The Beginning of the End • Funky Nassau ℗ 1971
26 minutes ago
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Liverpool's board split over two new bids to buy club
Gillett (left) and Hicks have come under pressure to sell from Liverpool fans
Liverpool have confirmed that two new bids that would wipe out the club's debts have been made, but a huge split has divided the Anfield boardroom.
A source close to the negotiations said: "Both bids would significantly reduce the debt and give the current owners their original investment back."
But American co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett have opposed the offers.
A club statement added that the pair tried to remove two members of the board prior to Tuesday's meeting.
Hicks and Gillett wanted managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre replaced by Mack Hicks - son of Tom - and Lori Kay McCutheon, who is vice president at Hicks Holdings.
A Liverpool statement read: "This matter is now subject to legal review and a further announcement will be made in due course.
"Meanwhile [chairman] Martin Broughton, Christian Purslow and Ian Ayre continue to explore every possible route to achieving a sale of the club at the earliest opportunity."
The two bids, which the club statement described as "excellent financial offers", are thought to be from Asia and America.
BBC Sport understands the US bid is from Boston Red Sox owner John Henry's New England Sports Ventures.
The three independent members of the board - Purslow, Broughton and Ayre - favour a sale to one of the two new bidders and are weighing up whether to accept.
But it is thought Hicks and Gillett are against accepting as neither bid would see the duo walk away with a profit.
Liverpool were put up for sale by Hicks and Gillett in April with debts of £351.4m.
They initially sought an asking price of around £800m, a figure they subsequently dropped to £600m.
In August there were abortive bids from Hong Kong businessman Kenny Huang while a consortium fronted by Syrian businessman Yahya Kirdi had also expressed an interest.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kirdi was quoted as saying the group he represents were dropping out of contention, adding: "Once everyone is united and there's logic in the price and the overall deal, me and my group will be prepared to return to the table."
The owners paid £174.1m to buy the club in 2007, while also agreeing to take on the club's debt of £44.8m.
It was said to be a new dawn for the Anfield outfit, with outgoing chairman David Moores describing it as "a great step forward for its shareholders and its fans".
But little has gone right for either the club or its owners since then.
But little has gone right for either the club or its owners since then.
The club slipped into the Premier League relegation zone after losing at home to Blackpool at the weekend and were earlier knocked out of the League Cup by League Two side Northampton.
Many of the club's fans have become increasingly outraged at the pair's mismanagement of the club, which is said to be currently £237.4m in debt, and their failure to carry through promises to build a new stadium.
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has set a deadline of 15 October for that debt to be repaid or a penalty fee of £60m will be due.
If not the bank has the option of extending the deadline once again, or deciding enough is enough and either selling the club to the highest bidder or putting it in administration.
Many fans of the Merseyside club are keen to see RBS call in the debt, even if it means them going into administration and receiving a nine-point penalty from the Premier League as a result.
Whether these bids signal the beginning of the end of a saga that has blighted the club in recent years remains to be seen.
Dan Roan @'BBC'
Mike Jefferies' anti-Tom Hicks and George Gillett film
Interestingly enough, this statement was issued by Liverpool FC yesterday:
'A Board meeting was called today to review these (new?) bids and approve a sale. Shortly prior to the meeting, the owners - Tom Hicks and George Gillett - sought to remove Managing Director Christian Purslow and Commercial Director Ian Ayre from the Board, seeking to replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon.'
???
Grinderman deny plagiarism
Nick Cave responded to claims by an unknown Dundee-based musician that he plagiarised a song on the new Grinderman album at the band's Hammersmith Apollo gig last Friday.
The accusation was made by Frankie Duffy, who says that 'Palaces Of Montezuma' from the 'Grinderman 2' LP is actually 'Grey Man', a song he wrote for his former band Rising Signs in around 2005.
Duffy told Scottish newspaper The Courier in an interview published last Friday morning: "I couldn't believe it when I heard that track. It stood out a mile, it's exactly the same chords and the same hook as the intro to 'Grey Man'. I was never really a Nick Cave fan, but I really like Grinderman, that's a different kettle of fish. But when you hear that track you can totally spot the similarities".
He continued: "I sat down with my guitar and played along with it and it's exactly the same A, E and B chords, which to be fair anybody could use to write a song at any time. But it's the chord progression and when the vocal hook comes in with some ooohs, it's exactly the same, you can just hear it's the same thing".
As for how Cave came to hear and steal the song, Duffy postulated: "It's been up on our MySpace even after Rising Signs split, and I don't know, I can't help thinking that Nick Cave was sitting in his house one night and decided to surf some unsigned bands and saw our site, saw we were split up and thought, 'I'll have that track, nobody will ever know'".
He conceded that it could actually be "a really huge, amazing coincidence", though added: "It's really obvious they sound the same and on the Grinderman album you can hear the band talking and you can hear the words 'grey man' being said, so maybe it's not as much of a coincidence after all".
Duffy went on to say that he was going to get in touch with Cave's management "to see what they've got to say", adding that he wasn't quite sure how to proceed after that, but thought he "might have to sue [Cave] in court".
Certainly by Friday evening Cave had got the impression things were heading down the legal route. On stage at the Hammersmith Apollo, the singer introduced 'Palaces Of Montezuma' by saying: "You may have read that some seventeen year old kid in Dundee is trying to sue me and is claiming to have written this song. That's funny, because I wrote it for my wife".
In fact, Duffy is 29, but I'm not sure you can sue someone for accusing you of being a teenager. Whether the plagiarism case will go any further remains to be seen. With the utmost respect for both musicians, that guitar riff has been used at least twice by 78% of all bands that have ever written more than three songs. And as for where Grinderman can be heard whispering "grey man" on their track, I have no idea.
Next Liverpool FC manager?
