John Henry

[Bender]

Everytime!

Bender, this site would be a lot worse without you.

Thanks Guvnor

[JudgeRed]

To the writer of the email mentioned in that article- I salute you!

[Vermilion]

This article as you can see is 3 weeks old, but i missed it at the time, and having checked this thread i don't see it posted.

So...........

Liverpool FC owner John Henry moves up Forbes rich list.

Liverpool Daily Post
Sep 23 2011

LIVERPOOL FC owner John W Henry has made it into the world’s top 400 rich list.

Forbes has announced that the financier has broken into the exclusive club.

The 61-year-old is now ranked 375th, with a net worth of $1.1bn.

Henry made his mark in the sporting world by turning around the fortunes of historic Boston Red Sox baseball team. But he has become a household name in the UK since his 11th- hour takeover of Liverpool Football Club. Henry has delighted in watching his team play in the Premier League.

Henry suffered a turbulent few years business- wise, which saw him dropped from the billionaires’ club. But a series of additions to his empire has seen him climb back in, driving his wealth above the $1bn requirement mark. In March, he was ranked 410th richest American, or 1,140th worldwide. It is thought Henry’s elevation was fuelled by his acquisition of Liverpool FC.

His Fenway Sports Management company bought the club for £300m, in October, 2010, dramatically raising his global profile. In America, Henry’s wealth is driven by his ownership of the Red Sox and sports news website NESN.

Read More http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/...#ixzz1abnSpB8f

[Yozza]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/oct/12/liverpool-boston-red-sox-henry

Exclusive: David Conn meets Liverpool's owners, part one

Liverpool's owners battle boom and bust after Boston Red Sox stumbleThe Boston Red Sox success story came crashing down last month but John W Henry and Fenway Sports Group believe the same approach can benefit Liverpool



For the owners of Liverpool Football Club – John W Henry, Tom Werner and their partners in Fenway Sports Group – the honeymoon is over. After a calamitous run of results, the group famed for shrewd-value "moneyball" player signings are accused of wastefully overspending, fans are in uproar, the manager has departed. The owners, on the defensive, are accused for the first time of having their focus diverted by the other club they own across the Atlantic.

This is not some nightmare future scenario for Liverpool, which Henry and his partners have owned, to mostly positive approval, for exactly a year this Saturday, when Liverpool face the club's modern nemesis, Manchester United, at Anfield. It is a crisis unravelling right now at the other major sports club Fenway owns and which, in reality, consumes much more of its focus: the Boston Red Sox baseball team. After the most catastrophic collapse in the final month of a season in baseball history, the Red Sox blew a nine-game lead in September to be pipped for the "wild card" – second‑place qualification for the post-season play-offs – by the much less financially resourced Tampa Bay Rays. In America, this is a huge sporting story, yet in Britain it has barely registered, despite the Liverpool connection.

Terry Francona, the manager of eight years who won World Series in 2004 and 2007, has gone, the general manager, Theo Epstein, has reportedly signed a deal this week to join the Chicago Cubs, and, with criticism of the players' physical fitness rampant, Henry has promised: "The organisation will have a self‑critical examination."

Last month, with Liverpool due to play Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane – they would be crushed 4-0 – and the Red Sox playing four successive games against the Rays, Henry granted the Guardian three days' exclusive access and interviews in Boston, with him, the Liverpool and Fenway chairman, Werner, and key senior executives at Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. Watching the games with him, and talking at length, afforded the most revealing insight yet into Henry, his and his partners' careers and approach to owning sports clubs, and their motivations for buying Liverpool in that bitter court battle against Tom Hicks and George Gillett, the previous American owners, 12 months ago.

Henry co
Henry standing next to a quote from John Updike painted on the wall at Fenway Park. Photograph: Rick Friedman/Polaris nfessed that before he bought them he knew "virtually nothing about Liverpool Football Club nor EPL". That is the abbreviation Americans use for the English Premier League, in a country where the major sports leagues are the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. Werner said he, too, had barely heard of the club: "I had been in sports so I was aware of the EPL and its strength globally," Werner said. "But I didn't know the inner workings of it. I certainly knew about Manchester United."

