Liverpool supporters groups are stepping up their campaign in protest at the massive debt the American owners have placed the club in.
Only yesterday, plans were released to enable Liverpool supporters to directly take over the club and pay for the majority of the new stadium. The new site had exceeded its bandwidth within about 10 minutes and is currently being moved to a better webserver due to the demand. About half an hour later we re-published the text from the site, and unfortunately this caused Anfield Online to also crash temporarily when we received an unprecedented number of visitors to the website.
At a meeting near to Anfield, items discussed included boycotting the Liverpool FC Club shop and eseason ticket.
We would like to reiterate their proposals, and offer the following advice to Liverpool fans both in the city and worldwide about how you can help to return our club out of the hands of the current owners.
1. Boycott the Official Liverpool FC Stores.
We urge everybody to refuse to purchase items from the official Liverpool FC club stores, located in Liverpool city centre or at Anfield itself. Fans will be handing out leaflets to fans who do visit the store at Anfield before and after games.
2. Cancel your e-season ticket
Liverpool FC have one of the most popular official club websites in the world. The e-season ticket giving you access to interviews and highlights costs around £50 a year. We estimate that this is a significant source of revenue for Liverpool FC – and the website is claimed to have 23 million registered users – although only a fraction of this will have the e-season ticket.
We will be cancelling our subscription with IMMEDIATE effect and we hope you feel that this is the right thing to do.
To cancel your account visit the ‘My Account’ section of the official site (here) click on ‘E-Season Admin’ on the right and then click Cancel. Make sure you enter the reason you are leaving so that the club are aware of the huge debt the new owners have placed the club under.
(Many of the features of the e-season ticket can be accessed on other Liverpool FC websites and forums, and for instance, many national newspapers now carry videos of press conferences etc on their websites.)
‘Save our Club’
Anfield Online
www.anfield-online.co.uk
We will never win the league under there ownership, We over achieved last season, We are falling behind other team’s year after year. Save us DIC
Boycotting the club is not the the answer! In fact all this rubbish about how to run the club (from people who are passionate, but have no idea)is really hurting my club. Stirring up support for demonstrations and boycott is NOT the Liverpool way! Save your passion for getting behind the team, that’s where supporter can have the best influence. Leave the running of the club to the businessmen (who may, or may not love the club I don’t care)the one thing they do want to do is make money, the best way to do that is have a successful team. Supporter passion is great when directed in the right way, It’s very dangerous when used in the wrong way. Lets not become another Newcastle or Leeds!! YNWA
i understand ur ideas but i do not think there best way to take our club forward x
Wake up and smell the coffee everyone!
Stop all the moaning about the Yanks and see sense!
To make a profit, they will have to spend in the first place, ‘speculate to accumulate’, they said when they arrived only that they bought the club without debt, which is completely true, they never said they would build us a stadium for nothing, do we really expect anyone, including DIC, to come and build the new Anfield completely free of charge?
By the club paying for the stadium, we will own it and it won’t be the Hicks and Gillett arena etc……..
Also this comparison with the Leeds situation is VERY different to what we find ourselves in, they were spending money they didn’t have, on tropical fish tanks in Ridsdale’s office for God’s sake. They were paying journey men players like Seth Johnson a small fortune and if I’m not mistaken, they were still paying Kewell’s wages for quite some time after he left!Pity there still not as he hasn’t earned them for some time now.
Lets not get involved with fc united
We are Liverpool FC
The jeanie’s out of the bottle and you’re not going to be able to put it back in. Blame Moores. He couldn’t be bothered taking your club forward and then sold you down the river. You don’t need “big investors” to come in, just look at Arsenal. Anybody who buys you will want to make a profit out of you. That means they take out more than they put in.
That’s it. That’s the reality, and too few of you have woken up too late to do anything about it now.
You have, as seen on here, too many people with their heads in the sand who can’t understand that 2 + 2 = 4, always. They think that somebody out of the goodness of their hearts will come and just give away millions of their hard earned cash to buy Liverpool success. Well dream on, it isn’t going to happen.
You have the power collectively in your hands to change things but too few of you have the bottle to use it, which means in effect you have no power.
Some of you I feel sorry for, the others just deserve what they get.
Im very concerned about the clubs future. These Americans dont understand Liverpool’s great history and the way things have always been done. The only reason they’ve bought the club is for profit. Im all for the club to be bought by us fans. Not that I could afford five grand at this time. But I think before fans buy into this. They need to no more, as said 500 mil to buy the club and help towards the new stadium. Will the club run self sufficiently without a millionair funding it. If the answers yes and there was money for transfers as normal every season. Then i think never mind 100000 fans times that by ten. These are dark times, and Liverpool fans need to unite and then we can get through the storm . LFC FOREVER
I am always amazed when people assert that clubs cannot be run by supporters; the business side of football is really very simple and in any Anfield crowd you could pick hundreds of people with both the qualifications and business experience to run a football club. What is more, they would have the passion for it and the desire to ensure that income is invested back into the club. What we have now is a bunch of carpetbaggers, determined to screw clubs for every penny, using borrowed money which is loaded back onto the club. And guess who is going to pay for it? I wish you well in your venture to take control of your football club but be warned, as with MUFC, most supporters will not care enough to back you, let alone consider even boycotting a single game. FCUM.