Current standings:
M O’Neill - 2/1
K Dalglish - 6/1
J Mourinho - 7/1
G Hiddink - 12/1
M Pelligrini - 12/1
S McClaren - 14/1
O Hitzfeld - 14/1
L V Gaal - 16/1
M Hughes - 16/1
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
The Billionaire Test
How to tell if your club got a good one.
"I have a new piece in Slate about the Hicks-Gillett-Glazers tycoon implosion and the fan protests at Liverpool and Manchester United. While I was working on the piece, it occurred to me that in this age of billionaire owners, in which every club, no matter how Portsmouth-y, can be plausibly linked to a gasp-wrenching imaginary stock portfolio, there are really two kinds of billionaires: billionaires and fake billionaires. Billionaires live in space, sleep in chocolate and eat a helicopter as a snack. Fake billionaires drive around looking important on the way to being yelled at by suburban bank managers. Somehow we’ve evolved a culture in which it’s possible to have some contacts, borrow a fortune, and get a profile in the US Airways in-flight magazine, even though at the same moment real billionaires are playing badminton on the moon with movie stars only millionaires have even heard of. It’s a confusing time to be a soccer fan.
The problem, of course, is that, while we’re all getting savvier by the second, the deals are often still so secretive and the facial expressions all so billionaireish that it can be hard to tell a fake billionaire from a real one. When the ousted crown prince of G______ comes sniffing around your club, should you start worrying about Wachovia or let yourself dream of a future of massively overpaying for Craig Bellamy? After some serious thought, and a sandwich, I’ve put together a simple two-minute test that will help you determine whether your club’s new billionaire is pregnant, or still praying every night and crying a little, secretly, in the kitchen, at his best friend’s baby shower.
Question #1: Can you envision your billionaire belonging to a country club?
From the moment Tom Hicks and George Gillett first showed themselves in the stands at Anfield, with their weird, googly-craggly, “I’m trying so hard to look like a billionaire that my eyeballs are popping out of my head at different speeds” faces, it was clear that the only place on earth they could truly be comfortable was in the yacht room at the Sandy Pines Country Club, where they could go around shaking hands and loudly saying other men’s first names. No billionaire should ever belong to a country club, for the same reason that Oprah should never go on The View. Rich people clump together in country clubs for mutual protection and assurance. A real billionaire doesn’t need protection, because he can afford a private security force, and he doesn’t need assurance, because he is a billionaire.
Question #2: Does your billionaire sort of come off as a soap opera character?
Having unlimited wealth allows one’s ego to expand without restraint, like gas in a hot air balloon the size of infinity. Conversely, soap operas foster the pinched intensification of conventional fantasies enforced by profound limitations on one’s ego. The lifestyle of a soap-opera billionaire will revolve around widely accepted status symbols, with minor eccentricites (an eyepatch! weird facial hair!) at the fringes. The eccentricities of the true billionaire are his status symbols. Tom Hicks has a yacht. Roman Abramovich has a yacht with its own submarine. Malcom Glazer used to have a $27-million mansion in Palm Beach. Lakshmi Mittal has a house decorated with marble from the same quarry as the Taj Mahal. You couldn’t set As the World Turns there, because the world only turns if he says it does. It’s not even his only house in London.
Question #3: If your billionaire broke the law, would there be repercussions?
A true billionaire is essentially his own country. He transcends the apparatus of any single state and acts as an independent principle of order, like gravity or a weird idea on Lost. Wherever he goes, he’s three mean Beatles and the world around him is Ringo. If George Gillett woke up with a headache, a slippery flashlight, and a bloody corpse in a Donald Duck costume, he would feel the chill of a man who dreads the movements of justice. With pristine clarity, he would realize that somewhere in the world was a DA who yearned to take him down. If Alisher Usmanov woke up in similar circumstances, he would yawn, yell for his slippers, and note that the day was Tuesday. Why do you think Putin is always expressing fatherly disapproval of Abramovich and inviting him on orca-wrestling expeditions? Because even for Putin—especially for Putin—it’s easier to wrestle an orca than to go against a billionaire.
Question #4: Is your billionaire kind of a prissy killjoy who throws his weight around?
Usmanov may live without fear of legal consequences, but he’s still not a real billionaire, because he’s constantly hopping up and down and pointing one finger and sending his lawyers after bloggers who dare to repeat that he was once imprisoned in Uzbekistan for cooking and eating every chicken in the country. Pale, impoverished bloggers with many children to feed are rhythmically dotting a conveyor belt aimed at prison because Usmanov does not want you to know that he once ate an entire nation’s chicken supply in one sitting. He may not be afraid of the police any more, but he’s afraid of something, even if it’s just public disapproval. The real billionaire isn’t thin-skinned. The real billionaire doesn’t have skin at all, having long since replaced it with a bulletproof carapace that’s indistinguishable from the real thing except in extremely bright sunlight.
Question #5: Is your billionaire worth more than $10 billion?
I’m sorry, but billionaires who are only worth between one and nine billion dollars are pathetic. It’s odd. When a guy is worth $990 million, he’s unimaginably rich, but when he crosses over to $1.1 billion, you can bet that it’s all unpaid taxes and outstanding furniture debts. Somehow or other, it’s just impossible to sustain real billionairehood on less than ten stacks, meaning that the Glazers of this world are always taking out little piggish loans from Manchester United, while Paul Allen literally doesn’t know that the city of Seattle exists. Go by Forbes, go by Wikipedia, whatever, but check out your man’s bottom line. If it’s lodged in the mere ten figures, he is a man without dignity who can’t really afford your club. Condolences.
—
There. Now you can look at your own club’s billionaire and make an informed decision about your populist reign of terror. Please enjoy reading the conclusion of this “blog post.”"
BRIAN PHILIPPS - The Run Of Play
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
