Tony Barrett January 11, 2010
Tom Hicks Jr was under mounting pressure to resign from the Liverpool board last night.
Hicks sent an offensive e-mail to a supporter and triggered a row that has led to a fansâ group accusing the club of âa conspiracy of silenceâ.
Hicks â the son of Tom Hicks, the Liverpool co-owner â sparked outrage at the weekend when he responded to an e-mail from Stephen Horner, a supporter, with consecutive abusive replies. The first simply said âidiotâ, but the second said: âBlow me, f**k face. Go to hell, Iâm sick of you.â
He has since apologised, but the Texanâs contrition has failed to quell growing calls for him to quit the club.
The Spirit of Shankly (SOS), a fansâ campaign group committed to the removal of Hicks Sr and George Gillett Jr, released a statement demanding the immediate resignation of Hicks Jr.
It was also heavily critical of the Liverpool hierarchy for remaining silent on the matter. On several occasions yesterday The Times sought a reaction from Liverpool, but to no avail.
Freud Communications, the London-based PR firm employed by the Hicks family, also failed to offer any comment on the matter.
âIt is a great surprise and an even greater disappointment that Liverpool Football Club have thus far failed to make any comment on what we feel is a very serious matter,â James McKenna, a spokesman for SOS, said.
âIs this what the club has come to, that a board member can speak in such derogatory terms to a supporter but can go without censure or any public criticism?
âThe conspiracy of silence which has followed this unsavoury incident is totally unbecoming of a club which has always prided itself on its relationship with the fans.
âAre we to presume that the Liverpool hierarchy condones the comments made by Tom Hicks Jr or is it simply a case that the deeply flawed regime of Hicks and Gillett has left the entire club in a state of paralysis?
âSurely the very least the Liverpool supporters deserve is an open and honest explanation from the club, an indication on their feelings about the objectionable behaviour of such a senior member of the board and a commitment that such an incident will not happen again.â
Horner had sought comments from Hicks about a weekend article in a local newspaper, following up revelations in The Times last Tuesday about Rafael BenĂtez, the Liverpool manager, not being allowed to reinvest the proceeds from the planned sales of four players during the transfer window.
Hicksâs subsequent admission at least ended any debate about whether he had actually sent the offensive e-mail, but it has done little to negate the growing sense of outrage on Merseyside. Hicks told Horner: âI apologise for losing my temper and using bad language with you. It was a kneejerk reaction.â
Horner said: âThe damage has been done by Hicksâs initial two e-mail messages that he sent me on Saturday morning and the apology received later in the day is hollow and probably a PR exercise.
âHicks Jr should resign with immediate effect and it is time that Gillett and Hicks sold up and handed the reins over to people who understand the Liverpool way. They are not welcome at Anfield and should name their price and begin negotiations with more suitable investors who can take this great club forward.â
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/liverpool/article6982996.eceOliver Kay
"Blow me, ****face. Go to hell. Iâm sick of you."
As an epitaph to the calamitous Hicks-Gillett regime at Liverpool, the ten-word e-mail sent by Tom Hicks Jr at 4am on Saturday, in response to a polite message from a concerned supporter, ticked just about every box. Brash, arrogant, offensive, crass, uncouth, contemptuous and hopelessly naive, it was the defining moment of almost three years of blundering, back-biting and broken promises at Anfield.
Hicks Jr, the son of Tom Hicks, the co-owner, eventually apologised to the supporter in question for "losing my temper and using bad language with you", calling it "a kneejerk reaction". A jerkâs reaction would probably be a better way of putting it and a more considered, appropriate response now would be to resign from his position on the clubâs board.
But still, at least it was an apology; Liverpoolâs supporters have been waiting a long time for one of those.
Hicks and George Gillett Jr made all the right noises when they swaggered into Liverpool in February 2007, red-and-white scarves draped around their shoulders, oozing folksy charm and pledging, among other things, to start building work on a new stadium within 60 days (oops), not to take the club into debt (it now stands at around ÂŁ245 million), to be accessible ("go to hell") and "to add to the lustre of the club, not detract from it" ("blow me, ****face").
