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What do we do now? Allen and Sterling back in? I hope we go for the first goal early, throw everything at it, even if we're wide open and it's 5-4 in the first half. Stoke will love to see us try and do the patient passing to find a way through their packed central areas, and then smack it up to Walters or Jones to bundle the defenders and get a mistake out of them. Hit em hard, hit em first, rattle the cunts. Not a game for Suso, perhaps...

David Maddock column As GSO Capital Partners found out, Liverpool fans are finally taking their club back - and RBS could be next on the hitlist - David Maddock - MirrorFootball.co.uk Another great article by Maddock on our fight

With all that is going on - and the sheer, bare-faced underhand tactics that G&H are employing, which most of the English courts and media cant believe - it is a damning testimony of Moores'/ Parry's search for investment and their conclusion to give it to these two cowboys. I know it has been said, partially in jest, before...but when this is over, it should be the next objective of SoS or other fan pressure groups for Moores to be relieved of this honourary status at this club. If it were up to me, he should also be pressured to pledge some of this illgotten gains from the sale to these two bastards to either a charity (HJC) or the club. Here endeth my rant....

I appreciate that we are currently operating with financial constraints, but I am nevertheless still disappointed at our lack of transfer activity. I still think we desperately need 3 players - a quality striker to cover Torres, a central midfielder to partner Meireles and allow Gerrard to play further up the field, and a wide player who can play on either flank and add pace, creativity and guile. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, but over a 12 month period we seem to have recouped more than we have spent and as a result I think we will continue to regress. It was obvious that our transfer plans were totally dependent on the sale of Mascherano, but I will still be disappointed if we only bring in a striker before the window closes particularly if that is only a loan deal.

Just caught part of an interview with Chris Bascombe on talksport, I missed the start of it but the jist was that the refinancing package the yanks got is costing us £10m a month just in interest payments. That's staggering.

would any of us be prepered to buy a ticket for the arsenal game and not go in the ground(i would).Was havin a nose on rawk and saw a thread asking the same and wondered how many on this forum would be prepered to do this. p.s am not arsed if people think a boycott wont work:wallbutt:

Is Tony Evans on about atk here? It's from a webchat Tony Evans did for The Times.

