KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Henry article in Guardian

This is interesting. No net Spend.

Out Babel/Torres
In Suarez/Carroll

and the point of Carroll + 15m = Torres. So they looked at this to make sure that books are balanced and not just 70m from Chelsea and more debt. They want to build a team and make sure it is financially sound. Wow, complete opposite from last owners.

Dr AVO

Liverpool's American owner, John Henry, has criticised Chelsea for their extravagant transfer window spending, questioning the commitment of Roman Abramovich's club to Uefa's financial fair-play rules. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Henry suggested Chelsea may be planning to "evade" the rules and called on the governing body to ensure they are strictly followed by all clubs. The fair-play rules, which require clubs to spend only the income they make and not rely on subsidies from owners, come into effect from next season to 2014.

"I was surprised Monday morning to receive an offer [from Chelsea for Fernando Torres] in that amount [£50m] at the same time they were announcing such large losses [£71m for 2009-10]," Henry said. "The big question is just how effective the financial fair-play rules are going to be. Perhaps some clubs support the concept in order to limit the spending of other clubs, while implementing activities specifically designed to evade the rules they publicly support. We can only hope that Uefa has the ability and determination to enforce what they have proposed."

Chelsea have insisted since signing Torres and David Luiz that they firmly intend to comply with financial fair play and that the £71m outlay was within overall progress towards cutting costs.

Henry, setting out his thoughts on Liverpool's direction almost four months since his Fenway Sports Group bought the club by paying off the £200m debts Tom Hicks's and George Gillett's "leveraged" takeover had loaded on to Liverpool, said he is committed to the club living within its income. "We've always spent money we've generated rather than deficit-spending and that will be the case in Liverpool," he said, referring to the group's ownership of the Boston Red Sox baseball team. "It's up to us to generate enough revenue to be successful over the long term. We have not and will not deviate from that."

That commitment to sound financial management was followed, not breached, Henry asserted, in the £35m Liverpool paid Newcastle United for Andy Carroll, a fee that astonished English football. Henry said the £35m made financial sense because Liverpool were only paying to Newcastle what they were to receive from Chelsea by selling Torres, whom they allowed to leave because he had become too evidently unhappy at Anfield.

"The fee for Torres was dependent on what Newcastle asked for Carroll," Henry said, explaining that Liverpool wanted Carroll, plus £15m, to replace Torres. Together with the £6m sale of Ryan Babel to Hoffenheim, that effectively financed Liverpool's £22.8m signing of Luis Suárez, meaning the club bought two strikers but net, spent almost nothing. "The negotiation for us was simply the difference in prices paid by Chelsea and to Newcastle," Henry said. "Those prices could have been £35m [from Chelsea for Torres] and £20m [to Newcastle for Carroll], 40 and 25 or 50 and 35. It was ultimately up to Newcastle how much this was all going to cost. They [Newcastle] made a hell of a deal. We felt the same way."

Saying Kenny Dalglish has "exceeded our expectations" as the club's caretaker manager, Henry explained that Liverpool retain ambitions to qualify for European competition this season, so insisted they had to sign a replacement striker, preferably Carroll, if Torres was to go. "We weren't going to write off Champions League and Europa League for the sake of someone's happiness," Henry said of Torres. "The striker position had to be filled, by someone who made sense for the long term. With about 24 hours remaining, the possibility of Andy, who was No1 on our list of possibilities for the summer, emerged."

Henry explained how Carroll, even at £35m, fits into FSG's philosophy, which famously learns from the strategy honed by Billy Beane, the general manager at baseball's Oakland Athletics. As described in the book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis, players are assessed from performance statistics, not solely by scouts rating how good they look. Henry, however, said this did not mean they were not prepared to spend big fees on the right players, as the group has done when turning the Red Sox into a World Series-winning baseball team again.

"The Moneyball approach is about poor decision-making in baseball, based on anecdotal evidence [about players' qualities] as opposed to hard, statistical evidence. If the Red Sox are a Moneyball team it has to be noted that we are second in spending over the last decade within Major League Baseball. We have been successful through spending and through securing and developing young players."

That, he said, will be Liverpool's two-pronged approach to rebuilding the squad, which will be financed only out of its income; he and his fellow investors in Fenway will not be pouring cash in. "We intend to get younger, deeper and play positive football. Adding two top players [Carroll and Suárez] who have just turned 22 and 24 is a good first step."

Henry lavished praise on Dalglish, although he declined to say whether Dalglish is likely to be offered the job permanently. "We didn't know Kenny well prior to him coming aboard as manager," Henry said. "But he has exceeded our expectations on all fronts. It would be inappropriate to comment publicly on what happens beyond the end of this season."

FSG is, Henry confirmed, studying the possibility of expanding Anfield rather than building the long-mooted new stadium on Stanley Park, a plan which he criticised. "It's not a coincidence that the last two ownership groups could not get a new stadium built," he argued pointedly. "What they proposed or hoped for just didn't make any economic sense or they would have been built. A lot of time and effort is being put into study and creatively looking at all options."

With his first, extraordinary, transfer window done, in which Liverpool managed to part with English football's most astonishing fee ever while spending nothing overall, Henry argued the new American owners' strategy, to refashion Liverpool as a major club, is on course. "Our goal in Liverpool is to create the kind of stability that the Red Sox enjoy," he said. "We are committed to building for the long term."

