KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum VIDEO: JOHN HENRY APOLOGISES TO FANS

I want to apologise to all the fans and supporters of Liverpool Football Club for the disruption I caused over the past 48 hours.

It goes without saying but should be said that the project put forward was never going to stand without the support of the fans. No-one ever thought differently in England. Over these 48 hours you were very clear that it would not stand. We heard you. I heard you.

And I want to apologise to Jürgen, to Billy, to the players and to everyone who works so hard at LFC to make our fans proud. They have absolutely no responsibility for this disruption. They were the most disrupted and unfairly so. This is what hurts most. They love your club and work to make you proud every single day.

I know the entire LFC team has the expertise, leadership and passion necessary to rebuild trust and help us move forward. More than a decade ago when we signed up for the challenges associated with football, we dreamed of what you dreamed of. And we’ve worked hard to improve your club. Our work isn’t done. And I hope you’ll understand that even when we make mistakes, we’re trying to work in your club’s best interests. In this endeavour I’ve let you down.

Again, I’m sorry, and I alone am responsible for the unnecessary negativity brought forward over the past couple of days. It’s something I won’t forget. And shows the power the fans have today and will rightly continue to have.

If there’s one thing this horrible pandemic has clearly shown, it’s how crucial fans are to our sport and to every sport. It’s shown in every empty stadium. It’s been an incredibly tough year for all of us; virtually no-one unaffected. It’s important that the Liverpool football family remains intact, vital and committed to what we’ve seen from you globally, with local gestures of kindness and support. I can promise you I will do whatever I can to further that.

Thanks for listening.

Very honest speech. Almost as honest as a Clinton-Bush Jr.-Trump combo.

That's not gonna wash.... FSG will have to buy a lot of top players to even begin to heal that rift. Time for 50+1 rule in England.

50+1 rule, what is that?

That's the German ownership model, where the fans have 51% of shares, so no individual/organisation can take control, they can have a max 49% share:

https://www.bundesliga.com/en/news/Bunde...ined-466583.jsp

Well if fans have that kind of money, 1 Billion, maybe, until then...

So are you demanding they spend hundreds of millions on players and player wages. This is in part the wider financial problem in football which lead to this whole debacle as the owners were looking to make more money for their unsustainable teams.

Unless you are 'lucky' enough to be owned by an oil state football can't carry on spending 50+ million for average players at best. This is why Chelsea and City backed out first because they don't need the money.

This is why we take the approach we do because we can't compete financially with City and Chelsea.

This is the point I was making, we have opposed ticket price increases, copyright issues when FSG trademarks names, we have opposed the ESL now. Football costs are raising, we have increased the contracts of our players like VvD/Salah/Mane/Allisson based on success, rightly so, but now our salary is huge, with these players getting older and value/re-sale reducing.

We cannot have it all, if we want Liverpool to be competitive and win PL & CL, FSG need more to generate funds, that's why they joined the ESL, as that would have given more funds and close the gap between us & City/Chelsea. Come the summer we will all be saying we need a new striker, we need better CB cover etc, this all costs huge money in transfers & pay.

FSG bought us over expecting FFP to kick in to level the competition, they knew they could improve/increase Liverpool marketing/sponsorship/merchandise, increasing our income so FFP would put us in a strong position going forward if sugar daddy owners could not financially dope their club. FFP has been blown out of the water as UEFA have no teeth and have let Man City walk, Man City are in the semi final for a CL competition they were been banned from!!!!!

Yeah precisely. On top of what you describe one of the big problems with FFP was it came in about 10 years too late, after Chelsea, PSG and Man City happened, it needed to be in place beforehand. All FFP did was keep the top clubs rich while putting smaller clubs in a vice.

I'm not really sure how the best way to try and level things out is. I guess one way would be a dynamic salary cap so one team can't just collect 11 players all on 200,000 but could have a quota of 3 players on top money, 5 on medium etc to try and spread the talent pool around a bit more. No idea how this would actually work out in practise.