I've just found this article, Its from Goal.com so how accurate it is, is 50/50. However by the sounds of it, its more accurate than not. Liverpool hunt new managing director after disastrous deadline day Club owners Fenway Sports Group are furious over the collapse of Clint Dempsey's proposed moved to Anfield. By Richard Buxton Liverpool will restart their search for a new managing director next week following a disastrous transfer deadline day at the club, Goal.com can reveal. Owners Fenway Sports Group have revived their plans after Ayre was deemed culpable for Brendan Rodgers being left with only two recognised strikers when the transfer window closed on Friday night after their pursuit of Clint Dempsey fell through. Ayre was charged with negotiating with Fulham for the striker, who had made no secret of his desire to move to Anfield and was greatly admired by the club's American owners, but refused to match Tottenham Hotspur's £6 million valuation which saw him move across the capital. Rodgers was assured prior to allowing Andy Carroll to join West Ham United on a season-long loan that a deal for a replacement attacker was in place but the move for Dempsey, as well as that for Chelsea hitman Daniel Sturridge, failed to materialise. Goal.com understands that this latest setback is the final straw for Anfield chiefs and has validated the long-standing concerns of principal owner John Henry and chairman Tom Werner, the club's senior figureheads about the Merseyside-born businessman. The pair both harboured misgivings about appointing Ayre to oversee the day-to-day running of the club following Christian Purslow's departure in late 2010, but were won over by his work within their commercial department, which saw him promoted in March 2011. However, his controversial quotes on plans for Liverpool to lead a breakaway from the Premier League's overseas television rights deal prompted strong disapproval from their peers and set in motion what soon became a season-long PR blunder last term. At the height of Luis Suarez's race row, Ayre sanctioned the publishing of a forthright statement on Liverpool's official website in response to the striker being hit with an eight-game suspension for abusing Patrice Evra, which contained several inaccuracies and was widely criticised. His refusal to intervene in the infamous T-shirt debacle which took place before Liverpool's visit to Wigan the following night continued to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the owners, who forced him to join Suarez and then manager Kenny Dalglish in issuing a public apology after the Uruguay international refused to shake hands with Evra ahead of a 2-1 defeat at Old Trafford. It is currently unclear whether Ayre will be allowed to return to his original role as commercial director at Anfield, where he has been succeeded by Billy Hogan, who arrived from subsidiary Fenway Sports Management at the end of May, despite helping successfully negotiate deals for Liverpool's array of new commercial partners this summer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First it was Comolli, then it was Kenny, now its Ian Ayre. FSG it seems are as good as their word, and will not accept sloppiness. And thats what it seems went on yesterday. Sloppiness is the only word that it can be described as. Ian Ayre may have done wonders in terms of the array of commercial deals, and the cutting back of the wage bill, but dithering like this in a manner that would make Rick Parry proud, looks like being deemed to be unacceptable. There could be more to it. There seems to be a lot of dithering going on about the proposed stadium refurbishment/relocation. Ayre seems to be running around in circles and going nowhere. This may also force their hand and look for a new MD.
Who? As long as Peter Kenyon( a bigger bullshitter than Rick Parry), doesn't get it, I don't care who gets it.
Needs to be someone respected, quality, known to be good at finding the deals and making them happen.
He would be perfect. He's one of the best ''fixers'' in the game. Managers love him, owners adore him. He also doesn't get involved with club politics either.
David Dein is knocking on a bit but I hear he has already been advising FSG so a relationship already exists. He would be ideal ...
All well & good and he may be culpable but how many people do you promote, rehire & give contract extensions to that you Apparently "hold reservations about" before we get to start questioning your judgement & ability to spot talent among supposed liabilities. At the very least these guys are suppose to know business. This FSG partyline of "we didn't really want him he's not our guy" is getting old fast. We followed that debacle on twitter last night and we're just fans. You telling me Henry or Werner have somehow lost the ability to use twitter, email or even the old fashioned telephone? That's all it would have taken if they "really thought the deal should be secured" yet more contradictions, double speak, information by leakage & rumour. Of course it all could be rubbish.....but then that still doesn't give us an answer.....
I actually saw a tweet this morning where John Henry was abused by a Liverpool fan. The tweet read something like this. You're a ****ing yank bastard, go and get cancer and die, and your wife is a whore.
That's obviously unacceptable, totally, utterly repugnant. I saw some myself last night, Ive seen the same to Charlie Adam and KD. Like on forums, twitter seems to allow the extremes of behaviour. People magnify their feelings beyond sanity. It's actually quite frightening to think these are people you meet every day & look & sound normal. It is ok & perfectly reasonable to be annoyed, even angry about a persons action or inaction. It's also acceptable to let them know this. It just needs a bit of respect & manners. That kind of crap is not positive and does not get answers or results.
Disgusting. I think they've done their best. Clearly they showed a lack of experience/knowledge last year with regards to the amounts of money they let Comolli and Dalglish splash about but this transfer window I think they've done pretty well. Set a reasonable transfer budget and didn't over pay for anyone. We must be around 3rd or 4th biggest spenders this window I'd guess? They never claimed to have great knowledge of the game and it definately showed but they seem to have a better structure now. ie. no managing director (Comolli particularly as he was useless) and Rodgers signing his own players.
I'm just as worried about the story coming from Aussie Land that we offered the MD post to Gillon McLaughlin an AFL MD. that's all we would need: yet another person who knows nothing about football wandering around. Luckily he turned us down.
The truth of it is, we will never get answers. Who hired the scouts from Citeh? Scouts who have not even started working yet? And who screwed up the Dempsey deal? Excluding these two issues, Ayre has done great work for the club. If he was responsible for these two screw up, then maybe he is not MD material, but if the Owners screwed up, I'd be pissed for Ayre to lose his job to protect the owners. Whichever pile of ****e filth who posted that tweet to Henry, needs his head kicking in.
Ian Ayre should go back to his original position as Commercial Director (I think the Billy Hogan now holds that role) or around that department. He did a good job there. But a new MD is required, an experienced football head - Txiki Bergistrein? (excuse the misspelling)
In the report I read, there is the possibility that Ian Ayre may go back to the commercial side of things and work with Billy Hogan and Phillip Nash. However this isn't 100% certain either. However the chances of him keeping his MD job now look to be very slim indeed.
Agree with this, I said in an earlier post I said I suspected it was Ayres that had ****ed it up. The bloke has a great commercial awareness and has a role to play for the "LFC Co." but he shops be kept further from transfer negotiations than Hitler from a Bar Mitzvah.
FSG seem very good at dumping the blame onto anyone but themselves during their tenure; when it's mostly their fault for employing the wrong people in the first place.
Why is that Liverpool continue to put square pegs in round holes. First it was Rick Parry, an accountant, in other words a number cruncher was in charge of our commercial dealings. Then we had Ian Ayre a marketing whizz in charge of transfer negotiations. It is about time, Liverpool put the right people in charge of areas in which they specialise in. I do agree that Ayre should be retained in the commercial area. In that respect, he's done a fantastic job.
