Liverpool were rocked earlier this summer by the accounting revelations that under Hicks and Gillett, Liverpool FC are making annual payments to the RBS of £40M – effectively stripping out the small amount of profit from the club, and thanks to the complex accounting with Kop Football Holdings as a parent company – the club’s debt – overall – is massively increasing.
With the arrival of Hicks and Gillett – Liverpool were promised the funds to compete in the transfer market – but that promise is looking as hollow as all the rest of the big promises from the clubs owners.
If anything – Liverpool appear even less forceful in the transfer market.
We all knew that with the departure of Keane – the reds would need a solid backup striker for Torres – and we’ve all lamented our lack of a world class winger. In those games when we struggled to break down defences at Anfield – results that cost Liverpool the title – the absence of someone with creativity to relieve the pressure on Gerrard and Torres was clear for all to see.
Last summer Liverpool spent a net total of £21 million on players.
This summer, with the reds in a great opportunity to build on last season’s improvement, it looks as if LFC will be trying to make a profit.
£13 million up front was pocketed by the club in January lets not forget – for the sale of Robbie Keane (and this deal could increase to bring another £3 million in)
£3 million was raised with the departure of Sebastian Leto and around £500,000 was raised with the sale of a few fringe players.
In contrast Liverpool have signed Glen Johnson in a £16.5 M deal – but with money already owed by Portsmouth for Peter Crouch – the reds did not need to shell out the full amount.
OUT
Robbie Keane £13M (could rise to £16M)
Sebastian Leto £3M
Others £0.5M
IN
Glen Johnson £16.5M
TOTAL TRANSFER SPEND = £0
You have to wonder exactly who Hicks and Gillett think they are fooling. The calculator doesn’t lie. The Xabi Alonso speculation has been going on for months now – and now we hear various rumours that if we sold him – both David Silva and a central midfielder such as Wesley Sneijder could be arriving.
But when Liverpool FC have technically not shelled out a penny this summer – then we shouldn’t have to sell anybody to fund two such transfers.
Meanwhile the reds will carry on paying RBS £1 million every 9 days in interest alone.
well said bart well said,,,, i think rafa has been a saint..
team to play first half v thailand.
reina
johnson carragher kelly insua
el zhar mascherano spearing reira
pacheco
voronin
second half; martin
darby ayala skrtel dossena
kuyt spearing lucus babel
torres ngog
They will never be forgiven for the way they rode roughshod over Liverpool fc. They are never here, they do not have to listen to anything being said about them and they can shut us out without a second thought, I don’t know what they want, it’s not the cash cow they thought it was, in fact they must have realised by now that a football club is run from the heart and pocket. They only get away with it now because we have an outstanding manager, if ever they lose Benitas, then and only then will they see just how much he is a big part of keeping the club up there on a pittance, it ever that happens their will be no-way back for H&G and by then we will be a mid table team, unless they come to their senses and sell up……
Hicks and Gillett have to go, no matter what they’ve done for the club. They might have marketed us in a bigger way, but we still lack in the transfer stakes. We definitely need someone who is willing to match and beat the other top dog teams paying obscene amounts. Man City in 2 seasons time will be the next ‘Chelsea’ – buying any and everybody at will. Yanks out – Russians or Arabs – please save us with your billions. Saying all this, Rafa can still prove his masterclass tactics against the ‘richer’ clubs – proven in La Liga not once but twice.
Rafa Rafa..eeelll …. Rafa Rafa….eellll
Putting it in plain English we’re skint and can only bring in quality if we sell some of our top players.The American’s have been taking us for idiots since they arrived…..
The frustrating thing is that we only need to add a few high quality players to reach the promised land and they seem available at the right price but we can’t afford them.IMO a high class winger and forward are required to make us the best squad in Europe.
Agreed. The likes of Silva and a decent backup striker would make an enormous impact for a team that has won only 1 of the last 16 competitions we have entered.
Ironically, around £40M would probably do the trick to capture someone like Silva and a backup striker to Torres – but I suppose RBS need paying first.
I seriously think that if we “must” sell to buy then make the right decisions…….
Sell Alonso = £25m
Sell Dossena = £5m
Keep babel and play him in more of an advancing role….not every other month…he has potential…just needs more time to gain confidence……
buy Ashley Young = £18m
buy Lee Cattermole = £7m
bring in some more english talent…..enough of these risks from europe……..we need players who can play well straight away………and i know im contradicting myself by saying this but i am a fan of babel and i dont want to see £12m go to waste in the pages of history
I am fed up with people assuming we “need” villa we “need” silva…..liverpool are going to be one of the clubs who get shafted when to comes to the player cap…..and its going to happen sooner rather than later
And i strongly think that we should invest more time in our youngsters…..they are being kicked out of senior squads quicker than you can say “all f**ked up”……sort it out liverpool…..we have the talent to win the title !!!!!!
