navbasi

He's deffo laundering money for the Columbian Cartel... Nobody can be that calm after having pissed away £600m in a few months... Something deffo not right there, unless Roman is still lurking in the background funding his pet project.

All 3 basically went on strike to force a move.. the right thing was to sell them at the best price we could get for them, the fact we wasted the money is another argument. Not defending FSG btw as I want them gone now, had enough of the cunts.

Exploring a sale and “club is for sale” to me are two very different things… Obviously they’d have sold it someone had met their valuation but I think the preferred option was always investment and a small stake for $X which is what has transcribed.

Stewart Downing.

To be fair, I think they never entertained the idea of a full sale, that was just The Athletic breaking a story that never was... The press conference that Jurgen did after the news broke he said that he had spoken to the owners back in Oct and from what he understood was that they were looking at investment rather than a sale (and that's what seems to have always been the plan)...

Klopp on Bellingham chance of joining this summer: There's nothing to say about it to be honest. If we don't speak about players we are signing or not signing, why would I talk about it now? Klopp: It has always been like this. It's never changed. My answer now is not about Jude Bellingham. I never understand why we theoretically talk about things we can never have, like six players in summer for £100m (each) Klopp: You have to work with what you have. You wouldn't say as a five-year-old at Christmas you want a Ferrari. Whatever we need and want we try absolutely everything to get it but there are moments when you have to accept it's not possible and step aside and do different stuff

A bit off topic but It’s mad how all that loan shit went… a mate of mine has his own company and applied for a £50k loan, answered 7 odd questions online and that was it… he never got a response, so assumed he was successful, he checked his account a week or so later and the full £50k was in there.. it saved him from going under but others (like you) applied and didn’t get anything… no idea what the criteria was, it just felt very hit and miss. Hope you managed to get through it and your company survived.

You're right about the signing players, wonder if they could have used the money for the ARE expansion?

If that's the choice then Jude and his knee strap can go fuck themselves.

Spurs took out a BoE loan for £175m at an interest rate of 0.5% in 2020 during covid... I never understood why we didn't do the same.

I hope you're right as he's the only thing that holding everything together at the moment... Him not being there is not something I even want to contemplate... He deserves so much better from FSG for what he's done for the value of their franchise.. One big summer.... The cunts at least owe him that.

You really think it'll be that long? If we continue as we are into next season I think Jurgen walks by Christmas.. They'll never sack him but he'll have had enough, he'll take his lovely wife, a pack of Marlboro and go and sit on the beach with a New York Yankees cap.

They've managed to hide the extra £600k a week they are paying Haaland and god knows what else is being paid into the HSBC Abu Dhabi branch but they are cunts but I don't think FSG are creatively taking money out.

What's this magical FFP you talk about?

Liverpool owner John Henry trolled by Boston Red Sox fans over lack of spending Liverpool and Boston Red Sox owner John Henry was booed as he spoke in front of baseball fans for the first time in almost three years on Friday night. Henry and his Fenway Sports Group have been heavily scrutinised for their lack of investment in their sports teams, including the Red Sox. FSG boss Henry appeared on stage at the Red Sox’s Winter Weekend event in Springfield, Massachusetts in an attempt to build a bridge between the fans and the team ahead of Spring Training, which takes place in March ahead of the 2023 Major League Baseball season. It was his first public appearance for fans since the Red Sox traded star Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers in February 2020. Henry appeared alongside Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy, chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom and team manager Alex Cora. The owner faced the ire of a fanbase who, like Liverpool fans, feel they have been robbed of adequate investment by the ownership group compared to rival teams. The boos began when Henry suggested the reason for high ticket prices at the Red Sox’s iconic Fenway Park was that ‘baseball players are expensive’. The comment angered Boston fans who feel FSG can spend more given their $10billion valuation. FSG owns the Red Sox, Fenway Park stadium, Liverpool and NHL franchise Pittsburgh Penguins, as well as half of Roush Fenway Racing and 80% of the New England Sports Network. Henry managed to control the displeasure as he reiterated the group’s commitment to Boston and to winning further championships, with their last coming in 2018.

