Originally posted by Shanks65
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Hicks gives Liverpool plenty to chew on
In urban slang - and a hilariously bad Jerry Bruckheimer movie - the phrase "coyote ugly" refers to the business of waking after a drunken evening next to a suitor so hideous that one would rather chew one's arm off than wake him or her, much as some coyotes will gnaw off their paw if it is caught in a trap.
Who knows how the Liverpool chief executive, Rick Parry, is feeling this week after reading the Rafael Benítez-undermining comments of the club's co-owner Tom Hicks but it must be hoped he is pondering at least some sort of self-administered bite for the blithe manner in which he allowed the club to become bedfellows with the Texan and his partner, George Gillett.
Urging the fans to take it on trust that these men were "the right people", Parry and his departing chairman, David Moores, permitted Dubai International Capital's bid for Liverpool to be gazumped last year and the club was bought by two American businessmen who had set up a private limited company called "Kop", one of whom gushed that the atmosphere at Anfield was "like nothing I've ever heard or felt".
Mmm. Gillett is married but you get the feeling that on any notional first date he would claim Sex and the City was his favourite TV show and that he was all about the post-coital cuddle and chat.
It seems somehow fitting that Hicks is a huge George Bush supporter. The US president has never judged that the fact most of his coterie were draft dodgers should preclude them from running wars, and his runaway success with this strategy remains an inspiration to us all - certainly to the two men who know nothing about football who are running Liverpool and who this week even gave us their version of that central tenet of the Bush Doctrine: the pre-emptive strike. Jürgen Klinsmann was sounded out for the manager's job just in case, or for safety's sake or because Hicks' and Gillett's intelligence suggested Rafa possessed weapons of mass destruction. I forget the precise excuse but it was totally convincing.
Then again Hicks did once compare the manner in which he purchased Liverpool to the manner in which he purchased Weetabix. It is often said of businessmen who buy into a product in which other people have an emotional rather than monetary investment that, for all they care, they might as well be selling soap powder or dog food. Hicks does actually own a dog food factory in Argentina. Whether he is more attached to this commodity or to another flesh-based investment such as Fernando Torres is hard to say.
The thing that seems increasingly surprising, really, is that anyone is surprised at the manner in which the deal has backfired. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but there are plenty willing to stick their necks out and risk some foresight on how the vogue for foreign prospectors snapping up clubs will pan out.
Plucking two recent Premier League annexations from the air, I would hazard that the Glazer family's association with Manchester United will not end happily (many, notably the red rebels behind FC United of Manchester, would contend the damage has already been done); and that the Amnesty-condemned former Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, will not ultimately prove the saintly saviour of Manchester City that those willing to turn a blind eye to his human rights record might currently fancy him to be. Similarly Liverpool supporters might be hasty in breathing a sigh of relief even if a magic wand was waved and their club ended up owned instead by the investment arm of the Dubai government.
There is a school of thought that says there have always been owners who were somewhat unlikable and that this new breed of Abramoviches and Thaksins are no more unlikable than your Doug Ellises or your Kenneth Bateses. But maybe it is time to be slightly less credulous when strangers turn up promising the moon on a stick.
If Rick Parry is not embarrassed at how trusting he was, the rest of us should be doubly wary of even offering that old standby - the "cautious welcome" - to the next set of speculators who set their sights on a piece of English football. In fact, perhaps we should concur that it will end in tears at some unspecified point and set about laying in supplies for the inevitable heartbreak.
Will we? Of course not. The ability to convince oneself that the unlikely is possible is arguably the quintessential element of the football fan's psyche and the heart sinks just wondering who will be the next person for whom some club's supporters will have to suspend their disbelief.
Hicks gives Liverpool plenty to chew on
In urban slang - and a hilariously bad Jerry Bruckheimer movie - the phrase "coyote ugly" refers to the business of waking after a drunken evening next to a suitor so hideous that one would rather chew one's arm off than wake him or her, much as some coyotes will gnaw off their paw if it is caught in a trap.
Who knows how the Liverpool chief executive, Rick Parry, is feeling this week after reading the Rafael Benítez-undermining comments of the club's co-owner Tom Hicks but it must be hoped he is pondering at least some sort of self-administered bite for the blithe manner in which he allowed the club to become bedfellows with the Texan and his partner, George Gillett.
Urging the fans to take it on trust that these men were "the right people", Parry and his departing chairman, David Moores, permitted Dubai International Capital's bid for Liverpool to be gazumped last year and the club was bought by two American businessmen who had set up a private limited company called "Kop", one of whom gushed that the atmosphere at Anfield was "like nothing I've ever heard or felt".
Mmm. Gillett is married but you get the feeling that on any notional first date he would claim Sex and the City was his favourite TV show and that he was all about the post-coital cuddle and chat.
It seems somehow fitting that Hicks is a huge George Bush supporter. The US president has never judged that the fact most of his coterie were draft dodgers should preclude them from running wars, and his runaway success with this strategy remains an inspiration to us all - certainly to the two men who know nothing about football who are running Liverpool and who this week even gave us their version of that central tenet of the Bush Doctrine: the pre-emptive strike. Jürgen Klinsmann was sounded out for the manager's job just in case, or for safety's sake or because Hicks' and Gillett's intelligence suggested Rafa possessed weapons of mass destruction. I forget the precise excuse but it was totally convincing.
Then again Hicks did once compare the manner in which he purchased Liverpool to the manner in which he purchased Weetabix. It is often said of businessmen who buy into a product in which other people have an emotional rather than monetary investment that, for all they care, they might as well be selling soap powder or dog food. Hicks does actually own a dog food factory in Argentina. Whether he is more attached to this commodity or to another flesh-based investment such as Fernando Torres is hard to say.
The thing that seems increasingly surprising, really, is that anyone is surprised at the manner in which the deal has backfired. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but there are plenty willing to stick their necks out and risk some foresight on how the vogue for foreign prospectors snapping up clubs will pan out.
Plucking two recent Premier League annexations from the air, I would hazard that the Glazer family's association with Manchester United will not end happily (many, notably the red rebels behind FC United of Manchester, would contend the damage has already been done); and that the Amnesty-condemned former Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, will not ultimately prove the saintly saviour of Manchester City that those willing to turn a blind eye to his human rights record might currently fancy him to be. Similarly Liverpool supporters might be hasty in breathing a sigh of relief even if a magic wand was waved and their club ended up owned instead by the investment arm of the Dubai government.
There is a school of thought that says there have always been owners who were somewhat unlikable and that this new breed of Abramoviches and Thaksins are no more unlikable than your Doug Ellises or your Kenneth Bateses. But maybe it is time to be slightly less credulous when strangers turn up promising the moon on a stick.
If Rick Parry is not embarrassed at how trusting he was, the rest of us should be doubly wary of even offering that old standby - the "cautious welcome" - to the next set of speculators who set their sights on a piece of English football. In fact, perhaps we should concur that it will end in tears at some unspecified point and set about laying in supplies for the inevitable heartbreak.
Will we? Of course not. The ability to convince oneself that the unlikely is possible is arguably the quintessential element of the football fan's psyche and the heart sinks just wondering who will be the next person for whom some club's supporters will have to suspend their disbelief.
Sounds like a possibility no?
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