Financial situation, doom & gloom reports etc

[Guest]

In today's Telegraph:

Liverpool by numbers
£300 million The cost of Liverpool's new stadium at Stanley Park.
£121 million Liverpool's turnover in 2006.
£120,000 Steven Gerrard's weekly wage.
£220 million The price paid by George Gillett and Tom Hicks to buy Liverpool last February.
£350 million The amount they are looking to borrow to refinance borrowings used to buy the club.
£30 million The estimated annual interest repayments linked to that refinancing.
£42 million Liverpool's summer transfer spending on Ryan Babel, Fernando Torres and Yossi Benayoun.
£25 million The amount borrowed to help pay for those transfers.
£40 million The amount of cash Gillett and Hicks are being asked to find to help fund the RBS and Wachovia refinancing.
0 The amount of money Hicks and Gillett have so far invested in the club from their own resources.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2007/12/22/sfnliv122.xml

[Red22]

i disaageree pepole have known for along time the aevconomy was going to struggle this year. THis agenerally hapen in 5 year cylcles.

Exactly. Kill them all.

[blacky]

Anyone read bascombes take on it today.....I heard he mentioned a DIC takeover?

[Venton]

if the press could get the fans against the owners they'd have a field day and would sell more papers.

When they smell blood they wind the situation up over and over again to get everyone going. Truth doesn't come into it.

You look around some of the forums (not just here but on the other sites too) and it's like a pack of french schoolgirls when one of them sees the madonna in a field - all fainting fits and mass hysteria. What's everyone going to do when nothing dramatic happens and it's business as usual in the new year?

[Johnny]

The list is endless.
By July 2008 Liverpool football club will have a new manager (picked by people who dont have a clue), will have a debt of over £100million piled on it so some Americans could buy it, various players wanting out because the manager has been sacked, little cash for transfers and the 15th design of a stadium that they say will still be ready for 2011/12

God,your a drama queen.There is no evidence that any of this will happen.

[sonsofthedesert]

Who knows. Last week Parry said one thing about the stadium one day and then an almost complete opposite thing a few days later.

Go read his comments from the Saturday statement again, he said the dredit crunch did not effect the design and the club were still going to build a stadium that could hold approx. 70,000. If you had not read between the lines and taken it on face value you would have realised he did not lie. With PR people you have to read what they say and only take what is said as fact and not assume. Parry did not lie.

[Guest]

Go read his comments from the Saturday statement again, he said the dredit crunch did not effect the design and the club were still going to build a stadium that could hold approx. 70,000. If you had not read between the lines and taken it on face value you would have realised he did not lie. With PR people you have to read what they say and only take what is said as fact and not assume. Parry did not lie.

But the americans did.

[sonsofthedesert]

But the americans did.

Everyone at the club lied if you want to thin of it that way as they al thought we would build that stadium. As soon as the press said there was a problem the club did not say the space age stadium will be built.

[Guest]

Everyone at the club lied if you want to thin of it that way as they al thought we would build that stadium. As soon as the press said there was a problem the club did not say the space age stadium will be built.

The club will always put a spin on it so as not to ignite the flames. As for the press, well some of them have concrete and genuine information and some not. But they won't stand there and believe what the PR guy at LFC will say ... They won't say anything negative isn't it ?

All points to the fact that G & H don't have the financial clout to raise money to:

1) Buy the club
2) Build the stadium

And that's not doom mongering. It's been nearly one year since they took over and deadlines have been pushed and pushed.

[Rashid]

Some nice warm articles just to cheer us all up.

http://hitlesswanderings.mlblogs.com/hitless_wanderings_in_tex/2007/06/tom_hicks_vs_ro.html

Hicks bought the best soccer club in England and they promptly lost their first championship match under him. He commented about how the fans were so loyal and passionate as compared to the US teams he owned. Be careful what you ask for. I am sure those fans are feeling the same way Rangers fans did back when. They expect him to get them the players they need to be perennial champs. How long will it take for them to realize that this won’t happen? If his poor management skills rear their ugly head in Liverpool, those fans will be calling for Hicks’ head and he may not feel so comfortable traveling in the UK.

http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/nov/11/iforbesi-issues-major-smack-down-tom-hicks-mismana/

DALLAS — Forbes.com recently came out with their list of NHL franchise values and economic outlooks, and the Stars come in as the #5 most valuable franchise overall, trailing just Toronto, New York, Detroit and Montreal. According to the report, the Stars are worth approximately $254 million.

