beejay

It's been trailed that the £105m debt against the club is made up of £60m for advance costs on the stadium ; £25m to pay off the loans for the transfers ; and the rest on bank/broker's & architect fees. We'll soon see tomorrow when the announcement is made I guess but maybe then you can join the party.

cowtown off RAWK may have a point. Some of the press reports stated that DIC would not want to buy if G&H's refinancing went ahead because they would have to inherit a £350m debt rather than introduce their own package. The fact is that G&H have now put in a sizeable amount of their own equity so if DIC do come back in they will only have to take on the £105m debt on the club and can repackage the rest of their outlay as they choose. To speculate - DIC have been hovering around seeing if G&H fail to refinance so they would then be in a firesale ; G&H organise the finance but only as a "sticking plaster" so that negotiations can take place to arrive at a market value. My head hurts, I am so desperate to get rid of these shysters I will clutch at any straw going.

Way I see it, DIC have been given 24 hours to come up with the right offer. If they don't (and I very much doubt they will) we are royally f***ed and I can get back to doing some work and forget about footie.

It's over. We are now supposed to be grateful to Parry & Moores and hope they stay on the board so the entire debt isn't on our books? LOL. We will still have to pay all the interest FFS. We have a long, long way to fall yet. G&H will get rid of Rafa as soon as they can then watch us disappear into midtable obscurity.

Sorry guys looks like it;s b****x - came from a mate who picked up his ticket for the cup game on saturday and it was a rumour going round outside the ground but there's no confirmation anywhere.

Just been told Moores has resigned?

However it pans out now there's going to be blood on the floor. The Echo are getting briefings from all parties and it's reached the point where the principals have taken sides. If Hicks & Gillett sign up to the new loan with some or all of the debt on the club I can see Parry & Moores stepping down as well as Rafa being sacked. I fear this soap opera is set to run and run.

A couple of observations : 1. The idea that Rafa's job was offered to Klinsmann because of results or interest from Real Madrid etc is laughable. This all came to a head in November because Rafa was agitating over transfer policy, as he had done throughout the summer. This time it was about Mascherano and G&H wouldn;t come up with the money, told Rafa to get on with coaching the current squad and leave transfers to the businessmen. The festering sore over transfers & Rafa's refusal to toe the line is the main reason they wanted him out. I went to Athens with a solicitor mate who got the tickets (we missed out on the ballot) through his firm and after the game we met up with other guests, one of whom had worked on the takeover at a senior level. He told us that as part of the takeover proposals, G&H had stated they had set aside a transfer budget of £60m but this was a personal "pledge" and did not form part of the legal documentation. (I posted this when we returned). At the time it was taken at face value, G&H had made a good impression and were trusted. It was explained that as part of a complex set of loan documents , it was not feasible to make specific guarantees on where money was to be allocated but the funds were available. I think Rafa's growing irritation over the summer was about the release of these funds and of course, nothing like £60m materialised but he did manage to secure enough of his targets to keep him on board with the promise of more to come. Rafa has pushed them to the limit to honour their undertakings and they don't like it. It calmed down when the transfer window closed but flared up again when Rafa tried to plan ahead for the January window. Reading between the lines, it built up into a classic example of brinkmanship with Rafa using media-reported interest from other clubs and the backing of the fans to make his case until he realised G&H had had enough and wanted him out. He backed down but not before G&H had offered his job elsewhere. 2. Why has Hicks made this statement now? The clue is in the briefing given behind-the-scenes at Bayern Munich that they had to move quickly because Klinsmann had another offer. The interest in Klinsmann did not end as Hicks has said when they met Rafa in December, he was lined up to take over as our manager in the summer but decided instead to go to BM. Hicks has now made his statement, giving Rafa his "support" and hoping to stabilise events until the summer when the axe can then fall. These are observations not known facts

Jeez, it gets worse. Hicks is a complete t*sser, unfeckinbelievable

Not convinced we have the right players for that system.

