Fans plan Liverpool buyout

Liverpool fans cheer their team before the Champions League final against AC Milan in Athens in 2007. A group of Liverpool supporters is trying to succeed where the financial might of Dubai International Capital has so far failed and buy their beloved club from its American owners.

A group of Liverpool supporters is trying to succeed where the financial might of Dubai International Capital has so far failed and buy their beloved club from its American owners.

Tom Hicks and George Gillett have, for the time being at least, seen off the threat to their Anfield reign from DIC, an international investment company, and recently completed a 350-million-pound (469-million-euro, 696-million-dollar) re-financing deal that left Liverpool with interest payments of about 30 million pounds per year.

Manager Rafael Benitez has been promised that the arrangements will not affect his ability to sign new players at the end of the current season.

However, financially, as well as in footballing terms, much depends upon Liverpool's ability to keep playing in the lucrative Champions League.

A 1-0 defeat at West Ham on Wednesday left Liverpool seventh in the English Premier League, where only the top four at the end of the season qualify for European football's most prestigious club competition.

Regardless of the club's on-field form, the boardroom set-up at Anfield remains a concern for a new organisation called "Share Liverpool FC", which has now announced plans for a supporters co-operative to buy the club.

The plan is to produce a members-share scheme similar to the one already in existence at Spanish giants Barcelona, effectively owned by its fans, and raise 500 million pounds to buy the club and build a new stadium in Stanley Park, close to Liverpool's existing Anfield ground.

Liverpool owners George Gillett (L) and Tom Hicks pose for photographs with a team scarf at the Anfield stadium in Liverpool, in 2007. A group of Liverpool supporters is trying to succeed where the financial might of Dubai International Capital has so far failed and buy their beloved club from its American owners.

Rogan Taylor, one of the figures behind "Share Liverpool FC" and a lifelong Reds fan, said: "The time is right to offer a different solution to the rising 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 often devolves onto clubs newly purchased, but the fans know that, in the end, it will be they themselves 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?" Taylor, director of the football industry group at Liverpool University, asked.

"What many don't realise is that there are other ways of financing and taking ownership of big clubs. In Germany and Spain, most top level football clubs are simply not for sale.

"They are owned by many thousands of 'member fans'. The Champions League has been won on six occasions in the last 15 years by clubs owned and run in such a way."

Andy Burnham, Britain's new secretary of state for culture, media and sport, welcomed the bid and said it could set a precendent at Premier League level.

"This is a fascinating development and it will be really important to see how it works," he told BBC radio.

"I was one of those who set-up Supporters Direct, an organisation with the aim to encourage supporters to take a greater share ownership in their own clubs.

"So far, it's happened mainly at a lower level. It had been a great success in the Football League and lower and this development will test the water in the Premier League.

"It (the fans' proposal) is not necessarily incompatible with success."