Can't remember if Maddock is a Benitez or Purslow stooge, but it's a pretty good read, if a bit long. Since Rafael Benitez’s famous outburst – commonly termed ‘Rafa’s Rant’ for ease of reference - Liverpool has been a club inexorably linked with the notion of “facts”. It is ironic then, that no other English football club seems as darkly impenetrable when it comes to discovering the truth over those fundamental issues that affect the heart and soul of the club. In that sense, Liverpool are a very modern club. They are ‘owned’ in the loosest sense by corporate raiders, steeped in the murky spin of leveraged buy-outs, but governed, essentially, by two global banks, with their thoroughly 21st century approach to morals. They are run by financial experts, who can navigate their way around the politics of business and its related balance sheet like Jenson Button does Monza. And they are managed by the most modern of coaches, who is as equally talented in the art of self-preservation as he is in the intricacies of tactics. Perhaps it is no wonder then, that when it really comes to it, with the club apparently in a perpetual state of crisis, we have so much opinion but so few facts about every facet of turbulent life at Anfield. It is an entertaining show, which offers scope for the media to fill the gaps with information and speculation in equal measure, as the major players woo their supporters and fight their enemies with a passion that would be admirable, were it directed towards the day job of making Liverpool Football Club great again. Ultimately though, most of it is a sideshow, particularly the increasingly hysterical politics that surround the tenure of the manager and the senior players he has (or hasn’t, depending on who you believe) fallen out with. Of course, whether Benitez remains in charge at Anfield is important. Whether Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard stay at Anfield is of huge interest to the fans, and probably to the short-term business aims of the club. But it is still a sideshow, because the fundamental issue facing every person who holds this special, and sometimes special needs, football club to their heart is its financial future. For several years now, a relatively small section of fans has worked that one out. Most don’t really give a monkey’s who owns Liverpool and how much debt they have, so long as they have stars like Torres and Gerrard taking them towards trophies. But some have realised that the way Liverpool is owned stinks. They realise that the manner in which Tom Hicks and George Gillett bought the club is a major barrier – indeed almost impossible obstacle - to long-term health at Anfield, never mind success. I’m going to have to talk money here for a minute, but try to stick with it, even if that prospect makes your eyes glaze over. Because the accounts displayed by Companies House last week relating to Liverpool Football Club and its connected companies make important reading. It was claimed in some circles that that the Americans would not use Liverpool’s money to buy the club, that they would not place one penny of debt upon the club. But the takeover debt has grown from around £80m when they took over three and a half years ago, to a basic level now of £238million. It gets worse. Much worse. The accounts seem to show that the money Hicks and Gillett were forced to put in to reduce debt – or more accurately to stop it escalating even further – came actually in the form of a loan from their offshore company in the Cayman Islands… a tax haven, of course. And, as with all loans or mortgages, Liverpool are paying the interest on that too. Currently, the debt to Kop Cayman stands at £145million and counting, because it had almost doubled in 12 months. Which means, if looked at coldly, debts on the club in the form of net borrowings (and there is a distinction here between gross and net) now effectively stand at more than £350million. Liverpool are paying the interest on that total amount. In fact, interest payment for the years 2007-2009 now stand at £78million. No doubt that figure will be much higher at the end of the current financial year, which runs until June. The accounts show that Liverpool have – in theory – a negative net worth of £128million, and are only operating as a going concern because of the support of the banks. What does that mean to you, as a fan? It means that your football club isn’t really owned by the Americans at all. It is actually owned by a bank – the RBS. The Yanks have the title deeds, and when the club is sold, if there is any money left after settling the debts, they will get a nice big cheque, because that is the nature of a leveraged buy-out, but in a moral sense, the bank is the owner. It means that last year, before any money could go on signing players or increasing wages to top players, more than £40million was spent on interest payments. It means that between £3million-£4.3million was spent on paying off a chief executive. It means another £3million was spent on getting rid of staff the manager didn’t want. It means that Liverpool can’t build a stadium because they have too much debt piled on the club to raise any more funds to start the dig (even though upwards of £43million seems to have been spent on stadium development costs in the past two years). It means that Liverpool are crippled under the current ownership. If you didn’t quite realise that before, then you know now. Incontrovertibly. I’ll run those figures by you one more time - £95million losses in two years, £78million interest payments in two years, and a negative net worth of £128million (which presumably means they’d have to pay me to take it off their hands!). Hicks and Gillett won’t put any more money in. So debts will continue to rise until they go. If they are here for another five years under those conditions, debts could conceivably be around the £700million mark, if not considerably beyond. The irony of it all, is that it remains a good business. The financial team of Ian Ayre and Philip Nash and more latterly Christian Purslow have quietly repositioned Liverpool as equal to Manchester United in terms of sponsorship levels and global brand, and they are now in the top four or five clubs in the world, in the sense of commercial potential, if not performance. But no amount of record-breaking sponsorship deals can make up for interest payments that will go beyond £50million a year, and debts that will inevitably go beyond the £500million mark, given there is not sufficient stadium revenue to make up the deficit. If all that is alarmist, then of course there is a solution. The answer is to get new owners. Even the Americans have conceded that must happen, and the question now simply is, how much profit do they want before they go? If they don’t want any at all, then a deal could probably be done next week. But this is the real world, the ruthless modern world, and that will not happen. No amount of protests and ridicule will turn them away from the pursuit of profit. In their world, remember, greed is good. It’s like that programme with the wide-boy from Stoke and the chunky blond bird that students watch, where people buy a house cheaply at auction, tart it up a bit with a pair of dodgy curtains and cash in and make a tidy profit when the market allows. Only on a bigger scale. Liverpool are Homes Under the Hammer. With very dodgy curtains. There was a time when Liverpool could have handled interest payments and debts, and still made enough profits to buy players and pay top wages and compete at the top, just as Manchester United are doing despite their staggering level of debt. But the accounts show that is not the case any more. So what can fans do, and what can the club itself do, those competent people like Ayre and Nash who will be left when the Yanks and the bankers clear off? The only solution is to make Liverpool as attractive as possible to prospective new owners, and ensure at the same time they are fit and proper people to own the club. This is the hard part, because what I am about to say will come as anathema to the fans who quite rightly feel betrayed by Liverpool Football Club, feel betrayed by the people they entrusted to run their club – and it is THEIR club in the end. The effect of all the financial dealings of recent months is that Hicks and Gillett have effectively handed over running of the club to the RBS, or strictly more accurately to the RBS and Barclays Capital. It is a complicated deal, but essentially, the Americans discovered that no-one wanted to buy the club from them and now realise they must shut up and go away and let Broughton and Barclays get on with selling a world-class brand… and wait for the cheque they want at the end of it. If you don’t want them to profit, then the only solution is to agitate and destabilise to ensure a buyer can’t be found, and eventually the banks will pull the plug, the Yanks will go bankrupt and there will be a fire sale. But that could take years and years, and there could be little left of Liverpool as we know it at the end. So even though it stinks, the only realistic option is to find a buyer willing to pay a decent sum for Liverpool. And that means doing everything possible to present an image of a club WORTH buying. That sticks in the throat, because it means the Americans will trip off after four years or so with a big fat cheque, after bringing Anfield to its knees. But that is the way it is, it is the way it has always been – the speculators make the money off the rest of us. The fact is, not one true fan wants Liverpool Football Club to go under, to go out of business, to cease to exist. So clenching the teeth and presenting a united front to find new owners who can take the club forward is the only way. It is the only way for the financial men, who must set aside the daily politics of their spin to present only an image of a stable institution that actually has impressive figures in terms of global brand. It is the only way for the supporters of the manager who seem to think that destroying the image and reputation of the club is the best way to ensure he stays. The hysterical in-fighting of recent weeks has served only to suggest Liverpool is a basket case that shouldn’t be touched with a bargepole, and even those with a pathological need for power and control must realise it has to stop. It is the only way for the fans who have been strong enough to fight the Americans from the start, and expose their greed. It is the only way because they love the club and at heart want it to thrive, no matter what has happened. When it is done, the fans of the club – all of them, not just small, isolated, easily manipulated groups - must stand up and ensure that this situation never happens again. They must ensure that owners, directors, executives, managers and staff are all working for the long-term success of the club, and not the short term gain of themselves. It is a utopian vision, but somehow, they have to ensure those people know who really owns this club.

