There’s a play by Ionesco called “
Le Roi Se Meurt” (usually translated as “
Exit the King”). It’s allegorical about how you should accept the inevitability of death. The King is told at the start of the play that he will die by the end. He goes through stages of denial, anger, futile revolt, powerlessness and depression as everything around him crumbles. Finally, be bows to the inevitable.
This whole tragi-farce has had the same stages of development and inevitability. The latest figures bear that out. EBITDA comes a poor second to common sense.
We knew as soon as the debt was transferred onto the club that we were screwed. As I recall, Timbo’s Goals was the first person to highlight the futility of our position in this (now amalgamated) thread of over two years ago (
Does Liverpool FC have a Future?)
http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=213798.0. Since then we’ve had all the stages of denial. The debt is on the holding company, the transfer fund is separate, Parry and Moores can block them, they can’t asset strip as players will refuse to leave (still believe that?), we’re LFC, we couldn’t become another Leeds… Well, now we’re talking about our ability to complete next season’s fixture list. It was obvious then that we stood every chance of becoming a charitable case, needing someone to rescue us.
A club breaking even with a turnover of £120M can’t suddenly pay 40M in interest. Even if you get your revenues up by £40M it’s profit that pays the bills. Every football club finds ways of spending its extra cash and quickly getting back to breakeven again. This can usually be achieved through normal football expenditure – transfer fees, improved contracts, agents fees and, in our case, the up-front costs of developing a new commercial structure. We’ve also managed to fritter it away on bank fees, additional directors, travel expenses, pay-offs and a fictional stadium. Even if the fictional stadium had become reality it is not certain that it would have done much more than pay for itself.
We set off like a boxer with a cut eye, knowing we needed a quick knock-out or defeat was inevitable. The initial euphoria of cash spent on Torres, Mascherano and others got us close but finished by increasing our debt and draining our energy. Now we’re on the ropes and getting battered.
The only benefit to owning LFC (or any club) is to be able to say “I’m the owner of LFC” and to get a free ticket for every match. And the only person who seemed to know what he was getting into was Abramovich. He’s enhanced his personal reputation, bought a level of political immunity, shown he can manage (who else had poached an MD?) and, yes, he even appears to enjoy his free ticket…
Hicks has made the error of becoming fixated with revenue, not profit. He believes that revenue has a direct link with perceived value of the club. Well, revenue’s gone up but I can’t see people rushing in. Why should they? They’ll get a much better price if they allow us to decline that bit more – or walk away if we’re on our last legs. Hicks and Gillett have been in a desperate position for a long time, despite their bravado. Their main tactic seems to be “Anyone moves and the kid gets it…”
It’s difficult to see a way out, other than one that involves destruction and pain. If Gillett and Hicks were to sell at a profit then the problem perpetuates. Someone else is left wondering how to get his money back. We may need to wipe the slate clean and start again. We may actually find that Rafa’s transfer dealings help the club in ways we hadn’t imagined. The profit on an Alonso or a Torres may yet keep the wolf from the door. Could anyone have seen him becoming the Dario Grady of the Premier League?
Like all good tragedies, most of the audience could see it coming from the start. We’ve had the denial, calls to revolt, powerlessness and many have now reached the stage of depression. The ancient Greeks solved the problem in these dramas by using a
Deus ex Machina, a god who descends from the rafters and sorts everything out. We're now reduced to hoping for the same.
