George Gillett and Tom Hicks OUT !

[sean_lfc]

If we go on an amazing run and win the league then it will be because of Rafa's genius and nothing else. He will be a legend because he is trying to run the club with both hands tied behind his back, cable ties around his ankles and a big **** off snooker ball rammed in his mouth. This will all be inspite of all the crap the Americans have give him.

Total exaggeration and far removed from the truths to try and ram home a point.

'Both hands tied behind his back', what a pile of ****. So he can't go out and buy any players? So he wasn't able to invest a substantial amount of money this summer and has strengthened already this January transfer window? So he can't pick the team he wants, because we have a Romanov style chairman who picks the team and buys American players because he likes his country and wants to employ his fellow countrymen?

And of course it would be because of Rafa's genius, we are still a long way off the top of the pack, ie the Scum and Chavs and Arsenal to an extent.
What are you trying to say, that Rafa'd not be a genius for doing it? You're making it sound as if I wouldn't be respecting Rafa's genius should he do it and that it'd be due to the Americans or what?

You make it sound as if you'd be pissed off if we won the league, I don't get it.

[Fowler_God]

And do we know where this is "pointing and leading too"? As Sean rightly pointed out we simply don't.

really didn't believe there are so many simple people out there.

[Revo]

Oh do **** off with that analogy. Ridiculous.

And do we know where this is "pointing and leading too"? As Sean rightly pointed out we simply don't.

So you go ahead, waste your time inventing your little conspiracy theories. I'm looking forward to the match tomorrow. Something which will I can be fairly certain will take place.

of **** off niall will that ****. our boss, one of our own has been publically outed by his boss. simply be amazed if rafa sticks around and would fully expect him to go now

[CharlieMansonsSquint]

really didn't believe there are so many simple people out there.

Oh come on you can do better than that, surely?

No structured, reasoned retort?

[Tom]

all the gob****es that contributed to rafa out bull**** also need to share some ****ing responability here. you let the ****ing yanks know we could be divided and now they know it even more. shameless gob****es everyone of you and get the **** out of this club everyone of you

Post of the day that.

[sean_lfc]

You are serious deluded mate!! They were speaking to him so he could be the next manager of LFC. FULLSTOP. Just because he never took the job doesnt mean the intention was never there.

BTW what is your membership number in the Tom Hicks ****s over LFC fan club?

Ever think that, regardless of the fact they spoke to him and that it's all not going to happen anyway and the story is dead and buried, they might now, seeing the backlash it's having (and most CERTAINLY they will be told by many other high-profile connections to the club that it was a foolish thing to do) come to realise that they can't come up with blunders like this again.

Ever heard of humans making mistakes and then realising it and acting accordingly in the future?

People make it out as though the Americans have come in to deliberately crash this club into the ****ing mountain. To **** us up completely and then leave us in a miserable pile of **** in the corner, to be forgotten forever.

And they've got no reasonable and substantial evidence to suggest this, the Americans have after all backed the manager ("But not enough!!!" came the cries from the pack), they have got the whole stadium saga up to scratch and seem to be in the process of constructing a magnificant stadium for this football club, they have employed commercial directors to get us to the front of club football merchandising (which will take time and doesn't just happen within 9 months), and whatever...and they would do all this, JUST TO **** THIS CLUB UP!?!?!

People just see what they want to see.

[CharlieMansonsSquint]

of **** off niall will that ****. our boss, one of our own has been publically outed by his boss. simply be amazed if rafa sticks around and would fully expect him to go now

There's millions of reasons he won't you know.

Or perhaps this is a nothing story - and an old one at that - and that Rafa and the owners are on the same page, so to speak.

And if that wasn't the case, seeing as this was supposed to have taken place 2 months ago, surely he'd have walked by now?

Okay. Fine. If Hicks does his Judas Iscariot impression on Rafa - if his sacking isn't purely down to poor results - then by all means lynch him.

Problem is there's a lot of assumptiveness (not a word I know) going around and it's just creating mass hysteria. None of this is helping.

[sean_lfc]

of **** off niall will that ****. our boss, one of our own has been publically outed by his boss. simply be amazed if rafa sticks around and would fully expect him to go now

Obviously it doesn't bode well, but to say there now is only one outcome to this whole saga, I just don't buy it. I just don't believe that that's it now, regardless of WHATEVER might happen. Just my opinion, but I just don't think that there's only one way left and that it's Rafa being gone (or the Americans being gone). I fully believe there is enough room left for compromise, call me naive, call me deluded or whatever you will, but that's what I truly believe.

