Is Liverpool really worth over half a billion pounds?

Is Liverpool really worth £654 million? Tom Hicks thinks so. He reportedly told the Sunday Mirror, “"Liverpool Football Club has been a great investment. It has probably tripled in value.”  And I agree with him, but only in a muted extent. Liverpool FC is worth more than that, maybe immeasurable when you explore the opinions of the Kop fans scattered round the world. The real danger to the beautiful game is the tendency to transform the ownership of European football teams to the American style Franchise. It is not. You borrow money from one source and buy a club in dire need of some monetary tonic, while making flamboyant promises on your stride. Close to when a critical loan repayment is due, put it up for sale to re-route the eddy current of diminishing returns on the pitch into a large arc of expectation for the teeming followers, which may never be attained. 

When you a club with such a tradition and the quality of players as Liverpool, the value always appreciates because of it potential. Liverpool will perhaps get a buyer at a very good price because of its true worth, but that is not going to wipe away its debts, estimated to be over £300 million nor will it make it more attractive for soccer stars in the absence of Champions league football. It is on the pitch that the real danger of declining fortune will honestly play itself out and it surely will if that fourth spot eludes them. The two teams that are likely to benefit from their misfortune won’t fold their hands in the transfer market, particularly Manchester City with their massive pocket. A European spot for the blues of Manchester is going to fling the vault open with such a brute intensity. It will be near impossible to compete domestically with them 

The dangers that face Liverpool are real if the focus is not removed from “share” appreciation to isolating the key areas where mistakes were made and to forge diligent answers to them. A team like Liverpool need to compete among European elite to maintain a value in consonant with what their tradition purports, so it can attract the kind of investment that keeps a club’s debt revolving endlessly. The dynamics of the next transfer window as it unfolds is going to determine how well they cope with this storm. The prospect of losing Steven Gerard and Fernando Torres is still real because the innate hunger for trophies provides a good degree of motivational steam for players to switch clubs. I don’t see that changing.