Hi Jane
No need for concessions.
Tickets here are 40 pounds per more and impossible to get hold off. There is huge pent up demand for the best supported club, which has only the fourth biggest stadium in the premiereship.
LFC could double stadium capcity and still fill it. What’s more, they can go to virutally any country in Northern Europ and Asia and fill out a stadium, even with second string players.
In terms of genuine global supporter base (where supporters declare a single lifelong team allegiance i.e. not the millions of South Koreans who suddenly love Man U, because of Park) it is one of the big seven, alongside Barca, Man U, Real, Juve, Bayern and Ajax.
What Hicks seems to have correctly sussed – is the need to methodically, ruthlessly, relentlessly exploit this huge base and Brand for as much money as he can. That’s how Man U and Real have got to the top of the money leagues.
The thing is, we need a better business model. I don’t know much about the UK pricing and such, but where I am, a pro baseball game is $8/ticket. Essay contests in schools bring dads and lads free tickets. A ball signed by the team is $10. Concessions are a bit of a rip-off, but people don’t seem to mind as their tickets were cheap or free.
Boycotting is the only way to go. The superfans think paying the loan off for GG and Hicks is the way to go by saying they go to matches to support the team. Soon we will not have a team left to support. The mass hyseteria of being second last season left people complacent to the fact that GG and Hicks are screwing the club from all over. if they accept the refinance terms that RBS have given them rafa will not have money to spend during the season. infact GG and Hicks will more than likely take any money theyn have put into LFC the back from LFC at the end of the year The long term survival of the club is more important than short term. LFC fans need to make their voices heard via their pockets. Hicks cant afford to pay the loan himself. He already defaulted on over 500 million in the usa and GG aka penfold is just clueless. Deadly Doug Elliss at Villa saw straight through his lies and told him where to go. It is a pity Moores didnt take the time to use google and find out who he was selling to.
It is being said more than a million times, we need to get rid of those two bullshit yanks, and get the Arabs to run the club if we really want to seriously go for the league title.
It is a known fact that we do not have those depth players in the squad unless Benites go for some good ones. For me I cannot see that happen because we already missed out on Michael Owen even when we could get such transfer for free.
Mr. Benitez, can you imagine now getting a striker like Michael Owen, and you have to pay big money ? from where ???
Last and not least, if we really want to win the league, then we must make big changes now or else forget it.
After being messed around with for so long the Arab’s seem to have lost complete interest in buying LFC.Fans are helpless too because the American’s arn’t willing to sell to anyone.I’ve said it many times that i blame David Moores for selling to them in the first place.
Very ill-informed and speculative
We are only half way through the transfer window and the Spanish contingent are barely back a day so perhaps waiting for this would be an idea for shooting your mouth off
Additionally the funds from Peter Crouch would have been taken into account for our ‘kitty’ so it’s not something for nothing as you seem to imply, ie if we had a profit of 10m last year then we only had a profit of 3m if the 7m owed to us was spent and therefore we’d need to make up that 7m in interest payments if we allocate that off the Johnson transfer
Do you really think that Rafa would spend all his transfer budget on a fullback?
Also the interest we must pay is only the amount an owner would take out if we were owned by some Sheikh or other businessman then they’d be looking for a return on their money they put into the club otherwise why do it – The 2 clowns are not taking profit but hoping to make profit when they sell the club so the returns go to the banks and not their pockets -if we weren’t in debt the returns would go into their pockets
I dont know what world you live in but normally people invest their money to make themselves richer not so people like you can bask in some sort of reflected glory by buying a coveted name at an inflated price so that you can gloat about it at work
What difference does it make if we dont buy anybody but go an and win the prem?
Is it wise to spend our money in a market that is 30% overvalued? Man U have loads of dosh but aren’t wasting it when there’s nobody worth spending it on
Ged. Massage the figures how you please. I had included the full amount for Peter Crouch in last season’s £21M net spend.
‘I don’t know what world you live in but normally people invest their money to make themselves richer….’
Indeed they do. The way I see it Hicks and Gillett haven’t invested a penny. Liverpool can ill afford the £40M in interest alone to pay for a loan which is buying the club. Liverpool fans are buying the club for the Americans.
