Liverpool’s bitter, farcical sales process looks like coming to an appropriately messy end next week in London’s High Court.

The club’s board this week accepted an offer from the “New England Sports Ventures” group (NESV), owners of the world-famous Boston Red Sox baseball team, to take over the club and clear its £237m + debt.

The offer made no provision for previous American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett to get a return on their Liverpool investment. Without that return, no-one expected Hicks and Gillett to go quietly. But the pair’s efforts to cling onto power this week have smacked of desperation.

 

Liverpool’s five-man board is split between Hicks and Gillett on one side and chairman Martin Broughton, managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre on the other.

Or it was until moments before a board meeting convened on October 5^th to discuss two “excellent” and “credible” offers, one from NESV, the other from a still un-named Asian source.

In a remarkable move, the legality of which is key to Liverpool’s short-term future, Purslow and Ayre were suspended by Hicks and Gillett and replaced by Mack Hicks, Tom Hicks’ alternatively-named son, and Hicks’ “business associate” Lori Kay McCutcheon.

However, current chairman Martin Broughton claims that only he has the power to make such appointments, authority which comes from a written undertaking made by Hicks and Gillett and from the company’s articles of association, which were amended during the sale process to confirm said authority.

The validity of these claims will be decided in the High Court next week.

The NESV bid is figureheaded by John William Henry II, a “self-taught” hedge fund manager with an estimated net worth of $840m, who is credited with rejuvenating the Red Sox.

He bought them in 2002 and they won baseball’s “World” Series in 2004 and again in 2007, the first national titles for the team in over 80 years.

This sporting track record will have instant and direct appeal to Liverpool’s fraught and distraught fanbase. But reaction to NESV has been wary.

There is an understandable reluctance to welcome any new owners with open arms in the wake of the Hicks and Gillett experience – especially, frankly, another American.

But initial reports suggest that NESV favour a redevelopment of Anfield ahead of the much-proposed new stadium at Stanley Park.

This has more than just footballing repercussions as the stadium was a pivotal part of regeneration plans for the Anfield locality, one of Liverpool’s most run-down areas.

A major reason for Hicks’ and Gillett’s unpopularity was their total failure to progress this issue. NESV would hardly be courting popularity if they were not even going to try.

All this may remain speculation if Hicks and Gillett’s actions receive High Court approval. The pair would then have to clear Liverpool’s debts themselves or cede control to the club’s bankers, Royal Bank of Scotland, who are owed the bulk of the money.

But what about the football, you ask? The football?? Oh, that’s been horrendous…