RaoulD

They could in theory but I suspect that the articles of association of the parent may limit the powers of the directors and the fact that Abramovich is owed the money he put into the club may mean that in practice the directors will not want to alienate him.

The shares in the football club are owned by Kop Football (Holdings) Limited not Hicks and Gillette. As a matter of company law, a company is run by its board of directors not its shareholders. More importantly Hicks and Gillette will have no authority to bind the company other than as authorised by the company's board. The decision to sell assets held by Kop Football (Holdings) Limited will be taken by the board of Kop Football (Holdings) Limited. Whilst Hicks and Gillette are the ultimate beneficiaries of any surplus upon the dissolution of the company, they will not be able to veto the sale of shares in LFC if it is approved by the board of Kop Football (Holdings) Limited. The fact that they could be out-voted is probably down to the conditions imposed by RBS in extending the loan facilities so that any assurance given by H & G that they were looking to sell was actually worth something.

Huang is a hostile bidder. a £300 million bid would be for the shares in the club and would go to Kop Holdings. RBS would have their loans to Kop Holdings discharged from the proceeds. There might also be some repayment of the inter-company debt in the £300 million. The alternative to buying the shares is buying the debt owed to RBS and then, assuming the terms of the loan allow it, calling in the debt and having recourse to the security, namely the shares in the club. The problem with the latter course is that you still have to realise the best price available for the shares and you may have to put Kop Holdings into administration before any deal can be done. I suspect this would cause LFC to suffer a points deduction. On the other hand, G & H will run the risk that the forced sale realises less than their exposure under personal guarantees etc. and may be forced to accept a reduced bid for the shares now. They will probably try to force the price up and I suspect that Huang may well go higher to get control before the transfer window closes. Much will depend upon the precise terms of the RBS facility. If it allows the lender to force the sale of the shares once certain conditions are met, then G & H are running out of time. Their only bargaining chip is the fact that any purchaser after 1 September will not be able to invest in the transfer market and therefore may be prepared to pay a premium for a quick sale.

1. Dalglish came in at the moment of the Heysel disaster and the team was arguably in decline having lost Souness and was over-reliant on an ageing Wark. Everton had won the league and Cup Winners Cup and had nearly won the FA Cup so there was precious little success to maintain. 2. Every team's average age fluctuates as players come and go but a successful settled team will often have a higher average age than a team that is in development. 3. You did not have the luxury of a "squad" in those days. Most teams consisted of about 16-20 key players. You had one named substitute so options were limited. The problem that Souness inherited was that the Shankly/Paisley policy of buying players for the future and bringing them in gradually through the reserves had given way to a policy of buying star players who were then expected to fit into the team immediately. This had worked with Dalglish in 1977 and with Barnes, Beardsley, Aldridge and Houghton in 87-88. The difficulty with the policy was the cost represented a massive financial commitment for the club at a time when attendances were declining and it is no coincidence that all of the above named players were bought after the sale of a star player for a record fee. You could not sustain the policy every year without such sales. I suspect that the effect of buying back Ian Rush after only a year severly restricted the club's ability to invest in other areas for a while and as a result we did not recruit players for the future. This meant we became increasingly dependent on buying established players and there is always the risk that it will not work out. Every manager has bought players who turn out to be wrong for the team but whereas in the past the cost of failures could be absorbed (usually because the cost was relatively modest) a big money failure was likely to have a detrimental effect on the manager's resources. The problem became more acute as our rivals became significantly richer than us.Not only could they cover more bad purchases than we could but they could afford to develop better squads as well. We have been playing catch up ever since. I don't think it is fair to blame either Dalglish or Souness for what happened, the club was too slow to react to the changes that were taking place.

It is unlikely that a buyer would want to terminate the employment of a manager who, despite a poor season, is very much in demand on the continent. The prospect of being able to demand compensation from the new employer for Rafa breaking his contract means that a buyer would more likely regard Rafa as a saleable asset rather than a liability. The most probable scenario is that Rafa does not want to leave and intended to honour his contract but that the board feel that there is an opportunity to get rid relatively cheaply as he would be under a duty to mitigate his loss if they were to sack him now and with clubs such as Inter Milan interested, it is unlikely that he would be out of work for long. Employment Law rights are different in the UK to Spain and the common law is less favourable when it comes to such large break clauses. The board are probably working on the basis that Rafa will have little difficulty in securing new employment at or about the same level of remuneration under his current contract and so by offering him a fraction of the sum he would have earned over the next 4 years they can persade him to leave now. What is more of a concern is that I suspect that the board are looking to get rid of more than just Rafa here and that there is no realistic prospect of us being sold so they are about to cull the squad to raise funds to repay debt rather than move the team forward.They probably will then see whether there are more buyers at the reduced price that will inevitably be the consequence of such asset stripping.