For a company director to insult a customer in such a way (and, yes, it irks to use such terminology) is a disgrace and yet somehow it is not the foul-mouthed language that irks most about Hicks Jrâs e-mail. Far worse is the contempt that runs through every word: contempt for the concerns expressed by a supporter who, without further comment, sent him a link to an article in the Liverpool Echo in which concerns were expressed about Rafael BenĂtezâs alarming struggle to find money to invest in a depleted, demoralised squad that is in severe danger of missing out on Champions League qualification.
The supportersâ concerns for Liverpoolâs future, short and long term, are legitimate. BenĂtez appeared to acknowledge for the first time over the weekend that he may be forced to sell players such as Fernando Torres if they fail to qualify for next seasonâs Champions League â previously, in an interview with The Times in November, he had said he would resign rather than tolerate such a scenario â and for Hicks Jr to sneer at such concerns, whether he uses foul-mouthed insults or wit worthy of Oscar Wilde, is not acceptable.
For the sake of balance, it is worth pointing out here that Hicks, Gillett and their families have been subjected to some rather less civil e-mails and, according to Gillett, telephone calls since their ill-conceived dalliance with Liverpool took the first of many turns for the worse.
On a visit to Merseyside two years ago Hicks Jr decided, flanked by minders, to go for a post-match drink in The Sandon pub "because I have wanted to go for quite some time to see the birthplace of the club and I also wanted the opportunity to have a direct talk with some of the supporters". Suffice to say it was a brief conversation.
Liverpoolâs supporters did everything to make Hicks and Gillett feel welcome in the spring of 2007. Unless it has been burnt, whether out of embarrassment or anger, there is a fan somewhere with a banner that, echoing the words of the MasterCard advert, ends with the phrase "for everything else, thereâs George and Tom".
It was not until the season after â the unedifying and very public spats with BenĂtez, the talks with JĂźrgen Klinsmann, the decision to take the club heavily into debt, the continuing fiasco over the stadium â that warmth turned to hostility of the type that the Glazer family faced on their early visits to Manchester United.
Outsiders mistake the antiAmerican sentiment on Merseyside as a misplaced sense of empathy with BenĂtez. They look at the purchases of Torres, Javier Mascherano, Robbie Keane, Glen Johnson and others and suggest that BenĂtez, having been backed to the hilt, has only himself to blame for Liverpoolâs failure to win a first league title since 1990. That is a different argument and a spurious one; whatever BenĂtezâs perceived faults â and his judgment in the transfer market last summer, albeit faced with a constrained budget, was highly questionable â he is far from being Liverpoolâs weakest link.
Hicks and Gillett have made some good appointments in the commercial and financial sphere, helping to drive up the clubâs revenue, but none of that counts for a bean when Liverpool were forced to pay ÂŁ36.5 million in interest last season (and, at best, a similar figure this campaign). Ivan Gazidis, the Arsenal chief executive, said in an interview with The Times last week that "not all debt is bad", pointing out how the clubâs interest bills are more than covered by the revenue generated by the move to the Emirates Stadium. Liverpoolâs debt, by contrast, is very bad, existing for no other reason than to prop up a regime that, in every other sense, ran out of credit long ago.
Gillett took the unusual step of telephoning me the last time I criticised him and Hicks, telling me I had "got it all wrong" and that "debt per dollar, we are in a far better position than our rivals". His response was certainly more polite and more reasoned than that from Hicks Jr in the early hours of Saturday, but my deep reservations were not overcome. It is not a case of saying that Gillett or Hicks or their sons are bad people. It is simply the case that, between them, they have repeatedly shown themselves to lack the qualities needed to be worthy owners of Liverpool Football Club.
In February 2007 â the day he said that "the shovel needs to be in the ground within 60 days" with regards to the construction of a new stadium, where two years, 11 months and four days on, no shovel has yet been seen â Gillett said that "this isnât about making money. This is about winning and passion and tradition".
Yet passion has been directed in all the wrong areas, traditions have been ignored, the aforementioned lustre has been tarnished and the widespread belief persists that they would be as willing as ever to sell up if they could be guaranteed a huge enough profit to show for all their hard work and dedication to the Liverpool cause.
That will be the final insult, when they depart â whether it is in six weeks, six months or six years â with a profit to their name. Hicks Jrâs e-mail in the early hours of Saturday was merely the latest, but, with those ten words, he plumbed new depths. Next time he is passing The Sandon, he would be advised to keep walking.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/thegame/2010/01/insults-follow-injury-for-beleaguered-liverpool-supporters.html