It adds up to the most revealing picture of any of the US buyers, who come from a country still largely oblivious to football yet who have somehow become owners of five of the English game's most prestigious clubs: Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Aston Villa and Sunderland. Henry and his colleagues explained they were drawn to Liverpool by the challenge of restoring a great sports club to winning ways and solving its stadium conundrum, as they did for the Red Sox in Boston. But it was also clear they were attracted, centrally, by learning about the huge support the Premier League and Liverpool have on television and the internet worldwide, compared with American sports whose following remains mostly restricted to the US. The prospect of being able to make huge money from media and sponsorship with that global reach led them to buy Liverpool.

Henry, though, is clearly keenly worried about a backlash from fans at both clubs, who may accuse the owners of concentrating too much on the other – a reaction that erupted in Boston last week with vitriolic press criticism of Fenway's "dysfunctional" organisation and Henry's involvement with Liverpool. He suggests he and his partners, contrary to their image of frugal, statistics-based player signings, in fact sanctioned major spending partly to allay that concern. The Red Sox spent $300m (£190m) on "payroll" – wage commitments – before this season on two left-arm hitters: Carl Crawford, signed for $140m wages over seven years, and Adrian Gonzalez, $154m. Kenny Dalglish, since being appointed Liverpool manager in January, has paid £110.5m in transfer fees alone for Andy Carroll (£35m), Luis Suárez (£22m), Jordan Henderson (£20m), Stewart Downing (£20m), Charlie Adam (£7.5m) and José Enrique (£6m).

"There was a lot of criticism in Boston that we weren't going to spend money on the Red Sox after we did the Liverpool transaction," Henry said. "Then there was the fear we wouldn't spend in Liverpool. Hopefully the fans of both clubs will eventually see what we see clearly – that there is nothing to fear from the existence of the other club."

In the proud, cultured city of Boston, this is Fenway's first crisis in a story of previously shining success since Henry, Werner and partners bought the Red Sox in 2002, and hired Epstein, a protege of the chief executive, Larry Lucchino, to overhaul player recruitment. They inherited expensive plans for a new stadium but ripped them up, opting instead to refurbish Fenway Park, the grand, original, 1912 inner-city ballpark. (They do not use the word stadium, Lucchino firmly explained, just as they have trained themselves with admirable discipline not to refer to Liverpool as a franchise or football as soccer.)

Henry said from the beginning they always wanted to stay at the renowned old place: "Why would you leave a beautiful, historic ballpark unless you absolutely had to? The previous ownership believed the best way to compete with the New York Yankees was to build a brand-new ballpark, which would have generated tremendous revenue. We chose to refurbish Fenway Park because after a great deal of study we were able to determine it was, in fact, doable."

The group has asked that same question at Liverpool, where it inherited designs for a prohibitively expensive new stadium on Stanley Park, but it has found the legal planning obstacles to redeveloping Anfield, still its preferred option, so far intractable. At Fenway Park, with more of the expansiveness of a cricket ground than a football stadium, it was able to develop gradually, make good money from relatively cheap improvements, and invest the income back into another upgrade, until the group completed a splendid refurbishment, costing $285m since 2002, all with reinvested income.

The renovation has generated a great deal more income, partly from increased ticket prices. The first move, Henry recalled, was to introduce two new front rows of seats, for which fans pay a high premium. They later added extra tiers, the Coca-Cola Corner and Budweiser Deck, where a party of 20 can sit at tables for $22,000. Corporate boxes, overhauled, sell for $250,000 a season. Some fans can still stand in one row at the back of stands for $25 or $30; the seats in front of them cost $90. The 274 seats installed in the Green Monster, the famous wall above the scoreboard, are favourites, costing $165.

At these
Fans milling about outside Fenway Park. Photograph: Rick Friedman/Polaris prices, the crowd at games appears comfortably middle class and is overwhelmingly white, largely missing the age group also substantially priced out of Premier League matches: young people in their late teens and early 20s. It is, though, striking how many girls and women there are, and baseball is clearly a date, young couples snuggling closer as night draws in. David Ginsberg, a former hedge fund financier, now the Fenway partner who spends most time in Liverpool – "Around a week a month," he said – smiled, watching families on the Budweiser Deck guzzle beer, Coke, hotdogs, popcorn, peanuts, ice cream, chips. "I wondered why there were so few women at Anfield. But it's more social here, isn't it?"