Not much difference from the last 20 years then. Come to think of it, I can remember the whinges from the 80s about the state of the team particularly after Souness left for Italy.

The reality of a boycott is that it will hurt the team before it hurts the owners. The money that comes from sources such as television etc will cover the interest payments to the banks and a boycott will enable Hicks and Gillette to offload star players on the grounds that the club cannot afford their salaries. I think this is going to happen anyway as it is clear that Hicks and Gillette see LFC as just another asset to be turned into profit for themselves and even if they were persuaded to sell, there is no guarantee that the buyer will not wish to do the same. I cannot see where a person who is required to pay £500 million + for the club will make a return on the investment without stripping the club down. The dream of a benevolent owner is just that. At the end of the day the only comfort is likely to be supporting the team through the storm...

The problem this season is much more complex than simply blaming Gerrard for not producing enough rabbits. Gerrard is an outstanding attacking midfielder. His strength is the driving run into the box with and without the ball. He is not an outstanding passer of the ball and does not always spot teammates in space. If there is a criticism it is that he is often too static in his movement off the ball and does not make enough space for himself to receive the ball from his teammates. He is not however the worst culprit in the current line up as Lucas' movement is appalling and Mascherano can also be seen standing still in the centre of midfield when we have the ball. I watched Lucas during the Lille game and despite an massive improvement on what I have seen for most of the season, he was still generally running towards an opposition player rather than into space when we had the ball. I think the movement in the team has been a problem for some years now - too many of our players do not make themselves available when we have the ball and so the player in possession either has to resort to a long ball or plays a pass to someone who is at risk of being tackled/closed down immediately. Alonso used to compensate for this failing in two ways. Firstly, he would usually take the ball from the centre backs as soon as we had possession and his close control was good enough to allow himself the time to spot a free player. Secondly, Alonso had the ability to hit precise long range passes from deep which enabled him to exploit runs made by Gerrard and Torres into space on the counter-attack. This role has been taken by Mascherano this season and it is not his strength. The lack of movement has also meant that the wide players such as Insua and Kuyt often find themselves with no support when they receive the ball leaving little option but to pass it backwards. It was no surprise that the introduction of a fit Aquillani against Portsmouth produced a much more mobile display from the team as a whole and not just Gerrard. It is for this reason that I don't believe Rafa would have left Aquillani on the bench today unless there were doubts about his fitness.

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It looks to me as if the decision to charge him was taken by the police rather than the CPS but they obviously had something which made them confident that they had a case. This doesn't mean that a prosecution will not take place, but equally, that a prosecution may not happen. It is possible that the decision to charge was based upon the testimony of certain witnesses which supported the charge but that a review of the evidence by the CPS will result a decision not to prosecute. Affray is a very easy charge to make but a difficult one to prove to the criminal standard of proof especially when you are dealing with something which took place in a matter of seconds. Personally I think it is all part of Rafa's masterplan to deflect attention from the fact that we just might challenge for the title this year - there were far to many journos actually starting to get interested for my liking and what better than have your captain step up and direct all the attention to himself.

What does not seem to have been pointed out to those making an issue about the registration of the liver bird as a trademark is that trademarks are registered in trade categories and only apply in respect of those categories. In order to register the mark you need to prove established use and reputation in that particular class. Registration of a mark which is used on LFC merchandise is a sensible think to do and it begs the question why it was not done earlier. It would be a different thing if LFC were trying to register the liver bird as a registered design (something completely different to a registered trademark) since this would only work for relatively new designs. I think the problem Arsenal had was that their design was so old that it's copyright (as an artistic work) was about to expire.

We are there to be shot at now. Every team will be trying to get a result against us. This was how it always used to be and it is something we have to deal with if we want to be champions again. Spurs would be up for it whether they had won lost or drawn tonight.

1983/84 for me. Watched nearly every game home and away including trips to Bilbao, Lisbon, Bucharest and, of course, Rome. Watched the final with some Italian mates who supported Lazio but were quite happy to wear red on the day! I don't know who was happier at the end but they knew how to get out of the ground safely and the party afterwards went on until about midday the next day.

