Ex-Liverpool striker slams shambles at Anfield

Liverpool great Ian St John has labelled the current boardroom stand-off at Anfield “a shambles”.

Reds chief executive Rick Parry said Monday he intended to hold talks with manager Rafael Benitez after the latest twist in a series of off-field dramas.

That came after Benitez voiced his disappointment at co-chairman Tom Hicks’s revelation Parry had been present at the club owners’ infamous meeting with Jurgen Klinsmann last year.

It had been thought only Hicks, his fellow American co-owner George Gillett – with whom he has now fallen out – and their sons had been present as they sounded out former Germany striker Klinsmann as an “insurance policy” should Benitez leave.

“It is a real shambles,” former Liverpool and Scotland striker St John told BBC Radio Five on Tuesday. “When you think about it, has it ever worked having two people running an organisation like a football club?

“One guy at the helm, fine – he carries the can. You can’t have two people doing it because if they have a disagreement what is going to happen?

“And you have Rick Parry who is supposed to be the liaison between them and Rafa and then Rafa finds out, ‘Hang on, he’s hiding things from me’.

“I was amazed to tell the truth. I thought, like everyone else, the Americans had done it over there with Klinsmann and that was it.

“But when we heard that Rick Parry was over there. Rafa must feel right out on a limb here. Where is he going to get any support from?”

Last week Hicks called for Parry to resign. But both Hicks and Gillett each own 50 perecnt of the club and with Gillett in no mood to grant Hicks’s request, Parry is set to stay in his job.

It has been reported that while Parry went to New York for an initial meeting with Klinsmann only at the request of Liverpool’s co-owners and did not attend a subsequent meeting in California.

Despite all the wrangling, Liverpool have still reached the semi-finals of the Champions League.

Gillett and Hicks’s dispute has led to the stalling of a takoever bid from Dubai Investment Capital, a group bankrolled by the ruling royal family of the United Arab Emirates.