For the English visitor abroad in Boston and innocent of the weighty expectations riding on the games, baseball at Fenway Park is a lovely sporting experience, a privilege. The early autumn sun setting golden over the ballpark, the game's attractive geometry, the well-catered-for crowd hugging the action … Fenway Park weaves a seductive appeal. If you are watching sport at a level on which the very rules must be explained, you can enjoy the spectacle detached from emotional investment in the result. With The Star Spangled Banner sung before the game by the pure young voices of Scouts or glee clubs, the baseball frames an idealised vision of how much of middle America would like to see their country. To the English eye, the Red Sox fans, agreeable enough even in defeat, seem a world away from a sporting passion that anybody could possibly describe as more important than life and death.

Henry watches from his owner's box above the hitter's plate, present, with his wife, Linda, at almost all the games at Fenway. The volume of matches, 162 a season, and the work required in the "offseason" mean, Henry said, he can be at Liverpool matches only rarely. "There is a rhythm of nightly baseball games. I couldn't give that up," he said. "And I love that. I'm rarely at Liverpool matches. If I had two lives I would spend one in Europe, but I don't."

In the agonies of defeats to the fitter and more united-looking Rays, Henry was an optimist to the last, a foil to Werner's nervy exasperation. With two men out in the ninth inning and the Red Sox 8‑5 down, Henry still saw possible salvation from the last man standing: "OK, we need a home run." Yet watching hitters striking out or fielders fumbling, at times he swept his fingers through his hair, whispering to himself: "That is unbelievable."

Werner, a celebrated Los Angeles TV producer of series including Roseanne and The Cosby Show, is more a pacer and shouter: "Come on!" he yelled in frustration. They came together with Lucchino and 16 other partners to pay $700m for the Red Sox, and the baseball franchise's truly lucrative arm, the pay-TV station New England Sports Network, which has the rights to show the games regionally.


Baseball has always had owners; the teams were commercial ventures from the beginning, not formed as member associations, like most football clubs here, where for 100 years shareholders were prohibited from taking money out. The teams are literally franchises, licensed by Major League Baseball, which tries to ensure a level playing field between high-earning big city teams and smaller ones. All clubs' income is taxed, then shared out, a system Lucchino described, drily and without obvious enthusiasm, as "very socialistic". Werner was quite open that, as a richer franchise, Fenway resents how much money it is taxed, which is not publicly disclosed. "It is a balance," he acknowledged. "We realise we are part of a league, but we feel the burden on the top is higher than appropriate. We feel we deserve the fruits of our labour."

It became quickly clear, talking to them, that a prime attraction to the Americans of buying English football clubs is that in the Premier League the clubs keep all the money they make, from everything except television rights. So it was no surprise that the managing director they appointed, Ian Ayre, talked this week about beginning the break-up of even that, the collective TV deal. "That is the difference with the EPL," Werner said. "If we can generate interest in Liverpool here and around the world, we will benefit from that."

Henry st
Fans at Fenway during the final home game of the regular season between the Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles. Photograph: Rick Friedman/Polaris ill talks about baseball as a passion rather than a financial investment, but it is clear the 19 Fenway partners expect to make money out of it. Ed Weiss, Fenway's general counsel – in-house lawyer – explained the approach of the partners, who have never so far taken a cash profit out: "If you were interested in pure financial return, sport would not be your path, because it is not liquid. That said, everybody would want to make some return for their investment." The one partner whose financial figures are public, because it is listed on the stock exchange, is the New York Times Company. It paid $75m to become 17.75% owners in the original 2002 takeover. Last year it sold a small stake for a reported $14m. Three months ago it sold around 10%, for $117m – that makes $131m realised, a $41m profit, and still the company retains a 7% stake.

The Fenway partners made their money in diverse fields before they invested in baseball. Henry grew up on an isolated Arkansas farm, his father seriously ill for much of John's childhood, and baseball was an escape that became a lifelong passion. Listening to the St Louis Cardinals on radio commentary, he said, "filled my room with players and magic". Gentle in manner behind thick glasses he has needed all his life, and famously softly spoken, Henry played in rock bands and, in his early 20s, was a professional gambler in Las Vegas, using a mathematical approach for the casino game of 21. Inheriting his father's farms, he moved into grain trading, where he developed an analytical system based on identifying long-term trends, which led him to the fortunes he ultimately made trading for major financial firms.

