Liverpool fans to buy?

A group of Liverpool supporters are hoping to buy the club from American owners Hicks and Gillett and pick up where Dubai International Capital failed in securing the purchase of the club.

Rogan Taylor, one of the figures behind "Share Liverpool FC" and a lifelong Reds fan, said: "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.

"Thousands of Liverpool fans have already demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs.

"Large amounts of debt often devolves onto clubs newly purchased, but the fans know that, in the end, it will be they themselves who will have to pay it off through increased ticket prices and other schemes.

"In such a case, why not simply buy the club yourselves?" Taylor, director of the football industry group at Liverpool University, asked.

"What many don't realise is that there are other ways of financing and taking ownership of big clubs. In Germany and Spain, most top level football clubs are simply not for sale.

"They are owned by many thousands of 'member fans'. The Champions League has been won on six occasions in the last 15 years by clubs owned and run in such a way."