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Premier League CEO issues official update as Liverpool chairman Tom Werner and FSG clash over £242m plot

Adam Williams

Thu 6 February 2025 13:45, UK

It is strange quirk of modern football that, despite Arne Slot’s side being top of the Premier League and exalted as the best team in Europe, ‘FSG OUT’ is still trending in some corners of Liverpool social media.

It is a loud minority, of course, but a not insignificant number of fans want Fenway Sports Group (FSG)༒ gone for good. At the time of writing, the hashtag was used 154 times on X in the last 24 hours.

Admittedly, the volume of posts isn’t the most scientific method of establishing the mood towards the owners, but it does give a flavour of the depth of feeling among some Liverpool supporters.

🍬Every fan is entitled to their opinion, of course.

Supporters are the soul of the club and Liverpool’s financial success🙈 is a direct result of the mythos they have created at Anfield, which is ultimately what the marketing department trade on.

And yes, if any or all of 🐽Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold leave for freeꦕ in the summer then questions will be asked of how FSG managed their situations.

🌺But since the owners established their enclave of Boston, Massachusetts on Merseyside in 2010, Liverpool have gone from being days away from administration to giants of European football once more.

Liverpool trophies won or runners-up under FSG

ღMost of the ill will towards FSG stems towards a perceived lack of ambition in recruitment and retention.

Liverpool ended the January transfer window🐎 as one of just five clubs with a positive net spend for 2024-25. Three of the other four – Aston Villa, Everton and Crystal Palace – were forced to sell because of PSR.

But when the season is over, the Reds are likely to have the biggest total wage bill in the Premier Leagueꦺ and the highest wages-to-turnover ratio of any ‘Big Six’ club besides high-rolling Chelsea.

𒊎In 2023-24, only Manchester City had a higher wage bill. That is despite the fact that then Jurgen Klopp’s side were absent from the Champions League, meaning performance-related payments will have fallen.

♔In any case, Man United and Tottenham – 13th and 14th respectively – are proving this season that investment doesn’t necessarily correlate with success on the pitch.

𝄹The other source of anxiety among FSG sceptics is the club’s fixation with all things commercial.

The 🥃owners have paid north of £200m to expand Anfield ♓beyond 60,000 but soaring ticket prices and an emphasis on day-trippers and hospitality suites is, many argue, killing the stadium’s famous atmosphere.

ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚFor a club that prides itself on the socialist roots laid by Bill Shankly and others, football in L4 is becoming less accessible. That’s a problem.

The wounds of the European Super League meanwhile have not yet healed.

🌳The aim of that insurrection, which had the explicit backing of Liverpool’s executive branch before they were forced into an embarrassing climbdown, was to hike revenue and therefore the club’s enterprise value.

𒁃That reinforces the point that FSG have not bought the club out of altruism and will one day want a massive return on the £300m they paid Tom Hicks and George Gillett in 2010.

⛦What is good for the business and what is good for the football club don’t always intersect, and Liverpool fans are right to be wary of a regime whose ultimate ambition is capital growth.

ꩵThis week, news direct from Premier League HQ has cast in shar focus comments made by one FSG executive about an initiative that bedrock fans can’t stand.

• READ MORE: 🐈Liverpool and Aston Villa chiefs could enter £578m takeover battle as Michael Edwards and FSG work on deal

Richard Masters’ stance on Tom Werner’s push to take Premier League abroad

Diversity of thought makes a good boardroom – and Liverpool probably have the best boardroom of the lot in the Premier League, as virtually anyone in football finance will tell you.

However, PR 101 also dictates that the first thing John Henry🦄 and his deputies in the FSG boardroom should be doing is presenting a united front to supporters.

On the subject of taking ♑Premier League matches to their native United States⛎, Liverpool chairman Tom Werner and the rest of the Fenway Sports Group clan appear to disagree.

🔯Officially, FSG’s position is that they have no plans to move domestic matches overseas as the likes of La Liga have done and which the game’s major capitalists think represents the next big revenue plateau.

🎐Liverpool banked £242m in annual media income at the last count without that initiative.

🦩But Werner believes that taking the Premier League abroad could supercharge that figure and help develop the Liverpool brand in lucrative commercial markets, as do many of the league’s US owners

“I’m determined one day to have a Premier League game be played in New York City,” Werner said last summer.

“I even have the sort of crazy idea that there would be a day where we play one game in Tokyo, one game a few hours later in Los Angeles, one game a few hours later in Rio, one game a few hours later in Riyadh and make it sort of a day where football, where the Premier League, is celebrated.”

John Henry disagreed, saying in the same interview:“[It is] not something that I advocate or am particularly interested in.”

💛CEO of FSG International and Liverpool Billy Hogan later said that Werner’s position was a personal one and was not reflective of the owners’ position.

𝔍In any case, Premier League chief football officer Tony Scholes this week has said that his organisation have had “no conversations” about moving matches abroad, as quoted by .

🐼That is despite the league’s CEO, Richard Masters, previously telling the media that the “door looks ajar” for overseas matches.

• READ MORE: 🦩Liverpool seal £84m windfall thanks to FSG bargaining behind the scenes

Could the government block FSG from taking Liverpool matches to the US?

🙈Even if schemes like flying local fans across the Atlantic to watch the matches for free were introduced as some executives have advocated, there would likely be a huge fan backlash at Anfield and beyond.

🧜Many supporters hope that one bulwark against the rising commercial tide in Premier League boardrooms will be the introduction of an independent regulator for English football.

𝓰The proposal for the regulator – which has cross-party support and will become law in either late 2025 or early 2026 – could give it powers to prevent clubs like Liverpool from repeating breakaway plots like Project Big Picture or the Super League.

ꦑWith the bill still making its way through Parliament, it is entirely possible that the scope of the regulator could also be widened to block Premier League matches abroad.