Cactus’ Reality Check for Liverpool Fans

Can someone please explain to me why former Liverpool owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks are seen in the eyes of every Liverpool fan as the enemy, and their new American owners as some sorts of Knights in shining armour?

I’d love for someone to explain that one to me because I just can’t see it. Surely their anger should be aimed in the direction of a certain former manager?

Here’s the way I see it. Hicks and Gillett bought the Club three years ago and made a few promises they shouldn’t have, namely to build a new stadium in Stanley Park and not saddle the Club with any debt.

OK, these two things didn’t happen, but I reckon they were just the words of some excited new owners. I doubt they truly meant to lie to Liverpool’s fans. So instead of investing in a new stadium and paying off debt, they gave money to Rafa Benitez at an astonishing rate only to see their former manager waste it just as quickly.

This was their only real mistake, trusting Benitez to deliver. Benitez bought so many players who just weren’t good enough it was astonishing.

Yet Liverpool fans believed he was some sort of footballing genius, even after he left for Inter Milan. Benitez left Liverpool with a mountain of debt that couldn’t be serviced well enough, and a team that is at best average, and at worst a side that will finish in the bottom six. The two owners backed the manager with wads of cash, the manager produces a crap team, and it’s the owners who are vilified? Defies belief really.

I’ve got a news flash for all Liverpool fans. Every club in the Premier League is in debt in some way or another, not just yours. What makes some clubs run better than others is their ability to service that debt. The only crime Hicks and Gillett committed was backing a manager Liverpool fans seemed to love.

And now Liverpool fans believe these new American owners are in it for the right reasons and will make Liverpool the best club in the world once again. What a joke!

Do Liverpool fans honestly believe a consortium of businessmen from America have the best interests of the fans at heart? If they didn’t see an enormous profit to be made, do you really think they’d be interested? It’s not as if the directors of the New England Sports Ventures company were die hard Liverpool fans as kids with a Liverpool backpack they wore to school every day with a Liverpool pencil case and Liverpool lunch box. I bet they don’t even know all of the words to “You’ll Never Walk Alone”!

Get used to a few more years of shattered dreams all you Liverpool fans because there is a lot of work to be done to undo the damage caused by Benitez.

And another thing, for people to suggest the results on the pitch are because of what’s been going on in the club’s boardroom is an insult to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Do you honestly believe that once those over paid prima donna’s Liverpool fans call players put on the famous red shirt they’re thinking about Gillett and Hicks? Of course not, and if they are, they should be shown the door immediately. What an insult to the loyal and passionate Reds fans who pay their hard earned coin to go to Anfield if these players are performing badly because of what is going on off the field. If Liverpool’s players start playing like world beaters now the Hicks and Gillett are gone, I’d be ashamed of them if I were a Liverpool fan.

The truth is Roy Hodgson inherited a poor team who relied on a couple of world class players to get results, and he is going to need A LOT of time to get Liverpool near the top of the tree again. And if he gets the boot within two years for not winning a trophy, the new Americans in charge of the club should be ashamed of themselves, for it was someone else who put this club on the downward spiral to the Championship long before Hodgson arrived, and it wasn’t Gillett and Hicks!

Cactus Chris Couch