Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Liverpool receive two 'excellent' bids for club

Published>Wed, Oct 06 10 05:36 AM

Liverpool have received "two excellent financial offers" to buy the club that would repay all their long-term debt, the struggling Premier League club said on their official website (www.liverpoolfc.tv) on Tuesday.

"A Board meeting was called today to review these bids and approve a sale," a club statement said.

"Shortly prior to the meeting, the owners -- Tom Hicks and George Gillett -- sought to remove managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre from the Board, seeking to replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon.

"This matter is now subject to legal review and a further announcement will be made in due course," the statement added.

"(Chairman) Martin Broughton, Christian Purslow and Ian Ayre continue to explore every possible route to achieving a sale of the club at the earliest opportunity."

British media reported that the owners of the Boston Red Sox baseball team had lodged a bid while the other offer came from Asia. The Red Sox were not immediately available to comment.

TERRIBLE START

Liverpool's American owners, who bought the Merseyside club in February 2007 for 218.9 million pounds ($347.5 million), instructed Barclays Capital in April to find a buyer and appointed British Airways chief Broughton to oversee the sale.

The five-times European champions owe 237 million pounds to their major creditors Royal Bank of Scotland, which has set a deadline of Oct. 15 for the debt to be refinanced.

Liverpool, English champions 18 times, have made their worst start to a season in more than half a century with the burden of servicing the debt, leaving new manager Roy Hodgson with little money available to buy new players and strengthen the squad.

Some 7,000 fans marched to Anfield on Sunday before the match against promoted Blackpool waving banners and chanting in the latest protest against Hicks and Gillett.

Liverpool lost the match 2-1 and have now picked up just six points from their first seven league games to sit 18th in the 20-team standings. They have also suffered an embarrassing League Cup defeat by League Two (fourth division) Northampton Town.

The last time they made such a poor start was in 1953-54, when they were relegated to the second division.


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