So many threads on here attacking Benitez. And its all coming from Purslow. What the f**** happened to his statement that the debt would be payed down during his SOS minutes or was that the same to divert attention elsewhere. People on here need to focus on the real issue ownership. Proper owners will deal with benitez. Mr Purslow as done F*** all since he's been at the club. I think Ian Herbert is bang on with this article...... By Ian Herbert, Deputy Football Correspondent A crisis that will haunt Liverpool for a generation - News & Comment, Football - The Independent Tuesday, 4 May 2010 AFP Liverpool's nightmare scenario is Fernando Torres deciding to leave this summer Martin O'Neill's comments after Manchester City beat his side on Saturday and took a step towards the Champions League were as ominous for Liverpool as for Aston Villa. "Even if they don't make the Champions League, Manchester City will get stronger again and keeping up with them is going to be hard," he said. Liverpool can trade on their fans and their blue-chip reputation for only so long. If City win what is effectively a Champions League eliminator against Tottenham tomorrow, it will pave the way for a summer of spending that should render their place in the elite tournament a certainty for some years to come. Liverpool, meanwhile, face the risk of four, five seasons – a generation – without a place at the continent's top table. It is why the pursuit of a new owner this summer is an issue of far greater significance than the career intentions of Rafael Benitez. The club's managing director, Christian Purslow, thought he had found a way to stabilise the listing club: by securing a group of new equity partners whose money would keep the bank happy and smooth the way to capital needed to build a new stadium, which would send match-day revenues soaring. It is known as the "facility model" in football. Related articles •Benitez wants to stay at Liverpool says agent •James Lawton: There are no excuses for Benitez. He must accept the blame for Livepool's plight •Benitez set deadline to accept Juventus deal Search the news archive for more stories The problem was the prospective new partners understandably wanted some say over how the club might be run, and the owners, George Gillett and Tom Hicks, would not tolerate that. They sent the club back to square one and hired non-executive chairman Martin Broughton and Barclays Capital to find someone to buy them out entirely. The Americans have a track record of demanding an unrealistic price for their club, though: the £500m Dubai International Capital was quoted a few years back is a case in point. But now the Americans' Armageddon is here. The merchant bankers who have been trying to sell Liverpool for months have insisted all along that investors would simply sit tight, wait until the club failed to qualify for next season's Champions League (thus taking a critical £20m hit), and make their bid when the Americans needed to sell in a hurry. That has happened now. Signs that the crown jewel, Fernando Torres, is unwilling to tolerate much more of this chaos might just be the tipping point that forces them to forgo the idea of a tasty profit, dispose of the club at a realistic price – £300m might be the best they'll get – and walk away. The consequences of clinging on are a haemorrhaging of players and years in the wilderness. The merits of a diplomatic stance with Benitez in the meantime are considerable, despite any irritation felt by the Anfield hierarchy at his use of a move to Juventus as a stick to beat the club with. With Benitez around, Torres might just be persuaded to stay a little longer, and Javier Mascherano might just sign a new contract. Without Benitez, neither of the above applies. The next manager might be one of O'Neill, under whom Aston Villa have barely advanced in the past three years, despite money; Roy Hodgson, whose only big job in England was at Blackburn, involved a £20m outlay in the summer of 1998 and his departure by Christmas of that year, with the club bottom of the table; or Kenny Dalglish, who hasn't managed for 12 years. If Liverpool really want an English manager then Mark Hughes, whose reputation is by no means diminished after his Manchester City experience, would be a good proposition if the Manchester United connection could be overcome. But would he want to walk into financial turmoil? Holding on to Benitez and finding a buyer and a place at the top table might not be such a forlorn hope.