‘Man U have loads of dosh but aren’t wasting it’.
Did Benzema and Villa not turn them down then? They clearly wanted to spend but their targets opted to either remain at their club or move to Real Madrid.
My article was not ill informed – it was stating simple mathematical facts. If you believe Liverpool should be handing £40M a year to a bank in interest instead of spending it on improving the squad or even putting it towards a new stadium then I would suspect you are extremely out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Liverpool fans.
The thing with statistics is that they can be read to support anybodies way of thinking. One comment I will say is that you have chosen an odd time to publish this article. If it was September 1st and we have only bought Johnson then I can see your point.
But at present, you seem to be jumping on a bandwagon, and little else.
Also, I am not a great fan of the Americans, but I feel you (and many like you) are doing them a great dis-service. Do you REALLY, honestly think that they have not improved our squad – seriously? Also, the options when they bought were Parry and Moores, who despite doing their best, had not just taken the club as far as they could, but had started to hold it back. Or the 2 Americans who bought the club. No one else was seriously on the scene (from memory there were issues with the Middle East bid, not just that Moores wasn’t getting a big enough return on his money).
I am also not 100% sure but i am fairly certain that our Owners DID put their own money into the club – both at the time of purchase and I suspect that they will have to underwrite the new loans (GG has recently sold assets in the US for this purpose).
So, in summary, this is an article that if written at all should have been written in September at the end of the transfer window. And perhaps the truth of the matter is Rafa hasn’t agreed deals with the people he wants for reason other than the depth of the owners pockets.
Why did you choose not to include Masch’s £18.6 fee from the previous year? Where’s the cut off? Why start your numbers at that point? Just because it was convenient? I sort of agree with the chap before, it’s easy to massage the numbers, but if you nip 3 or 4 months before you started your figures, you’ve got an £18.6m Javier Mascherano spend.
Have you taken into account the 4 or 5 players that have just signed new contracts? An extra £20k or so each, per week, plus signing on fees, that’s another £5m a year out of the kitty.
To write authoritatively, in bold, that our net spend was £0m, I just find quite misleading.
It’s not ideal to have G&H in, but let’s choose our battles wisely. For all their many, many faults and mistakes, I don’t think Rafa has really wanted for much in the transfer market. We’re never going to spend £40m on the likes of Villa et al, we can’t blow our whole kitty on a single player. We need to be going half way between Arsenal’s and the Scum’s strategy of buying great players and ones for the future.
I said last summer. I think that was quite clear as there is only one summer transfer window. If you want to include Javier Mascherano’s winter 2008 fee then maybe you should include Momo Sissoko’s £8.5M transfer out as well from the same period?
Our net spend in the January transfer window and this one is approximately zero. It’s not misleading. It’s the actual figures. Please correct my figures if you believe I have made a mistake.
40m in interest, 40m in dividends for the owners – what’s the difference
I think you’re way out of touch with finance and modern football ownership – sure pine for the owner that bought the club for the love of it – we had one of those but it’s people like you who seem to find t more important that we ‘make a statement’ and sign people for loads of money than the actual football
It’s the interest that builds when vast amounts are spent that means vast amounts of income so then footy gets taken over by those that promise to invest loads of money so it becomes that to compete you have to forget about prudent stewardship and start throwing the cash about. Each summer the amounts spent on fewer players becomes larger and it’s unsustainable but the root cause of it is people like you complaining that we haven’t spent enough to show the rest of the premiership how strong we are
Nobody disputes that the owners have lied but they have got us in a position to challenge so they can’t have been that miserly. In any case I didn’t see others queing up to promise to buy us for altruistic reasons
Yes Utd got turned down but if we had been in that position you’d have been advocating spending the cash on other targets instead even if they weren’t worth the amounts asked for. Utd’s owners didn’t invest a penny either and pay far more in interest than we do but still manage to find the cash for the right type of players
That the likes of Madrid, Chelsea and City haven’t won everything is a clear indication that it’s not all about money but it’s got to the point that each summer fans of each club berate their owners for not spending more than they can generate
It annoys me when the concentration is on spending money even if it’s not needed – we dont need big amounts as we were arguably the best team in the land last year – just a bit more nous and we could have won it. If that’s the objective then why the childish fascination about who spent more wonga, it’s demeaning. Would you rather we all sail close to the wind like Leeds did? What are you crying for, you want a donation from the owners? Even if a rich Arab buys us we would have to be prudent at some point – the returns must come in at some point – look at Chelsea now, they have been beaten by us and many others for signatures, the spending has massively decreased
You make some fair points but I’m certainly not suggesting we go out and throw ridiculous Man City or Real Madrid money about.