The cunts are even making money on the loan that they provided for the redevelopment by charging interest on it!!!

Plus the additional sponsorship money from SC and Expedia..

The PR machine has kicked into action.....

Liverpool’s finances: No Champions League, no Bellingham and a £100m hit In all the drama of Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal last weekend, there was the realisation that even the faintest hopes of qualifying for the Champions League had abandoned Jurgen Klopp’s side. The gap to the top four has been allowed to grow again and now even the most optimistic Liverpool supporters have been forced to accept a six-year unbroken run in Europe’s elite competition is over. A dismal season, in truth, saw to that long ago. Liverpool face a fight to secure any sort of European football in 2023-24 and for that, there will be a price to pay. For the first time since 2016-17, there will be no Champions League money coming to Anfield next season and Liverpool’s turnover cannot escape the hit that is coming. Klopp’s side have also admitted defeat in their attempts to sign Jude Bellingham, the Borussia Dortmund and England midfielder who would cost around £130million ($162m) plus wages and agent fees.Liverpool have pulled out of the race to sign Bellingham this summer (Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images) The deal stopped making sense for Liverpool when the Champions League shortfall and the wider scale of this summer’s rebuild were taken into account. Then there’s the question of how to attract one of the best young players in the world without the lure of playing in Europe’s elite club competition. Liverpool are also reluctant to pin all their hopes on one footballer — even if Dortmund could have been persuaded to sell — when numbers are needed in midfield as well as defence. Don’t forget too that the club’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, is still exploring bringing in extra investment. Resources are finite. The Athletic analyses where a disastrous season leaves Liverpool ahead of the summer transfer window. How much do Liverpool make from being in the Champions League? A good old chunk. More is taken annually from the Premier League pot (£152million last season, for example) but since 2017, Liverpool have made roughly half a billion pounds through Champions League distribution money alone. UEFA’s annual financial reports are published every March and the last five seasons on record detail that Liverpool have earned £422million from their exploits in the Champions League. Last season’s adventure to the final brought in €119,957,000 (£106m; $131m). Although this campaign’s figure will have dropped after Liverpool were eliminated in the last 16 by Real Madrid, the latest payout from UEFA is still expected to be around the £71million mark. Liverpool’s recent successes in the Champions League also grant them a bigger slice of the pie. The higher a club’s coefficient ranking — the system that decides how both clubs and their associations are ranked for every season of European football — the greater the benefits. Tottenham Hotspur also exited in the round of 16 but Liverpool will bank as much as £8million more due to UEFA’s distribution being partially weighted in favour of recent achievements in the competition. And that is not all. Matchday revenues have also been boosted by those Champions League nights at Anfield. Last season’s accounts showed that £87million had been earned from the 30 home games played since 2017, suggesting that every fixture staged is worth somewhere between £2.5million and £3million. Liverpool have played at least four home games in the Champions League in each of their last six seasons, with sellout crowds as good as guaranteed. Qualification to the Champions League never brings a specific lump sum but Liverpool’s habit of going far has come to make European football an important revenue stream. Take last season’s numbers as an example. The £105million earned in prize money from UEFA alone amounted to 17 per cent of Liverpool’s record-breaking total turnover of £594million. Seeing that disappear leaves a significant hole in the balance sheets. “The figure any club earns depends on how far they go in the competition but even if you just made the group stages and nothing else, that’s minimum £50million for an English club with the way the prize money is set out,” says Dr Dan Plumley, a sports finance expert and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. “That can then go up to £100m if you go a long way. “Then you’ve got the other things that come with a Champions League season, like the additional matchday revenue and the commercial benefits. You’ve got to be looking around the £100m mark for a season in the Champions League. “I don’t think missing one season of the Champions League is a disaster for a club like Liverpool but if you start to miss two or three seasons then it starts to put a real dent in things.” A big summer ahead then, right? Absolutely. FSG, Liverpool’s owners since 2010, has made no secret of its attempts to find outside investment and even went as far as considering an outright sale of the club in November. Crucially, the need for someone to fund a summer rebuild is pressing. Klopp has admitted that significant changes are required and failure to reach the Champions League on the back of a poor recent run will only have entrenched that belief. Naby Keita, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and James Milner are all out of contract at the end of the season, while Arthur will return to Juventus following the end of his loan spell. Liverpool had long courted Bellingham as a potential key piece in the jigsaw but hopes of a successful pursuit have receded. Other targets, such as Chelsea’s Mason Mount and Alexis Mac Allister of Brighton & Hove Albion, might be more achievable. A clear indication of the funds Klopp