His first baseball stake was in the New York Yankees, baseball's giant whose rivalry with the Red Sox parallels Manchester United's with Liverpool. He described buying into baseball as "a great stress reduction", not primarily an investment. American sports owners move around; they are not tied by support to a particular club. In 1998 Henry bought the Florida Marlins, stayed for three years, then left after he was unable to get a new stadium approved and paid for with public money by the Florida senate. Werner was a partner in the San Diego Padres, where Lucchino was chief executive. In dizzying multiple trades, Werner sold the Padres, Henry sold the Marlins to the owners of the Montreal Expos, that group sold the Expos to MLB, which scrapped the Canadian franchise and turned it into the Washington Nationals, and Henry's partnership, freed up, bought the Red Sox.

The Boston team is, to use that evocative American word, "storied", meaning the Red Sox have heritage, stories. The most renowned, of course, was that the team had not won a World Series, the equivalent of the Premier League championship, since 1918, when the legendary hitter Babe Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees. Lore has it that the sale, and subsequent long-time "curse of the Bambino", was due to the financial motivations of the owner, Harry Frazee, who sold Ruth because he wanted to take money out to invest in a Broadway play.

Henry and his partners, of course, wrote a new story, staying triumphantly at Fenway Park and winning the World Series, in 2004, breaking the 86‑year curse, and 2007. Famously too, they became associated with the sabermetrics, statistical approach, as used by the arguably overachieving small team Oakland Athletics and chronicled in the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis, now romanticised into a film starring Brad Pitt as the As' manager, Billy Beane.

The Moneyball concept has become both simplified and overblown in discussion, and even Henry says its significance is exaggerated. The Oakland As did not become successful because they suddenly started using statistics to assess players to sign. Baseball has always been bedecked in statistics; the game manufactures numbers. Moneyball told the story of a hobby statistician, Bill James, who concluded that some data, such as the number of times a hitter makes it, workaday, to first base, were in fact more important to a match than crowd-pleasing, eye-catching but rare feats such as hitting glorious home runs. Sceptics, however, argue that the Oakland As did so well because they had three outstanding, star pitchers, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito and Tim Hudson, in a sport where the pitcher is key – hitting a ball thrown at 80-95mph with a thin bat is extremely difficult, even for players on $154m wages.

Henry, keen to accrue any potential advantage and being, with his ostensible gentleness, a consummate networker, made contact with James and Beane. He offered Beane the job of general manager then, when Beane declined for family reasons, hired Epstein instead. The World Series victories were ascribed to sabermetrics, but Henry explained it was down to all-round rigour. "We'll look at stats no one else will look at, employ scouting in a way that has a compelling organisational context, question everything and everyone and ensure we have the best player development curriculum and protocols. In short, we are determined to outwork everyone else and hopefully be smarter every year." That was before the September collapse that plunged the Red Sox organisation into, as Henry put it, "critical self‑examination".

They came to buy Liverpool a year ago when, despite missing the play-offs, their record was still glowing, Fenway's income was around $1bn, and Henry was considering expanding into some other American sporting venture. His interest was sparked by an employee in corporate sales at Fenway Park, Joe Januszewski, who was, somehow, a Liverpool fan. With Liverpool staggering under the debts Hicks and Gillett had loaded on to the club, he emailed Henry: "Please save my club." Henry admits he had reached the age of 60, a lifelong American sports fan, knowing "virtually nothing" of football, or the Anfield club that have won 18 League championships and five European Cups. But he was intrigued, and fixed a meeting with Inner Circle Sports, New York bankers who became Fenway's financial advisers on the deal.

Werner, recalling that meeting, at which Inner Circle's Philip Hall presented Liverpool's prospects, smiled. "I wasn't paying too much attention," the current Liverpool chairman said. "Frankly I was on my BlackBerry, dealing with more pressing issues. I thought there was no way John was going to drag us into that one."

Part Two of David Conn's series with the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool owners will be on guardian.co.uk on Thursday

[Mostar]

Interesting read.

[elrichio86]

To the writer of the email mentioned in that article- I salute you!

Joe Januszewski

[Vermilion]

Interesting read.

Very.

[dom9]

Part 2 out today, right?

[Yozza]

Part 2 out today, right?