Abramovich's investment in the company has to be recorded somehow. Unless you get something in return i.e shares, the money will be shown as a debt owed by the company. The problem for Chelsea is that they are operating on credit which they could not afford without Abramovich's money. If anything happened to Abramovich they are in trouble as it is likely that his estate would call in the loans. The debt also makes Chelsea an unattractve proposition for potential buyers and they may have difficulty selling players who currently earn high salaries. Unlted on the other hand have the asset base to service their debt and would be an attractive proposition to other investors should the Glazer family decide or be forced to sell. If Chelsea were to win the Champions League I suspect that Abramovich will lose interest to the extent that he will not want to put more money in rather than call in the loans. Chelsea will then have to operate in the same way as everyone else and will probably drop out of the so-called Big Four as they have huge problems in generating sufficient revenue due to the limitations of their stadium and a much smaller fanbase than the others.

I don't think the Chelsea side were an average side, they had gambled on a number of big players and were effectively broke. Had we beaten them to the CL place there was every likelihood of them doing a Leeds. Abramovich arrived to bail them out but probably would not have bothered if Chelsea were only in the UEFA cup. I recall that he was more interested in Spurs at the time. I don't recall the bizarre tactical decisions in the EC in 2001-2002. I remember the following season was one where we were completely outplayed by Valencia and failed to beat Basel in the group stage but the latter was more down to poor performance than tactical decisions. The defeat by Celtic was also more the fault of the players as typified by Diouf's behaviour in the first leg. There wasn't an abject surrender to Marseille the following season either. We played well to start, took the lead and then Biscan got himself sent off in trying to stop Drogba. After that we were holding on with 10 men for the entire second half. Houllier laid the foundation for us to become realistic contenders for trophys. He did it by making us extremely hard to beat. The defensive problems which we had had under Souness and Evans were largely erradicated. Benitez has built upon this foundation. The real doubt is whether Houllier could consistently beat the top European sides playing the way he did. Whilst we could beat anyone on our day by sitting back and hitting them on the counter, there was always a risk that we would concede an early goal and be faced with having to change the system to get back into the game. This is were Houllier often fell short - he could not get the team to play a more expansive attacking game when the need arose. The changes Benitez made at half time in Istanbul were not the sort of things Houllier would have done.

If Houllier had stayed we would probably have continued the counter-attacking style which had been developed since 2000-2001. We might have seen more from Cisse (possibly acting in tandem with Owen) as Houllier's plans seemed to revolve around him. There was still a chance that Owen would have left as he was sitting on the fence regarding a new contract throughout Houllier's last season. The difficulty is that Houllier may well have had a bigger budget that Rafa had in 2004 as the cost of terminating his contract would not have impacted on the club's finances. Even if he had 10-15 million to spend there is no telling who he might have signed (we could have ended up with someone like Essien). The chances are that we would have done better in the league that season but I am not sure we would have won the European Cup. The biggest problem with Houllier's teams was that they were geared up to soak up pressure and counter-attack rather than take the game to the opposition. This defensive strength was still evident under Rafa but we were slightly more creative. Although we probably would have got the results against Juventus, Bayer and Chelsea, I am not sure we would have beaten Milan. We would probably not have got Mascherano or Torres without the Spanish influence at the club and the likelihood is that we would still be struggling to keep up with United and Chelsea in the transfer market. We might have got closer to them than we have done under Rafa but there is also a chance that we could have slipped back into the chasing pack as teams like Villa, Man City and Tottenham started to spend.

I don't think it would have worked until we got Torres and even then it would have taken a number of games for the two of them to gel and to understand the runs each other was making. The injury to Alonso and the international breaks probably did not help either.

It is far to easy to take a single season in isolation and say that we have not developed as well as Man Utd. In 2006, they still finished ahead of us in the table. They still had the nucleus of a championship winning side but certain players had a poor start to the season and there was not the same settled squad mentality that had been the hallmark of past United sides. They were eliminated from Europe early, we knocked them out of the FA cup and so they focused on the league and ended the season playing much better than at the beginning. The last 2 seasons have been relatively good for them in that Ronaldo has matured as a player much more than I anticipated and has covered up the fact that they do not have a prolific striker. They have also been quite lucky on the injury front with key players generally remaining fit throughout the season. United have had much more continuity that we have over the past few seasons and this has helped them. It is much easier to produce consistent results with a settled team rather than one where you are introducing several new faces to try and build on the advances you have made in the previous season. Over the 4 years Benitez has been in charge, we have replaced all of the strikers at the club when he arrived, most of the midfield and some of the defence. Over the same period, United have kept Ferdinand, Scholes, Giggs, Ronaldo and Rooney as regular starters in their team. Three of these players cost the best part of £75 million between 2002 and 2004. We have only really started to match the spending on key players that United and Chelsea have enjoyed over several seasons. It is not hard to see how Mascherano and Torres have improved us. Equally, Reina is a big improvement on the past (leaving aside Dudek's wonderful debut season). You could also see how the team improved as Mascherano and Torres got more games and an understanding developed between them and Gerrard. It would have been nice to have seen Skrtel and Agger in tandem as I think this would enable us to keep a much higher line and could well have led to us converting some of the draws into wins this season.