will be given is yet to come, but principal owner John W Henry is not about to revise the funding strategy deployed throughout the reign of FSG. “We continue building in a responsible manner,” Henry told the Liverpool Echo last month. “We’ve seen many football clubs go down unsustainable paths.” Investments, he added, would have to be made “wisely”. Recent history tells us that Liverpool are unlikely to be among the Premier League’s biggest spenders. This season and last both brought net spends of roughly £50million, and the campaign before it was only marginally higher. The season before that — 2019-20, when Liverpool ended their long wait to be champions of England — even saw a profit made in the transfer market. Unlike Chelsea, who will also miss out on the 2023-24 Champions League (unless they win this season’s competition), it at least ensures financial fair play is not considered a worry. A failure to back Klopp this summer, though, would make the task of returning to the Champions League for 2024-25 that little bit harder. The ‘Big Six’ is becoming the ‘Big Seven’ with Newcastle United’s transformed wealth but at least there will be the likely prospect of five English clubs featuring in a revised Champions League model from 2024. Liverpool’s modern period of prosperity has owed much to their success in Europe and it is a revenue stream they can ill-afford to let run dry. How could Liverpool go about making up the shortfall? It might be an unpalatable option given the club’s recent glories in the Champions League, but qualification for the Europa League would be the easiest way to plug some gaps. Not only would matchday revenues be protected with the guarantee of additional home games, but there is also money to be made from the competition where Liverpool finished as runners-up in 2015-16. Last season’s winners, Eintracht Frankfurt, made €38million from going all the way, while progress to the semi-final stage also earned West Ham United €32million. Liverpool’s strong club co-efficient ranking, with only Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Chelsea higher, would also see them enjoying greater financial benefits given the structure of earnings. Having to make do with the third-tier Europa Conference League, however, would bring the promise of far less income. Last season’s inaugural winners Roma, who beat Feyenoord in the final, earned €19million. A fifth-place finish in the Premier League would guarantee qualification to the Europa League group stage next season, with sixth also likely to secure a spot depending on who wins the FA Cup. Unless Sheffield United win the FA Cup, or Brighton win it and finish outside the European places, seventh place would also mean busy Thursday nights next season, but in that instance, it would be in the Europa Conference League. Liverpool are eighth, three points behind Aston Villa in sixth and two behind Brighton in seventh. “You can claw some of it back (via the other European competitions) but it’s nowhere near the Champions League level,” says Plumley. “You’re looking at something like half the value of the Champions League and that would be going all the way. “You might make anywhere between £20m and £40m from the Europa League but it’s not at the level of the Champions League. That’s where they want to be.” Liverpool do have other insulation if next season brings no European football at all. A redevelopment of the Anfield Road stand will boost the capacity of Anfield to 61,000, with an additional 7,000 seats creating the opportunity to significantly increase matchday revenues. Building work, which began last year, is set to be concluded in time for the start of next season. Liverpool also have new and extended commercial deals with their two main sponsors, Standard Chartered Bank and Expedia, beginning in 2023-24. One other saving to consider is the wages that Liverpool will need to pay out in 2023-24. Although no player will see a pay cut come directly from missing out on the Champions League, the majority of contracts are heavily incentivised. Bonuses are typically paid on progression in the Champions League and that was a major factor in Liverpool’s wage bill for the 2021-22 season rocketing to £366million, an increase of nearly 17 per cent on the previous 12 months. No Champions League football in 2023-24, therefore, will inevitably see the club’s wage bill fall. Where does this leave Liverpool? Not where they want to be. The last six seasons have had bumps in the road but Champions League football has helped Liverpool become one of European football’s financial powerhouses. Go back to the 2016-17 season (when Klopp guided the club back to the top four after missing out in six of the previous seven years) and Liverpool were lagging behind other elite clubs. Deloitte’s Money League, a measure of European football’s most powerful, had Liverpool down in ninth place that season but gradual progression in the subsequent years has brought a climb up to third. Only Manchester City and Real Madrid had greater revenues last season, with more earned by Liverpool than Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona. By every metric — broadcast, commercial and matchday revenues — Liverpool have grown in the last six years. This season will bring falls in revenue but nothing like a campaign without Champions League football. That has become the rock from which Liverpool have built, with a top-four finish assuring them of important financial help. “That’s always our goal at the start of the season,” chief executive Billy Hogan told German newspaper Bild in Oct 2022. “Qualifying is important because of the turnover we can make in the Champions League but the way we run the club is to make sure we’re as sustainable as possible. You can’t automatically count on Champions League qualification.” Hogan makes a point but Liverpool, even unwittingly, have grown used to Champions League football.