Supposed to be - just checked; nothing yet

[Mostar]

Part 2

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/oct/13/john-w-henry-liverpool-boston?CMP=twt_gu

John W Henry turns from Red Sox to red shirts for the global gains



In his apartment on the 11th floor of Boston's five-star Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Liverpool's principal owner, John W Henry, and chairman, Tom Werner, watched on Fox Soccer Network what could be Liverpool's most significant match of the season, last month's 4-0 demolition by Tottenham Hotspur. For Henry, Werner and their 17 partners in the Boston-based Fenway Sports Group, their takeover of Liverpool, a year ago this Saturday when the team face Manchester United at Anfield, has been marked mostly by progress and feel-good optimism.

The club's £200m bank debt was paid off as Fenway's price of buying the club, Damien Comolli was appointed director of football, the Kop's king, Kenny Dalglish, made manager, £110.5m has been spent on new players. Above all, Henry and Werner are basking in their overwhelming quality, of not being Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

Henry, naturally optimistic as a spectator – constantly believing his Boston Red Sox baseball team would turn games round throughout their record-breaking September collapse – anticipated a win, to launch Liverpool towards the cherished, lucrative, Premier League fourth place. What happened, however, was not in the prospectus: Liverpool froze, Luka Modric scored after five minutes, Charlie Adam was sent off for two bookings, Martin Skrtel followed him, Spurs were comprehensively superior.

Henry watched the Red Sox's 8-5 defeat to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays later that day with quiet but vocal despair and Werner would struggle to contain his angst. But theygreeted the football hammering mostly in affronted silence. When Skrtel crashed into Gareth Bale for his second yellow card, with Bale on the halfway line facing his own goal posing no threat, there was no eruption of fury from Liverpool's owners at so needless a dismissal. Henry, joking, said: "Well, we played a little better for a while with 10 men, maybe we'll play better with nine." Watching Liverpool crumple and the new, expensively-bought midfield of Adam, Jordan Henderson and Stewart Downing outplayed, Henry and his party, all fans of baseball, a game charted by numbers, seemed to need some statistical handle on it. "How many yellow cards we got?" somebody asked. (Answer: at least four too many.) At the Red Sox games, I had been similar; appreciating the skill and speed, recognising great athleticism and obvious bungles, but still grappling with the rules, so a lifetime short of understanding the sport's pattern and rhythm.

With Liverpool 3-0 down, Henry mused admiringly: "Boy, did you see how far [Andy Carroll] headed that ball?" He seemed to have a touch of Dalglish's propensity to query refereeing decisions, struggling to see why Adam's downward lunge on Scott Parker merited a second yellow. I began to offer an appreciation of the officials' skill, pointing out how an assistant referee was exactly in line with the last defender, to judge the Spurs forward's position precisely when the ball was played – then I suddenly thought: I am watching a match with the owners of Liverpool Football Club, and I am coming perilously close to explaining the offside rule.

Told relentlessly about the Premier League's huge following internationally, and that soccer is breaking through in America, you can believe it – until you actually go there. In Boston, football barely breaks into consciousness. Widely played by schoolchildren, as a spectacle it is drowned out by the giants of American sport: baseball, American football and basketball. Henry believes Americans want regular decisive action, so struggle with a game that can deliver 0-0 draws. Manchester United's 3-1 defeat of Chelsea later that day was the most watched Premier League match ever in the US – 886,000 people tuned in live, 0.3% among a population of 307m.

Henry acknowledged that, a lifelong American sports fan aged 60, he knew "virtually nothing" of Liverpool or the Premier League before buying the club. That drilled home how extraordinary it is that American businessmen, from the singular huge country with its own sports, still largely oblivious to football, have bought five of English football's greatest clubs, Manchester United, Liverpool (twice), Arsenal, Aston Villa and Sunderland. These owners' collective contribution at the big three has not been positive: £473m drained out of United in interest, fees and bank charges by the Glazers' leveraged United takeover; Hicks and Gillett almost costing Liverpool its solvency; Stan Kroenke paying more than £300m to Arsenal's English shareholders but promising, as an article of faith, no investment in the club.

His interest sparked by an email from a Liverpool-supporting Fenway employee last August, Henry fixed a meeting to hear about the club with Philip Hall, of Inner Circle Sports, New York-based merchant bankers. Inner Circle previously acted for Hicks and Gillett when they bought Liverpool and became Fenway's financial advisers on their Liverpool acquisition. During that meeting, Werner did not pay too much attention, believing he and his quintessential American partners would not venture into English football.

