Ayre Wants Back into the Money League

Liverpool announced their financial results last week, and although the outlook was overwhelmingly positive, the Merseyside outfit dropped out of the top-ten in the Deloitte’s Money League.

Once a year the professional services firm profiles the highest earning clubs in the world’s most popular sport, and with a lack of European football putting a strain on their returns, the Reds dropped to 12th this year.”It is serious in the sense that we are Liverpool FC and we know what good looks like” said Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre when asked about their exit from the top echelon of the list. “We’ve been there and we expect to be the best we can be.”

“We are not playing European football and that’s at the heart of it. We have a stadium that doesn’t allow us the capacity that our demands dictate” he continued. “So we know why, and we are doing all we can to address that. We are doing what we can in terms of European football by addressing it on the pitch and we are all hoping we can get back in the Champions League.”

A return to Europe’s elite competition would be a boon to their cause, but expanding the capacity of Anfield remains a top priority and will be key to not only the short term goals of the club — a return to the top ten of the Money league — but their long term goal of financial sustainability as well. “We continue to feel very positive about where we are with the stadium objectives, but at the same time we continue to be very measured about it” enthused Ayre. “We are in good shape and perhaps the best message we can give to the fans is that our timelines that we set out to achieve this are on track. We are not behind.”