We've had a full week to rest and some key players even longer so we should be fresh. Agger, Skrtel, Aurelio & Arbeloa probably won't be risked so my stab at Rafa's team is : -----------------------------------------Reina----------------------------------- Finnan------------Carragher-----------------------Hyypia-------------Riise Pennant-----------Gerrard---------------------Mascherano---------Kewell -------------------------Crouch---------------------Torres--------------------- Subs : Itanje, Skrtel, Alonso, Benayoun, Babel

With the incessant backstabbing endured by Rafa mainly from the press at the moment I thought the following article from a fan's perspective fairly reflects the consensus of opinion from the match-going supporters : http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/sport/...64375-20337865/ If anyone has G or H's e-mail address, it is well worth forwarding on.

It was meant to be a jokey response to your one-liner is all mate, no offence meant. Wenger certainly did have a major input into many facets of the design of the Emirates and was no doubt involved in aspects of the financing as well given his own transfer & wage budgets - Arsenal made a virtue of highlighting his role - but you are right, not on "all levels". Rafa is not given anything like the same respect so far as I can tell.

If you didn't get it the 1st time what I meant was Cobs = http://www.pabird.supanet.com/~pabird/AI/

Cobs = http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2005/...ry567137745.asp

I remember reading about the influence Wenger had over Arsenal's new stadium, he was involved at every level. Contrast this with LFC where Rafa is focussing on coaching & training while Parry sits in on all the key meetings. Just hope the 2 week delay is to give them time to sell out .

This one? http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverp...64375-20329577/

From the bbc sports gossip round-up Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez wants to sign Villarreal's creative midfielder Matias Fernandez. (Telegraph)

Rafa's statement to the Echo today make it clear that he was the one doing the briefing but the journos chose to put a different spin on his words. I suspect Rafa may have been asked if he was happy about his current position and off-the-record may have said something about being very committed blah blah but we will see at the end of the season. They have then construed this as he thinks he's a dead man walking. Fact is Rafa just can't laugh off these stories any more - he is vulnerable, he's been told to keep his trap shut and it's not doing him any favours if the press keep digging this stuff up.

Good on you Rafa. Now can we have the same positive statements from Parry and G&H...

All the papers ran with the same story - that according to "friends/sources close to the manager" Rafa believes he will be sacked at the end of the season. Rafa then said at every press conference that he had not briefed the press, was happy at Liverpool & hoped to be with the club for a long time. But the media are all still running with the theme that the story did come from Rafa's camp and so the next part of their campaign is to link the well-trailed meeting to discuss the new stadium plans with a story about Rafa's "latest outbursts" enraging the owners to the extent that they may sack him now. The imminent acquisition of a £6.5m defender doesn't quite fit in to this tale so they all dismiss this pretty unconvincingly. We are a great story for the press at the moment. We are well within their "club in crisis" radars and they are milking it, waiting for one bad defeat or some other negative circumstance to really go to town on us. Heaven only knows what the truth is but there doesn't seem to be any doubt that it is affecting the players and if Rafa's authority in the camp is diminished any further we really could be a club in crisis. If Rafa can hang in there for a week or so, get positive results & performances against Middlesborough & Luton and conclude his January transfer dealings it will all settle down until the summer. I despise being part of the media circle, come back David Moores all is forgiven.

Reina, Finnan, Carragher, Agger, Alonso, Gerrard, Mascherano, Babel, Benayoun, Torres are all good enough to be part of a title contending squad. Hyypia, Riise, Aurelio, Arbeloa, Lucas, Pennant, Kuyt & Kewell can also play a part. Give Rafa a new 4 year contract and allow him to sell Carson, Sissoko, Guthrie & Crouch. We need a genuine No 10, another striker and a winger all with pace (assuming we now have our centreback covered). We are NOT a million miles away, we need some stability at the club and a bit of patience.

He was really bad. Towards the end his head had dropped and he was hiding, the first time I've seen that in him, usually if he is out of touch at least he works hard but yesterday he didn't want the ball. I watched some replays of some of last year's games over xmas on our TV channel and he looked a totally different player.

I can I'm afraid. We are 5th now and our form is deteriorating. If Rafa was safe in his job I would have no concerns at all about the rest of the season, in fact I would be expecting us to really push on and compete on all fronts. But he has precious little security, he knows it, the players know it and it is bound to have an impact on confidence & form. It's starting to look like a classic case of dead man walking which is unbelievably unfair on the man.

Seems to me the problem at the moment is the players are affected by all the off-pitch speculation. If we have another 6 months of the same there is a real chance that we could implode.