For Sale: The most successful English Club side ever.

Finally sense has over taken the American owners of Liverpool and they've put the club up for sale.  I said well over a year ago on here that something was rotten at the club and although a half decent league campaign masked the clubs failing, I still felt that things were far from ok.

This season the failings on the pitch have served to highlight those off it and the Americans have finally realised that the fans ambition for the side and structure of the club goes way beyond what they thought they were taking on.  Whether they were naive in the first place remains to be seen, but they've made a bunch of proud supporters wholly disillusioned.  The news today then is welcomed, but there's also some trepidation about what comes next.

Benitez should probably go and if we have the money from a wealthy new investor then surely the timing should be right to go for Jose.  Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I feel a bit like I did on the eve of the 87/88 season when we were being linked with Barnes and Beardsley, not daring to dream that the pair of them would both join.

However the Portsmouth lesson must be learnt.  We can not rush into this lightly.  A sugar daddy owner (as sick as that makes me) is needed, some one whose pockets are made of cash, not just full of it.   Get it wrong again and it could be curtains.  I kinda hate the way we'll be touted out to every Middle Eastern billionaire and I can't help but worry that fans will end up becoming more and more disconnected from the clubs they love. But the more that this happens but there is a sense of inevitability about it.

Since we won the FA Cup Liverpool have been sliding.  The news is good that the Americans are going.  It gives me hope that maybe that promised new stadium will happen even if we have to share with Everton.  (Honestly if we go down the Bayern route where they change the colour of the seats who's really gonna care).  It gives me hope that we might be competitive again in the League after that false dawn last season, maybe not next season, but soon.  But it also makes me worry about what comes next.  There's something about the Club that's been too insular since Hillsborough, when the real damage to the soul of the club was done, and it needs to move past that.  

I doubt whether the club will ever dominate the English game in the way that it did 20 years ago.  Others have moved above and beyond us, but the odd League Title here and there would be nice, I haven't played We Are The Champions since 1990 and I kinda miss that song!  

Respect the past?  Absolutely.  Yesterday's icon post will tell you something about how much Hillsborough still bothers me 20 years on.  Embrace the history of the club?  Of course it's what makes us Liverpool fans.  But learn to move forward and out from that shadow?  Yes we absolutely must.  Getting rid of the Americans is, hopefully, the first step on that journey.

Hopeful but with one hand behind my back, fingers firmly crossed.  YNWA.