Scored against the Manc fuckers yet again. Leg.

Details of the planned action for Sunday Tom and George - Not Welcome Here - Sunday; Spirit Of Shankly; Liverpool Supporters' Union Spirit of Shankly

Whilst I know we are not mathematically out of the Champions League , it is looking pretty grim despite a decent performance tonight. It as seems likely we are demoted to the Europa League what would you like our attitude to be ? I have still not written off the league at this point( Rafa's 2 best league seasons coincided with our earliest CL eliminations ) & have no real appetite to play on Thurday nights in places where they still point at aeroplanes . I would therefore try to get through the next stages of it by playing a Coca-Cola Cup type team. If the league is totally blown in the new year & we can get to the latter stages of the Europa League then maybe start taking it more seriously.

Lads on Rattle and RAWK saying its offically cancelled since 6th of November, laing rourke and suppliers have been told, no surprize if true, anybody hear anything?

Babel made most of you lot look cunts tonight. And Benitez has lost his players now. Totally indefensible what he did there. Definition of insanity. Repeating the same mistake. At 72 minutes Torres sprang 4 foot in the air from a standing start on a supposed dodgy groin. We dont pay again until Monday, weve already spunked the league, and he subs him and thereby invites the whole midfield in to our box for the last 5 minutes. A total negative arsehole. Sack him in the morning.

I’ve been expecting our current predicament for a while now. I thought we might be ok this season, and maybe next, but I think this will be the year we fall away and ‘the big four’ is no more. The reason why? Is it Rafa’s fault? No, not in my opinion, he has done an amazing job just by keeping us in contention for all these years Is it the current owners fault? Not entirely, yes they have played a huge part in finishing us off so to speak, but they should never have been sold the club in the first place. Since the introduction of the Premiership we have slowly began to fall behind our rivals and allow lesser clubs to overtake us. I believe us currently, to be behind United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City and eventually Tottenham once they build their new stadium. Much as I hate to say it, United have it all, Massive Stadium, World class players and crucially old sir Alex whiskey nose has always been backed by the board and been allowed to sign any players he’s wanted, when he’s wanted them. Chelsea have been backed by the billions of Abramovich who has allowed countless different managers to spend as much as they want, and unlike Rafa without having to sell anyone to fund the deals. Arsenal haven’t spent crazy money like the likes of United Chelsea and City, But Wenger has been backed despite not winning anything of late and not challenging for the title either. Wenger is now reaping the rewards of ten years of being at the club and bringing through young players that the board have backed him to splash the cash on. Arsenal also have their new stadium up and running whilst ours is constantly fobbed off and put onto the backburner. Manchester City had a net spend of over 100 million this summer, ours was 0 million. We simply cannot compete with their financial resources and won’t be able to under current ownership. Strangely I am actually looking forward to what’s coming next for us. It could be a grim few years, maybe even longer but I think eventually we will come back stronger and create a new era of success for Liverpool football Club

Liverpool debts pose fears for future | Liverpool - Times Online

LFC was formed there, loads of fans drink there, upstairs is sound for an after match bevvy while the crowds die down, but guess what, Liverpool Football Club have only hired the upstairs all season for all home games for the corporate’s. Just been reading about this on raotl, what’s next, hire the Albert for them so they can witness a proper good old Liverpool kop choir sing along. Well they can fuck right off.