http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/may/16/kenny-dalglish-fenway-liverpool
Kenny Dalglish is gone but has Fenway taken on too much at Liverpool?
The Liverpool icon Kenny Dalglish's second stint as manager is summarily over and, with his departure, so too is the honeymoon period for the club's American owners, John W Henry's Fenway Sports Group. Liverpool seemed to promise such fun for them, and riches, when they were back-slapped in 19 months ago, paying off, as the price of buying the club, the ?ú200m debt that the previous pair, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, borrowed to buy the club in the first place.
Yet now, and after a disappointing season in which expensively bought players failed to justify their outlandish fees, Liverpool supporters will demand a coherent plan from FSG, for a new manager, coaching structure, and some action on the stadium.
When they arrived, Roy Hodgson was struggling painfully, but it was FSG's decision to hire Dalglish on a permanent contract, and now they have sacked him. They appointed Damien Comolli as director of football
on the recommendation of a baseball general manager, Billy Beane. Then they sacked Comolli too.
Liverpool overspent on players under FSG, the ?ú35m for Andy Carroll the most staggering example, but Henry publicly endorsed that. The owners also supported Dalglish's protest at the FA's ruling that Luis Su?írez had racially abused Patrice Evra, and Liverpool put out two dreadful, complaining official statements, so Dalglish's sacking has little to do with that. Last week the head of communications, Ian Cotton, who worked for 16 years at a club previously known for a dignified Liverpool way and then had to wrestle with the Su?írez stance, departed too.
FSG have not only a manager's job to fill, but to design a whole structure, if they are to persist with a director of football, an appointment that is key, too. When they took over, the reports of their Boston Red Sox baseball team stewardship were glowing and had seductive parallels – there they restored a grand, fallen club to championship triumphs and its old ground, Fenway Park, sumptuously. But the discomforting truth, only dimly recognised here, is that Henry, Tom Werner and their fellow FSG investors bought Liverpool just as they were running into serious problems at the Red Sox for the first time. Last season the team failed to make the play-offs, a failure considered more catastrophic there than Liverpool fans feel about missing Champions League qualification. The Red Sox general manager, Theo Epstein, left and the coach, Terry Francona, was sacked.
Yet the replacement Red Sox coach, Bobby Valentine, is not faring any better; the Red Sox are bottom of their division, the fans unhappy, the press critical, which is all uncomfortable for the owners.
At Liverpool, you can overlay on FSG's Boston headaches four additional major difficulties. First, while they are lifelong baseball aficionados, they knew almost nothing about football before they bought one of its greatest institutions. Second, a much underrated difficulty in this Premier League experiment, the first ever in world football, is overseas ownership of clubs: FSG are busy people, a long way away, inconvenienced in daily business by time differences.
Third, Liverpool also have a stadium to sort out. The stated need that rich men must stand behind the cost of building a new stadium on Stanley Park was the sole reason Liverpool were sold in the first place, the former chairman David Moores making ?ú90m for his shares. Yet FSG, having done a gorgeous job with Fenway Park, arrived saying they would look at redeveloping Anfield. So far they have spent 19 months scratching their heads over the same planning problems Moores's former chief executive, Rick Parry, found insurmountable.
Fourth is money. FSG were attracted by Premier League football's lucrative worldwide following, basing their calculations on Champions League qualification.
The fans retain patience for FSG because they paid off the Hicks and Gillett debt and above that have lent Liverpool ?ú30m interest free, freeing up money they then overspent. It appears, though, they do not intend to put more in, because Liverpool's accounts state they organised a ?ú120m facility to borrow money from banks.
With expensive signings of historic proportions, Dalglish now fired, much blood spilt on the carpets and no news yet on the stadium, the American owners' next moves have to be very much more sure-footed.