Despite this, Tom Hicks does not get any love from the writers at Forbes, who had this to say:

It is a good thing Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks is a billionaire. Otherwise, he might not survive the mess he has made of the Dallas franchise. The team, which owns 50% of American Airlines Center, is saddled with $200 million in debt (the team's holding company, Southwest Sports, defaulted on $135 million of debt four years ago), a high payroll, and an under-performing team that can't make it past the first round of the playoffs. The natives have clearly gotten restless, illustrated by sagging ticket sales and waning interest in the Dallas market for the Stars. In the face of this Hicks has actually increased the team's marketing staff to boost ticket sales. What he really needs is a better product.

The fans not filling entire sections of the AAC for home games probably agree with that assessment

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3862/is_200207/ai_n9134756/pg_1

The front office has been a mess, too. Hicks inherited team presidents Tom Schieffer of the Rangers and Jim Lites of the Stars from the previous owners. Schieffer was gone fairly quickly. Lites was named president of SWSG because Hicks knew little about hockey and because Stars general manager Bob Gainey wasn't comfortable discussing personnel issues with him.

To look after the money, Hicks installed his own man, attorney Mike Cramer, as chief operating officer. Cramer had once managed the Bumblebee brand for Hicks, which led some SWSG colleagues to refer to him derisively as "Mr. Tuna." Later, he and Lites sparred over personnel and financial issues, and Lites was gone. Hicks helped Lites get a job with the Phoenix Coyotes.

The other changes in the organization are easily explained, Hicks says. Rangers manager Johnny Oates and Stars coach Ken Hitchcock had lost their teams. "A manager can only be effective in the pros for a finite period of time." Rangers GM Doug Melvin couldn't "get us to where we wanted to go." Gainey, who had told Hicks he would step down two years ago, had become a lame duck.

Tom Hicks' net worth, as calculated by Forbes, is around $700 million. But that's a deceiving figure. When you have a lot, you spend a lot. Net worth is one thing; liquidity is something else entirely. Hicks' money is tied up, some in outside investments, some in Hicks Muse funds. Ready cash is a scarce commodity, no matter how many zeroes you have on your balance sheet.

"If we looked at Tom Hicks in January 2001, he was ranked in the top 10 of all private equity firms, he was on the top of the sports world, his personal friend had become president, and there was talk of his being named Treasury Secretary. All the stars were lining up for this guy. Now his firm's in some trouble, his sports teams are terrible, and he was passed over for a cabinet post. It's amazing how quickly all of this has caught up with him."

[bazza76]

Some nice warm articles just to cheer us all up.

http://hitlesswanderings.mlblogs.com/hitless_wanderings_in_tex/2007/06/tom_hicks_vs_ro.html

http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/nov/11/iforbesi-issues-major-smack-down-tom-hicks-mismana/

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._n9134756/pg_1

I am convinced "the ghost of christmas past" will come back to haunt you Rashid.
Bahumbug, Happy Chirstmas Rashid

[Rashid]

Happy Christmas all... have a good one.. and remember life and your famalies are more important than even Liverpool.

[bazza76]

Happy Christmas all... have a good one.. and remember life and your famalies are more important than even Liverpool.

thanks for the reminder, I was starting to forget about that

[sonsofthedesert]

Some nice warm articles just to cheer us all up.

http://hitlesswanderings.mlblogs.com/hitless_wanderings_in_tex/2007/06/tom_hicks_vs_ro.html

http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/nov/11/iforbesi-issues-major-smack-down-tom-hicks-mismana/

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._n9134756/pg_1

The southwest sports defaulting on a loan worries me as the papers suggest this will be Kop footballs future.

[AFII]

The southwest sports defaulting on a loan worries me as the papers suggest this will be Kop footballs future.

I hope that they won't sell off a few players to get the cash they need but everything is a possibility right now.