Go Liverpool Reds!

Well the takeover has finally happened. It's taken three years of false dawns and broken deals but we got there in the end. I am quite happy with the way it's turned out. I listened to the press conference given by Gillett, Hicks and Parry on Tuesday. It was very informative and I would reccommend listening to it, I think it's still available on the official site. The two men seem very passionate about sport and said all of the right things, bar "franchise" and "liverpool reds". I'm sure that some of this is spin but I am cautiously optimistic about the future. The Canadian and American fans of their teams seem quite happy with their ownership.

They said that they will respect our traditions and they've kept on Rick Parry in his current role and David Moores has been made honorary life Predident. I like both of them even though they have made mistakes over the past few years. One area that I expect to change is our commercial division. The marketing and merchandise sectors have huge room for improvement. We've been lagging behind Utd, Real and others in this regard for years.

The securing of the stadium is the most important aspect of the takeover in my view. It's essential that we move into a larger and more modern stadium. Otherwise we'll be left far behind the other big English clubs. The capacity will be around 61,000 but more imortantly it will have vast amounts of corporate boxes and facilities. Anfield has barely any of these facilities. Arsenal make as much money from corporate boxes at the emirates as they do from regular seets. Work should start on the new stadium within the next month or two. It sounds like the naming rights will be sold which is fine by me. Arsenal got a great deal for the Emirates and the Americans have experience of negotiating these kinds of deals.

I would imagine that there will be a fair ammount of money spent in the summer. The new owners kept away from saying we're going to spend £Xm this summer and rightly so. If they splash figures about a war chest over the media then we'll be ripped off left, right and centre. As to who will our targets be, I don't have a clue. If I were to make a wild guess I would say a top class left winger (Vicente, Ribery or Silva), maybe a right winger/right back like Dani Alves, a left back (Bale?) and a striker, maybe David Villa who Rafa tried to sign before he went to Valencia. Doubt that we'll get all of those but I would imagine that we'll make bids for some of them. Don't shoot me if none of these happen.