JUNE 20
Hicks and Gillett in peace pact

By David Prentice - Liverpool Echo

George Gillett has revealed that Liverpool's feuding co-owners are trying to patch up their differences.

And he has suggested that he and Tom Hicks were now trying to revive a partnership he had previously described as “unworkable” – with a desire to help Rafa Benitez “be more competitive in the chase for the Premiership.”

But the Reds co-owner pointedly refused to discuss whether he still intended to sell his half of the club.

Gillett gave a rare interview to Canadian radio station Fan590 late last night, when he revealed: “It’s fair to say that communication between the Hicks and the Gilletts has been substantially improved and I believe that it will be for the benefit of the club.”

After his last appearance on the same station led to a public and apparently irretrievable breakdown of the working relationship with Tom Hicks, this time he said: “Time is a healer and there were things that had happened previously. It took a while for both of us to realise that we weren’t communicating very well and the huge responsibility we have to the fans to do the right thing for the club.

“I believe that the Hicks family are communicating better with us and we’re communicating better with them and I think that will be much better for the club.”

Asked whether the ‘For sale signs had now come down,’ he declared: “I’m not going to comment on anything specifically.”

But he did add: “All of us are focused on the transfer window and we want to be ready for that and we want to have adequate resources and good communication with Rafa and our hope is that we’re making better progress.

“What did I think of last season’s performance?

“I’d would rather let the fans make that decision. But for a club that has a history of winning trophies, any season that you don’t win one of the five or six trophies that we compete for, I suspect the fans, as well as the Hicks and Gilletts, are disappointed.

“But overall I felt that the team played quite well, particularly beginning and late.

“I think they were very representative and I think Torres was a wonderful selection.

“By summer I think the rest of the boys played quite well and we have to help Rafa try and be more competitive in the chase for the Premiership.”

Gillett’s interview does not confirm whether his long term ambition is still to sell out his half of the club, but it does show that he is prepared to bury his differences with Tom Hicks in the short term.

Interviewer Bob McCown admitted that the radio station had been “inundated with e-mails from Great Britain” when it was advertised that the American was due to be a guest on the show.

And Gillett admitted he had been taken by surprise at the levels of passion shown by Liverpool supporters worldwide.

“It was really amazing,” he said. “Soccer is the leading sport in the world and it’s just shocking how popular Liverpool is. So it surprised me, but it really is an amazing responsibility.

“We’ve always felt that for the 40-plus years I’ve been around professional sport that we really hold these assets in trust for the fans and that we have an obligation to the fans. We feel that very strongly in Montreal and Liverpool.”
 

Thor Zakariassen ©