And I have to take issue with your statement that the owners have got Liverpool in a ‘position to challenge’. I’d be more inclined to hand any credit on that matter to Benitez.
I think the major problem fans have with Gillett + Hicks is that they have used finance to make any purchase with regards to LFC rather than invest their own cash in the club . If they had have invested their own money they would by-pass £40 interest payment however the result of that is if things go belly up then THEY loose out whereas this way the loan is taken out against the CLUB and not them, so they get off SCOTT FREE if this all goes south.
Don’t be fooled by the liquidation of shares in their American teams ether because this is only a visual appeasement for RBS to perpetuate the loan and the fact they have created a sister company means nothing ether. The only thing that is saving and has saved the club recently is the fact that it is in the best interests of the bank to keep this loan going (that can change of course)
These guys need to start splashing their own cash that would at least show the fans they are serious (in some way) about a long term investment in the club .
Second in the league last season, four points behind a team who have now lost the World Player of the Year, who won them countless points on his own over the last few seasons. Players who didn’t fit in to the system have been sold, with the money raised proving enough to buy the best right back in the league. Two of the greatest central midfielders in the world are, for now, still on the books. The best attacking midfielder in the world is about to start another season playing just off the best striker in the world.
We might be broke, but as things stand we don’t need much fixing.
I’m not sure a right back is what we lacked to land a title last season.
But we’d have won the league had Ronaldo not been playing for United wouldn’t we?
If we have to sell to make money to get in players then for f**k sake sell the right players;
Babel should have gone already, if alonso(getting well bored of this p***k now) if you want to go, do the right thing make it short and sharp and f**k off and make us money buy going now so we can think about the team not just you!!
Sell Itandje – why is even still at the club? Why is dossena still at the club? Sell him, I’d be happy to get back 5.5 mill on him. get rid of the voronin too.
buy silva, villa, srna, grosso, cambiasso
Must be nice living in your dream world !
we really need to get rid of the stupid yanks! they’re effectively ruining liverpool fottfall club and if they dont leave we’re going to have to keep selling our best players to buy good players. I think the only way we are going to sign david silva and wesley sneijder is if alonso leaves and no one wants that but if its what it takes to get a good replacement for xabi and a decent winger/replacement for torres then so be it. but for gods sake rafa start a petition to get rid of the yanks!
I agree with most of what has been said but we will really see what the picture is in the next week or so as teams look to really prepare for the new season – if there is nothing doing then we are probably in trouble if we get a couple of injuries.
And the owners, yes they are in it to make money but they have lied, lied and lied some more. Why not just be honest and say they are broke. I wish they would leave. The paradox is, the longer that Rafa does so well with no where near the funds of other clubs, the more likely they are to stay. And recently, sale talk has cooled significantly. I guess the hacks are waiting for the new season where they can have another anti-Liverpool series of articles.
Relax… things are about to change in a way that you have wanted and have not believed! Take a chill pill and enjoy what is coming. Soon!
Editor.
Only Sugar Daddies want nothing in return for there services, 99% of businesses actually want a return of some sorts, my problem with Gillett and Hicks is nothing more than when they first bid for Liverpool F.C they had no f#cken clue what they where doing, (Oh for due diligence back then) and a Chairman or Chief Executive who could pull there heads out of there arses and do some research of there own. While Hicks and Gillett are far from perfect nor are the arseholes who sold the club to them. What we need to do is stop number crunching every time you dust of your calculator and further fueling the fires that be and start living in the real world.
Unless an Arab comes in with major money and wears blinkers all day and doesn’t give a crap about a profit or running up a debt, Then……………
Get used to it we could have Ashley as an owner.
Well we have being making noise for a long time but we need to remove these monkies n their monkey business from LFC…. they have contributed more in pain then finance. Whenever their name comes up we know something smells bad. Please get away from LFC…go buy Newcastle…. U will eventually kill us off….
Well, while I share your disappointment about the alleged lack of funds available for transfers, I would like to have a look at this from a different perspective. Selling clubs are, like the public, made believe that we don’t have any money, unlike the likes of Man City, Man U, Chelsea, Real Madrid etc. As a result of this, these clubs may not ask silly money when one of their players is eventually sold to us, unlike the case with the aforementioned clubs.
The yanks are bleeding LFC dry, the sooner they are gone the better.