Fans' group bids to raise £500m for Anfield buyout

A Liverpool fans' group, led by a leading academic and campaigner from the city's university, launched an ambitious plan yesterday to raise a £500m kitty from 100,000 supporters around the world to transform Liverpool into a Barcelona-style members-run club at some unspecified point in the future.

The Share Liverpool FC group was founded by Rogan Taylor, a fan of more than 40 years and the director of the Football Industry Group at the University of Liverpool. The impetus behind SLFC comes from the recent turmoil at Anfield caused by the ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

The Americans bought Liverpool entirely with borrowed money, and last week extended their club-related loans to £350m and rising, all directly or indirectly to be repaid with money generated by the club.

"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," Taylor said.

The SLFC website www.shareliverpoolfc.com went live at 5pm yesterday and promptly fell victim to its own popularity, crashing. But in the spells when it was working, it was clear that SLFC is in its early stages of gauging fan support, not anywhere near fund-gathering.

The way in which cash will be raised is still up for debate. Taylor envisages it might involve 100,000 people paying £5,000 each to buy the club outright. Or it might not. Two questions on the website's main page appeal to fans via the club's heritage. "What would Bill Shankly have wanted?" asks one. "It certainly wouldn't have been to see Liverpool in the pawnshop window for passing trade to buy if it took their fancy."

"What would Bob Paisley have wanted?" asks the other. "It certainly wouldn't be a club owned by people incapable of grasping its importance or its history."

Fan-owned clubs, clubs in the truest sense, are common on the continent: Barcelona and Real Madrid are best examples, where fans elect presidents, have representatives on the board and vote on club decisions. In Germany's Bundesliga, every club is at least 51 per cent fan-owned, while AEK Athens in Greece has significant supporter involvement.

"In Germany and Spain, most top-level football clubs are simply not for sale. They are owned by many thousands of 'member fans'," Taylor said. "The Champions League has been won on six occasions in the last 15 years by clubs owned and run in such a way."

The ideology is no doubt sound. But practical measures will make fan-ownership at Liverpool an uphill battle. Huge sums will be needed for any bid, and Hicks and Gillett say they do not want to sell. As a spokesman for Hicks reiterated yesterday: "As we've previously indicated, Liverpool FC is not for sale to anyone, at any price." Such a stance puts Hicks at odds with any prior claims that he cares what the fans think. But then that, in itself, is one reason that SLFC and others want rid of him.

A spokesman for the Supporters' Trust said: "This [SLFC] is an exciting development and has enormous potential for supporters of Liverpool to become a part of their club." He added that the Trust would offer support and advice but was not involved in "any planned consortium bid or any takeover talks".