Liverpool owner John W Henry admits top players wanted to leave the club before his overhaul at Anfield
Exclusive: In an exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport, Liverpool owner John W Henry reflects on his first 10 months in English football and reveals the plans for Liverpool’s future.
Corresponding over email, Henry defends the club’s investment in expensive British talent, makes clear that his expectation is for a return to the Champions League and asks if anything will be done about Chelsea and Manchester City not appearing to take Uefa’s Financial Fair play rules seriously.
He has damning words for the lack of discipline with which the club was previously run and makes it clear that players who were not committed have been sold.
Perhaps most excitingly for Liverpool fans, he reveals that he is looking for a naming rights partner that could make a much-needed new stadium viable.
What is clear is that he is not a hands-off owner but someone who has immersed himself in the project of taking Liverpool from its debt-laden stagnant state back to the summit of European football.
You attended the opening game against Sunderland last weekend. Could you talk us through your day?I had spent the previous day in Munich studying the Allianz Arena - a truly magnificent accomplishment by Bayern Munich. I flew in late Friday night and Tom, Ian and I met with our supporters committee on Saturday morning. We were amazed at the strength and depth of the committee. It was an important meeting covering a number of technical issues.
Richard Scudamore of the Premier League and David Bernstein of the FA were there prior to and during the match so it was an opportunity to speak with them. I’ve got to know Mr Scudamore, but it was my first time meeting Mr Bernstein. Both are very impressive and seem to be extraordinarily well-suited for their roles.
Did you go down to the dressing room?
Yes.
What did it feel like watching this team you had helped build?Tom and I spoke as the match began about how many players in the starting line-up had arrived after we had. The fact that Luis Suarez was there despite such a limited period of rest after the Copa America is representative of just how determined everyone in the dressing room is this year.
As you know this is a club with a tremendous history and you want players who understand how important every match is to millions around the world. Our fans don’t even take friendlies in a friendly way. They have expectations. So do all of us inside the club.
This year those expectations are matched by every player. Not every player wanted to be here when we arrived. Kenny, Steve, Damian and Ian have turned that completely around. And you have to give Kenny the lion’s share of the credit.
What are your targets for this season? Is there a minimum requirement for Kenny Dalglish and his team?
Manchester United has done an incredible job of building a young, talented, deep squad. I watched a number of their pre-season matches and they seemed in top form even then. We’ve just begun to build and are years behind them so we don’t expect this to be our year to win the Premier League.
Manchester City seems to have unlimited spending restraint and are attempting to have all-star quality at each position - two deep. That will be hard to beat. This year our goal is to get back to Champions League.
This is a club with a history in European competition and people throughout the world - at least our supporters - yearn for European nights. That’s our first goal. But it won’t be at all easy as there are 6 big clubs - among the best in Europe - fighting for 4 spots.
In your first 10 months in English football, what has impressed you?The referees impress me. Football officiating is so subjective - much more subjective than any other sport. But the more I watch - and I watch too many matches - the more impressed I am with referees.
It’s impossible to get every call correct because so many of the calls are highly subjective. We have slow motion cameras looking from various angles but a referee is on the move and only has one angle. The most amazing thing to me is how accurate linesmen are on offsides.
I don’t see how they can see when the ball is struck and at the same time determine from their angle if someone is offside. It’s frustrating when they don’t get it right, but it’s so difficult and they are right 95% of the time despite all of the complaining. There are so many things I’m impressed with - that would take a full article.
What has surprised you? Shocked you?Well, the transfer system and how it works is a shock if you’ve come from American sports. The fact that a guaranteed contract means very little when another club decides that they want your player is surprising. The player suddenly “has to go.”
This is an advantage for big clubs such as ours and I’m getting used to it, but it was a shock to find out that the guarantee only works one way. And of course the sums of money that are spent on buying and selling players is remarkable.
When you first arrived in English football you made it clear you supported Uefa’s Financial Fair Play concept, which begins to be applied this summer. Are Liverpool on track to conform to the rules?
For a club to be sustainable for the long-term it is essential to live within those rules. What happens when large deficit spending for a club suddenly stops? The record isn’t very good in that regard.
Quoting Gordon Taylor on billionaires, “History tells you that sometimes, like butterflies, they land on one attractive resting place then move on to another. I’m asking: when it’s time for these people to move, is there a structure in place to enable their clubs to survive?" What about other clubs? You recently raised doubts about Manchester City’s sponsorship deal on your twitter site….
The question remains as to how serious EUFA is regarding this. It appears that there are a couple of large English clubs that are sending a strong message that they aren’t taking them seriously, yet large clubs in Italy are - or are at least taking steps to do so.
Maybe it’s necessary for other associations to act. I believe the Football League has adopted these protocols. They have to be congratulated on that.
