THE roar of the Kop has been heard all over Britain and Europe.
Tonight, an attempt will be made to send it right across the Atlantic Ocean.
Liverpool fans are in a state of fury and dismay, convinced their world famous club is enduring the biggest crisis in its modern history.
And who can argue they are wrong?
A marriage that everyone hoped was made in heaven has spiralled into a nightmare captured in barely believable headlines, one played out amid a climate of deep distrust.
There is no doubt today that the majority of match-going supporters – surely still the most important people at any football club – believe the American dream is for them over and beyond repair.
And tonight at the game against Aston Villa they are set to call on Tom Hicks and George Gillett to do the decent thing – and grant them and their club the quickie divorce that many now believe offers the most dignified, possibly the only honourable route out of here for all sides.
Hicks and Gillett may see it differently and believe this fractured marriage can be repaired. Particularly if they really are intent on keeping the house.
They own it – and this is up to them.
They are hugely successful business partners who made a first class first impression when they bought Liverpool almost a year ago. They were appropriately welcomed with open arms by an Anfield faithful yearning for more success.
But stadium delays and confusion, alleged personal rifts, claims of imminent broken promises which will load all their personal debt onto the club, and a series of unsightly public rows with a driven manager whom most supporters still love and believe in, have rocked Anfield to its core.
This is not the Liverpool way.
And for the sake of a club which someone outside Merseyside recently described as ‘a national treasure’, it just cannot go on like this any longer. Particularly when a rejected suitor is waiting on the sidelines with a genuine offer which Liverpool fans are praying Tom and George cannot and will not now refuse.
An SOS sign was hung out on the Kop last week to Dubai International Capital.
It will be there again tonight, but will not be walking alone in its display this time.
Liverpool fans may know as little about the Dubaians as they did the Americans.
But the sure truth is the Dubaians have never fallen out of love with the idea of owning Liverpool, even though the long – possibly overly long – initial engagement was broken off suddenly amid acrimony, as pre-wedding nerves on both sides became tested.
Their interest in securing a deal at Anfield has never dwindled, not least because they are convinced the American re-financing numbers simply do not crunch going forward and put Anfield in even more jeopardy, even more harm’s way.
