Liverpool supporters have launched proposals to buy the club outright, on the day that its north American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, are due to renew their £350m loans with Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia. Almost £200m of that was borrowed by Hicks and Gillett to buy the club, having said they were not "doing a Glazers" and loading the club with paying the interest and costs of their own takeover. They have since failed to raise the money to build Liverpool the planned new 60,000 or 70,000-seat stadium on Stanley Park, which was the sole reason the club was sold to the pair in the first place.
The announcement by the two groups, ShareLiverpoolFC, the supporters trust, and the Spirit of Shankly campaign, explains how they believe they can raise £250m from ordinary and wealthy fans, and a commercial partner, to buy out most of the bank debt, and pay the other £100m off in instalments.
That ambitious aspiration is endorsed by Supporters Direct, the government-backed initiative to encourage fan ownership of football clubs, whose chief executive, Dave Boyle, said: "This proposal is the only sensible, sustainable offer that's been put forward that also meets the crucial community requirements. Community ownership is something both the Government and UEFA strongly support, and this proposal is very much in line with that.
"The Club seems to be at a crossroads. It will either continue to be owned by a group of distant people with an eye on the bottom line, driven by the need to pay off colossal debts, or owned by the community, like Barcelona or Bayern Munich."
The banks are, however, expected to approve the refinancing and so continue the £350m facility, of which Liverpool had actually borrowed £302m by July 2008, paying £36.5m in interest. As I wrote when the accounts were published, that, in the current climate, is great business for any bank, including one like RBS which fell into catastrophic financial problems last year, was bailed out and is now majority owned by the government – on behalf of us, every British citizen.
Playing on the belief that public ownership, which has cost us billions, comes with public duties, Liverpool fans have campaigned, hosed the bank with emails, urging it not to renew its loans, a decision which would lead to the probable ousting of Hicks and Gillett. RBS, though, responded with a message to fans which all but confirmed they will be continuing to lend. Their reasoning is worth contemplating. Ominously for those fans' groups, the message said the bank has a "long-term relationship with the club, and we look forward to this continuing for many years to come."
It went on to explain why the bank wants to keep lending money to Liverpool year after year: "In our view and that of the executive management of the club, it is financially healthy and able to service comfortably its debt obligations from cash flow generated by its playing and commercial activities. It is in our commercial interest to support the club."
In other words, the £350m loan, or more particularly the almost £200m of it which is paying for Hicks' and Gillett's takeover, may be appalling business for the football club itself and, the fans would say, the spirit of what it represents, but it is lovely lucre for a bank. To receive, in the current climate, £36.5m interest from a football club confidently expecting another season of a packed 45,000 seat Anfield, floods of TV money and all the other till-ringing means of Premier League money-making, is not to be sniffed at, or turned down for a fans' principle.
So the likelihood is that Hicks and Gillett will secure their lending, keep hold of the club, from which they charge for their expenses, and expect to make a good profit when they sell it on. The banks will make plentiful money too "for many years to come," from a honeypot football club in a spartan economic climate.
And the fans, who feel irreparably betrayed by the owners - and who believe that football is more precious than a mere business, an emotional attachment to core ideals they summarise as the Spirit of Shankly - get to pay for it all.
No wonder businessmen from afar want to buy into all this – with borrowed money, if they can.
Future ownership of the Club