Financial Closure of The Disastrous Hicks and Gillett era - New Anfield

By dedlfc (Dave)

The financial restraints we all find ourselves in at this time puts all the talk of major financial losses into true perspective but my analysis looks at the positive light at the end of the tunnel.

When Hicks and Gillett first took over to the fanfare of what we now know to be false promises of a new stadium, we were all boasting that we were gonna go onto bigger and better things.

The reality of the falsehoods from our previous owners was that they lacked the required funding to make the dream a reality and also faced the embarrassment of having Gillett make his infamous "spade in the ground within 60 days" speech.  The stadium never had any real chance of being built.


With the announcemet yesterday of £49.4m losses for the last financial year, it could be deemed as a bad day, but I look on it as a day to finally close the chapter on the inept reign of our previous owners.

Of the debt, £35m of which relates to the extortionate (Dallas based) HKS design fees, legal and admin costs with saw these futuristic but ultimately fruitless stadium plans written off. 

Fortunately, the predicament the club found itself in when FSG first came on board in October 2010, was eased substantially given the fact that they wrote off £200m of our original outstanding debt, although they had to hold back money for the outstanding unpaid fees.  The threat of UEFA Financial Fair Play regulations on the horizon has not dented our future intentions to a viable fight for a Champions League place in future seasons, as the debt was not counted against us as it was not seen as part of the "break even" calculations made at the time.
  
The other exceptional item listed on the losses today was the total cost,  £8.4 m, of hiring and firing Roy Hodgson and his backroom team.  The total figure also included the "settlement figure for termination payments" to be made to Christian Purslow and the temporary chief executive Martin Broughton who both stayed on to oversee the sale of the club to the FSG.
    
The final major item which our managing director Ian Ayre also stated 18m in unspecified further costs which were not elaborated on.

In summary, the losses were worth taking, especially the payments to Purslow and Broughton, as we now have a relatively clean slate and are benefitting from John W. Henry & co having a more pragmatic and wiser look at the whole picture rather than the flamboyant and arrogant false promises of Hicks and Gillett.