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George Gillett does his best Baron Greenback impression (with shades of Gerard Houllier) at Liverpool’s rout of Hull on Saturday

Having snatched the Premier League’s best player, La Liga is moving on to phase two…
[EPL Talk]

Phil Brown is already on the lookout for alternative employment
[Off The Post]

Arsenal make some more money for Arsene Wenger not to spend
[The Sun]

Gareth Bale has finally broken his Spurs losing streak. Now on to actually starting a winning game…
[Daily Mail]

Roy Keane is a thoroughly pleasant man
[News of the World]

Follow us (and DB10TheTruth) on Twitter
[@thespoileruk]

Spoiler promotion: Play Fantasy Football and win Champions League Final tickets!

Can the Reds compete with the big boys on such a budget?

Hank Hicks and Billy Bob Gillett’s popularity on Merseyside ranks somewhere between The Sun and cancer, and they won’t be winning any praise from Liverpool fans for their fiscal planning. According to an investment prospectus uncovered by Bloomberg News, the club’s forays into the transfer market will be limited by a £20m spending cap until 2014.

The Daily Mail reports:

The startling revelation was published in a prospectus back in March by investment banks Rothschild and Merrill Lynch to attract potential investors in the club.

The £20m spending cap, which will also include wage increases accruing from contract renewals, means that Anfield boss Rafa Benitez must continue to sell before he can buy over the next fives years as Liverpool chase their first league title since 1991.

While the majority of Premier League clubs froze or lowered their season ticket prices this season, the document revealed that Hicks and Gillett were also considering an eight per cent hike in admission fees to cover some of the club’s debt. This idea was

Construction to continue when economic situation improves

When Billy Bob Gillett and Hank Hicks took control of Liverpool in 2007, plans to move the club to a new 60,000-seater stadium in nearby Stanley Park were put on hiatus, so that an architect from Hicks’ native Texas could draw up a more spectacular design (and boy howdy do they know how to make a stadium in the Lone Star State).

Thanks to the global financial apocalypse, and Liverpool’s precarious loan arrangements that could bring the house of cards down at any point, preliminary building work on the site was brought to a halt last August, and it will not continue until the recession is over.

Liverpool’s new managing director Christian Purslow said:

“Construction on the stadium will begin when the

Also appearing on a computer near you…

Dirty Tackle live up to their name by finding this flagrant abuse of a referee

Blackburn’s 2009/10 looks a little cheap
[Pies]

Bye bye Roman Pavlyuchenko
[Caught Offside]

Tottenham are offering £1.25m for Ruud van Nistelrooy - surely that’s insultingly low?
[Daily Mail]

Billy Bob Gillett and Hank Hicks have been making some outrageous expense claims
[Guardian]

Cátia Rocha - FC Porto’s hottest and nakedest fan (slightly NSFW)
[On205th]

Could a Big Four side really go down the pan?

As the Tesco Value teabags and “one square of loo roll per visit rule” at Spoiler towers demonstrates, the nation remains in the grip of a financial apocalypse.

Throughout the crunchy credit crisis, the Premier League has tried its best to remain impervious to global economics, by continuing to spend big, charge extortionate amounts for tickets and encourage potentially destabilising foreign investment. This week, however, cracks are starting to show in the supposedly invulnerable entity, whose members seem to believe they can buck the trend of a recession.

On Tuesday, The Guardian revealed that the Premier League is cumulatively £3.1bn in debt. Just over £2bn of those outstanding bank overdrafts, loans and other borrowings are attributable to the Big Four alone.

We have also learned that wages have spiralled to over £1bn for the first time, suggesting one too many clubs are operating with an unstable business model. Such a unevenly balanced ratio of wages to turnover could become a club’s undoing, particularly in light of the fact that ‘guaranteed’ income from ailing broadcaster Setanta may be about to dry up.

Perhaps the most telling sign of the fool’s paradise that is the Premiership, however, is the news that reached us this morning concerning Liverpool’s financial crisis.

In a set

More foreign money to be poured into the Premier League

According to this morning’s Sun newspaper, Liverpool’s financial chief Philip Nash and commercial director Ian Ayre have been sent to the Middle East to thrash out a takeover deal with the man above, Nasser Al-Kharafi.

The Kuwaiti, who inherited most of his £12bn net worth, is currently the world’s 46th richest man, and is said to be interested in a £400m deal for the Anfield club.

Last November, we suggested the current financial apocalypse would force out the eternally unpopular Hank Hicks and Billy Bob Gillett, and the 64-year-old father-of-five is looking to take the club away from them completely. However, at present, it is understood that Liverpool want the Yanks reduce their share to 25 per cent, with Al-Kharafi claiming the remaining 50.

Liverpool’s debts currently stand at £350m, which they owe to two banks (Wachovia and the Royal Bank of Scotland), and have even been faced with the prospect of selling their biggest stars to balance the books.

Liverpool fans and Jamie Carragher are particularly unhappy that Hanks and Gillett have pulled a profit from the club, while failing to invest in the squad and neglecting to start building the new Stanley Park stadium.

If this deal went through, the Reds could potentially be as well-funded as Manchester City, but nowhere near as laughably unpopular.

Spoiler bonus: Nasser Al-Kharafi tried to take control of Newcastle Utd last October. Check out the fact file we compiled on the prospective Premier League owner here.

Global belt tightening brings mixed fortunes to the big four

Manchester Utd’s £14m-a-year- AIG shirt sponsorship looked to be on rocky ground earlier this week, and the future of the deal looked no more certain as the US Federal Reserve rescued the insurance behemoth with a £47bn refinancing package yesterday: rather understandably, they will no longer consider sports sponsorship a ‘core activity’.

According to this morning’s Guardian, however, the frailty of the American International Group should not concern United as much as the intentions of the Glazer family. Malcolm and co have been forced to spend $150bn on ‘PIK‘ loans in recent months, the interest on which is a hefty 14.45 per cent. A Glazer representative insists that “the investment is for the long term,” although the Guardian strongly suspects ex Football League chairman, United fan and major dealmaker Keith Harris is touting

Forty per cent of the top flight now owned by overseas investors

For a team like Chelsea, foreign investment has proven the difference between success and slightly more success, but not every club benefits. Now that Dr Sulaiman Al-Fahim (pictured above with a Hollywood star and her grandson) has waded in with daddy’s oil cash, eight current Premier League clubs are owned by out-of-towners. Accordingly, The Spoiler has looked at the fortunes of each of foreign-owned club to find out if overseas money has helped or hindered the league…

Aston Villa
Owner: Randy Lerner

So far everything seems great. Martin O’Neill and Lerner get on well, money is readily being made available to sign players and Lerner was willing to support whatever action his manager chose to take in the Gareth Barry saga. Other factors that make Aston Villa an attractive model to follow are that they target English talent and although they occasionally pay over the odds, there isn’t the “we must finish in the top four or else sack the manager” mentality.

Chelsea
Owner: Roman Abramovich

Abramovich had an advantage over the likes of Lerner in that the club he bought were already a top four team, however, he still delivered a title in his second season. Wikipedia claim that “as of May 2008, Abramovich has spent approximately £600 million on the club since arriving in 2003.” Things have taken a turn