Don't forget the 2% ticket increase that's going to bring in a whopping £1.5m for the season!

Linda's tits maybe?

Summary of the financial period: Covers the first full season post-pandemic Media revenue fell by £5m to £261m Matchday revenue rose by £83m to £86m Commercial revenue rose by £29m to £247m Administrative costs rose by £69m to £545m Overall revenue rose by £107m to £594m Profit before tax was £7.5m

FSG must give Liverpool fans a reason to believe after Jude Bellingham defeat (James Pearce) For Liverpool supporters stung by how this miserable season is playing out, the prospect of their club signing Jude Bellingham come the summer provided much-needed relief. It was going to be the show of ambition they craved – proof Liverpool were serious about challenging for the biggest prizes once again by breaking their transfer record for the most gifted young midfielder in Europe. Jurgen Klopp had made no secret of his admiration for the England international. Last July he said the “only problem” with Bellingham was that he wasn’t available for transfer then and after watching the 19-year-old light up the ensuing winter World Cup in Qatar, Klopp purred: “Everyone can see he is just exceptional.” Yes, there was always going to be stiff competition for his signature given other suitors had considerably deeper pockets, but Liverpool felt like the perfect fit for a youngster who grew up idolising Steven Gerrard. He would have been the face of their midfield rebuild and potentially their talisman for the next decade. Friendships had already been forged on international duty with Jordan Henderson and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who went with Bellingham to see American musician Chris Brown in concert last month. When asked about Bellingham’s future recently, Henderson joined the charm offensive: “If it ended up being Liverpool (he joins from current club Borussia Dortmund) that would be amazing. His potential is through the roof.” That potential now looks set to be realised elsewhere. The Anfield hierarchy are adamant that, following extensive discussions, they are no longer in the race to sign Bellingham this summer. Cynics will inevitably question whether this is merely a ploy to either get Dortmund to lower their price or that is being floated because Liverpool believe he has already decided to move to a rival club. However, the reality is that it had become increasingly clear in recent weeks that Liverpool’s hopes of getting Bellingham were dwindling. The Athletic’s David Ornstein wrote last month about how the greater financial power of Manchester City and Real Madrid had put those clubs in much stronger positions to secure his services. Liverpool admitting defeat in their pursuit of a player who has been their top target for so long has triggered understandable anger and frustration among the fanbase. The club’s owner Fenway Sports Group (FSG) has long been accused of not investing sufficiently in Klopp’s playing squad and this will add more fuel to that fire. Earlier this season, Klopp admitted there are occasions when he would like to “risk a bit more” in the transfer market. When Liverpool didn’t pursue a Plan B in midfield last summer after missing out on France international Aurelien Tchouameni, who moved from Monaco to Real Madrid, the message was clear: they were sitting tight because the player they wanted wasn’t available at that time. There would be no compromise. The message was repeated in this year’s January window. And now it finally appears possible to prise Bellingham away from Dortmund, they have opted against it. Why? Senior Anfield sources insist they had reached a point where the deal “stopped making sense”. A transfer fee of around £130million ($162.1m), with wages and agents’ fees on top, would have taken up a vast chunk of Klopp’s overall budget for the next window. And on top of that, Liverpool still had no guarantees Bellingham would definitely leave Dortmund this summer — or choose to go to Anfield if he did. The fear was that it would drag on into the summer and then if they then missed out on