Reason for re branding????? who knows?

This has been a very confusing week for most of us and its hard to get your head around why changing our blue kit would get us £100 million, but not changing it could possibly LOSE us the money....it is obviously far more to it than that.


These are just my thoughts based on what we have been discussing during the last week and possible reasons why the Malaysians were advised by their financial experts in Kuala Lumpur to look at radical re branding.

From the season after next our owners will be limited to a specific sum of money that they can prop the club up with (it maybe £6 million)...the rest of the finances must be made of monies generated by the club itself, these include Sky monies, TV and radio monies, advertising player sales etc.
We currently seem to be running way over budget, even when you take into account our good cup runs, we also have huge debt hanging over our heads and smaller debts that have slowly been cleared by Tan....it still apparently means almost £1 million a month is needed to prop up the club.

They have been happy to do this for two years, they could continue with that for at least one more year, but then it would not be allowed within the new rules. So we either chop the budget dramatically and possibly face relegation or we look for more income from other sources...the Malaysians look to have been advised to re brand the club, mainly because they believe there is possibly far more likelihood of investment abroad than there is in Wales or the UK.

Most fans would accept re branding as a means of raising income but that brings us to two parts of the rebranding that the fans are not willing to accept, the home red shirts and the badge change, however there has been a marked change since last week and more talk of compromise.

My view is that it is far more than just a red shirt, that was just part of the rebranding along with the dragon, it seems to me that the whole rebranding was aimed at the Asian markets and possibly going on to the stock exchanges...the red and the dragon being part of the package. The Malaysians are fully aware that a red shirt or dragon won't be the stand alone answer; they will have to make us a successful club on the pitch for the plan to work.

Their other ideas including the building of new training ground and academy building does not come under the financial fair play rules, neither does them increasing the capacity of the stadium...but doing all three will give them another chance of creating income to get the club self sufficient and therefore not breaking the fair play rules.

The academy will be used to produce our own talent that we can use to strengthen the club it may also be an income generator if it produces top class players that are sold...the extra capacity of the stadium would also help increase turnover and therefore give the club more scope for staying inside the financial fair play rules.

So I think it is far more complex than just a red home shirt and if this rebranding is not tried by the club and its fans then Tan and TG will have to re think the budget and look at other ways....at least that is what I thought their open letter said.
Anyway it's just my opinion and summing up of how I see it...

Liverpool already in Asia and seeking alternative sponsors -

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/latest-n ... ith-courts

They are one of many clubs, even our Championship rivals Bristol City are exploring new links in Asia - China especially.