Friday, 19th April, 2013

Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre has revealed that the club’s owners, led by John W Henry, regularly ask for advice from Arsenal and Manchester United, two sides owned fellow Americans in Stan Kroenke and the Glazer family.

The Merseyside giants are owned by Fenway Sports Group and have seen a perceived lack of understanding of football criticised by some quarters of the Liverpool support.



But Ayre insists that Fenway Sports Group are fully engaged and are keen to learn as much as they can about football, which he feels is only a good sign for Liverpool’s future.

"The thing with John is, if he’s going to do something, he wants to be the best he can be at it. He’s also not the sort of person who would try to kind of fake having the knowledge of something", Ayre was quoted as saying by his club’s official site.

"So in terms of his football knowledge, he’s watching and watching, and not just Liverpool, but everything he can get access to. His wife, Linda, told me he’s literally watching hours and hours of soccer. He’s a prolific reader of content from all sorts of avenues to get himself well-informed.

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"But he also asks a lot of questions, asks your view on things. He sends things around to all of us. What do you think of this? He and Tom are both very open in their approach.

"They’ll contact David [Gill] at [Manchester] United and Ivan [Gazidis] at Arsenal. What do you think? That’s healthy. Let’s a get a rounded view of the sport and how we should be doing things.

"It’s better to have an owner taking a genuine interest and is well-informed, rather than someone who says, I was successful in baseball, so I can do that in soccer. They both put a lot of time into the team and into the game. That bodes well for Liverpool."

Liverpool have so far failed to put together a realistic challenge to break back into the Premier League top four under Fenway Sports Group, while this season there is a worrying prospect for the club of missing out on European football altogether for 2013/14.

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