But Henry, as he listened to the club's prospects, found it revelatory. "A number of parallels emerged with the situation that existed in Boston when we arrived," he explained. The Red Sox and Liverpool were both historically successful clubs which had lost their dominance, and both had beloved old grounds not up to modern money-making standards. Henry began to feel Fenway could apply the same strategies at Anfield as they had to winning effect in Boston, and also make an ambitious move into international sport.

There was more to it than just wanting to win. Central to Henry's and Fenway's fascination was English football's, and Liverpool's, huge worldwide support, compared to the US-restricted following for American sports. Several Fenway executives recounted, with awe, that the Super Bowl, American sport's most prestigious event, is watched by around 20m viewers outside the US, whereas Liverpool's 3-1 defeat of Manchester United last season attracted an estimated 500m global audience.

Hall outlined how United, under the Glazers, have made money via international sponsorships, explaining that Liverpool have room similarly to profit. They found it very attractive that, as Hall explained, in the Premier League, individual clubs keep the money they make from such worldwide sponsorship. In baseball, the teams are franchises, their income is taxed by MLB and shared, to maintain reasonable competition between big city teams such as the Red Sox, and smaller teams. Thus the underdog Rays were well-equipped enough this season to dramatically deny the Red Sox a place in the play-offs. Werner told the Guardian he resents the amount of money the Red Sox have to share with smaller teams.

Understanding how compelling Fenway found these individual financial arrangements, it is no surprise that Ian Ayre, whom Fenway appointed Liverpool's managing director, said this week they want to break out of the collective overseas TV deal, the only income football shares. Henry, asked if the American owners will ultimately want their clubs to do their own TV deals, as Real Madrid and Barcelona do, replied: "These people [the American owners] understand media and the long-term global implications. They're going to want to reach their fans in the new media landscape. The Premier League was created in response to changing media. Audiences will drive leagues rather than the other way round."

Hall's presentation included a comparison demonstrating that Liverpool, a big "EPL" club with a worldwide following, could be bought for better value than US sports teams, with their "limited global potential". Ed Weiss, Fenway's general counsel (in-house lawyer) who would help mastermind the bloody legal fight that Liverpool's three-man board won, selling the club to Fenway against Hicks' furious opposition, explained Liverpool's appeal: "So much internet clutter competes for mindshare now. Big sports clubs are one of the few things which can cut through and capture mindshare. We have one of the great baseball teams, but its ability is geographically limited. The Liverpool numbers blew us away. We believe there is a significant amount of monetisation we can do, on a worldwide basis, which is not occurring now."

Henry was extremely taken. Just six weeks later, after rapid due diligence and that bitter court battle, he emerged blinking in the media's spotlights outside his London lawyers' offices, having bought Liverpool. Fenway had been forced to increase their price to £200m, due to the higher bid from the Singapore businessman Peter Lim. Weiss said before that they had been planning to leave some debt in. The takeover undoubtedly put Liverpool immediately in a dramatically better position – undoing the previous US takeover's damage, so putting the club almost back to where it had been in February 2007, before any takeover at all.

Fenway, like the Glazers and Kroenke, do not intend to spend their own money freely on Liverpool. Henry is firmly attached to Uefa's financial fair play rules, which require clubs to move towards breaking even, rather than make huge losses bankrolled by indulgent owners such as Chelsea's Roman Abramovich or Manchester City's Sheikh Mansour. "We wouldn't have moved forward on Liverpool except for the passage of FFP," he said. He is worried Uefa will not enforce the rules strictly, so that clubs with investing owners will remain wealthier. Henry and David Ginsberg, the enthusiastic Fenway partner who spends most time in Liverpool – a week a month – say they have put some partnership money into Liverpool, "to help with cash flow", although they would not say how much. Certainly, they clarified, it had not come from the 19 Fenway partners putting more money in, but from the group's existing reserves.


Fenway's significant first move was to appoint Comolli, the former director of football at Tottenham, into a similar position at Anfield, working with Roy Hodgson, the manager, who Fenway would replace with Dalglish in January. Henry confirmed there had been no wider recruitment process for this most plum of jobs; Comolli was appointed following the recommendation of Billy Beane, the former general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, with whom Comolli had struck up a friendship. "Billy became passionate about the Premier League and he became my initial adviser about the football side of Liverpool," Henry recalled. "Billy was adamant – 'There is one person who you have to hire – Damien Comolli. He has the same philosophy Theo [Epstein, the Red Sox general manager], you and I share.'"

