Football news part Trois

[Creator Supremes]

John Benjamin Toshack as Rafa used to refer to our former striker out of the respect he had coaching in Spain has sadly been diagnosed with dementia.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cy01n951evwo

[justincredible]

Incredibly there are some who still have absolutely no clue what exactly Jurgen Klopp did for our club during his tenure.
It went way way beyond results on the pitch.

Yes, he's so much more than just a set of teeth.

[miller0863]

Incredibly there are some who still have absolutely no clue what exactly Jurgen Klopp did for our club during his tenure.
It went way way beyond results on the pitch.

[Steveo]

Not even in their thinking….

Just remember.. to date - those lovable rogues venture capitalists FSG have already cashed out on £233 million in clear Profit via the sale of 10% to RedBird Capital for £533 million. This is before even looking at the collateral leverage they have utilised to capture other sporting franchises via the massive increase in value of their L4 asset that WE the fans have paid to upgrade.

While we have barely seen a dent in the ST numbers or any meaningful attempt to get more genuine fans to see their team "collateral leverage" has been their mantra…. They used the massive growth in Liverpool's value - A club Valued @ £515 million bought at almost half price… “for a steal” (from the debt clearing £300m to over £4bn) to effectively quintuple the value of their entire company, which in turn allowed them to buy more teams like the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In 2010, they were a successful regional sports group. By 2026, using their L4 asset as their primary engine of growth, they have become one of the most powerful and wealthy sports conglomerates on earth.

Until last summer - their L4 asset, the most successful club in the land in 2010 and in 2026… had a net spend @ 8th in the league - for the decade. From the owners who purchased for half price….! WTF

Jurgen Klopp completely masked the stark disparity between the club’s organic growth and the owners' actual investment. By overachieving on a sell-to-buy budget, Klopp turned FSG’s efficiency into a virtue, making the 'miracle' look like a 'strategy.' He gave them the shield of trophies to hide behind while they sat 8th in net spend, all while the value of their holding increased by 1,300%.

[miller0863]

First number I remember was 7,000 plus but that was over a decade ago. There was a fall in numbers when the Main Stand reopened but the Anfield Road was a real disappointment. I don’t think it dropped a full thousand.

So much corporate kicking around now, you can’t move for prawn deliveries on a match day.

[Steveo]

You’re joking surely? for every season ticket added they have added 3 hospitality seats.

[redebreck]

More importantly the updated Season Ticket list is in and we have made some progress, not as much as hoped but better than nothing.

We are now around the 2,050 mark.

Maybe within ten years of our tickets, after all it’s only been 24 years thus far …

Congratulations it's something to
look forward to.
Would imagine the waiting becomes less by a significant number each year. What was your original number, and how many years ago?
Have the ground expansions speeded things up at all?

[Steveo]

Great innit..

[miller0863]

More importantly the updated Season Ticket list is in and we have made some progress, not as much as hoped but better than nothing.

We are now around the 2,050 mark.

Maybe within ten years of our tickets, after all it’s only been 24 years thus far …

[Insidious]

PSG are requesting that their league game scheduled to be played between their CL games against us is moved.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cge0jl5075xo

A Qatari-owned Oil entity wanting to gain an advantage?

I am shocked - shocked to my core

Something to pin to the wall in the dressing room at least.

[RedMagic]

PSG are requesting that their league game scheduled to be played between their CL games against us is moved.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cge0jl5075xo

[redebreck]

Iran reportedly attacking the Gulf States could destabilise the regimes?
All precipitated by the good old USA.
And Israel.

[Steveo]

It runs far deeper than lawyers. See the below for some of facts on the ground.

Petrodollars..!!!

The Premier League isn't a Football league anymore... it just isn't.


Let's be honest with ourselves, lads. The Premier League stopped being a football league about the same time Sheikh Mansour stopped being a football fan. It's a global asset class now. A financial instrument with a fixture list attached.

When sovereign wealth funds from the UAE or Saudi Arabia deploy billions into UK infrastructure, they're not scouting for a right back or a DM. They're buying political leverage. It;s geopolitics.

The Foreign Office and the the cabinet have already let this slip - accidentally, like they always do - even The Guardian and The Athletic have done some digging. Neither paper is exactly neutral, fair enough, but the analysis is sound. The UK government is bricking itself over the Newcastle and Man City cases, because they know what everyone who's been paying attention already knows.. if the Premier League actually nukes City, they're they're insulting a key strategic ally in the Middle East.

The Yanks and the Gulf and the Dollar - the actual owners

More than half of the Premier League is American-owned now. City themselves around 20%. Private equity boys who look at the NFL and see the model...closed shop, no promotion, no relegation, pure profit extraction. The league purely as a content product. The fans as a revenue stream. We see it even at Anfield now - the empty seats, the prawn sandwiches, the fan experience zones. It's no accident, it's the owners vision.

The Gulf model = limitless spending - or 'sportswashing' if you want to use the Anglo Saxon colonial trope.... prestige, soft power. The American model is profit maximisation - extraction. Those two philosophies should not exist inside the same rulebook forever. One side wants to spend infinity. The other wants a closed shop where everyone's rich but nobody's actually trying. It's like putting a seasoned kopite and a hedge fund manager in a room and asking them to agree on what football is for FFS.

The crux of it - and this is the bit that all mainstream coverage (and thus most fans in here) refuse to mention - is that the United States needs these Gulf regimes stable to keep the Petrodollar system alive. Oil traded in dollars. The whole architecture of American economic dominance. That's the real game. So you've got the UK government in the middle, trying to keep Washington happy, trying to keep Riyadh and Abu Dhabi sweet, while 115 - or is hundreds of charges against City just sit there, while everybody stares at everybody else and nobody pulls the trigger.

[Insidious]

Is the Paltry £10m fine and suspended one year transfer ban given to Chelsea for years of illegal payments a good indicator that Man City are likely going to be treated incredibly leniently irrespective of what rules they've broken and how many times they broke them, assuming of course that they get found guilty of anything?

I think it is.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cx2dx8rjw08o

You'd hope not - gut says it will be, but there's been an ownership change there, whereas with Man City it will be about punishing the regime that is still in charge - so slightly different circumstances.

That said, everyone is terrified of Man City's lawyers, wealth etc so not expecting much.

[LFC-DPG]

Do we know where the paltry £10m goes to?

Grassroots football or a worthy charity I expect?

Towards paying the legal fees for 115