back to article Yank walks plank over Liverpool fan email

Supporters of Liverpool FC have succeeded in getting Tom Hicks Jr to quit his post as club director after he fired an email broadside at a fan's "polite enquiry about the funding challenge facing Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez during this transfer window". Hicks Jr, the son of Liverpool's co-owner Tom Hicks, impolitely …

COMMENTS

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  1. TeeCee Gold badge

    Gas shortage hit Hell has it?

    Most other sources today have reported the email fracas but indicated the likelyhood of him actually quitting over it as being on a par with Satan skating to work.

    Maybe all those Arctic weather / end of world as we know it articles from those same sources aren't just hype......

  2. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Its football...

    Who here really gives a flying fuck!!!!

    1. Citizen Kaned

      not all of us are....

      overweight geeks who are incapable of kicking a ball or indeed incapable of any form of co-ordination - even though almost every IT person i have known was the person bullied for being a geek at school. some of us are quite sporty and even quite good looking!. football is the world's favourite sport (apparently fishing is more popular but its simply not a sport)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Boffin

        Methinks he doth protest too much...

        I presume that last statement is supposed to be some sort of argument in favour of football over other pursuits, but, just as a thought experiment, let's test out its logic by replacing the words "football" and "sport" with "Internet Explorer" and "browser".

        Anyone care to use that to build a case for ditching Firefox?

        1. Grivas Bo Diddly Harm

          Well, I tried what you suggested, but....

          ....some of us are quite browsery and even quite good looking!. Internet Explorer is the world's favourite browser (apparently fishing is more popular but its [sic] simply not a browser)

      2. Paul 4
        Headmaster

        Fishings a sport

        footballs a game.

      3. Gene Cash Silver badge
        FAIL

        It's not the game

        It's the "oh! EVERYONE ***LOVES*** football" attitude gets really old and stale after a couple decades. I even get it over on this side of the pond about the American version.

        I get "Hey, how about that game between the wilddogs and the bearcats last night?" and I usually respond something like "Do you think Pedrosa is going to be a problem for Rossi in the championship this year?" and that usually shuts 'em up good.

      4. blackworx
        Grenade

        And not all of us here...

        ...who are not overweight geeks incapable of kicking a ball or indeed any form of co-ordination

        ...give a flying fuck about football.

      5. Mike Flugennock

        Fishing, not a sport?

        Huh, you might be right as, like golf, it's something that can be done while drinking a beer or smoking a cigarette.

    2. GrahamT
      Thumb Down

      And its Liverpool

      so even further down the "couldn't care less" list

    3. Mike Flugennock
      Pint

      It's just football, for sure, but...

      ...still, in principle, I'd have to say that local ownership of a football team is a fairly important issue -- especially if it's a British "footie" team owned not only by Americans, but _ugly_ Americans, apparently.

      For over thirty years, we in Washington, DC went without a baseball team -- that's right, no team playing the American Pastime in the capital of the USA -- but when we finally got one a few years ago, it was as part of an agreement that sealed a sweetheart deal on taxes for developers and the bulldozing of most of an entire neighborhood in order to build a new stadium -- because, apparently, the 40-year-old, entirely-serviceable and with no obstructed sight lines RFK Memorial Stadium just wasn't good enough -- so that the Montreal Expos, who were sucking at the time, could move to Washington DC, become the Nationals, and continue to play shitty ball in a spiffy new stadium, at a cost of nearly a billion dollars to city taxpayers. Needless to say, I'm not entirely happy about my city having a baseball team again.

      But, aaaa-aaanyway... on general princple I'd have to come down in favor of the fans owning the team -- especially Liverpool, as I've heard so many stories about their fans. I mean, do they still carry knives to the game? For god's sake, let 'em own the team, already.

      Pint of beer icon, because you can't watch football without one.

  3. Christopher Rogers

    oh well

    can we sack rafa now?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    It's just a game

    Almost as boring as that American tripe.

    1. Mike Flugennock
      Thumb Up

      Not as boring as you think...

