With everything that has happenned in the last few days, I th ought I would try and look at the situation rationally. Kenny has gone, im a bit upset about this as the mans a legend and I have enjoyed our football this year, it has been infuriating rather than embarrassing as some would suggest and it was clear that we were showing signs of improvement in some areas. However, there were some major bad points aswell: Terrible home form, bad league position, lack of goals, and bad spending. (Not massive net spend, but Newcastle shows us that money can be much better spent.) Anyway, as it stands, I havent got a clue what we have in terms of first team staff, but I know we do have some players and some owners. There has been endless debate about our players: Some class, some good, some on their way out, some class on its way up, and some guys who are not good enough. What of the owners though, they certainly say the right things, they seem professional and have a good track record. But aside from this they have not shown their true colours yet. To study their potential to be successful owners of our club I look at two qualities. Intention and Resources. Intention What FSG have shown us already is that during last summer they were preparedto give the fans what they wanted and follow the tradition of the club by Hiring Kenny, They were aware that Kenny had been out of the game for a while, so appointed Damien Comoli as director to assist in bringing players into the club. They then invested in the squad over the summer and added British players at the same time as cutting a large wage bill. Over the season they have visited games regularly and have been looking to publicise our club worldwide. At the end of the season they have studied our season and decided its not good enough and changes must be made. With financial regul;ations coming in soon for European competition, if they are going to spend big it has to be sooner rather than later, and im sure they want make sure the best possible person is doing the buying. Kenny did great things for us this year. But the buys didnt work. From their performance this season, I think they have every intention of making us successful and will do what is right to bring success.. Resources Didnt know how much they had actually.... As a parent company. Top in the Premier League is QPR as their owner, Lakshmi Mittal (33%) has About 32 Billion, then Man City who have about 22.8 billion, Then us with about 22.2billion.........Amazing resources...... They have the resources and have showed half a hand with their intention. What we need from them now is the following: 1. They need to bring in the right managerial team - God knows who this is ...Dont ask us thatsd for sure, we are emotional fans and cannot see past Kenny and Rafa for the most part. 2. Back the right managerial team financially 3. Build us a 65-70,000 seater stadium (This is the big one) FSG seem to know what they are doing, but they know that Liverpool fans wont accept bad ownership. Hopefully they will realise that the majority of fans will be devestated at kennys loss, but this summer they need to cheer us up and demonstrate their direction, and a stadium confirmed this summer is perfect evidence of that. Liverpool fans love the club so much they will even build it for them, just leave the materials on the edge of stanley park and take a two week vacation.. How long have i been writing for...might have done a wjhole page with one comment
Interesting post. In regards to the resources i believe they will invest but not to the same extent as the Man City/Chelsea owners.They probably will want to sort the stadium out and i foresee us doing an arsenal and being self sufficient in a few years time.However this requires an injection of money at present - Marquee Signing,Hungry Manager,signing our young talented players to longer contracts,etc. Would like to know where you got the 22 Billion figure from as last time this was mentioned i didnt see anything near that amount.
FSG has a large group of wealthy contributors or shareholders such as the NY Times majority stakes owner. Collectively, they're worth an absolute fortune, but as an ownership group, they have 'small' amounts of capital to play with compared to City, Chelsea, QPR, etc. This is my understanding of it.
I read a few months back that NYT sold their shares in FSG when the US economy took the knock in the global recession. The shares were sold privately and only FSG board members were told the name of the buyer,what a shady world they live in.
Took the figure stright out of wikipedia, it just states resource aith no indication of what is available to the club... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_football_club_owners
They maybe worth a lot of money but unfortunately, they won't be spending as freely as Chelsea or Man City. However, I do see them spending big if they can justify it on 1 or 2 players.
They sold their Class B shares (no voting rights), they will have their Class A shares. However, they now have a less than 10% stake in LFC (this is why their name is no longer on the LFC Corp page like it used to be)
very excellent rational view. IMO you are very right about guys being "emotional" and only seeing rafa etc. I also firmly believe too many are unrealistic and deluded and think cl was easy. However i don't see the real evidence of intent. I do see the purchases made and a net figure that given the cheap price they got the club for was not hard to put in... even G&H put that in once. I do not see real evidence of huge backing financially and they do need to back this. I don't see their grand strategy that people keep mentioning as you mentioned a stadium, well i don't see that happening any time in the next 5 years and they faield to bring in a CEO and settled for Ayre. My objective view is that last summer they had kenny do a caretaker role and then plumped for him... almost as the easy option and honetly it was THEN they needed to apply this grand strategy. once they chose kenny they should have backed him properly. now we've the worst of all words in that they've dismissed everyone and may or may not have the plans in place to replace... we could get to the summer tour and be managerless in the USA. It could happen.... equally they could show men something by appointing someone within the next two weeks. Much needs to be done and in the next say 6 weeks all that work is squarely on FSG. they now need to deliver or face a season next year far worse than this one. if they dleiver in the next 6 weeks and back someone with real cash, not 30mil... then that someone can be judged on one season... if for example... dare i say it the emotional fans got their rafa wish and he had 100mil and then get 5th in the table i don't doubt some would call for his head too. Simply put breaking the top 4 no matter how poor they did this year takes real work. spurs have 3 very good players and barely scraped in due to chelsea's awful year (awful until they players got their manager the sack and took over) LFC do not have the players and thats why kenny and comolli could be sacked... bad buys in downing, adam and carroll. simple.
