http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/john-henry-s-open-letter-to-fans Liverpool Football Club's principal owner John W Henry has written the following open letter to supporters: I am as disappointed as anyone connected with Liverpool Football Club that we were unable to add further to our strike force in this summer transfer window, but that was not through any lack of desire or effort on the part of all of those involved. They pushed hard in the final days of the transfer window on a number of forward targets and it is unfortunate that on this occasion we were unable to conclude acceptable deals to bring those targets in. But a summer window which brought in three young, but significantly talented starters in Joe Allen, Nuri Sahin and Fabio Borini as well as two exciting young potential stars of the future - Samed Yesil and Oussama Assaidi - could hardly be deemed a failure as we build for the future. Nor should anyone minimise the importance of keeping our best players during this window. We successfully retained Daniel Agger, Martin Skrtel and Luis Suarez. We greatly appreciate their faith and belief in the club. And we successfully negotiated new, long-term contracts with Luis and with Martin. No one should doubt our commitment to the club. In Brendan Rodgers we have a talented young manager and we have valued highly his judgement about the make-up of the squad. This is a work in progress. It will take time for Brendan to instill his philosophy into the squad and build exactly what he needs for the long term. The transfer policy was not about cutting costs. It was - and will be in the future - about getting maximum value for what is spent so that we can build quality and depth. We are avowed proponents of EUFA's Financial Fair Play agenda that was this week reiterated by Mr Platini - something we heartily applaud. We must comply with Financial Fair Play guidelines that ensure spending is tied to income. We have been successful in improving the commercial side of the club and the monies generated going forward will give us greater spending power in the coming years. We are still in the process of reversing the errors of previous regimes. It will not happen overnight. It has been compounded by our own mistakes in a difficult first two years of ownership. It has been a harsh education, but make no mistake, the club is healthier today than when we took over. Spending is not merely about buying talent. Our ambitions do not lie in cementing a mid-table place with expensive, short-term quick fixes that will only contribute for a couple of years. Our emphasis will be on developing our own players using the skills of an increasingly impressive coaching team. Much thought and investment already have gone into developing a self-sustaining pool of youngsters imbued in the club's traditions. That ethos is to win. We will invest to succeed. But we will not mortgage the future with risky spending. After almost two years at Anfield, we are close to having the system we need in place. The transfer window may not have been perfect but we are not just looking at the next 16 weeks until we can buy again: we are looking at the next 16 years and beyond. These are the first steps in restoring one of the world's great clubs to its proper status. It will not be easy, it will not be perfect, but there is a clear vision at work. We will build and grow from within, buy prudently and cleverly and never again waste resources on inflated transfer fees and unrealistic wages. We have no fear of spending and competing with the very best but we will not overpay for players. We will never place this club in the precarious position that we found it in when we took over at Anfield. This club should never again run up debts that threaten its existence. Most of all, we want to win. That ambition drives every decision. It is the Liverpool way. We can and will generate the revenues to achieve that aim. There will be short-term setbacks from time to time, but we believe we have the right people in place to bring more glory to Anfield. Finally, I can say with authority that our ownership is not about profit. Contrary to popular opinion, owners rarely get involved in sports in order to generate cash. They generally get involved with a club in order to compete and work for the benefit of their club. It's often difficult. In our case we work every day in order to generate revenues to improve the club. We have only one driving ambition at Liverpool and that is the quest to win the Premier League playing the kind of football our supporters want to see. That will only occur if we do absolutely the right things to build the club in a way that makes sense for supporters, for us and for those who will follow us. We will deliver what every long-term supporter of Liverpool Football Club aches for. JOHN W HENRY
Fair play to JH. He probably senses the unrest amongst fans and has addressed it. Is this a sly dig at Kenny and Damien? ...
Nothing sly about that dig. And it's true too, BR would have spent that money infinately better than DC, KD - much as I love KD. It's a clever letter, wouldn't expect different from FSG. Jury's well and truly out still though and It doesn't answer why we didn't get a striker this summer.
Nothing sly about it at all - he's telling it exactly how he saw it, and for that he is to be commended. I like his vision, I applaud the fact he's actually written this to the fans. We all know it wasn't going to be a 5 minute fix - long term solutions take time to bake properly. Let's see where we are at Christmas, not the first week in September.
Bullshit paper talk! Not interested in this hype to cover up clearly evident cracks in this and previous ownership regimes. Clearly about profit, clearly about making a 'sefl-sustained' business and not at all about the sports sideof Liverpool FC! All this odes is make me even angrier that we are being taken for idiot!. I'm more than happy to give BR time as this is only right but he needs and must make the right choices going forward. Leaving the business to everyone else is not the way it should be done. He should be sat on the phone pestering the power brokers if like he said, he didn't have full control which I don't buy for a second!
Its a crock of ****...as said above its not gonna bang the goals in. Why were we waiting until the last few days of a two month window to sort the biggest problem we had...because they were pushing BR to get rid of Carroll first...if they'd backed him first we wouldn't be in this mess. This letter will undoubtedly appease some fans...but not those with eyes and brains in their head THEY ****ed up and yet are still saying they're as disappointed as we are...somehow I doubt they are. Time to start looking in the mirror Mr Henry.