Bellingham, alternative targets such as Chelsea’s Mason Mount and Alexis Mac Allister of Brighton may have already been snapped up by rivals. Klopp wants the club’s business done early, so his full squad are together from when pre-season begins at the start of July. Earlier this season, Liverpool had envisaged Bellingham being available for around £80million, but his play at the World Cup significantly lifted both his profile and price tag. However, the biggest shift in explaining why they have pulled out is the realisation of how much surgery Klopp’s squad needs before next season. If Liverpool just needed Bellingham to become a major force again, it would be different, but the team’s glaring failings over the course of this season have laid bare the fact that four or five new faces are required. Klopp needs a minimum of two, ideally three, new midfielders, the back line also needs strengthening and Liverpool must decide whether to replace outgoing attacker Roberto Firmino. In that climate, it was felt they simply couldn’t justify spending so much on one player, especially given their dwindling hopes of playing in next season’s Champions League. Just four wins in 13 league matches since the turn of the year has left them 12 points adrift of the top four with nine games to go. Not being among Europe’s elite for the first time since 2016-17 would heavily dent the revenue streams of a club run by FSG on a self-sustaining business model. The owners don’t take money out of the club, but neither do they invest their own cash. FSG has been searching for new investment over the past six months, but talks over the sale of a minority stake in the club remain ongoing. Klopp has been assured significant funds will be available in the next window, but it clearly isn’t going to be enough to buy Bellingham and carry out all the other improvements required too. You can understand the logic of dropping out of the race at this juncture and at the same time bemoan a recruitment strategy that has left them needing to do so much in one window. Take the misfiring midfield department, which has become such a glaring issue. Yes, the scale of the drop-off by Henderson and Fabinho from the heights of last season couldn’t have been predicted, but the fitness issues of Thiago were well known. As was the erratic inconsistency of Naby Keita and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who both should have been moved on last summer. James Milner turned 37 in January, while youngsters Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott are still learning their trade. Liverpool were crying out for an injection of energy and proven quality in midfield last summer. It didn’t arrive. They ended up panicking after injuries cut deep late in that window and paid a £4million loan fee for Juventus’ Arthur Melo, who has played just 13 minutes of football for them. The club badly misjudged what they had at their disposal, and that has cost them dear. Thiago remains the only senior midfielder Liverpool have bought since Keita arrived from RB Leipzig in the summer of 2018. If they had recruited more wisely last summer (most of their resources were spent on striker Darwin Nunez, who has had a mixed first season), they wouldn’t be outside the top four or needing to bring in so many new faces. They would have been in a much better place to both attract and afford Bellingham. “Whatever we do next year will never be enough from people’s point of view and your point of view,” Klopp said before last weekend’s game against Arsenal. “But, yes, with smart recruitment we will improve, definitely. That’s the plan.” All eyes will be on where Liverpool turn now. The pressure will be cranked up on the owners to deliver the backing required. Signing Bellingham would have been a real statement of intent. Leaving the path clear for others to do so may be pragmatic, but it’s also deflating. It shows both Liverpool’s financial limitations and the scale of the challenge facing Klopp this summer.

They could have at least done a medical and then pulled out.

We’ve got more chance of signing his bird