Dear Tom and George... do you realise this is the most important summer in Liverpool's history?
The Mirror David Maddock The Daily Mirror's Merseyside Correspondent, David Maddock, writes an open letter to George Gillett and Tom Hicks, the owners of Liverpool Football Club....
Dear messrs Hicks and Gillett,
I am writing to ask a simple question of you both. Namely, do you realise that this is quite possibly the single most important summer in the history of Liverpool Football Club?
By now, I know you are aware that you have presided over a financial disaster at the English soccer âfranchiseâ you purchased with much bravado in 2007. No doubt you will blame the global credit crunch and the collapse of the financial markets for your problems, but the simple fact remains that you are unable to put into place the plans you had for the club.
That is why you are selling. The level of interest payments now placed on the club is so crippling that there is no profit left over to fund the development necessary to increase the value of your investment.
You can not build a stadium. You can not even buy marquee players to extend the image of your brand across the developing markets of South East Asia and the Americas. So you are left with a brand that maintains the potential which prompted you to buy it, but without the means to realise that potential.
So you are selling up, you are getting out; you have saddled up the steed and are preparing to hit the trail. Those troublesome fans â the little people you had banked on exploiting - have made life uncomfortable for you, they have made you unwelcome at your own franchise. They have exposed your plans for what they are: the pursuit of corporate profit.
But that is not the reason you are going. You can live with being hated from 5,000 miles away if it means making more profit. You are going because you feel you can not make any more profit.
Your plan was to tart the property up, making it infinitely more valuable, and then sell it for considerably more than you paid. But the banking collapse put paid to those plans, the banks are continually squeezing your line of credit, and you donât have the money to make the improvements.
So you will sell it half renovated. Youâll bang on about the huge potential, the opportunity to cash in on a massive global fan base, and youâll even chuck in some flashy plans for an extension, that will be worth more than it costs to build.
One problem though. This summer. The most important summer in the history of Liverpool Football Club. Because the way you are going, at the end of this summer, your âproperty with great development potentialâ could be worth diddly squat.
Already you are carrying ÂŁ350million worth of debt that is growing by the day, and that is even before a disappointing season where failure to qualify for the Champions League will have a massive impact on financial performance. Already, interest payments are wiping out any operating profits the company makes.
But youâve got even bigger problems ahead, because the whole point of football as a business is that financial performance is intrinsically linked to playing performance. Stop winning on the pitch, and you risk the complete collapse of your brand.
And there is a very real risk of that now. The news that Cesc Fabregas wants out of Arsenal because he feels they canât compete with the biggest clubs should have the alarm bells screaming for you.
If he feels that about Arsenal â a club in exponentially better financial health than yours â then what about Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard? They are your only marquee players, the only faces that sell merchandising in Asia, they are the assets your brand is built on. And they must surely want to leave.
You havenât invested in the team for two years. You have allowed a situation to grow where the players are no longer all together in the dressing room, and are no longer all behind their manager either.
You have created a situation where your best two players, the key figures in the immediate future of your brand, feel that Liverpool are a hopeless case. No Champions League football, no investment, no direction, just muddling along without any response to the disasters of the last campaign.
And what have you done about it? Nothing. You are sitting and fiddling while Anfield burns, presumably because you think that if you sit tight and donât get involved, then the banks you have appointed to sell the club will get on and do the job, and deliver you a big fat cheque.
The season ended two weeks ago. It was Liverpoolâs worst season in a decade. The problems at the club seem worse now than they have done in 50 years. You have political infighting between board and manager, between manager and players, and even between the fans.
And what do you do? Nothing. No addressing the infighting. No addressing the lack of investment. No addressing the fears of the players. No addressing the unrest in the dressing room. No promises to manager or players. So what do you expect will happen?
Everything will sort itself out, everyone will stay put and get along, and the personnel who werenât good enough last season will suddenly be transformed â without any additions â into champions this time around? Dream on.
What will happen is that Gerrard and Torres will leave. And so will Mascherano and Benayoun. And probably anybody else who is good enough to want better than the nonsense you are offering them.
And then what? Your manager may remain, and you may give him some of the funds that will be raised from the sale of your best players (though no doubt much of it will go towards reducing the crippling debt).
But do you have any faith that those world class players can be replaced adequately? Do you really believe that you can start again and build a completely new side when your best players leave in July?
What will you get then anyway, in July, when everyone else has bought the best players? And what sort of player will you attract to a club that the likes of Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres have deemed is a basket case?
Look at the last few seasons and youâll see the type of player that is prepared to come to Anfield under your regime. Youâll have a team stuffed full of Degens, Dossenas, Aquilanis, Babels and Voronins.
You were already seventh, almost mid-table anyway. So where will that leave you? Lower mid-table? Relegation scrappers? And all the time the debt will be growing, the loyal fans will be rebelling, and the emerging markets will be switching their fragile allegiances to other more attractive franchises.
Do you think Liverpool will be worth the crazy figures you are asking then? Do you think youâll make a profit then? Do you think your plans to ride off into the sunset with a big, fat cheque will still be viable?
Of course, not one Liverpool fan gives a stuff about your big fat cheque, and every single one of them would love to see you lose money on your investment to teach you the lesson that football clubs are not simply a brand to be milked for corporate profit.
But every single one of those fans cares passionately about their club, because for them, it is more than just a product. And they care about the state you will leave Liverpool in, because the way you are going there could be nothing left of the club after the most important summer in Anfield history.
If that happens, you wonât just have Liverpool fans to answer to. If you destroy an icon of British sporting history, an icon of British social and cultural history, then you will have most of a nation to answer to.
Bear that in mind as you sit there, fiddling while Anfield burns. But bear in mind, too, the one thing that clearly means so much to you â money â could be slipping through your fingers as your inaction runs Liverpool into the ground this summer.
If you donât want your investment to turn to dust â and just look at English football history to see what happens to clubs that go into terminal decline â then you have to act now.
You need first of all to stop Torres and Gerrard following the example of Fabregas. To do that, you need to give them hope for the future, which means investment in the future.
You need a new broom to get rid of the despair of last season and see it replaced with excitement for the coming one. Only money can achieve that, because you need to invest in the best talent available â to attract world class talent at all levels of your club.
And it needs to happen now. Not in July, but now. You have days, not months, to persuade your best players to stay, and only a massive gesture can do that. Only a massive investment can do that.
It is risky sure, because it means borrowing even more money, given that you wonât invest any of your own cash. But it is worth the risk. Speculate to accumulate and all that.
This is the most important summer in Liverpoolâs history. If you get it wrong, as you have done for the past three years, then your investment will be worth nothing. You have to act decisively, and then you have to leave. As quickly as possible. And donât bother shutting the door on your way out.
Yours truly,
David