‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Tom Hicks Jnr certainly took that to heart when he entered the spiritual birthplace of Liverpool FC, The Sandon, at the weekend alongside a couple of American friends and a handful of burly minders. Maybe after winning three points he thought that us simple footballing souls would have forgotten all about the back-stabbing, and the little matter of £350 million worth of debt his pops helped get the club in to.
Sorry Tom.
Everybody at Anfield remains pretty unimpressed with the despicable treatment of the manager who had renewed a sense of pride on the pitch and in the trophy cabinet at Anfield. And were all pretty unimpressed by the £350 million lie of not putting a penny of debt on to the club. Fortunately the Texan left the Sandon pretty sharpish when the fans began to cotton on to who he was, and from all accounts The Sandon was not refinanced to the Bank of Wachovia-land, and the pub manager is not set to be replaced by a German. Phew!
But seriously, what was he thinking? We all know that Tom Hicks now has a swanky new PR firm to assist him in ‘dealing with Liverpool’ and it could only be such an idiotic organisation which may have suggested Tom Jr’s weekend walkabout. The Hicks’ can certainly be in no doubt as to the feeling of disdain in which they are held.
Meanwhile George Gillett has been silent since the Klinsmann-gate debacle and is being widely-tipped to dispose of his shareholding to Dubai Investment Capital, taking away a tidy little $50 million profit in the process. While Tom Hicks seems desperate to cling on to scrape more money out of Liverpool we would suggest that both American businessmen move on to pastures new this spring. Let’s just spend a moment to thank them both for their achievements over the past year.
1. Keeping Rick Parry in a job
2. Paying architects twice
3. Enabling Liverpool to pay some banks a £30 million fee to organise some loans
4. Enabling Liverpool to pay £30 million interest a year on their new £350 million debt
5. Letting Rafa spend £15 million of the banks money on some players last summer and in January
6. Creating a stabilising influence on the team
7. Keeping the fans happy
It’s been a pleasure.