Good read, just shows that Henry and Lerner know what they are doing. I just hope that they will remain loyal and commited until through out their tenure and until they leave. Long may it continue.

Atlast owners who actually care about LFC and its values

He's a clever business man and his philosophy is spot on just throwing Money at players isn't the right long term solution and one I don't want to see . In a few years when people like abramovichs reign at Chelsea and mansour at city finishes which inevitably they will they will be on such a poor financial base it will only go backwards where as Liverpool will be financially sound and rise to the top

Am I the only one who thinks it's a weird philosophy to just give a "15m less than what chelsea offers" direction to comolli in the negotiation of carroll?

Comolli should be squeezing every penny from Newcastle instead of saying "ok fine, since we've got 50m for judas, here's 35m for carroll. I don't care whether he worth that much. Just let me have him for 35m as I have been given that amount to spend."

If that's the case then I think my grandma can do a better job.

His philosophy on players and transfers is spot on I agree with that. He is a very good businessman and anyone who thinks he is in it for Liverpool fans is completely deluded. The Henry plan is now clear pretend you are interested in the fans then tart up Anfield and extract value e.g. you and me. Then sell the club on at a profit in 4 / 5 years. Well you say if we are successfully so what? Well the so what is the club will be permanently of second class status with a stadium behind all our rivals even including clubs like Spurs. The extraction of value will be by way of sky high ticket prices to up the turnover and hence the profit multiple for the impending sale. More or less every fan other than the stinking rich will only be able to go to the odd game. Season tickets for the average person will be in thing of the past sharing season tickets amongst groups of fans will be the norm. We will gradually lose our paying fan base and in ten years when he is long gone this club will be raped and flogged off the new Nottingham Forest. He will make his profit on the £300m and there will be nothing left a shell of what we once were. We were once one of the top clubs in Europe (the top for several years) we will still be in 20 years?

Why are you bringing up this argument in every thread? They have done nothing to suggest they are going to do this so cut them some slack.

The problem was that the little w1nker t****s left us in the sh1te so we had no time to negotiate so we had to pay whatever Newcastle wanted but at least we got our top transfer target and the money was re invested . Henry has done nothing wrong and I like his outlook for the club he is a businessman so sure he wants a profit he isn't going to pump money in and take nothing I don't think us fans will pay on tickets I think he will gain revenue in country's we haven't reached. He obviously knows how he is going to make money and it's just a case of waiting and seeing it in action I would rather trust him than h and g so I am positive about it.

I can understand stanley's argument. Because that scenario is possible. But its possible for every club. We all knew that this guy is not the 'hodgson' of football ownership. He is here to make money. What is in our favour is the climate of financial 'fair play'. If clubs have to be self sufficient, then we will be in a very good position in 2-3 years time. My only fear is that as Henry was saying, the bigger clubs avoid the penalties for overspending while watching the smaller clubs follow the rules. Unfortunately we have to trust the owners. I don't think they are here to pillage the club though, they believe in success and don't sit around in board meetings saying yeah I got kenny to sell their top striker so we have 50 million in the bank, and we are still in top half of the table. Another reason is the international market with shirts etc. If chelsea were to win the champions league and do a 'manchester united' for the next 20 years we would I am sure lose revenue from people buying the merchandise etc. The fans at the ground are the ones who pay the most in the sense that the season tickets privilege the rich, if not they have to sacrifice half their life savings on going to the match, but the merchandising is important. SO it is not in the interest of henry to see us outside europe .Therefore he must make us a top 4 team or he will lose money (remember he/ they paid off a lot of our debt to buy the club) .

At mightyreds. I agree with you that it seems strange but its the consequence of the transfer window which was designed or has been manipulated to inflate prices in my view. When you have one opportunity to buy a player in 6 months, and you are trying to buy a player that the club doesnt really want to sell as they have no cover for him., and they know that you ahve that cash burning a hole in your pocket, thats what they are going to demand. Imagine we didnt have torres, we had say rat boy owen and he went for 6 million, newcastle wouldn't demand 35 million they probably wouldnt sell him at all. Silly money silly rules. We were essentially not in the position to negotiate. Who to blame.? Torres, although he says he made it clear 10-15 days before the deadline, there are ways of doing these things, maybe his agent I am sure he gets a cut out of his fee, if the deal had been established earlier liverpool might have had time to find a striker on the continent for 25 million and they may well have (according to the logic of john henry) demanded less say 40 million, so less money for the agent.

He has not sold the Boston Red Sox up until this point, and I just don't see him selling Liverpool in 4-5 years. By long-term, I'm pretty sure he means 10 years and longer, though I suppose we will only know when he truly decides to sell. As for the stadium, it is a difficult choice since on one side we have people like you saying a new stadium is the best way to compete, and on the other side people saying we will lose a part of our history if we leave Anfield, and business-wise if there was a clear-cut, long term profitable solution for LFC, then I am pretty sure they would have immediately went with that. What I am trying to say is give them some time, and don't jump to conclusions, however rational they maybe, since for all we know they can come out tomorrow with a competitive plan that even you may agree with.

@Mighty reds: It was the other way around, Chelsea had to pay 15 million plus the Carroll money.