Steven Murray
paolomachiniThe ‘EPIC SWINDLE’ – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
October 16th 2010 11:15
Its all now seemingly resolved, NESV now own Liverpool and Tom & George have dropped the damages case for $1.6bn but the aftermath continues as Tom runs his mouth like a bath. He appears on Sky Sports and gives the interview of a victim; how he was swindled and how he had Liverpool’s best interests at heart. Well Tom, I will set the record straight for you and I will justify your comments with facts.
In 2007, Liverpool as a business was still under developed but after a 3 amazing campaigns in the Champions League, the appointment of Benitez and the purchasing of players such as Alonso, Reina etc the club had money to burn. It seems obvious now that the club was to be sold by Moore to DIC but last minute you and George outbid them; instead of Moores and Parry doing the proper research about you they took George’s word. A 2 minute google search would of shown what you had done to teams like the Texas Rangers, Stars and what you had done to the workers in the North East of England (with holding their redundancies/wages after you asset-stripped their employer business). George you are not getting off scot-free either – your track record of destroying the most historic Ice Hockey team was disgusting.
Now to yesterdays ‘Epic Swindle’ interview – you mention Liverpool is a healthy business with a little too much debt but can meet its interest payments? Well, on Friday this healthy club was hours away from administration because you could not afford to pay RBS £240m; you had straddled this club with £25m - 30m interest per annum; you had defaulted on payments and your partner in crime had not defaulted to Mills Financial. It also seems your claim that you could pay RBS was based on money you were borrowing from another company? Does that sound healthy? Let’s face further facts Tom, where is the money from the sale of Alonso, Keane and Mascherano? All you say in your interview is you were swindled but lets look at this – you and George paid £200m for Liverpool and sell it for £300m and the new owners pay the debt , please explain how you made a loss of 140m on this?
Now on to your next claim, You and George invested £300m on new players and net £150m; it was the 2nd highest in the premiership. You also claim that Rafa wasted all of this money and you justify this by comments from Alex Ferguson. Now the facts – Tom & George look away:
Players in during their rein:
Lucas Leiva Gremio £5,000,000 11.05.2007
Krisztián Németh MTK Hungaria Undisclosed 25.05.2007
Mikel Domínguez Athletic Bilbao £270,000 28.06.2007
Sebastian Leto Club Atlético Lanús £1,800,000 01.07.2007
Fernando Torres Atletico Madrid £20,200,000 04.07.2007
Andriy Voronin Leverkusen Free* 06.07.2007
Yossi Benayoun West Ham £5,000,000 12.07.2007
Ryan Babel Ajax £11,500,000 13.07.2007
Charles Itandje Lens Undisclosed 09.08.2007
Emiliano Insúa Boca Juniors £1,300,000* 26.08.2007
Lauri Dalla Valle JIPPO £600,000* 08.11.2007
Martin Skrtel Zenit St Petersburg £6,500,000 11.01.2008
Javier Mascherano Media Sports Investment £18,600,000* 29.02.2008
Philipp Degen Dortmund Free* 03.07.2008
Andrea Dossena Udinese £7,000,000 04.07.2008
Diego Cavalieri Palmeiras £3,500,000 11.07.2008
David Ngog Paris St Germain £1,500,000 24.07.2008
Robbie Keane Tottenham £19,000,000 28.07.2008
Albert Riera Espanyol £8,000,000 31.08.2008
Glen Johnson Portsmouth £17,500,000 26.06.2009
Alberto Aquilani AS Roma £17,100,000* 07.08.2009
Sotirios Kyrgiakos AEK Athens £2,000,000 21.08.2009
Daniel Ayala Sevilla £160,000 17.09.2009
Maxi Rodriguez Atletico Madrid Free 12.01.2010
Jonjo Shelvey Charlton £1,700,000* 10.05.2010
Milan Jovanovi? Standard Liege Free* 08.07.2010
Joe Cole Free Transfer Free 21.07.2010
Danny Wilson Rangers £2,000,000* 21.07.2010
Fábio Aurélio Free Transfer Free 31.07.2010
Christian Poulsen Juventus £4,550,000* 11.08.2010
Brad Jones Middlesbrough £2,300,000 18.08.2010
Raul Meireles Porto £11,500,000 29.08.2010
Paul Konchesky Fulham £3,500,000* 31.08.2010
Total Spent on Players – £172,080,000
Players Sold
Florent S.-Pongolle Recreativo de Huelva £2,700,000 04.05.2007
Daniele Padelli Sampdoria Returns from loan 08.06.2007
Danny O’ Donnell Crewe £100,000 13.06.2007
Boudewijn Zenden Marseille Free* 01.07.2007
Jerzy Dudek Real Madrid Free* 01.07.2007
Robbie Fowler Cardiff Free* 01.07.2007
Luis Garcia Atletico Madrid £4,000,000 03.07.2007
