My criticism of Moore’s isn’t so much the sale to G&H, it is the circumstances which led up to it.
After the Heysel Tragedy , and the subsequent England wide ban, the gloss surrounding our club came off. We did not handle it well, and then followed the body blow of Hillsborough. Moore’s took over the club with the lingering stain of the first event, and the still fresh pain of the second, hanging like a collective pall over us. As other clubs, particularly Man U, saw opportunity in the Taylor Report, the emerging Premier League and multiplying Sky driven TV revenues, we stood paralysed. I make this point because although Moore’s regime stands damned for inertia, ineptitude and Administrative stagnation, the context of the era is important to remember.
The appointment of Parry was a mistake, an Accountant, and a fan, I have yet to find anyone who can identify a Parry legacy which has benefitted the club other than that things operated fairly smoothly and relations with the FA and Premier League were cordial. But when you snooze, you lose, and the enormous power of the Liverpool Club name continued to be squandered in the 90’s.Our inability to win the league subsequent to Moore’s Chairmanship is testament to that torpor. It s easy to forget that Old Trafford did not suddenly become a 76,500 capacity stadia, it was increased in stages, not that M&P noticed, and now we are faced with the humiliation of being one of the most famous clubs in world football, but with the 64th largest stadium in Europe, and the 23rd largest average crowd last year, simply because of the size of Anfield.
To Moores, our club was a sinecure, and a place at a very elite European and English social club. I do not doubt that he was also a fan, with genuine affection for the club. But there was neither the ambition, nor the ability, to drive the club forwards. Steve Morgan was the chance to renew from within, but the men, one landed and with inherited wealth, the other a self made millionaire distrusted each other, and LFC became the loser. Moores regarded Morgan as a brash upstart and was suspicious of his motives, fearing that he wanted to “steal” Moores trappings of office. Morgan foresaw that Moores could not lead the club forwards. Their inability to reach a rapprochement had devastating consequences for us.
To be fair to Moores, he sold up because he accepted that he did not have the will to take Liverpool into the 21st century. He sold the family Pools business, as High St and Internet Betting began to take its toll just before the market for the Pools Industry collapsed. He also sold his stake in Littlewoods as online trading was about to wreak a similar toll, again pretty much at the top of the market. So he had previous for holding up his hands, saying he wanted no more of a business he did not want to take forwards, and cashing in his chips. Including us, he did it three times.
When he sold us, he had had enough. Although he could have built a new stadium for roughly the cost of the debt to date he did not fancy the 10 year further investment of time and energy to see the project through to a point whereby the club could be sold on again for a similar profit. And he certainly did not have the team around him to deliver it.
The sale to G&H has been a disaster. But there are no guarantees that DIC would not similarly have placed the debt on the club, and the chances of the stadium being built firstly before the UK Credit Crunch bit, and secondly before the Dubai financial market imploded, are very slim. Some feel that Moores “should have known” about G&H. But the Institutional Shareholders, particularly Granada, were not interested in the “Liverpool Way legacy” they were interested in raising the most cash once Moore signalled his intention to bail out. So criticism of him for the mechanics of the sale is probably harsh.
Mindful of this I am not quite sure what people expect him to say. My judgement is that hounding him for the G&H sale is probably misplaced. It is the period up to that which does not bear scrutiny. But that lets G&H off the hook, which does not satisfy the mob, and criticism of his regime can be countered with him replying that he, and the shareholders made a fat profit out of it, crisis, what crisis?
So although I am pleased to see that some are prepared to look back further than the carcass of our current rotting owners, chasing down Moores is to career down a cul-de –sac.