This was not, as some have simplified it, Comolli's use of player performance statistics, although Henry says Comolli is famous for that; all clubs use such data now, mostly the Prozone analysis. "What Billy meant is we are all dedicated to finding and using every advantage no matter how small," Henry said. "We don't rest. We'll look at stats no one else will look at, employ scouting in a way that has a compelling organisational context, question everything and everyone and ensure we have the best player development curriculum and protocols."

Dalglish, as Ayre enthused this week, was the key appointment that instantly lifted the Anfield mood, embodying for Liverpool fans the "spirit of Shankly" they felt Hicks's and Gillett's misrule drained out. "I wasn't convinced when we arrived that Kenny should be back managing," Henry reflected. "Kenny and Damien were calculated gambles. They both have the advantage of being passionate about their work and are both very clever. We didn't feel we had a lot of time to wait, and we hope things turned around."

They did, dramatically, even before the January transfer window in which Liverpool sold Fernando Torres to Chelsea for £50m, signed Luis Suárez for £22m – a high-quality arrival for which Dalglish has credited Comolli – then Carroll, for that £35m Dalglish still finds himself defending, quite impatiently, after every match. In the summer Liverpool spent again, £20m each for Downing and Henderson, £7.5m to Blackpool for Adam, £6m for left-back José Enrique, which many believe to be the best deal. Because of Comolli's presence, many have inferred there must be some statistical shrewdness to these signings, but Henry said it is not so simple. "Everyone is fixated on Moneyball or sabermetrics [an approach to using baseball statistics, which the book documents]. But football is too dynamic to focus on that. Ultimately you have to rely on your scouting."


Many in football remain staggered that Liverpool, with new owners famed in the US for analytical rigour, paid Newcastle so much for Carroll who had at the time played 18 Premier League matches. Some believe that huge fee sent a signal that Liverpool were now flush, and raised the prices for Henderson and Downing, while Adam, a fine playmaker in Blackpool's energetic 4-3-3 last season, faces a challenge adapting in Liverpool's four-man midfield. Asked if Liverpool did overpay for Carroll and the other players, Henry suggested the new owners did, to reassure fans: "There was a lot of criticism in Boston that we weren't going to spend money on the Red Sox after we did the Liverpool transaction," Henry explained. "Then there was the fear we wouldn't spend in Liverpool. Hopefully the fans of both clubs will eventually see what we see clearly – that there is nothing to fear from the existence of the other club."

Asked about Carl Crawford, the expensive Red Sox signing who attracted most criticism for poor performances this season, Henry said Crawford had only "had a bad year". But he then acknowledged: "Choosing players in any sport is an imperfect science. We certainly have been guilty of overspending on some players and that can be tied to an analytical approach that hasn't worked well enough."

At White Hart Lane, the new signings were outclassed principally by Parker, who cost Spurs £5.5m. Liverpool recovered with a 2-1 victory over Wolves in which the central midfield again did not dominate, against Karl Henry and Jamie O'Hara. Then against 10-man Everton in the Merseyside derby – Jack Rodwell, who was effectively cancelling out Adam, having been incorrectly sent off – it was still only after Adam and Downing went off , andwere replaced by Steven Gerrard and Craig Bellamy that Liverpool finally made their breakthrough, Carroll scoring his first goal of the season. A thorough assessment of the players signed, Dalglish's return to management and his partnership with Comolli, which Henry said works "remarkably well," has a long way to go.

The same can be said of solving the Anfield stadium conundrum, the reason why the former majority shareholder, David Moores, and then chief executive, Rick Parry, said they needed to sell Liverpool in the first place. They disastrously opted for Hicks and Gillett, who made no progress, but whose £174m purchase made Moores £90m personally for his shares. A year on since their takeover, Fenway are not a great deal closer than any Liverpool hierarchy has been in the near 15 years since Moores and Parry decided a new stadium on Stanley Park was the only option. They were terrified of United, slapping extra tiers up at Old Trafford, whose 76,000 capacity Ayre referred to this week.

