I’ll Judge NESV for Myself, Thanks

Purslow: NESV’s bid was very low – The Guardian

In a return to the previous mud flinging sludgefest that was the sale of Liverpool this past fall, the toys are being thrown out of the pram in court by H&G.  In a most likely futile attempt to get the courts to enable them to pursue legal action in the United States against LFC, they have resorted to tarnishing NESV and the directors who voted to sell to them.

Essentially what we have here is Christian Purslow speaking privately amongst businessmen looking to return a profit on what wasn’t their asset to profit from in the first place.  They were hired and put in place with the objective of turning a profit on the whole mess for RBS and H&G, not to simply get in new owners.  Selling the club without that profit is indeed a bottom of the barrel outcome for the previous owners of our football club, but I couldn’t give a toss about it myself.  He references previous offers but stresses NESV was the one real suitor we ever had.  Simply their existence made them an option, that doesn’t suggest to me there was much of a market in the first place.  That would render this whole argument null and void right there for me.

Purslow goes on to suggest there’s no investment capital available for the playing squad or the stadium as far as he can see from NESV.  I would suggest to him in turn, that our new owners knew we didn’t have a lot of options and didn’t feel the need to reveal their business plan beyond what was absolutely necessary to people they knew would not be involved in the day to day operations going forward.  That is good business sense, as these men could be competitors at some point and even if they aren’t you don’t just spout off your intentions in a competitive business like football.  They have a proven track record making winners out of their teams using the monies generated by those teams.

As I’ve written before, H&G did one very nice thing for Liverpool and that was increase our revenues in line with the advances being made by other internationally supported clubs.  The stadium and lack of capitalizing on merchandising/sponsorship overseas was hurting us, and while the spade never touched ground those latter numbers have gone through the roof in the past few years.  With the debt now mostly off the club (we have a credit line that can be drawn down and isn’t, along with some operating debt like any business) those newfound profits can be used for what they should be: investment in Liverpool Football Club, not the repayment of heavy interest on monolithic loans we never wanted in the first place.

To suggest we won’t have investment just because NESV aren’t pouring in their “own” money, let’s not forget to stop and realize that Liverpool’s money is now their money.  They’ve never shied from investing a teams’ income into providing the absolute highest quality team possible.  As an MLB fan of the St.Louis Cardinals, I envy their business sense in developing regional networks and stadium innovations to retain a historical sense of their team while increasing the profit margin at the same time.

Their player evaluation skills are also, while not so far readily apparent, going to be a bit off the beaten path.  I think we’ll see in the summer the signing of at least a handful of players no one ever suspected us of being in on.  They may be cheap and under the radar but see if they don’t turn out to be something more than meets the eye at first glance.  As has also already been demonstrated, the owners won’t shy from a big figure purchase if they think that’s what fits the bills.  How easy would it have been for them to pocket that Torres money and leave it all on King Kenny to keep us competitive?  Very easy, and yet it was on the very same day that they reinvested every single penny of it on the target that the manager felt was absolutely necessary.  They support their managers, they support their players, they support their fans all while trying to keep a business sense about us and not run the club into the dirt a la H&G.

For that I’m supposed to lose faith in them?  I think not, I’ll wait and judge them by what they should be judged by: our 19th domestic title and 6th European Cup.  If they can bring those things to the club, then I don’t care if we bought our players for a penny down on the corner and we kick the ball around an abandoned lot.

Let’s beat Wigan tomorrow and get those 3 points!  Gotta keep the pressure on Chelski.

YNWA

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