Djibril Cissé Marseille £6,000,000 09.07.2007
Craig Bellamy West Ham £7,500,000 10.07.2007
Mark Gonzalez Real Betis £3,500,000 17.07.2007
Gabriel Paletta Boca Juniors £1,200,000* 26.08.2007
Chris Kirkland Wigan Ath. £3,500,000* 27.10.2007
James Smith Stockport Cou. Free 28.12.2007
Mohamed Sissoko Juventus £8,200,000 28.01.2008
Lee Peltier Yeovil Free* 31.01.2008
John Arne Riise AS Roma £4,000,000 01.07.2008
Harry Kewell Free Transfer Free 01.07.2008
Anthony Le Tallec Le Mans Undisclosed 02.07.2008
Peter Crouch Portsmouth £11,000,000* 11.07.2008
Danny Guthrie Newcastle £2,250,000 14.07.2008
Scott Carson WBA £3,250,000* 18.07.2008
Steve Finnan Espanyol Undisclosed* 31.08.2008
Robbie Keane Tottenham £16,000,000* 02.02.2009
Jack Hobbs Leicester Undisclosed 24.04.2009
Paul Anderson Nottm For £250,000 30.06.2009
Astrit Ajdarevic Leicester Free 30.06.2009
Sebastian Leto Panathinaikos £3,000,000 01.07.2009
Jermaine Pennant Real Zaragoza Free* 01.07.2009
Miki Roque Unknown Free 01.07.2009
Álvaro Arbeloa Real Madrid £3,500,000 30.07.2009
Xabi Alonso Real Madrid £30,000,000 05.08.2009
Andrea Dossena Napoli £4,700,000 08.01.2010
Andriy Voronin Dinamo Moscow £1,800,000 10.01.2010
Nikolay Mihaylov FC Twente £1,500,000 04.02.2010
Mikel Domínguez Athletic Bilbao £2,600,000 19.05.2010
Fábio Aurélio Unknown Free* 01.07.2010
David Martin MK Dons Free* 01.07.2010
Yossi Benayoun Chelsea £6,000,000 02.07.2010
Albert Riera Olympiacos £3,300,000* 23.07.2010
Diego Cavalieri Cesena £3,000,000 23.08.2010
Krisztián Németh Olympiacos £1,000,000 25.08.2010
Javier Mascherano Barcelona £17,250,000 30.08.2010
Lauri Dalla Valle Fulham £750,000* 31.08.2010
Alex Kacaniklic Fulham £750,000* 31.08.2010
Damien Plessis Panathinaikos Undisclosed 31.08.2010
Total recouped on players – £144,900,000
Total Net Spend under Gillett and Hicks – £27,180,000
Now taking the above in to account; Liverpool FC would have generated more than your net spend if you had not saddled it with debt so in fact, I think you have made money from the club on the sale of players. Your figures are not even close Tommy.
So next claim from Tom; we would of built Liverpool a new stadium but of the world economic crisis – well Tom, you were the owners of this club before the crisis and George promised the spade would be in the ground within 60 days – 3 years on, no spade has touched Stanley Park. You say the reason for the delays was because the original plans were classed as obsolete, so you had to pay £50m for a new design. Its interesting that the new designs offered a downgraded version of the original plans hey? Lets face other facts at this point; a stadium on paper is not the same as a stadium made out of bricks and mortar – how you can justify a stadium plan adds substantial value to the club is comical.
Following on from this, Tom said the RBS/Board was a huge conspiracy to sell the club to new owners. Well Tom, here’s some more facts for you – you owe the RBS over £200m which in real terms is tax payers money now; if a bank thinks its going lose all this money do you not think they may react? They agreed with you and George to bring in Broughton to find a buyer at a reasonable price – I would say £300m for a club straddled in £240m debt, in the relegation zone, needing vast on pitch investment and on the brink of administration is reasonable. Now you accuse Broughton of wanting a big PR coup in his life; his remit as agreed by you was to sell then club which he did – no? Now on to my favourite bit, labelling the fans ‘Militant Internet Terrorists’ – why would the fans be upset with you and George. Well here are a few clues, straddled our club with unmanageable debt, did our dirty washing in public, kept our money from player sales and made it clear you wanted to fleece us i.e.
"Liverpool will be the most profitable investment I've ever made" - Tom Hicks, April 17th, 2010 Wall Street Journal
But lets not pretend its just Liverpool you do this to:
This is the same Tom Hicks who, within weeks of taking over the club in 2007 compared the purchase of Liverpool FC to the purchase of Weetabix:
“When I was in the leverage buy-out business we bought Weetabix and we leveraged it up to make our return. You could say that anyone who was eating Weetabix was paying for our purchase of Weetabix. It was just business. It is the same for Liverpool; revenues come in from whatever source and go out to whatever source and, if there is money left over, it is profit.”
