Liverpool Staff email

Come and work for Liverpool, an advert has enthusiastically told listeners on local Merseyside radio recently. It is the place to be, where a full-time contract will mean you are a significant part of an already wonderful team. In fact, scrub that — why stop there? You will instead become family…

Yuck.

Families, remember, are not always functional. Perhaps this explains why only at around 8.30 this morning, employees of LFC received an email confirming what everyone already knew.

It came from Billy Hogan, the chief executive appointed last autumn as Peter Moore’s replacement.

The Athletic can exclusively reveal what Hogan wrote and some of the more interesting points that deviate from the waffle already included in other statements are highlighted below in bold…

Dear Colleagues,

You will be aware of the announcement published late last night regarding Europe’s leading football Clubs coming together to establish a new mid-week competition, the European Super League, governed by its Founding Clubs.

It’s important as a member of our team that I share with you some of the context.

For quite some time now, Clubs, including our own, have held numerous longstanding concerns about not only the future of European football but also the way football is run by UEFA. The global pandemic has also accelerated the instability in the existing European football economic model.

We have therefore joined AC Milan, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur as Founding Clubs of the Super League. It is anticipated that a further three Clubs will join ahead of the inaugural season, which is intended to commence as soon as practicable.

The Super League will be the future of European football and if we want to continue our journey of being a sustainable Club with ambition to grow and continue winning trophies then we should absolutely be part of that process and have a seat at the table rather than outside that group.

The new annual tournament will provide significantly greater economic growth and support for European football via a long-term commitment to uncapped solidarity payments which will grow in line with league revenues. These solidarity payments are expected to be roughly three times what is currently achieved from UEFA competitions. One of the core commitments of the European Super League is to vastly increase financial support for the football pyramid.

After the start of the men’s competition, a corresponding women’s league will also be launched, helping to advance and develop the women’s game.

We know that this announcement has provoked strong feelings within the game and elsewhere but we believe this decision is in the best long-term interests of Liverpool Football Club.

Importantly, this is the beginning of the journey and we can now start an engagement process with you, supporters and key stakeholders to help shape this process in the right way.

There is still much more information to come in due course.

I will keep you updated as we progress on this journey and discuss further on our Town Hall tomorrow.

Thank you for your continued support.

Now, I have long believed any football club’s sense of self-importance can be measured by whether its senior staff insist on part of the title at the institution they represent being consistently referred to with a capital C on all official correspondence even when mentioned independent from the rest of the name.

That’s one box ticked off, a minor revelation that nevertheless might help illustrate why we have reached this point.

Private or not, Hogan became the first person from Liverpool to put his signature to any of his own comments relating to where this is all heading. John W Henry, it turns out, is more comfortable with allowing Manchester United’s Joel Glazer speak for him on his own club’s website.

Staff, of course, might find out more about what will happen next if they register at the “Town Hall” — which, it is fair to say, is not the sort of dialogue anyone from Merseyside would use for what is essentially a business update.

Yet this is the way it has been at Liverpool for a long time, a club (note the small c) that permanently seems to be battling with itself because the language of local supporters is not used by the figures who run it. Here, it is sharply felt that the word “growth” masks uglier pursuits, and that the global image pushed by those who stand to eventually profit from it does not correlate with a grim reality.

It is true the commodification of LFC began long ago. Hogan, who was hired in 2012 initially as a commercial officer, had upon his appointment wanted to know exactly how much money each supporter was generating. Spreadsheets revealed the potential yield per seat inside Anfield and this reinforced the notion that more money could be made not by attendance and active participation in any live event but through a contract with a television company.

Despite the recent trophies, cringing and embarrassment have never too far away. Since becoming European champions in 2019 for a sixth time, Liverpool’s owners have unsuccessfully attempted to trademark the city’s name, backtracked on plans to take money from the public purse via the government’s furlough scheme and been outed as one of the conspirators in “Project Big Picture“. The club’s 2018 slogan devised in-house (and not embraced by the fanbase, it has to be stressed) should be amended for a more accurate representation: “We are Liverpool, this means (we think we are entitled to a lot, lot) more.”

Not so long ago, chairman Tom Werner told The Athletic that Liverpool would not back any plans that threatened to damage the domestic game. “Our first intention is to protect the inherent strength of the Premier League,” he said in the summer of 2019. “I don’t want to participate in anything that in any way harms the experience both from a Liverpool supporter’s point of view and also in the primacy of English football.”

Only a month ago, indeed, Hogan thanked the fans for their patience throughout the pandemic. There is something to be gained by saying, “It is never taken for granted but in the absence of supporters at Anfield, we have had a reminder of why we value it as much as we do”, but evidently there is less to be gained by engaging with them even though you know your superiors are busy signing their futures away.

Even if Henry did speak, how could anyone really trust what he says? When he chose to stay silent despite being at the centre of Big Picture, sources close to him were insistent that he cared about the structure of English football. Despite criticism of the plan, it was possible to see some benefits for those who needed money most but this is different. The owners, Fenway Sports Group, tend to get incredibly upset whenever they are called greedy capitalists but no other description feels appropriate at the moment.