I’ve never paid much attention to English football. I never had much reason to do so and footie is rather disconnecting when you can’t see the matches.
However, I started following Liverpool when the club was purchased by the Fenway Sports Group and, fortunately, EPL matches have started to be carried on American TV.
FSG owns the Boston Red Sox whose period of greatness was before 1920. They were seldom terrible, but never reached the top until 2004 a year or two after John Henry, head of FSG, bought them. Now they’ve won 3 “World’s Series” in the 21st Century, more than any other team.
John Henry is a great owner. This is remarkable because he’s a geek who made his fortune by speculating on soy bean futures which is essentially statistical analysis of “which way will the bean price jump”. He grew up on his father’s bean farm and was had the intelligence to know when to buy and when to sell.
JH drove Gillett and Hicks into the darkness. When he bought Liverpool there were many Americans who thought he was getting in over his head. He probably was. The finances and rules regulating American teams are much more readily comprehensible than those of European football. However, JH is a very smart guy. More important than that is that he is honest, straightforward and has a strong desire to win. He is also not in it primarily for fame or money. He’s in the game to prove that he can win and to increase the value of his investment. To his credit, he does that largely by building an organization and letting the organization function on its own. He seldom interferes with the people he has put in place, and only gets involved in the big decisions. A man who can make a billion on guessing what beans will do is a man to be reckoned with.