[Revo]

Obviously it doesn't bode well, but to say there now is only one outcome to this whole saga, I just don't buy it. I just don't believe that that's it now, regardless of WHATEVER might happen. Just my opinion, but I just don't think that there's only one way left and that it's Rafa being gone (or the Americans being gone). I fully believe there is enough room left for compromise, call me naive, call me deluded or whatever you will, but that's what I truly believe.

sean not afraid to say i cried myself to sleep about stevie leaving to the dark side. i see the same scenario playing out here with a different ending. rafa benitez is one of the most sought after coaches in the game and this has to be the final straw for him. it would be for me, you and plenty of others. this is a ****ing dog and pony show and when your in demand you simply dont have to put up with it

[Radar]

George Gillett and Tom Hicks £470m takeover of Liverpool saved the Merseyside club from sure embarrassment when Dubai International Capital (DIC) pulled out after Liverpool management dragged their feet over their takeover bid. Gillett and Hicks offer was sweeter by £20m and it put £8m more into Liverpool chairman David Moores pocket.

Gillett's previous buyout bid collapsed when Rick Parry, Liverpool's CEO and David Moores all but sealed the deal with DIC in December last year. He was bolstered by teaming up with Tom Hicks in their new offer. Gillett and Hicks experience with sports teams was a big factor in convincing Liverpool. Gillett owns the Montreal Canadiens, NHL's premier franchise and Tom Hicks is the owner of rival ice hockey team, Dallas Stars and the MLB's Texas Rangers. Gillett and Hicks will split the £470m takeover on a 50-50 basis with £215m of that earmarked for a new stadium.

From all accounts Gillett is a low key businessman who has not imposed himself on the Montreal Canadiens, a hallowed team much beloved by the Canadian fans. He respects the traditions of his club whose success is synonymous with Canada's status as an ice hockey power. In his ownership tenure he has brought in new management and acquired new talent that has made the Canadiens a better team. Gillett's unobtrusive style will probably sit well with Liverpool and its fans who are equally passionate about their club's quintessential English character. Like that of Randy Lerner, owner of Aston Villa and the chairman of the US investment company MBNA, whose buyout of Villa was met by universal apporoval.

His partner, Tom Hicks is a totally different kettle of fish. Hicks is a master of leveraged buyouts and a founding partner at the legendary firm of Hicks, Muse, Tate, and Furst. One his biggest leveraged acquisitions resulted in the 1995 $2.5 billion sale of Dr Pepper/Seven Up. In 1985, he and then partner Robert Haas bought a bottling plant for $88 million and then parlayed that into subsequent successful investments in Dr Pepper/ Seven Up eventually buying out the entire company. Hicks continues to make news with his frenetic high powered acquisitions in the US and more recently in developing markets.

This is where it gets murky. Hicks is also an old buddy of President George W. Bush while he was governor of Texas and contributed thousands of dollars to Bush's gubernatorial campaign. In 1998 he bought the Texas Rangers for $250 million from a group headed by Bush, the principal owner of the Rangers and the then governor of Texas. His buyout of the Rangers made Bush a millionaire many times over. He also contributed $200,000 to the 2000 and 2004 Bush presidential campaign making him a Bush Pioneer (a rarified group of Bush campaign contributors who raise $100,000 or more).

Hicks has benefited from being a Bush loyalist and campaign contributor. He was appointed to head the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) in 1996 following Bush election as governor and promptly diverted public funds of the university into private equity. UTIMCO's board consisted of Bush Pioneers and Yale University connections. UTIMCO operated without any disclosure and public scrutiny until the Texas Legistlature intervened. By then it was too late, UTIMCO had lost almost $1 billion in failed investments in Enron and WorldCom stock. Investigations revealed a pattern of cronyism with substantial investments going to a clubby group of companies run by GOP donors and patrons with close ties to Bush and Hicks, including the Carlyle Group. In 1999, Hicks was forced to resign after the Houston Chronicle exposed these insider dealings. Hicks and brother Steven also founded AMFM, a communication company that ran radio stations before being bought out in 1999 by Clear Channel which now virtually monopolizes radio with 1200 radio stations all over the USA. Hicks was made the vice-chairman of Clear Channel. In an all too familiar pattern of cronyism, Lowry Mays, Clear Channel's chairman was also on the board of UTIMCO. Clear Channel was the Bush administration's biggest shillers of the war on Iraq organizing pro-war rallies under the aegis of Rally for America and banning songs sungs by dissenting artists including the Dixie Chicks who criticized Bush in a London concert.