So I will conclude my thoughts here for today – Make of it whatever you want. I will always be happy to see the back of Tom & George but now we just have to hope NESV are not trying the same game on.
In 2007, Liverpool as a business was still under developed but after a 3 amazing campaigns in the Champions League, the appointment of Benitez and the purchasing of players such as Alonso, Reina etc the club had money to burn. It seems obvious now that the club was to be sold by Moore to DIC but last minute you and George outbid them; instead of Moores and Parry doing the proper research about you they took George’s word. A 2 minute google search would of shown what you had done to teams like the Texas Rangers, Stars and what you had done to the workers in the North East of England (with holding their redundancies/wages after you asset-stripped their employer business). George you are not getting off scot-free either – your track record of destroying the most historic Ice Hockey team was disgusting.
Now to yesterdays ‘Epic Swindle’ interview – you mention Liverpool is a healthy business with a little too much debt but can meet its interest payments? Well, on Friday this healthy club was hours away from administration because you could not afford to pay RBS £240m; you had straddled this club with £25m - 30m interest per annum; you had defaulted on payments and your partner in crime had not defaulted to Mills Financial. It also seems your claim that you could pay RBS was based on money you were borrowing from another company? Does that sound healthy? Let’s face further facts Tom, where is the money from the sale of Alonso, Keane and Mascherano? All you say in your interview is you were swindled but lets look at this – you and George paid £200m for Liverpool and sell it for £300m and the new owners pay the debt , please explain how you made a loss of 140m on this?
Now on to your next claim, You and George invested £300m on new players and net £150m; it was the 2nd highest in the premiership. You also claim that Rafa wasted all of this money and you justify this by comments from Alex Ferguson. Now the facts – Tom & George look away:
Players in during their rein:
Lucas Leiva Gremio £5,000,000 11.05.2007
Krisztián Németh MTK Hungaria Undisclosed 25.05.2007
Mikel Domínguez Athletic Bilbao £270,000 28.06.2007
Sebastian Leto Club Atlético Lanús £1,800,000 01.07.2007
Fernando Torres Atletico Madrid £20,200,000 04.07.2007
Andriy Voronin Leverkusen Free* 06.07.2007
Yossi Benayoun West Ham £5,000,000 12.07.2007
Ryan Babel Ajax £11,500,000 13.07.2007
Charles Itandje Lens Undisclosed 09.08.2007
Emiliano Insúa Boca Juniors £1,300,000* 26.08.2007
Lauri Dalla Valle JIPPO £600,000* 08.11.2007
Martin Skrtel Zenit St Petersburg £6,500,000 11.01.2008
Javier Mascherano Media Sports Investment £18,600,000* 29.02.2008
Philipp Degen Dortmund Free* 03.07.2008
Andrea Dossena Udinese £7,000,000 04.07.2008
Diego Cavalieri Palmeiras £3,500,000 11.07.2008
David Ngog Paris St Germain £1,500,000 24.07.2008
Robbie Keane Tottenham £19,000,000 28.07.2008
Albert Riera Espanyol £8,000,000 31.08.2008
Glen Johnson Portsmouth £17,500,000 26.06.2009
Alberto Aquilani AS Roma £17,100,000* 07.08.2009
Sotirios Kyrgiakos AEK Athens £2,000,000 21.08.2009
Daniel Ayala Sevilla £160,000 17.09.2009
Maxi Rodriguez Atletico Madrid Free 12.01.2010
Jonjo Shelvey Charlton £1,700,000* 10.05.2010
Milan Jovanovi? Standard Liege Free* 08.07.2010
Joe Cole Free Transfer Free 21.07.2010
Danny Wilson Rangers £2,000,000* 21.07.2010
Fábio Aurélio Free Transfer Free 31.07.2010
Christian Poulsen Juventus £4,550,000* 11.08.2010
Brad Jones Middlesbrough £2,300,000 18.08.2010
Raul Meireles Porto £11,500,000 29.08.2010
Paul Konchesky Fulham £3,500,000* 31.08.2010
Total Spent on Players – £172,080,000
Players Sold
Florent S.-Pongolle Recreativo de Huelva £2,700,000 04.05.2007
Daniele Padelli Sampdoria Returns from loan 08.06.2007
Danny O’ Donnell Crewe £100,000 13.06.2007
Boudewijn Zenden Marseille Free* 01.07.2007
Jerzy Dudek Real Madrid Free* 01.07.2007
Robbie Fowler Cardiff Free* 01.07.2007
Luis Garcia Atletico Madrid £4,000,000 03.07.2007
Djibril Cissé Marseille £6,000,000 09.07.2007
Craig Bellamy West Ham £7,500,000 10.07.2007
Mark Gonzalez Real Betis £3,500,000 17.07.2007
Gabriel Paletta Boca Juniors £1,200,000* 26.08.2007
Chris Kirkland Wigan Ath. £3,500,000* 27.10.2007
James Smith Stockport Cou. Free 28.12.2007