Unfortunately, they will see the bigger **** up being when they allowed KD and DC free reign to spend 80+ million on players that are no longer deemed worthy of our staring XI and were bought little over a year ago. That's catastrophic. In their opinion tightening the purse strings a little and seeing how BR does with £20mil first is better than seeing him waste a **** load on ****e - unfortunately with that is a slow and painful road to the CL, not the quick fix I had hoped for
Horse bolted and all that. They were as at fault as Dalglish was for spunking all that money on players who were worth about a third of what they paid for them. True Dalglish picked the players but the owners picked him as manager when he had not been a PL manager for 10 years and his last two jobs had ended in relative failure. I doubt Dalglish negotiated the transfer fees either other than to say that he wanted Downing, Carroll and Henderson no matter the cost. It seems bizarre that the owners refused to back Hodgson and Rodgers, managers who have been successful over the past few years, and yet they bent over for Dalglish, a man so clearly out of his depth and living in a bygone era. Easy for them to apportion blame elsewhere but any fan not wearing red tinted specs will know that the owners have cocked things up badly.
I think this suggests that we won't be bringing in Owen or Drogba ... Credit to JH - the club have a strategy in place and we must stick to it. It won't be easy and we're in for a bumpy ride.
Its all a bit easy to send a letter extolling the virtues of a 16 year plan ... when they wont be around to see the end of it I guess ... clearly they didnt want to back Rodgers judgment of Dempsey and I dont blame them for that ... after all he's not the answer that any of us would have wanted. The disappointing thing is that BR has gotten rid of Andy Carroll and with him any possible Plan B that he could have had before he had an alternate in the bag .. poor , Naive managership I'm afraid . Lets be realistic here - Liverpool are now a busted flush - with neither the cash in the bank to attract marquee players or the team around them to retain them (let alone not playing in the CL) ... There are no short term fixes to come (like signing RVP) and neither ar ethere any real signs from the Academy of finding 3 or 4 new stars ... so lets get ready for even tougher times to come adn hoep that if BR does one thing during his (I'm sure) short spell he cleans out the dross that has been accumulated at the club over the last 3-5 years that remain on the books ... I'll brace myself for the abuse I'll be getting over this post .. but I'm happy to stand behind every word of it .. and the thought of bringing back Michael Owen just about says it all for the way in which this great club has been mis-handled over the last 5 years .... really sad , sad times ...
Finally, I can say with authority that our ownership is not about profit. Contrary to popular opinion, owners rarely get involved in sports in order to generate cash. They generally get involved with a club in order to compete and work for the benefit of their club. It's often difficult. In our case we work every day in order to generate revenues to improve the club. We have only one driving ambition at Liverpool and that is the quest to win the Premier League playing the kind of football our supporters want to see. Think they might be telling a porky pie here
this is full of cowsh@?t. everyone knows we have striking problems - right from KK's days. Kk refused to buy in january window; BR failed to buy in a 2 months window. Fsg fails to realize that commercial success is largely driven by football success. i weep for our home supporters who spend hard incomes on shirts, tickets and burgers
They might have allowed them to piss it up the wall but THEY employed them. This wasn't even "investment" money it was the Torres, Babel and Meireles money plus what they saved buying a club on the cheap. They've employed people not up to the job like DC and (if you believe them) Kenny. They promoted Ian Ayre and are now blaming him for the **** up. Their "football experts" didn't seem to be able to identify what we've known for a 18 months...we can't score goals. They are the people who've colluded with Murdochs Fox network to produce a documentary bearing open the insides of our club in what is a frankly desperate and shameless attempt at dragging in a few more dollars...dollars they aren't even prepared to spend anyway. They went missing during the Suarez affair when Kenny needed them most. They employed BR and then failed to give him any reasonable backing. These are a group of multi-millionaire business men who's first, second and third concerns are not and never will be LFC.
Like all other reds i hope it doesn't all go tits up for us come the end of the season, 3 games and 1 point isn't a disaster and a couple of good results will make the gloom vanish but BR has to stop the rot caused by FSG's 'frugal' spending policy. " No one should doubt our commitment to the club. In Brendan Rodgers we have a talented young manager and we have valued highly his judgement about the make-up of the squad. This is a work in progress. It will take time for Brendan to instill his philosophy into the squad and build exactly what he needs for the long term." Who's John Henry trying to kid?, Rodgers will have a mountain of **** on his shoulders if he cant manage to turn thing around and even if they had to sack BR they'll stick to the same financial policy with his successor. John Henry is telling us that the money they're making off our name in sponsorship's and partnerships is staying in the FSG bank account. It appears that they put their priority in making/saving money at the expense of weakening the squad.
Kodak had a vision and long term strategy in place didn't they? Seriously though, the failure to land a striker, any striker in the transfer window is naive beyond belief. I look at all parties - from Rodgers to FSG - and blame them all. Terrible execution, poor planning, bad communication.....and so on. I do applaud the fact that they recognise that they compounded the issues with mistakes of there own (e.g. Comoli/KD's signings).....but this should not excuse them for what has just transpired. Clowns, all of them.
