NESV seal acrimonious Liverpool takeover

New England Sports Ventures (NESV), owners of baseball’s Boston Red Sox, completed their acrimonious 300 million pounds (480 million dollars) takeover of Liverpool Football Club on Friday.

John W Henry’s NESV group were able to take control after Liverpool co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett were defeated in their legal battle to stop the takeover.

Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton brokered the deal despite fierce opposition from Hicks and Gillett, who have claimed they will sue for 1.6 billion dollars in damages because they believe the sale to NESV undervalued the Premier League club and was “illegal”.

Broughton was delighted to have finally brought the sale to a conclusion after a dramatic week that included court battles in England and America.

He said on Friday: “As every Liverpool fan knows, the most nerve-wracking way to win a match is in a penalty shoot-out but in the end, as long as you get the right result, it is worth the wait. And we have got the right result.”

Standing alongside Broughton at the central London office of lawyers who drew up the paperwork to finalise the deal, Henry drew cheers from Liverpool fans as he said: “I am proud and humble. We have a lot of work to do and I can’t tell you how happy I am that we have reached this point.

“We are not going to have a lot to say, we are going to do a lot of listening and we have a lot to learn.

“Obviously we are here to win. We have a tradition of winning. We are here to win and we will do whatever it takes.”

Liverpool’s ability to compete with England’s top clubs had been seriously hampered by the huge debts amassed during Hicks and Gillett’s ill-fated three-year reign at Anfield.

But that should change after NESV said the club’s debt servicing costs would now drop from 30 million pounds (48 million dollars) a year to no more than three million pounds (4.8 million dollars) a year.

After spending the last 12 months in a state of flux while Hicks and Gillett tried to sell the club for the highest possible price, Liverpool can finally return to concentrating on matters of football rather than finance.

Henry’s group managed to transform the fortunes of the previously underachieving Boston Red Sox and he knows Liverpool’s army of fans across the world will be hoping the departure of Hicks and Gillett will signal a brighter future.

“We regard our role as that of stewards for the club with a primary focus on returning the club to greatness on and off the field for the long-term,” Henry said.

“We are committed first and foremost to winning. We have a history of winning, and today we want LFC supporters to know that this approach is what we intend to bring to this great club.”

Although Liverpool are currently languishing in the Premier League relegation zone, the club has a proud history, which includes 18 English league titles and five European Cups.

It is that kind of success that Henry, who will work with NESV chairman Thomas Werner to re-build the club, wants to oversee during his reign.

In a joint statement with Werner, he said: “We are eager to commence with our plan, spend time with the organization, its leadership, its supporters, and the local communities.

“We will take these steps alongside the Club’s executives with a shared objective of stabilizing the Club and ultimately returning Liverpool FC to its rightful place in English and European football, successful and competing for trophies.”