Fans unveil plan to buy out club - News in brief - Evening Standard
       

Fans unveil plan to buy out club

A group of Liverpool FC supporters are due to unveil an ambitious plan to buy the troubled Anfield club from its US owners.

A group calling themselves Share Liverpool FC aim to create a stakeholder base of 100,000 fans to raise enough cash to oust Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

It comes after weeks of worry about the financial future of Liverpool, sparked when the pair took out a £350 million re-financing loan.

There have also been tensions between the owners and club manager Rafa Benitez, who last year criticised them over their financing of transfers.

Rogan Taylor, a Kop season ticket holder and a director of the Football Industry Group at the University of Liverpool, is leading the buy-out campaign.

He said: "It is time to answer the concerns that football fans have about the patterns of ownership developing at our major football clubs.

"Thousands of Liverpool fans have already demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs.

"Large amounts of debt is often laden on to newly-bought clubs and the fans know that in the end it will be them who will have to pay it off through increased ticket prices and other schemes. In such a case, why not simply buy the club yourselves?"

The model proposed by Share Liverpool FC will be a 'member-share' scheme, aimed at raising £500 million to purchase the club from Hicks and Gillett and build a new stadium.

The group have pointed to FC Barcelona as an example of how the system works. Barca currently have more than 150,000 members who own the club.

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