      ...compared to the "American tripe". As an American, I spent the first thirty years of my life closely following the gladiatorial combat with a ball known as American Football -- specifically the fortunes of our own Washington Redskins -- until around the late '80s I got so tired of the owners' greed, and the commercialization, and the media nuttiness, that I just quit paying attention to it.

      Btw, I've seen quite a bit of "real" football in my travels to France, Spain and Mexico, and it's way more interesting than the Gladiatorial Combat With A Ball we fall all over, here in the States. Too bad that Beckham asshole is turning "soccer" into another version of American football by behaving like your typical rich-assed, trash-mouthed, misbehaving American football star.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's only a mid-table side ...

    ... move along.

  6. JWS
    FAIL

    Haha

    Genius email reply! And yes it's only football so who gives a crap! Bunch of over paid wingy idiots running around doing very little.

  7. Adam Salisbury
    Grenade

    Selling Out

    Football's been shamelessy selling out for decades now, the teams barely have any players from the places they're named after, supporters are blatantly ripped off and mistreated in far worse ways than an insulting Merkin mail and still willingly pay through the nose and beat one another up over a team of "illiterate, millionaire, borderline rapists whose job it is to sheperd a bit of leather into an outdoor cupboard"

    My headline for this story would've been "Stupid director insulting stupid fans - No-one intelligent cares"

    1. Mike Flugennock

      I don't know about football...

      ...but the first big "deal" in American pro baseball -- that is, paying a player who doesn't live in your city to move to your city to play ball for the local club -- happened around 1906 or so, iirc, when a guy who played in Boston (iirc) was paid a then-outragous sum to move to Kansas City to play for the Athletics. It's been downhill ever since.

  8. Andy Enderby 1
    FAIL

    While it's footie....

    ..... a sport I really find it hard to be remotely positive about, perhaps the yank in question should have hired a communications director, and just possibly thought twice about hitting the send button.

    Hilarious. Fail, because he did.

  9. Dapprman

    There was an email - hence the IT angle .....

    The Beeb have it as news as well :-

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/8451812.stm

  10. Stratman

    title

    I'm surprised it took him that long to crack, being in Liverpool an' all.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    TOO MUCH TO SAY....

    Apparently, you are all so busy with your lives that you have no intrest in football that many of you have had the time to post comment on smthing that you have no intrest in...

    Why dont you all go back to calling each other names over your choice of mobile phones or choice of OS...

    when some people put the keyboards away at the end of the day, or whatever the tools of the trade are, football is somthing to take yor mind away from how your boss is screwing you over or why the damn server keeps falling over, or why the dork from sales keeps screwing up his laptop and wont listen to you about installing custom search bars, and re-installing windows idiot exploiter... or what the next MS updates will break.

    Football is very imprtant to many people, and the damage these yanks have done to Liverpool FC is appaling.... and not just liverpool... the yank that bought manchester utd, put one of the most profitable clubs in the world into debit. the russan who bought chelsea, the arabs who bought man city, its all wrong and is all destroying English Football.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Whinge whinge

      Moan moan

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Headmaster

      @TOO MUCH TO SAY

      Okay, take a deep breath, and...

      Check your spelling.

      Consider splitting the paragraph-length sentences up into shorter sentences.

      Check your punctuation.

      Capitalise your proper nouns.

      Consider learning what an apostrophe is, and where you should be putting one.

      I wouldn't normally send a 'Grammar Nazi' post, but the above is an appalling abuse of the English language, maybe you should have spent more time paying attention to those lessons at school, rather than the football ones?

  12. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    a ready blade

    I wonder if he'd like my job. He'd be brilliant.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Badgers

      Title

      Perhaps you should add his comments to your stock of cut'n'paste moderator comments.

      actually, perhaps not his exact words...you'd probably get too many takers.

  13. Dark Ian

    Football fans still don't understand how it works

    If you make a football club into a PLC, then yes, you can all go and buy a couple of crumbs so that you really _can_ refer to the club as 'we' or 'us' (because, lets face it, all you ever did was turn up in a beer-infested frenzy and shout incomprehendable rubbish from the stands), but it also means that big fat Uncle American can buy you wholesale and chew you out.

