First, congrats on the Carling Cup win, it isn't a mickey mouse comp and I always enjoy it when we win it. If you win the FA as well it will be a good season, though in reply to a poster of a few weeks ago it doesn't make you the best team, as the late Jimmy Sirrel said " The best team wins the league,everything else is gossip".
However my perception is that LFC is a team and club in decline, not that you should win every year as you used to(our turn will come to struggle) but you no longer seem a major force and a bit old fashioned. I believe the way to turn it around is the new stadium for the following reasons/
Most important is more revenue, then a new image as a forward looking club, you will be more attractive to better players, more comfort for the crowd and no upkeep needed for a few years, plus with the construction industry doing poorly this is the best time to get the best price.
Some made up figures, cost 500 million (sorry french keyboard so no pound sign) interest at 5% 25 million per annum. Extra spectators 20,000 at say 30 each over 30 games gives 12 million per annum so you need to half the debt to pay for itself. Owners put in say 50 million, sale of Anfield (no idea) sell 50 million of players plus salaries, naming rights preferably including Anfield ie Adidas at Anfield or something like that. Raising in total maybe 200 million. Then instruct the manager to not get relegated, play attractive football if possible and hope for good cup runs. When the debt is nearly paid off change strategy to spending maybe 12 million a year and tell manager to aim for top four ignoring all else. When in CL use the extra spending power to buy one star player a year until a really top club again.
I know it's a long haul but you have to do something otherwise you will overtaken by other clubs and could become say Aston Villa like.
I don't say which manager(s) to go for as I am worried enough by that at my own club when SAF retires; But in all Uniteds failings two things they have done right is to improve the stadium constantly and choose the manager they thought right and backed him regardless.
I always enjoyed visiting Anfield and unlike a lot of United supporters don't want to see you struggle, so long as you are not quite as good as us obviously!
New Stadium
posted on 5/4/12
Serious question. If you were offered a ground-share with Everton in a 65000 seat stadium, would you take it? I know I'd have hated to have seen it happen to Arsenal and Spurs. However, it looks as though it'd be a sure way to catapult yoursleves back into the big time.
posted on 5/4/12
comment by Waiting for Mourho (U6960)
posted 1 hour, 23 minutes ago
If the best team in England gets a beating by the 11th best in Spain we are in a terrible league.
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An idiotic comment like that is not really worthy of this thread.
posted on 5/4/12
PS, I don't know anything about how the finances of a loan deal that big would work but I very much doubt it'd be as brutal as 5%.
posted on 5/4/12
owners won't get a stadium till LFC are in a more attractive position,
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That really could be a problem.
For Liverpool to get back to their former status they have to be playing in a much bigger stadium. At least the size of the Emirates.
posted on 5/4/12
The problem is (no disrespect to Livepool fans) the owners can't charge top dollar for tickets at their new ground or at Anfield. If you get a seat at Arsenal for under £40 you're doing very well, and as a result the stadium pulls in around £95m a year. I don't think Liverpool can hope to haul in that much, say £75m a year if they are in the Europa league and £80m in the champions league.
For some reason, your new stadium seems to be planned to be even more expensive than ours (£360m) despite the lower cost of the land. I don't understand this. If the new ground it needed that badly, surely some costs could be cut?
posted on 5/4/12
I don't know about the finances and all the figures are off the top of my head, I went for 5% because I think banks are a bit wary of lending to football clubs at the moment.
posted on 5/4/12
i'm not sure we'll ever go as low as needing to tell the manager to avoid relegation. but i do agree that we need to look at signing some new young talent. i don't mean 20million for henderson and 35million for carroll. i'm thinking more along the lines of 10million for sigurdsson and more signings like coates. these guys might not make it straight into the first team but if nurtured correctly could become great players 2 or 3 years down the line. we've already got the likes of shelvey, sterling and suso. these are the sort of guys we should be intergrating into the first team.
this is all a long term plan of course. i do think in the short term we should look to sign a couple more quality players. i'm thinking definitely a new striker costing around £20million. i think that would sort us out for a few years so we can bring through some young players
posted on 5/4/12
We couldn't share with Everton as it would end in tears, they just about get 30 thousand for a home game so if anything they should think about down sizing
posted on 6/4/12
The problem with the OP's idea is that if Liverpool became a mid-table club, they would struggle to get an extra 20,000 people through the gates.
A club can only live of reputation for so long, after all, even in the last 20 years without a title, Liverpool have been consistently challenging for trophies, and fans have always been able to go to a home game with a reasonable expectation of a win and a good performance. If that were to change then I reckon they would struggle to fill such a big stadium.
If this happened, the club would be in financial ruin, with massive debt and limited revenue to pay it off.
I think that the owners would be better of making a couple of major signings, getting the right manager in and hoping to increase revenue through Champions League qualification, if that happened then they would get 65000 in easily.
posted on 7/4/12
The best article on our board for some time, thanks OP. We tend to focus on the team and what we are winning obviously, but you are right the bigger picture is more important at the moment. Build the stadium to show we are a club with big intentions and eventually (with our increasing revenue stream) we can begin to attract some big players. For now, let's enjoy some cup runs whilst getting our business model up and running.
Oh, and let's spend our transfer budgets a bit more wisely!
I have a Pound sign on my Swiss-German keyboard!
££££