Fenway arrived, though, saying they wanted to stay at Anfield, believing they could do at Liverpool's home what they did with Fenway Park, a stunningly high quality and shrewdly lucrative refurbishment. Henry is clear that building a new stadium, for perhaps 15,000 more seats than Anfield, at a price currently estimated at £300m, is an expense to be avoided if possible: "If you build a 70,000-seat stadium it will cost much more than double to build than a 35,000-seater. The higher the seat the more expensive it is to construct."

They have, though, been confounded, as their Anfield predecessors were, by the neighbourhood facts: Anfield is hemmed in by houses. Weiss, and Ginsberg, have now understood that expanding would mean Anfield requiring a larger footprint, which would mean acquiring dozens of houses and knocking them down. Not all residents, defiantly maintaining family life in a desperately run-down neighbourhood pockmarked by boarded-up terraces – some, historically, bought by Liverpool and left empty – will want to sell. There is also "right to light", preventing a bigger stadium shutting out its neighbours' light.

Fenway and Liverpool have spent a year "mapping" both alternatives, and are finding the uncertainties, of potentially being stalled at Anfield, great. They seem somehow surprised that English planning laws protect neighbouring residents so firmly; in America, Weiss believes "eminent domain" laws would be more favourable to a top-level sports team, which local authorities are usually desperate to satisfy. "Approvals are needed, and it is much more complicated," said Weiss. "If all the problems of redeveloping Anfield could be made to go away, we could have a different discussion. But we started out thinking we could refurbish, now we think maybe it will have to be done the other way. But at the moment we don't have a path to Stanley Park."

Fenway's multimillionaire partners do not intend to spend their own money building a stadium; they will borrow cash and ticket prices will inevitably rise to pay for it. Hence the search, so far unfulfilled, for a naming rights partner, whose sponsorship they hope would pay a substantial chunk of the building costs. "I'd like to tell you how it will play out," said Weiss, "but I can't."

It was, therefore, baffling that Werner last week stated publicly they would not consider a shared stadium, an obvious potential solution, because, he said, fans would not stand for it. With Everton, a mile across the park, also wanting a new ground, the income from two clubs' matches and events, and any contribution Everton might make to the construction, could make the difference. Fenway have conducted no poll of fans, nor boldly set out any arguments for a shared stadium, but based this dismissal mostly on already-fixed opinions on fans websites.

The new American owners, who saved a great club from the last American owners, have unquestionably lifted Liverpool's mood, spent partnership money to ballast the club, appointed Dalglish and sanctioned huge spending on players. But a year on it remains difficult to see quite how Liverpool are better off than in February 2007, before any takeover. Then the club had little debt and was heading to another final of the Champions League, which it won in 2005, but faced the same conundrum: how to finance a stadium.

Henry, a disarming money man, softly-spoken, viewing the world through thick spectacles and a lifelong love of baseball, still "rarely" visits Liverpool, given his commitment to the Red Sox. Fenway bridge the Atlantic, he said, by delegating, to Ayre, Dalglish and Comolli, the running of Liverpool, and Fenway do not "override football decisions". Henry knew "virtually nothing" about the world's most popular game before buying one of its greatest names, and he always said it would be a learning curve. He and his partners, dealing with the wreckage of a calamitous September collapse for the Red Sox, must hope buying Liverpool does not turn out to be a curveball.

[ChesterDave]

To the writer of the email mentioned in that article- I salute you!

As elricho pointed out the name is in the article posted by Yozza.

They came to buy Liverpool a year ago when, despite missing the play-offs, their record was still glowing, Fenway's income was around $1bn, and Henry was considering expanding into some other American sporting venture. His interest was sparked by an employee in corporate sales at Fenway Park, Joe Januszewski, who was, somehow, a Liverpool fan.

And the story about it has been posted on here before. Tried to find it and should hopefully have better luck now I know his name

edit: In fact, now I've searched his name I seem to be thinking of a different guy. Who was the one who told the story about him and his dad watching 2005 semi final against Chelsea and his dad picked Chelsea and he picked Liverpool - the moment that started his love of the club?

[PTP]

i see via twitter that lebron james is it? the basketball player, is in Liverpool

[Fredo]

I'm a bit worried after skimming through that John Henry interview.

[Tee]

I'm a bit worried after skimming through that John Henry interview.

Why?

[RedReet]

i see via twitter that lebron james is it? the basketball player, is in Liverpool

I was actually gonna post about him yesterday and ask if he’s still involved and what his involvement is.

Wasn’t arsed looking for the thread though.