Why Liverpool fans have to come together and act NOW to save their club - and perhaps all of football - before it's too late
On Saturday at Anfield, thousands of Liverpool fans remained behind after the game to register their protest against their club's 'owners'.
Over on Sky Sports, as cameras cut from the sit-in back to the studio, Jeff Stelling - the usually immaculate presenter of Soccer Saturday - offered a withering look, and muttered something along the lines of "perhaps they should concentrate on what's happening on the football pitch".
If ever a presenter can have got something so spectacularly, insensitively wrong, then it is him. Phil Thompson, a man with Liverpool in his veins and someone who cares passionately about the club, almost exploded in indignation beside him.
The former European Cup-winning captain, the former assistant manager, and lifelong fan of the club took him to task in no uncertain terms. For Tommo, the issue of ownership is the number one priority at Anfield at the moment. The only issue, in fact.
If Hicks and Gillett are offered refinancing by greedy banks to allow them to retain their control as owners of Liverpool, he argued, "it will kill Liverpool Football Club, and it will kill football."
Thompson even went as far as to suggest that, as a supporter, he wouldn't pay to buy tickets or merchandise from the club because "if you go and support the club, purchasing tickets, then you are supporting the owners, so no, I won't do it, I am not going to go because the more money I put into the club the longer I could possibly keep them there."
So who is right on this? Is Jeff Stelling correct in suggesting that fans should stick to what happens on the pitch and let the off-field stuff take care of itself, or is Phil Thompson right to fear for the future of the game he has been involved with for the past 40-odd years?
Regular readers of this column will know that is a rhetorical question, of course, because every Liverpool fan should be aware by now that if the current owners somehow persuade money-grabbing financial institutions to prop them up, then the future of Liverpool is threatened.
Why? Well, because under those circumstances, no money will be put into the club, meaning interest payments will get higher, debts will continue to rise, and eventually will exceed what the company is worth. At the current rate of debt growth, in fact, that situation will arise within the next 12 months.
The wider implications are obvious too. If Hicks and Gillett can get away with such behaviour at Anfield, then the Glazers will get away with it at Manchester United, and countless other ruthless, avaricious leveraged buy-out merchants will get away with it at countless other clubs. And eventually the whole pack of cards will come tumbling down.
On October 1, the Americans are due to repay almost £200million in loans to their current lenders, the RBS, and by the middle of the month the bank could legally call in that debt. They are trying to find that money - through refinancing - to be free from their obligations to the English-government owned bank, so they can continue on their obscene plan of buying LFC with the fans' money.
If they can be stopped from getting that refinance, and if the RBS can be persuaded not to extend current loans (which is still a distinct possibility, believe me), then they will be forced to allow the bank to sell the club quickly and cheaply to avoid bankruptcy, though for George Gillett that prospect may already be too late.
Which is why Phil Thompson's comments were so heartfelt. He knows the future of the club hangs in the balance NOW. Not last year, when a similar sit-in protest saw only a few hundred fans stay behind. Not next year, when perhaps tens of thousands of fans will be sitting outside, refusing to go through the turnstiles.
The deadline for the future of Liverpool Football Club is October, and maybe the deadline for the whole of football is October too. Football fans have to pick their battles, and that battle is upon us all.
Liverpool fans are finally coming together in recognition of that point. Some are angry that others are only just coming on board now, but that is spectacularly missing the point, because it is only now that the fans can make a real difference.
Gillett is a busted flush who seems to have lost control of his own finances in the USA, but Hicks is still scurrying around the world, trying to sweet-talk banks into giving him money, pretending that he is a victim of a campaign by an 'angry mob'.
It is his last shot of the dice, and it is happening right now, as you read this. He is rumoured to be in talks with Citibank, the latest in a long line of institutions to hear his pitch.
All the disparate groups, all those fans who don't like other fans because they aren't aligned to the right group or don't like the same manager or same toothpaste, can stop those talks by joining together to make clear their views to Citibank, and to all the other banks who may be greedy enough to allow the catastrophe at Anfield to continue.
They can make clear - as Phil Thompson has so brilliantly voiced - that if Hicks and Gillett do remain in control at Liverpool, then they will boycott the stadium, boycott merchandise and make any investment in the Americans by any bank worthless.
It is a real possibility. In a recent poll on the Anfield Road website, fans were asked to vote on a simple question with two alternatives:
1) Hicks and Gillett retain control via refinance or RBS extension.
2) RBS take temporary control of the club on the proviso the club is passed on, as soon as practicable, to a responsible owner (this carries with it the possibility of LFC being placed into administration and a nine point penalty being imposed by the Premier League).
The response was deafening. More than 97 per cent of fans would rather Liverpool took a nine point penalty and go into administration than face more time under their current owners.
It is an interesting poll, not least because it is basically the choice being faced by the RBS right now. Remember, this is a bank who have made MILLIONS out of Liverpool fans by lending a sum even they admitted was far too high to Hicks and Gillett.
So there is no guarantee they will do the right thing. But as Phil Thompson so eloquently pointed out on Saturday, the future of football may depend on them doing the right thing. And if they don't, then there may well be nothing left of their investment to profit from.
It is a point RBS will do well to remember, and any other bank thinking of propping up a morally bankrupt regime.
(David Maddock, Mirror)
