steve morgan

Three years ago, Steve Morgan took over at Wolverhampton Wanderers. But they were his second choice. For the club he had made his - ultimately unsuccessful – first attempt to buy was Liverpool, the team he had adored since childhood.

Back in 2004, Morgan made several passes at the Reds but he eventually withdrew all offers because he felt his bid was only being used as a stopgap while the club waited for bigger and better offers.

The closest he came to taking control was in August of the same year but it all fell through when the Garstan born tycoon realised that the proposed stadium costs had risen from the original £80 million to £115 million.

Do Liverpool now rue the day they let Morgan go?

They are now owned by the American businessmen, George Gillett and Tom Hicks, after they took over from David Moores in February 2007 after three years of searching for investment. In that time the Merseyside club have reached a European Cup final and finished second in the Premier League. But it has also been marred by off-field problems.

It is said that at the time the Americans paid £174 million for the total shareholding of the club, along with £45 million to cover the clubs debts. This figure has since risen and it has been revealed that the money used was taken out as a loan, as David Conn said in his Guardian column in January 2008:

“The fact that Hicks and Gillett had not spent one cent of their own money buying the club, but had borrowed fully £298m to do so, was there in the black and white of their official offer document, but few pointed it out as the men were embraced.”

This means that all the money Liverpool have been using to buy players such as Fernando Torres under their tenure has been further adding to loan repayments. The owners have also since said that any profits made by the club will be used to pay off the huge interest payments.

At the time they took over the Chief Executive Rick Parry said he hoped the investment would take Liverpool to the next level on and off the pitch. While the club came so close to reaching that level last season with the Premier League crown, this year it all seems to have caught up with them. They now find themselves desperately hoping for a fourth place finish and Europa Cup glory. Not the ‘next level’ Parry had in mind, I’m sure.

In a sense, the biggest disappointment for the Reds is the continuing uncertainty over the plans for a new stadium in Stanley Park. In Gillett’s and Hick’s first interview they were talking about it. And they still are. Only this month it was said that March is the new target for work beginning on a new state-of-the-art facility. But where would the finance come from? More loans to pile onto the ever-growing £350 million debt by the looks of it. With a history in the construction industry, and having been awarded an OBE for his services to the sector, you would imagine Steve Morgan would have sorted this particular fiasco out if he was at Anfield. But, with just a £350 million wealth to his name his pockets were not seen as deep enough.

He may not have the spending power of many chairmen in the top flight, but he has a smart business brain and understands football. At Wolves he has always allowed Mick McCarthy to manage the football side of things, even when not in agreement, without any interference. But with the other aspects of the club he is very hands on and he never misses a match. In the recent Deloitte financial survey Wolves were also found to be just one of three clubs in the top two divisions operating without any debt. While Wolves cannot compete financially with many clubs in the Premier League, they have steadily improved under Morgan’s ownership and prove that success can be achieved without risking financial ruin.

And Morgan recently had his say on Liverpool’s situation, he told the Wolverhampton Express and Star: “You cannot keep hocking your future. It’s like pawning the family silver. It has got to come home to roost.”

“Too many clubs are spending on meeting interest payments, on wages they cannot afford and on transfer fees which are unsustainable.

“We have already seen famous old clubs such as Southampton and Leeds go down and they will be followed by others.

“It’s not impossible that one of the larger clubs could go. We all know the obvious one. These clubs can go under and I can see others following. I do scratch my head and wonder why they do it.”

And with such sound principles being implemented at Molineux, while fall-outs, protests and unsavory emails seem commonplace at Anfield, perhaps the people at English football’s most successful club are also scratching their heads, wondering why they let Steve Morgan go.