Mohamed Sissoko Juventus £8,200,000 28.01.2008
Lee Peltier Yeovil Free* 31.01.2008
John Arne Riise AS Roma £4,000,000 01.07.2008
Harry Kewell Free Transfer Free 01.07.2008
Anthony Le Tallec Le Mans Undisclosed 02.07.2008
Peter Crouch Portsmouth £11,000,000* 11.07.2008
Danny Guthrie Newcastle £2,250,000 14.07.2008
Scott Carson WBA £3,250,000* 18.07.2008
Steve Finnan Espanyol Undisclosed* 31.08.2008
Robbie Keane Tottenham £16,000,000* 02.02.2009
Jack Hobbs Leicester Undisclosed 24.04.2009
Paul Anderson Nottm For £250,000 30.06.2009
Astrit Ajdarevic Leicester Free 30.06.2009
Sebastian Leto Panathinaikos £3,000,000 01.07.2009
Jermaine Pennant Real Zaragoza Free* 01.07.2009
Miki Roque Unknown Free 01.07.2009
Álvaro Arbeloa Real Madrid £3,500,000 30.07.2009
Xabi Alonso Real Madrid £30,000,000 05.08.2009
Andrea Dossena Napoli £4,700,000 08.01.2010
Andriy Voronin Dinamo Moscow £1,800,000 10.01.2010
Nikolay Mihaylov FC Twente £1,500,000 04.02.2010
Mikel Domínguez Athletic Bilbao £2,600,000 19.05.2010
Fábio Aurélio Unknown Free* 01.07.2010
David Martin MK Dons Free* 01.07.2010
Yossi Benayoun Chelsea £6,000,000 02.07.2010
Albert Riera Olympiacos £3,300,000* 23.07.2010
Diego Cavalieri Cesena £3,000,000 23.08.2010
Krisztián Németh Olympiacos £1,000,000 25.08.2010
Javier Mascherano Barcelona £17,250,000 30.08.2010
Lauri Dalla Valle Fulham £750,000* 31.08.2010
Alex Kacaniklic Fulham £750,000* 31.08.2010
Damien Plessis Panathinaikos Undisclosed 31.08.2010
Total recouped on players – £144,900,000
Total Net Spend under Gillett and Hicks – £27,180,000
Now taking the above in to account; Liverpool FC would have generated more than your net spend if you had not saddled it with debt so in fact, I think you have made money from the club on the sale of players. Your figures are not even close Tommy.
So next claim from Tom; we would of built Liverpool a new stadium but of the world economic crisis – well Tom, you were the owners of this club before the crisis and George promised the spade would be in the ground within 60 days – 3 years on, no spade has touched Stanley Park. You say the reason for the delays was because the original plans were classed as obsolete, so you had to pay £50m for a new design. Its interesting that the new designs offered a downgraded version of the original plans hey? Lets face other facts at this point; a stadium on paper is not the same as a stadium made out of bricks and mortar – how you can justify a stadium plan adds substantial value to the club is comical.
Following on from this, Tom said the RBS/Board was a huge conspiracy to sell the club to new owners. Well Tom, here’s some more facts for you – you owe the RBS over £200m which in real terms is tax payers money now; if a bank thinks its going lose all this money do you not think they may react? They agreed with you and George to bring in Broughton to find a buyer at a reasonable price – I would say £300m for a club straddled in £240m debt, in the relegation zone, needing vast on pitch investment and on the brink of administration is reasonable. Now you accuse Broughton of wanting a big PR coup in his life; his remit as agreed by you was to sell then club which he did – no? Now on to my favourite bit, labelling the fans ‘Militant Internet Terrorists’ – why would the fans be upset with you and George. Well here are a few clues, straddled our club with unmanageable debt, did our dirty washing in public, kept our money from player sales and made it clear you wanted to fleece us i.e.
"Liverpool will be the most profitable investment I've ever made" - Tom Hicks, April 17th, 2010 Wall Street Journal
But lets not pretend its just Liverpool you do this to:
This is the same Tom Hicks who, within weeks of taking over the club in 2007 compared the purchase of Liverpool FC to the purchase of Weetabix:
“When I was in the leverage buy-out business we bought Weetabix and we leveraged it up to make our return. You could say that anyone who was eating Weetabix was paying for our purchase of Weetabix. It was just business. It is the same for Liverpool; revenues come in from whatever source and go out to whatever source and, if there is money left over, it is profit.”
So I will conclude my thoughts here for today – Make of it whatever you want. I will always be happy to see the back of Tom & George but now we just have to hope NESV are not trying the same game on.
| 182 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog