LFC Up for Sale?

[teesred]

I'd say United have f**ked us when it comes to us getting decent owners. Their fans will love it when they get wealthy owners who don't care about profit and we get another shower of American corporate nightmares.

Is it possible this current investigation into City might be putting bidders off or maybe biding their time to see what happens?

[vin]

Over the last many years, he's had money, opportunities and attempts to land a midfield acquisition. He has to take some significant share in failings.


When you analyse the last 3 years as many have, our net spend is around 180 million. A high point in net spending for Klopp.
We've lost players on frees or for a pittance in Manes case. This costs us in our ability to invest, but it seems Klopp was happy enough with that scenario.



But I find it hard to accept this idea that all good is Klopp and all bad is owners.
Working within the known constraints of the owners, financial. Its been like that since he arrived.
And the various people employed at the club, Klopps got his charm and hotline to JwH.
So for me the mismanagement has a big Klopp factor.

Only when it comes to midfield recruitment. We could argue that he wanted Touchemani, who had apparently agreed terms with us and then choose Madrid.

The owners model has been outpaced by the increase in the market valuation of players. There model only works with us consistently selling players at optimum prices and acquiring players at reasonable market rates. The market rate has shot up. We can't generate enough money from sales. Where has all the other money gone? Stadium and training ground devs have been funded by loans.

[Steveo]

We don’t really get to see the true numbers…

What we do know is that John Henry’s wealth has risen at an alarming rate. Out of all proportion too, and during the most difficult of times for the rest of us.

The man who wanted to furlough staff added £1 billion to his net worth in less than one single year!!! He was barely worth half a £billion when NESV bought this club. He is now worth north of £4..

So - we have been operating within the revenues we generate - unable to buy big without selling big first. Infrastructure payed by loans and then out of club revenue…

How has Henry amassed such a profit unless he and other investors in this club are not creaming money from these franchises?

The answer is very likely to be just as murky as Cities dubious sponsorship deals. It’s how these crooks make their money. They start by not paying tax… Then become masters of the launderette. Shell companies and or speculating on the back of projected asset value - be they real or rumoured. Helps to have mates at the banks off course but Henry owns media too,

FSG are now a £10 billion enterprise. They were worth less (NESV) in 2010 @£930 million - than Henry just made this last calendar year!

[teesred]

There are some who say they don't take any money out of the club, if that's so where is the money going? The club is generating more than it ever has and also that ties in with having the highest costs it's ever had too but it's surely not all on running costs.
Their business model was always coming a cropper even without massive inflation of transfer fees. It relies in luck and getting 99/100 decisions right. It was never going to keep going and was short sighted if they weren't going to plough into the squad to maintain our levels.
They're greedy in my opinion, they've done a Tony Montana on their business of LFC.

[justme]

If they dont take money out of the club.. Just sell the club for a bit more than they purchased it then. and not FOUR+ billion they want..

[justme]

I don't personally want FSG to go. just kinda give Klopp the 200+ million we need for a rebuild. Theres no reason they can't. other than they only care about making themself rich..

[CCTV]

Only when it comes to midfield recruitment. We could argue that he wanted Touchemani, who had apparently agreed terms with us and then choose Madrid.

The owners model has been outpaced by the increase in the market valuation of players. There model only works with us consistently selling players at optimum prices and acquiring players at reasonable market rates. The market rate has shot up. We can't generate enough money from sales. Where has all the other money gone? Stadium and training ground devs have been funded by loans.

That may well be true regarding touchy, it's happened before and we move on to next best targets. With midfield recruitment we've stagnated.

Not so sure that is true, there's definitely been some setbacks like the failure of ffp, psg going to free transfers to try and comply with ffp, barca going bust-ish taking 2 bigger spending clubs out of the market for us and both in foreign leagues, and the covid pandemic.
But the increase in valuations applies to all assets and kind of evens itself out. We've Trent on 175 kpw, Salah on 350+kpw so our wage bill has risen massively - again failed ffp and inflation at the top of the market has impacted us.

But we've simply failed to move players on at the right time.
Lost a bunch on free contracts and those lost potential fees add up.
Mane for 32 million euro a financial disaster, with our classic front 3 we were always going to face ageing and have a dilemma. We really fucked up here losing Mane for only 32 Mill.
The first loan for the main stand was interest free subsequent ones not so, but these are being paid off.

Posted a link to a tomkins times article recently on here, a 2015 profile of Klopp and what to expect.
Logically, we'd have thought you back a better manager in Klopp more than Br. It's only with a Klopp profile you could expect net spending to decrease.
Klopps the type of guy it seems, who'll be delighted to have built 2 expansions of stadium stands/ends and a new training complex. A guy who loves to win without a massive financial advantage. He left Dortmund who were even stingier for net spend than us.

You take Jose/Pep/Most and give them a billion pounds to net spend over 4-5 years, no problem. You give it to Klopp and he'd start mouthing off about how that's immoral not the way to do things.

I do love him, his legendary status is secured and I'm quite happy to wait until the end of next season to see if he can get this shit sorted out.
But he needs to learn lessons from his first stint at LFC. He seemed to have identified some of his dortmund issues and kind of fix them here, needs a repeat to take into his second stint here.

