You'll Never Walk Alone (pending good dividends)

Two american investors has just spent about £500 ($800 million) on Liverpool FC. When this club was established in 1892 six states were still to be admitted to the union with another six states having been added shortly before in 1889/1890. Grover Cleveland was elected President in the election of 1892. The Indians were still putting up a fight; the massacre at Wounded Knee was in 1890. The first US movie was made in 1889. In Britain Gladstone was elected Prime Minister and Arthur Conan Doyle published 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'. Given the history of this football team the new owners Gillett and Hicks have pledged to respect the history of, and I quote, "the franchise".


Some facts about the new owners. David Gillet has made his money out of processed meat and ski resorts. He was declared bankrupt in the early 1990s but has since bounced back. Tom Hicks made his money from venture capital, investment firms and soft drinks. He also donated money to Ann Richards, the Governor of Texas, in the early 1990s but shifted his donations to George W. Bush when Ann Richards lost an election in 1994. Hicks has since become the number 4 career patron of Bush during his career. In 1998, Hicks made Bush a multi-millionaire by buying a Texas baseball team from a consortium headed by Bush.

The new owners have expressed an interest in selling the name of the new stadium to an advertiser "If the naming rights are worth one great player a year in transfer spending, we will certainly look at that as a serious option." Yeah, right. The name of the old stadium, 'Anfield', conjures up rich images of football heritage and success whereas modern 'branded' football stadiums have names like 'kit-kat crescent' which conjures up images of over-sugary chocolate bars mass produced in factory production lines staffed by workers on low wages in York whose jobs have been taken away and moved abroad where the cheaper workers are.

On the news tonight a Liverpool fan was heard to mutter that he preferred the club to be in American hands rather than the club be owned by the consortium from Dubai who recently expressed an interest. He never explained why. Maybe the fact that the Americans are white makes it OK that they are running a club in the hope of gaining "on-the-pitch success and economic success". The latter is the prime reason for investing in top-flight English football. They definitely don't know anything about football judging by the comment "this is the most important club in the most important sport in the world".