It is this sort of comment which shows that you obviously are one of those who have jumped on the bandwagon at some stage rather than understanding why the rest of us will support Liverpool regardless of whether we win or lose. Even when we were the dominant force in the 1970s and 1980s there was never an expectation that we would win anything but a hope that we would. Paisley used to remind the players that the past success counted for nothing when a new season started and that they had to go out an prove themselves again. Apart from Wembley in 1978, we were not even regarded as the favourites to win! We are no different to any other supporter in that we always hope that our team will win everything. In our case the hope of winning may have more justification but it is tempered with the reality that we are not the dominant force in English and European football anymore. We expect our players to give everything for the shirt they wear and not to give up even when the outlook is gloomy. We expect our players to understand and respect the history and traditions of our club. And before you ask - I have seen Rome and Wembley, I was at Heysel too but I was brought up on tales of life in the Second Division and the genius of Shankly and am fully aware that there is no divine right to win whether you are Liverpool or anyone else.

And have you bothered to look at where Drogba and the rest were running? It was not Riise's job to hold the line but to defend the flank. If he was trying to play an offside trap he would have noticed where Carragher and Arbeloa were and the threat that was posed in the centre from an early cross over the top. The fact was he was not in the right position to play the offside trap and if that was what he was trying to do, he was wrong to do it. I personally don't think he was trying to play Anelka offside, he was simply caught out of position too far up the field.

The "line" was not playing Anelka offside. The ball was on the flank and it was Riise's job to be tight to the attacker. As usual he was out of position in no-man's land. He then compounds the error by raising a hand to claim offside rather than challenge for the ball and allows Anelka a run which might have been stopped or at least resulted in a more hurried and less precise cross towards Drogba in the centre. One would be more forgiving if this was an isolated mistake by a defender but Riise's positioning is consistently wrong throughout the game. For the most part it does not cost us, last night it did - as it did in Athens last year when he let Inzaghi through for the second goal.

Riise has always been a defensive liability in my view. His positional sense is woeful and he is frequently caught ball watching. His lack of control and one-footness make him a clumsy footballer at best. Even taking into account his inadequacies, the way he chose to deal with what was a relatively harmless cross was shocking. He had the time to move forward and duck down to head the ball from the floor. I don't know why he didn't simply meet the ball and run it out of touch (with his left foot if necessary). There was not a great deal of pace on the ball and had he miscontrolled it (as he is likely to do), it would still probably have reounded back across the goal rather than into it.

The fact that we have to score may mean that we play better than we would have done at Stamford Bridge had it remained 1-0 tonight. I saw enough tonight to believe that Chelsea would get a goal at Stamford Bridge and if we went in with a defensive frame of mind we could find ourselves struggling to change tactics if they were to score. With Torres up front (something which we did not have in either of the games at SB this season) we have a chance of sneaking a goal and if we can hold off Chelsea, I suspect that the pressure may finally get to them. Much will depend on what happens at the weekend. If they get a result against United they will be full of confidence and our chances of winning will be diminished. If they lose and we score an early goal, it will be very close. I think Chelsea must be favourites (as they have been at this stage in the past) and we will need to do something which we have not managed before in our history. There have been occasions in the past where we have been held to a 0-0 at Anfield in a first leg and still gone through (against Bilbao in 1984 and Bayern in 1981) but I cannot recall a score draw at Anfield in the first leg!

I am surprised that he did not know many of the players playing against Fulham. More than half of them turned out against his team on the opening day of the season (Reina, Hyppia, Sissoko, Fowler, Bellamy with Gonzalez and Pennant as subs). It is always going to be the case that by this stage of the season many teams will see their remaining games as an opportunity to give some of the youngsters a go. We had qualified for the CL next season and had played Chelsea in the semi-final midweek (which had gone to extra time). It is not something new either. I remember we used to do this in the days of Paisley and Dalglish. I particularly remember Roy Evans playing a kid called Owen in a league game against Wimbledon (when we still had a remote chance of winning the title!) which we lost. I wonder what happened to him?

I don't think there is much evidence of Grant having done anything at Chelsea. He does not seem to do much during games and the squad seem to still be playing the Mourinho way without actually having Mourinho there! There does not seem to be much direction and the players are scraping by on their own individual brilliance. The team appear to be stagnating as much now as when they decided to give JM the boot. Although Mourinho's tactical genius was over-hyped, he knew how to get the best from his players and they had faith in him. The same cannot be said of Grant.