    If football wasn't a business there wouldn't be ridiculous wages and whatever spend on everything, it'd be a lot lower scale, much like your bog standard village 1st XI. You can't have your cake (or crumbs) and eat it, football freaks. Too bad.

  14. PaulK
    Flame

    Yank disses Scouser

    What's wrong with that? There's 50,000 Scousers slagging off 2 Yanks every week! Why don't they all fuck off.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      you obviously do not understand

      how te people of liverpool feel about football....

      as for 50,000 scousers slagging off two yanks, its not the 50,000 scousers that have wrecked the club...

      its the 50,000 scousers every home match that pay the money into the club and spend a fortune traveling around europe to support the club that deserve some answers to some basic questions, like, what funds are available to buy in players that are much needed?

      that bloke who bought manchester utd, he borrowed all the money he needed to buy up all the shares, and as soon as he gets total contrll of the club, pays off the loans with money from the club. Manchester utd were in a position where they could afford any player they liked, now they have to ask the bank managers permission, while the new owner lines his pockets with the clubs assets. they have at least one player that it is in his contract he has to play so many matches per season, and its all about shirt sales in china.. most of the time he is not good enough to be on the pitch, but he has to be played for the money....

      football has become a susiness, but it shouldent be.... it should be about the game... nothing else...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Polite Email

    My understanding is that the email in question had enough swearing in it to make Chubby Brown blush. To provoke a man with a hate fill abusive email, and then claim innocence and fire it around to all your mates and media contacts , smacks of horrific double standards.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Quotation Marks

    Can you please be satisfied with just one style per page, and try to use them in pairs?

    I am asking "politely, but given the topic, await possible replies with some trepidation!

  17. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Oh dear

    Is all not well in the world of soccer? Its a game you tossers; more specifically a game played by 22 wankers watched by fuckwits.

    Game: Soccer

    Objective: Place 10 inch ball in 8 foot net

    Difficulty rating: 0

    Boredom rating: 10

    Fuckwit percentage: 100

    1. Mike Flugennock
      Grenade

      twenty-two wankers

      Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. I attempted to play "soccer" in high school; kicking that goddamn' ball into the net was a helluva lot harder than it looked, especially with two or three guys trying to get the ball away from me or block the net -- and without using my hands. Probably the hardest thing I tried to do in any sport I played, including trying to hit a little horsehide-covered sphere -- flying towards me at 90+mph -- with a big stick.

      Tossing a big orange inflated sphere through a hoop with a couple of guys hanging all over me was relative child's play compared to trying to kick that other ball into a goddamn' net. (Actually, I was quite good at the tossing-a-ball-through-a-hoop game.)

      Game: American Rules "Football"

      Objective: Carry weird-shaped inflated bladder across a line while a bunch of guys try to crush you to death.

      Difficulty rating: 1

      Boredom rating: 11

      Fuckwit percentage: 95% on the field, 100% in the stands.

      (I understand rugby is similar, but without pads or helmets, though I couldn't give you any precise fuckwit percentages. Still, I'm guessing the insanity percentage on the field is about 100%, because they play that goddamn' game without pads or helmets.)

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Translation Issue?

    Maybe the US to Norwegian translation challenge was at the heart of the 'misunderstanding'?

    Ho, ho, ho...etc.

  19. M Brown

    Well

    For me, it's not just football that I hate (I'd find more fun in watching the grass grow on the pitch). It's the knuckle dragging neanderthals that seem to gravitate towards it. Grown men beating the hell out of each other just because they happen to run into a person who supports the opposing team. Pathetic.

    Give me a PC any day, because I'd rather have one of my defining characteristics as intelligence rather than an in bred common thug.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Once a sport becomes...

    professional and big business takes over it simply becomes a business. This has probably become most evident in the Olympics, but is also becoming more evident in other sport/entertainment/businesses.

    Youth and amateur sports are where the fun, love, and entertainment value really are. The rest is circuses, with the financial crisis far from over we can only hope that the bread will follow.

  21. asiaseen

    Too much of a business?

    Go back to the days when players were paid 5 pounds a week. And they had to wear baggy shorts.

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