RED WATCH: Dream of LFC fans’ takeover will remain just that

Feb 7 2008 by Andy Proudfoot, Liverpool Daily Post

SENT OFF your £5,000 yet for your stake in the Share Liverpool scheme? Thought not. As investments go, it’s got to be one of the least attractive since the dotcom boom.

The difference, however, is that in that ferment of greed in the late nineties, there was at least the chance that you would get your money back.

Not so the Share Liverpool scheme: once you’re in that’s it, your money’s gone, there’s no market to recoup your investment, let alone make a profit.

Surely you’ll get some benefits then, like priority for tickets or something? Nope, there’ll be too many of you for that.

So what do you get for your money? Well, according to the scheme, you and 100,000 others get to vote on the composition of the Board every four years.

And of course the satisfaction of owning 0.001% of the club you adore. Oh yes, and you might be able to stop ticket prices going up; conveniently ignoring the fact that even if they doubled it would be 150 matches before it cost you £5,000. Sound like a good deal to you?

The proponents of the scheme draw your attention to the example of Barcelona, supposedly the Utopian model for fans’ democratic involvement in the running of their club.

What they don’t tell you is that Barcelona was established as a members’ club at the turn of the 20th Century, and has taken over 100 years to build up its current membership of around 125,000.

They pay £100 a year for their membership, and, amongst other sports club benefits, get discounted tickets in return.

These Barcelona fans didn’t have to buy the club; nor did they have to finance the building of a new stadium.

The building of the Camp Nou in 1957 was financed by mortgages and bond issues (i.e. borrowing), and left the club in heavy debt for many years. Sound familiar?

The idea of fans owning our club may be an attractive notion, but given our current situation it’s a pipedream.

The sums of money involved are just too great to be raised from public subscription, and it’s borderline immorality to encourage ordinary working people to part with this sort of money by invoking the imaginary wishes of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, as implied on the Share Liverpool website.

Rogan Taylor, the founder of this initiative, would do well to ponder the family hardship that could be caused by such an outlay, rather than citing the money paid for trips to Istanbul and Athens as a ‘you can afford it’ argument in favour of subscribing to the scheme.

I’m afraid that it’s too late to tilt at the windmills of ‘big business’ running our game, and even our club; that process was started with the creation of the Premiership, and the advent of the big money television deals.

Where there’s money, there’s speculators, and the interest of super-rich Americans, Emiratis and post-Soviet Russians was bound to be aroused and then sated with the acquisition of our leading clubs.

If we want to compete, we have to go with the flow, and that places us at the mercy of those with the financial clout to deliver our dreams.

Having invited them into our house, we can’t then be surprised or complain if they take the odd piece of silverware for themselves.

Just as long as there’s more coming in than going out.