Do Liverpool need FFP to be properly applied if they are to compete at the very top level?We need time to build the football operation and we need to build our revenues. We did that in Boston and we still cannot come close to matching the revenues of the New York Yankees. But we match them competitively.
They are the two clubs that have won the most games over the past ten years in major league baseball. We won’t be near the top of Europe for a while. But we will get there in both regards.
You have made it clear in the past that you would be looking at introducing a more coherent policy went came to transfers, trying to make more objective judgements on players that included statistics, potential development and re-sale values.
Could you talk me through how you have applied this policy? Are you still using some of the principles gleaned from Moneyball/sabermetrics?First of all let me warn you, there are fictional elements to film Moneyball. It wasn’t a young geek who came up with all of those principles. They initially came from Bill James over a number of years. Bill was one of the first people we brought aboard when we bought the Boston Red Sox 10 years ago.
Billy Beane and his staff in Oakland weren’t the first to use these methods, but they were extremely effective at it. The only reason they didn’t win multiple World Series was that the playoffs in MLB are so much of a toss up in comparison to [English] football. We have been effective because those principles are only one aspect of our baseball operation. We spend a lot of money on amateur scouting and player development.
The nature of markets, and that includes player acquisition markets, is such that sooner or later any set of successful formulae that provide an excess return above investment are discounted.
By that I mean that eventually what was undervalued becomes more valued - sometimes to the point of being over-valued. It’s just a matter of how stubborn executives are with regard to preferring subjectivity over objectivity. At one point only Boston, Oakland and the Yankees placed a very high value on On Base Percentage and we were heavily criticised as stat geeks.
Then we won two World Series and now virtually all 30 clubs believe in the power of baseball’s hidden statistics. So with a limited payroll it’s become very difficult for Oakland to compete despite having some of the most brilliant people in baseball there.
Have you achieved your goals in terms of recruitment and sales this summer? Has the high expenditure of this window been a one-off investment to get you up to speed?
For a number of years players of quality were being sold and players of lesser quality were being purchased. The club wasn’t being run by people with the kind of discipline it takes to be successful over the long-term. It’s odd to be criticised by some who think we are over-spending.
The worry seemed to be that we wouldn’t spend. But we’ve been consistent, we intend to strengthen this club annually but that doesn’t mean we will deficit spend. It’s up to us to strengthen revenues. Only then will the club be strong enough to compete in Europe.
How important is it, again with FFP in mind, for you to lower the wage bill before this window closes?
Not an issue.
A large share of the money you have spent on recruitment has gone on British players (Henderson/Downing/Adam). Was this a determined strategy? If you compare the fees spent on any British, and specifically English, player with those spent on foreign counterparts there appears to be a market premium for buying British talent. Do you believe this is the case? And if so why were you prepared to pay those premiums?Everyone seemed to think that Liverpool was over-valuing British players this summer. But when the Premier League has the whole world to choose players from and there is a substantial homegrown rule, British players are going to be highly valued.
Look at the prices paid this year for Conor Wickham and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. At Liverpool we have purchased each player for a different reason. It doesn’t mean we are going to solve all of our issues in one season, but we are headed in the right direction.
Could you describe your personal involvement in the recruitment process this summer?This first year I have tried to be as involved as I could so as to learn as much as possible in a short period of time. Tom and I are always questioning everything in Boston. Always. And that is done in a very positive way because we have very talented people in the key positions.
It is now working the same way in Liverpool. I want to know why we are doing what we are doing on the pitch and with regard to player acquisition. I wouldn’t be doing my job in allocating resources if I wasn’t able to make sense of the individual steps we are taking within the context of our overall philosophy.
Consequently there is no doubt that Kenny, Steve, Damian, Ian, Tom and I share a long-term, disciplined philosophy that encompasses all aspects of the operation. It’s an exciting time to be a part of this rebuilding effort.
Has there been any progress on the prospects of a new stadium? Is building a new stadium a viable option in the current climate? Your group has indicated in the past that a ground-share with Everton is off the agenda — is this still the case?I’ve seen a lot of talk recently about ground-sharing, but our position hasn’t changed. There’s no doubt that if a new stadium were to be built in Liverpool from a financial perspective - which is the major issue - a ground-share would be helpful for both clubs. But there doesn’t seem to be any support for that from Red or Blue fans - at all. So how could that ever happen?
We would love to expand Anfield, but there are enough local and regulatory issues to keep that avenue stalled for years with no assurances that once begun it would bear any fruit.
If Anfield cannot be expanded a new stadium is wonderful choice. But the fact is we already have 45,000 seats. If a new stadium is constructed with 60,000 seats you’ve spent an incredible sum of money to add just 15,000 seats.
If the cost is £300m for an extra 15,000 seats, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Liverpool isn’t London, you can’t charge £1 million for a long-term club seat. And concession revenues per seat aren’t that much different at Emirates from Anfield.
That’s why the search is on currently for a naming-rights partner. And that could very well happen.
Telegraph
