Are Yanks really going... or is this just another big lie in their phoney war?

By Brian Reade in Mirror Football Blog

Published 22:45 12/04/10

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There is a scene in Fatal Attraction which makes a regular appearance in the nightmares of most Liverpudlians.

No matter how times Michael Douglas tries to stop deranged stalker Glenn Close from killing him and his family, he fails.

Just as he thinks he’s finally done the deed, after kicking, strangling, and drowning her, even as he stares into her dead eyes and a wave of relief floods through his body, her terrifying visage bursts back to life.

For Douglas and his family read Liverpool fans and their club. For Close read George Gillett and Tom Hicks.

Which is why, as the Americans nail on their best sincere face and summon up their best folksy charm, and tell the fans that this time, they really do have the interests of the club at heart and they are about to do the decent thing and never darken Anfield’s door again, it is taken with a container-load of salt.

Because we’ve seen it all before. For three years in fact. Scouring business pages when we should have been looking in the sports sections.

Their entire reign at Anfield has been based on deception. From the day they sweet-talked those amateurish buffoons David Moores and Rick Parry into giving them control of Britain’s most successful football institution on the cheap, they have deceived.

Saddling the club with a debt they vowed would never arrive, mugging every Kopite in the process and putting the club on course for three seasons of turmoil, skintness, warfare and depression.

From being a proud, dignified club which did things The Liverpool Way, it has become an undignified madhouse mired in an ugly internal civil war, the casualties of which eventually became the team itself, as witnessed by a woeful season which looks like ending their Champions League status.

From promising to build a new stadium to denying sounding out Jurgen Klinsmann as manager behind Benitez’s back, from promising they would be personally responsible for the club’s debts to claiming they were amicable partners when they loathed each other, these two have never been up-front and honest with the fans.

In one week alone last October Gillett told fans group Spirit of Shankly four statements which do not hold up to scrutiny.

* “The club’s debt situation is very sound.” It was £44.8million when they took over, it rose to £245m.

* “It wasn’t me who said we’d start building a new stadium in 60 days, it was Hicks.” It was him.

* “We’ve spent £128m on top of what’s come in over the past 18 months to buy players.” Rafa Benitez’s net spend over that period was £20m.

* “Liverpool is in an extraordinarily good financial position.” That’s why the RBS had told them to find £100 million new investment or the game was up.

Right down to the mouthing of You’ll Never Walk Alone with shiny new red scarves on, everything that’s left their mouths about Liverpool FC has seemed phoney.

Even the timing of this latest announcement shows how little they know or care about Liverpool. Who wants to be talking about banks and takeovers in a week when the only thoughts on fans’ minds are of the 96 they left behind at Hillsborough 21 years ago?

So why shouldn’t fans now wonder if this latest development is yet another ruse to distract attention while they shuffle the debts from one bank to another?

The fans see them as cowboys and don’t trust a word from their mouths. It’s why news that they will become sleeping partners at Anfield will leave most of them deeply cynical.

Because while their dollars are in the club, and they demand they walk away with an over-inflated profit, who can believe that they would sit meekly in the background while others cut the deals? Who can believe that they would willingly allow strangers to pull the strings on their latest leverage venture?

So long as they’re there they will be viewed as everything that is wrong with Liverpool and modern football. Like Glenn Close, fans will always fear Hicks and Gillett are out to destroy the thing they hold dearest.

It would be nice to think that Barclays Bank or Martin Broughton are about to do what Michael Douglas’ wife did and give them the bullet.

But Liverpudlians won’t believe it’s happened until all trace of their presence is wiped off the boardroom carpet.

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