Comment: LFC fans’ plans raise many questions

Jan 31 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

AN AWFUL lot can happen in the space of a year, as Tom Hicks and George Gillett, the US owners of Liverpool FC, are discovering.

From the more or less universal euphoria which greeted their arrival on Merseyside by the red half of the city in February, 2007, a series of PR disasters and false dawns over a new stadium means that they are now almost as universally loathed by those same fans.

This has now reached the extent of a group of high-profile Liverpool FC supporters putting their money where their mouths are and unveiling a radical proposal for a £500m fans’ buy-out of the club.

In an audacious display of supporter power, the Share Liverpool FC Group is looking for 100,000 fans to raise the money to purchase the club from its current American owners and build a new stadium, with an investment of some £5,000 each.

For many fans, the last straw was the news that a £350m loans package secured by Hicks and Gillett last week would saddle the club with massive interest payments of up to £30m a year.

Any suspicion that the buy-out is a pie in the sky scheme scribbled on the back of an envelope by a few fantasists is dispelled by the personnel involved. For the triumvirate is made up of a respected academic who has been a Kop season ticket holder of 40 years, a former director of communications and public policy at the Premier League, and a legal expert.

The seriousness of their ambitious proposal is, therefore, not in doubt. Yet they still have many questions to answer before they are likely to convince the sceptics.

In particular, are there 100,000 fans willing to risk £5,000 each, and, even if there are, will this be enough to buy the club from Hicks and Gillett and build a new stadium?

However, what this latest proposal, and the continuing strong interest from Dubai International Capital, prove beyond doubt is that the question of Liverpool FC’s ownership is still very far from being settled.