There’s no love lost between my club and yours, I’m a United fan, but even though I wish you luck with this I can’t see it coming off. I no longer go to Old Trafford I’ve been watching FC United since 2005. we’ve taken a lot of abuse from fellow reds for what they see as jumping ship but the time came to say enough is enough. The game as we knew it is dying, the people who buy us up are’nt interested in some joe from Stretford or Anfield, they want some JCL from surrey with money to spend in tha megastore, as long as theres an arse on a seat they don’t give a s**t.
There is nothing wrong with debt as long as it is servicable (you make more than you owe), the new stadium should allow the grow to compete and the owners to make a few pounds. At the moment we have lots of ‘super scousers’ competing to show how scouse they are. Grow up, leave the money to the owners (we will always be owned by someone for business reasons). One sure way to screw the club is carry on this pathetic nonsense.
The suggestions are sound, I’m convinced that the Barcelona type system can work for Liverpool and this must bring greater long term stability and prosperity to the club than it being owned by speculators who wish to make money out of us.
The current owners will need a push and I support the e-season and club store boycott as a minimum measure. I would support further action, even for fans to stop purchasing tickets if thats what it would take to force the sale at a reasonable price. There would be pain for a while but we would be securing our clubs long term future. Its got to be worth it.
i along with probably the majority of the liverpool fans around the world are in a very bad position right now as we dont know what is in store for our famous club.
but i dont know if you can move our club forward with your plan, and what i mean by this is yes we will have our club back and be debt free, even have half the money for the new staduim but after that i still dont think we will have the clout to compete with scum utd arsenal and chavski.
i think the best bet (and of course this is my opinion) is to get behind dic and force the american cowboys (who are clearly out of their depth) to sell up before they take it to far and drag our club into a leeds type situation.
I am not dragging your plan down as i think it is a brilliant idea which i thought about myself, but i really think if we where to do something like this we could only do it for the short term until we can find a proper buying who we can all trust to take our club and i will say that again OUR CLUB forward to match the others where dont speak of.
for the benifet of our club i really do hope you are successful to bring our club from the brink of obsurity to where it belongs standing proud above all the others on top of the world.
Unfortunatly i am not in a position to buy a share (i would sell my whole family if they where worth enough lol)but hope thatyou can buy the club and keep it safe till someone with the heart and desire to plough the money our club needs to restore it back to where it belongs
good luck
Some fatal flaws in this proposal.
#1 500 million wont buy the club the yanks didnt sell to DIC for a similar amount why would they sell to a group of fans
#2 It would take years to put something like this together
#3 Assuming for a moment the yanks *did* sell at 500m where would the money for player wages(69 million for 2006-2007)/transfers(at least 20m a year/running costs(academy, staff wages etc) come from ? – TV money is only around 40m and liverpool is not the most profitable club (even before the yanks) mainly due to a laughable merchandising operation (which you now want us to boycott !)
#4 the madrid and barca models aren’t exactly the best examples for follow. Wasn’t long ago that madrid needed to the king of spain to get them out of serious financal trouble and would you want the ludicrous annual president elections that barca have “vote for me because I can bring to the club”
#5 Hicks is quoted this morning as saying “not for sale at any price”
This whole idea is grounded in sentiment. Practical reality views it very differently.
If the fans raise the capital to pay for the club they then sell it to a new investor for what they put in i.e DIC who can then easily keep up with payments.
Cancel your e-season ticket Yes as this wont stop fans going on to our website
but dont boycott the club stores
i will not boycot the club i love time 4 us all 2 get behind the team;;;;
I am sick to death of this get behind the team rubbish..If you dont raise your voice you wont be heard.Anfield is like a morgue on a saturday cos too many people go the match like its a cool think to do.Be more vocal in our dissaproval at the yanks…how dare they sit there in there box on a saturday thinking all is well with the club..We will always get behind the team that goes without saying, but we should think about the future and not keep living in the past. ynwa
FAO Paul,
We are certainly not telling fans to ‘desert’ the club. We are not telling fans to boycott games. LFC products can be bought from thousands of retailers up and down the country.
All we are suggesting that by boycotting the club stores and cancelling our e-season tickets we can show the owners that we are more than capable of flexing our muscles and they should consider their position before they ruin our club.
You clearly don’t get it.
just cancelled my e-season ticket there now. it was hard but i feel small things like this will get threw to the americans. soon they will pack up and go home. but i also think a change of managment is required.
Are we going in the direction of man u ? fc united.
Please dont bring our club down and telling our fans to desert our sinking ship is not going to benefit our club or us as fans.
How do you tell your kids we cant go to the Liverpool shop .
Ok can we go to the everton shop then?
This is not the way for me sorry.
im a former member of the liverpool international supporters club one of the erly 4500. i dont know where to begin to explain my disapiontment in the u.s owners and lack of understanding of what is required to own a premier league team let alone the greatest team in the world liverpool. its hard enough putting up with manu winning the league year after year and a guy who said he wants to beat our record league titles (fergusson). now our club has plunged to a depth right next to the titanic and we all know the history of that fatal trip only this one starts at liverpool and ends in liverpool. “you’ll never walk alone” well lets see if thats true. so lets walk out the u.s owners via the shankly gates, stamp the passport never to return.
Its my club as well so lets not destroy something I love