hicks and George Gillett, are deeply committed family men who for all their wealth and hard-headed business brains surely understand that family ultimately comes first.

Particularly when that family feel and culture is actually a crucial part of their business asset, as much as it is an emotional reality.

The Kop is real currency – and losing it will cost in dollars, as well as in damaged eardrums.

For that simple reason, the co-owners must today do what they know is right in their hearts as much as their heads for a club steeped in that family tradition. One in which Kopites here have invested their lives, not just their hard-earned money.

If the Americans sincerely believe they can somehow get Liverpool out of this crisis and repair the damage then maybe, just maybe, they can risk taking that chance.

But the supporters at Anfield, many genuinely sick to their stomachs with worry, may now never be convinced, so serious is the collateral damage and loss of trust all round.

If Hicks and Gillett deep down accept that it just hasn’t worked out and that no amount of counselling can help, it is to be hoped they, or one of them, will sell their share to the Dubaians and walk away with no hard feelings either way.

Liverpool’s first business love is today waiting in the wings. She won’t go away and it’s clear the majority of the fans don’t want her to – though if there is to be a second marriage it might be worth hiring a Philadelphia lawyer to draw up the pre-nuptial contract.

But that, if ever, is for another day.

Liverpool Football Club and it’s wonderful, devoted supporters have suffered enough.

However it happens, every fair-minded and honourable man will surely agree it is high-time this desperate crisis was swiftly brought to a dignified end.