In the opulent town hall of a city whose economic glories have faded, Liverpool's managing director, Ian Ayre, presented as "a huge step forward" the decision to cancel a 10-year aspiration to build a new stadium. Liverpool instead are back where they were 13 years ago; planning to stay at Anfield and expand their main and Anfield Road stands to an overall 60,000 capacity, with plenty of "premium-priced seats". Ayre was frank about the motivation for such a historic expansion of Anfield, which will require buying and knocking down remaining residents' houses in the blighted streets around: "It is all about driving greater revenue to allow us to compete."
Ayre, the commercial director promoted by the new American owners, Fenway Sports Group, when it took over Liverpool on this day two years ago, explained: "Football today is driven by high finance. Manchester United, and Arsenal, have higher matchday revenue, and if you want to compete, you have to have as full a pot as possible."
Asked whether increasing capacity could allow Liverpool to make some tickets more affordable – a seat on the Kop for a category A match is now £45 – Ayre said: "We're not looking at reducing ticket prices – that's not realistic."
Pre-eminent in the years before the top clubs' 1992 Premier League breakaway, Liverpool have fallen behind financially ever since United, fortunately ringed by car parks, began to slap extra tiers and grow Old Trafford to 76,000 seats. Arsenal solved Highbury's constraints by boldly building the 60,000 seat Emirates Stadium, which they have plumped up with high-priced seating.
By contrast, Liverpool have spent years working up grand plans which have not reached reality, while the once-proud streets around Anfield have sunk into dereliction. First came the 1999 plan to expand Anfield in just this way, scrapped after residents complained they had not been consulted about demolitions of their houses, and the city council declined to back compulsory purchases.
That cleared the way for the ambitious vision of a new stadium in Stanley Park, leaving the site on which Anfield stands to be redeveloped into a "plaza" of shops, eateries and offices. Liverpool's former chief executive, Rick Parry, feared they would be unable to finance the stadium because, unlike Highbury's plum Islington location, selling Anfield would raise relative buttons.
That was why Parry and the former majority shareholder, David Moores, went looking for investors to buy the club, Moores making £89m for his shares when selling to the Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett in 2007. They famously promised "a spade in the ground within 60 days", but left the park largely undisturbed before their short-term borrowings to buy the club caught up with them and John Henry's FSG took Liverpool on.
Ayre said he showed Henry round when the Boston-based billionaire first came to Anfield, and Henry decided instinctively they should scrap the stadium plan. FSG restored Fenway Park, venerable home of their baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, attractively, with plenty of premium seats, and Henry, according to Ayre, said: "Why build a new stadium? This is like Fenway Park."
So today Liverpool have announced they are back to where they were before millions were spent designing a new stadium and the club itself was sold to finance it. The new American buyers think they can expand Anfield more cheaply than building a new stadium – costing them £154m, borrowed from their bank, not paid for with their own cash.
The design allows the club to build over and behind the existing stands, so not reducing the capacity, and losing money, while the work is going on.
The principal hurdle, besides borrowing the money, is to buy out the relatively few people still living in the blighted Lothair and Alroy Roads among other derelict properties, some owned and left empty by Liverpool. The city's mayor, Joe Anderson, sitting next to Ayre at Monday's town hall announcement, talked of partnership and regeneration, jobs and businesses which can be attracted once Liverpool have expanded. But he adopted a surprisingly aggressive tone when asked whether the council will ensure the local residents do not lose out.
Those who own their homes will, Anderson said, be offered "market value", but the market around Anfield has collapsed. So residents, some of them elderly, are unlikely to be able to buy a similar house in another, non-derelict area, and could end up in debt or paying rent. As their homes are to be bought to facilitate Liverpool making many millions of pounds, residents believe the price of their homes should include development value and recognise the awful conditions they have been forced to tolerate while the club has been making its mind up.
Ayre said: "It is not Liverpool that is acquiring the properties, it is the city council and [the developer] Your Housing." In doing so he confirmed that public money will be spent buying up the houses.
Anderson promised there will be consultation, and residents will be talked to in a "sensible and sympathetic way", but then referred to people who had sought "four times the market value" for their homes on other regeneration projects, and wanted to "screw" the council. "We will be sensitive, but we can't let a small group hold back regeneration," Anderson said.
Residents groups said they are not looking to do that at all. Ros Groves, chair of the local Salisbury residents association, said two homeowners had been offered £49,000 for their houses, not enough to buy a similar home elsewhere.
"Residents have been working with the new stadium project all these years," Groves said. "Now there are new owners and it's all changed. Nobody is trying to screw anybody; it is about people not wanting to be forced into debt."
Bill McGarry, vice-chair of the Anfield Rockfield Triangle Residents Association, said: "People have suffered blight and are entitled to adequate compensation, real replacement value of their homes, particularly given what the football club stands to gain. There has to be some social justice about this."
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