[Insidious]

I think we are on a moment right now when our model (FSG model) doesn't work to keep us competitive and fight for trophies. Under FSG model we will be again able to compete for trophies but you would accept 2 seasons without Champions League football and 2 seasons of transition without be able to compete for trophies??
We need owners that want to win and can spend money

We might be at that stage - time will tell. I still think they are "good" owners (not "great" necessarily) who just need to be a little less frugal and take a small amount more calculated risk.

They're regularly copping a lot of flack this season (people are entitled to do so, fine) but I think a little swing with some of our circumstances this season that have little to do with them (choosing which players to hold onto, our choice of physio, luck with injuries, certain line-up choices, form of so many dropping off a cliff) and we would be getting a Champion's League spot - even if it was done narrowly and not to our high standards.

Then we'd be ditching some lads (Ox, Keita etc) and recruiting - then going again.

I don't think we would be a title-contention side in 23/24 and do need some "transition" but I would have thought that period of transition would have occured while maintaining a Champion's League presence - so, for example's sake -

- finishing 4th in 22/23
- finishing 3rd or 4th in 23/24
- finishing somewhere in the top 5 (hopefully 1st-3rd) in 24/25, where 5 clubs quality for the Champion's League

- and that during those seasons we would have been bringing the age profile down, recruiting well more often than not in terms of quality and having decent Champion's League and cup runs throughout. Challenging for a title again sooner or later - particularly if the spending of sports-washing entities does start getting reigned in a bit.

Obviously it is now looking like the above may not pan out (we aren't getting a Champion's League spot this season for a start) but I do think we've been rather unlucky to have so much go against us in one season.

[CCTV]

We don’t really get to see the true numbers…

What we do know is that John Henry’s wealth has risen at an alarming rate. Out of all proportion too, and during the most difficult of times for the rest of us.

The man who wanted to furlough staff added £1 billion to his net worth in less than one single year!!! He was barely worth half a £billion when NESV bought this club. He is now worth north of £4..

So - we have been operating within the revenues we generate - unable to buy big without selling big first. Infrastructure payed by loans and then out of club revenue…

How has Henry amassed such a profit unless he and other investors in this club are not creaming money from these franchises?

The answer is very likely to be just as murky as Cities dubious sponsorship deals. It’s how these crooks make their money. They start by not paying tax… Then become masters of the launderette. Shell companies and or speculating on the back of projected asset value - be they real or rumoured. Helps to have mates at the banks off course but Henry owns media too,

FSG are now a £10 billion enterprise. They were worth less (NESV) in 2010 @£930 million - than Henry just made this last calendar year!

He hasn't sold the club so that money he's made doesn't exist yet.
2008 financial crisis, too big to fail, euro can't permit a euro-nations bank go bust, more wars, more QE, more inflation...

He has an asset that's worth a shit lot more than he bought it for, and as such holding this asset he's able to acquire loans and buy out other sporting franchises as mooted by the press.
That's the benefit to him, it doesn't really impact our ability to spend, getting this asset benefit.

The oil men, are cash rich in ways JwH is nowhere near. He's not in their league at all.

In a sense his purchase of LFC is a little like a Londoner getting a council flat and paying off the mortgage. Then over time the flat is worth way more and the person is still on the same income.
You'd be asking the council Tennant where has all your money gone.
Its in the assets valuation, only realised at the point of sale, and the only real benefit until you sell is the ability to get loans against the value of the asset.

People asking where all the money has gone, it is a fair question in ways. Perhaps some money has left the club. The accounts are not that detailed that I've seen.

[Insidious]

There are some who say they don't take any money out of the club, if that's so where is the money going? The club is generating more than it ever has and also that ties in with having the highest costs it's ever had too but it's surely not all on running costs.

It's always a pain-in-the-ass issue to address as by the time we get any access to the accounts they are already out of date by roughly a year, so it is hard to point at specific things and say "here!" - you just have to make mental notes and then assess in hindsight when the next set comes out and so on.

Managed debt may be one cost. Besides the typical stuff that goes under the radar (agent fees are a massive one) there's debt to consider. We are in a very fortunate position there compared to a club like Man United or Tottenham, but we still have "bills to pay" as Klopp once called it.

As of September of 2022 examining 10 of Europe's biggest clubs and their debt, they had us down as having £167 million of transfer debt (instalments of fees etc not yet paid) and we (allegedly) budget in such a way that such things can be managed even if we miss out on Champion's League football. So it looks like we may be prudent with money we might not have until we actually get ourselves mathematically over the line so as not to further debts. I honestly don't know - guesstimating.

There's also £129m or so of gross financial debt and we are said to have paid off a considerable chunk of that - but that phrasing could mean absolutely anything and we don't know if that has come from revenue streams or somewhere else. Hopefully that will be revealed in the next set of accounts, by which time most will have forgotten etc

Speaking of revenue streams, that's one area where FSG have done really well - in the 5-year period from 2017-2021 we got to a point where we were just £7m behind Man United - indeed had the Pandemic not happened we were on course to overtake them.

There's a good chance that we will have the highest revenues of any Premier League club (that isn't cooking the books) by the time FSG sell up, or we will be a close second to Man United who started with a huge advantage on the back of 20 years of success and a big stadium.