For Liverpool supporters who could care less where Tom Hicks gets his money from and who care even less about his politics, more relevantly his track record as a sports team owner is abysmal. Under Hicks stewardship, the good news is that the Texas Rangers went to the playoffs twice and lost both times in a clean sweep. Since then they have been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Hicks has a reputation for being beholden to Scott Boras, one of baseball's superagents and a super nice guy who foists expensive players first on Tom Hicks and facetiously calls the Rangers owner the best recruiter in baseball. This after a Scott Boras deal, in which Hicks earned the dubious distinction of making the most expensive blunder in sporting history, the obscene 10 year $252 million signing of Alex Rodriguez from the Seattle Mariners in 2001 in lieu of good pitching which was what the Rangers actually needed. Despite Rodriguez's outstanding contribution, the Rangers finished last for the fourth year in a row. Rodriguez was traded to the NY Yankees before his contract was up which forces Hicks to pay him $9 million not to play for them. But it seems that Hicks has not learned from this fiasco and continues to fritter money away.

So here it is good folks at the Kop: Tom Hicks with all his warts. Now Pini Zahavi can cuddle upto Hicks and dangle some really expensive soccer player. He might find a willing sucker.

[Johnny]

Fair enough mate, you've had your particular view on these things throughout the past 2 months or whatever, fair enough. I'll hold up my hands and say 'I'm just not like that' and somehow my need for vocalising said point seems to have gone wayward.

However it's still my belief, like Johnny said to you in another thread about evidence. For me, evidence is not reading between the lines, or interpreting this or that and the other. It could go this way, it could go that way, at the end of the day, no one really knows facts. No one is so close to the Americans or Rafa or Melwood or the players or the club to really know what's going on.

So I am just reserving my judgement, for the simple selfish reason that I keep my chakras in order. This is a zen thing, I just can't see myself getting upset and wound up about something that might or might not happen (Americans ****ing us over PROPERLY (so far, nothing has really HAPPENED, the RBS thing, the stadium thing, the sacking of Rafa, etc.).

Come the summer, I will see what happens. This has nothing to do with the fact that I'm sticking my head in the sand, far from it. I am just going by actualities and not probabilities and possibilities (AFII's favourite forté).

Currently, we're having a dip in form, this happens to us every season. Last season we had it, the one before, etc. Obviously the whole media circus is not going to help matters on the pitch, however the implosion on it does not result entirely from the matters in the press. All the negative things are just coming thick and fast and at the wrong time (as they tend to do).

However, once we get a few wins under our belt, starting with Luton tonight, I can see us gaining momentum and then being able to at least half-decently concentrate on on-the-pitch performances. The off-the-field problems we've had in recent weeks just seem to amplify the general supporter's concern that 'It's all because of them bloody yanks!!!'

And I just don't believe that to be the case, I think it's all just come together in a weird and twisted way and with a little bit of time we will be able to see past all the chaos into the golden sky.

[kurtangle01]

The 'T' stands for ****, obviously.

[Johnny]

Shouldn`t we wait until we see Rafa`s reaction to this.i`ll lead the mob if he leaves this week.

[sean_lfc]

sean not afraid to say i cried myself to sleep about stevie leaving to the dark side. i see the same scenario playing out here with a different ending. rafa benitez is one of the most sought after coaches in the game and this has to be the final straw for him. it would be for me, you and plenty of others. this is a ****ing dog and pony show and when your in demand you simply dont have to put up with it

The reason I believe that Rafa would not walk is because he bleeds red. I believe this club, the city and its fans have given him and his family such amazing support over the years, little things in day to day life we might never know people have done/said to Rafa and/or his wife/children, heart-warming stuff, who knows, I don't follow Rafa 24/7.

However I'm sure there have been reasons for Rafa often coming out and saying how much he loves this club and everything about Liverpool and I believe this to be the exact reason why he wouldn't just walk, because he'd feel it an injustice to just leave us all there with Statler & Waldorf. I just believe this ain't over and Rafa will not be pushed around and rather than walking would make the Americans change their way. **** knows how, but it's just a feeling I get.

I also believe Montse is giving him all the encouragement he needs and a wife's involvement is not to be underestimated, even in such high-profile situations such as these.

[Red_Al_77]

Shouldn`t we wait until we see Rafa`s reaction to this.i`ll lead the mob if he leaves this week.

It's not just Rafa's reaction that is important, it's the way the Yanks are doing our dirty linen in public. That is what people are angry about. Also the choice of Klinsmann and the alleged reasoning behind it. Rafa not referring to it in his PC this week doesn't mean the problems caused by this yank statement have gone away. It isn't that simple.