NOW that the Chinese whisperer Kenny Huang has decided not to buy Liverpool FC, it is becoming apparent that the search for a new owner is proving surprisingly more difficult than many people imagined.

In the midst of all these shenanigans, Roy Hodgson has to try and build a winning team and get Liverpool back into the Champions League.

The defeat away to Manchester City on Monday showed it is going to be a long, hard season and the rival bidders for Champions League places are much better equipped and better resourced.

It really is a very challenging set of circumstances for the management at Anfield, both on the pitch and in the boardroom, and it is important for the future of this great club that decisions are made in an atmosphere of good sense and realism.

Some of the statements which emerge from the club seem fantastically contradictory. The need for a new, bigger stadium as essential for the future development of the club is now regarded as holy writ and usually goes completely unchallenged.

At the same time, we are told that Liverpool’s real future is as a global football brand, with a massive presence in Asia.

But the business needs to decide which of these two costly endeavours will bring in the greatest future revenues.

If a new stadium was built, and the cost will surely run into a few hundred million, how much revenue will that generate?

Even if average crowds increased by 20,000 and ticket prices were hiked to maximise the take per fan, and every match day attendee bought a replica kit and other bits and pieces, it would get nowhere near the level of additional revenue required to make the business less loss-making – never mind solvent or, the usual objective of every business I have ever known, profitable.

Liverpool have opened an office in Singapore to “handle the club’s commercial expansion and management of its business relationships in the region”.