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FSG plans take shape after shock Liverpool exits and u-turn on club sale

Fourteen years on from John W Henry standing on the steps of London's High Court as the new principal owner of Liverpool Football Club and Fenway Sports Group are almost as unrecognisable as the club they helped transform.

From snaffling one of sport's great institutions at a knockdown price of just £300m, thanks to ruinous reign of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, FSG's work in the near decade-and-a-half since has seen the club's valuation soar to a remarkable £4.3billion, according to influential American business publication Forbes.

It's quite the markup for a club who came perilously close to administration before New England Sports Ventures, as they were then known, came riding to the rescue. Since then, the success on the field, particularly in the Jurgen Klopp era, has been well documented, and never more in depth than on the ECHO's dedicated pages, but the last two years have been characterised by uncertainty and transition for the Boston-based owners and the club's itself.

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In the autumn of 2022, FSG began gently exploring their exit strategy, producing a glossy sales presentation for potential investors and instructing two Major US banks in Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to assist with the process.

A statement was prepared for the inevitable media enquiries around the developments, which, while not exactly confirming the intention to offload the club, revealed enough to suggest toes were in the water.

It read: "FSG has frequently received expressions of interest from third parties seeking to become shareholders in Liverpool. FSG has said before that under the right terms and conditions we would consider new shareholders if it was in the best interests of Liverpool as a club."

Inevitably, it led a slew of reports about interested parties from India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Germany, among others, before the flurry of links dissipated and FSG remained in possession of the keys to the Shankly Gates. During that period, they continued to oversee their third major expansion of club-owned infrastructure in the £80m Anfield Road development project.

The news came around the same time as it was revealed sporting director Julian Ward and head of research Ian Graham would be leaving at the end of that season. At the time, it appeared to be a club and ownership group in quite a state of flux but 23 months on, FSG's own in-house renovation looks to have set Liverpool up for the foreseeable future.

Investment from private firm Dynasty Equity in September of last year was described as "passive" and something that "does not affect the operation of the club in any way". It was also categorically dismissed as being the first stepping stone towards a full sale. The figure was thought to be around £150m.

“Our long-term commitment to Liverpool remains as strong as ever,” said FSG president Mike Gordon at the time. And while Fenway's more general governance of the club does indeed remain firmly in place, there has been a changing of the guard in more recent times.

The decision from Klopp, 11 months ago, to tell the Americans of his plans to leave Liverpool at the end of last season was the catalyst for a reset in the Boston boardroom. In came Michael Edwards, the former sporting director, with a brand new job title of 'CEO of football' to kickstart the multi-model that was now being prioritised as Gordon took a long-planned step back, away from the coalface at Anfield.

Having served as the most hands-on of the ownership group, including as Klopp's confidant on all aspects, Gordon is now supplanted by Edwards as the head of Liverpool, while his apprentice for the sporting director role, Julian Ward, was also brought back into the fold alongside Pedro Marques, who was recruited from Benfica and Hans Leitert, who arrived earlier this year as global head of goalkeeping.

The number of appointments, between March and May, has set FSG up for the long term once more and with Arne Slot and a new backroom staff overseeing things at the AXA Training Centre, the club and its owners are seemingly well prepared for what will now be the latest chapters of their ownership story.

Off the pitch, the commercial operation continues to add to its roster of partners, with blue-chip companies like Peloton, UPS, Orion Innovation and Google Pixel seeing Japan Air, Husqvarna and Strauss added alongside them over the summer months. Links with training ground sponsors AXA were all strengthened earlier this year.

At a time when Newcastle United's takeover by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with their horrendous human rights record, is under fire; Manchester United custodians INEOS are still being subjected to a whole host of questions around their own decisions, on and off the pitch; and Chelsea's ceaseless recruitment of over £1bn is yielding little under Todd Boehly's Clearlake Consortium, FSG's self-sustainable model should, in theory, be a desired one to aspire towards.

Even for a club who have won the last four Premier League titles, the situation at Manchester City is someway from perfect right now. Their public image continues to take a battering thanks to courtroom battles over Associated Party Transaction Rules and 115-plus charges over alleged financial breaches. Meanwhile, Benjamin Mendy - whose case is revealing some particularly grim details that City are no doubt aghast at hearing made public - continues to sue for £11m in unpaid wages. Clearly, then, such relative serenity at the top shouldn't necessarily be taken for granted.

City's legions of fans, particularly the vociferous and fiercely combative online contingent, might stand by the owners of their club because of the success they have brought in recent times, but the whirlwind of legal actions and the mountainous debris of headlines that has followed will surely have made some at Anfield thankful it is not them mired in similar circumstances. The 115-plus charges is casting an especially long shadow over their achievements and the decision on that case will be seismic for the entire English game.

Despite that, the Americans' stewardship at Liverpool has not been perfect. Plans to furlough some of the lowest-paid members of staff at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was met with a fierce backlash before a U-turn was quickly performed. Plans to trademark the word 'Liverpool' was also pushed back on aggressively, again forcing a climbdown.

The Reds' participation in the doomed Super League was also a hugely controversial plot before it quickly fell by the wayside and ended with a formal and public apology from Henry via video link in April of 2021.

In more recent times, however, it's fair to say that Henry and club chairman Tom Werner have looked to diversify their interests. It was back in January that FSG, whose catalogue of sports teams also includes the Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Penguins, agreed a $3 billion partnership with the PGA Tour. With Gordon finally getting to step back from the day-to-day running of Anfield, it feels, from the outside looking in, as though the Reds' owners have entrusted Edwards to skipper the ship for the long term on Merseyside.

Those with knowledge of how the operation works have spoken of a "blank canvas" for Edwards in his new role within the operation and the rise to executive level at FSG has been remarkable for someone who was once viewed with suspicion from some in football because of his penchant for untrusted data analysis.

It's Edwards's fingerprints that are all over the current setup at Anfield. His headhunting of Hughes as sporting director was quickly followed by the decision to bring in Slot and there is now a clearly-defined power axis within the club that was absent in the final years of the Klopp era.

This, then, feels like the real 'Liverpool 2.0' - as Klopp memorably coined his team last year after a raft of changes within his squad. Back then, the phrase was uttered due to a midfield rebuild that saw four signed and five leave in Jordan Henderson, Fabinho, James Milner, Naby Keita and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

It is the significant movement within FSG itself and the first-ever external recruitment of a full-time sporting director that should be the real place to talk about a reset at the club.

It's been quite the overhaul in recent times but as Fenway cast their minds back to those fledgling days of 2010, when they were NESV and looking at a Roy Hodgson-led team and a club worth just £300m, they will feel, with much justification, that their reign has enjoyed more highs than lows.

Their stewardship will never be universally approved of and the missteps and mistakes along the way have been sizable ones at times but things are about as settled as they have been for quite some time on Merseyside just now. A look across the Premier League shows that not always to be a given at clubs of similar stature.