Dojji

What is there to say? The three points LFC will need to know about the guy: 1: He's a hands-off owner who believes in letting baseball men run his baseball team, so I imagine he'll let "football" men handle his "football" team (in quotes so as not to confuse Americans). He does not make knee-jerk firings. He does not try to impose his will on transactions. He is a smiling face in the owner's box and the occasional public appearance and other than that he lets other men be the face of his franchise. 2: He believes in spending to compete and is not afraid to be among the biggest spenders in a given league if that's what he feels is appropriate. The wallet will be open and the team will attract the best players it can. 3: He has a history of restoring credibility and confidence in a prestigious team that's down on its luck. Before his Sox days he led the upstart Florida Marlins, a rather cash-poor expansion squad, to a World Series win in 1997. He helped us to rings in 2004 and 2007. I really expect Liverpool FC's dignity and standing in its league to improve and its worldwide impression to be markedly better after he's had his hand in for awhile. Oh, and a possible #4: Apparently, he's paying in cash, meaning Liverpool FC won't be loaded down with his debt problems on top of their own.

JS, we in the states have a saying that's gotten around our side of the internet. It goes something like this: Don't Feed The Troll.

Quite all right, we have Yankee fan trolls here on a regular basis -- and a couple of relatively respected New York fans that know how to be decent and stay around to remind us that not all of them are like that.

Do you guys have a cite of the Sun's retraction? That would go a long way to settling this/

Probably the most interesting trade piece we have who is actually a trade piece, from the Padres' perspective, is Ryan Lavarnway. I'd rather see if he can hack it as a catcher in the bigs for this team though.

OK I can understand why we're suddenly inundated with Liverpool fans since they might need information we have about Henry, and can share a perspective about their own team, but the only reason rival Britball fans would come here would be to troll the Liverpool fans, so I'm going to have to respectfully request that the rival fans keep their noise down. And please, both sides, Liverpool and non, quit poisoning the waters on each other in a neutral site, or we'll just get the impression that the lot of you are too far gone to be worth our time. Thanks in advance.

With such brilliant English and cogent grasp of current events, how can we possibly fail to respect such an argument? There are fandiots in every base. There are Red Sox fans who set cars on fire and tipped them over after the celebration in 2004. There were even a couple of people who professed to be fans who capped a Yankee fan because he wore the gear in the wrong part of town, the idiots. Hooliganry is less established in baseball than it is in soccer but it happens, and when it does, fans on both sides quickly recognize that it was the act of a small lunatic element and that their side is painted nearly as black by equivalent counterparts and move on.

Besides which, the San Diego Padres just outperformed their way to within spitting distance of a playoff berth and emotionally, I doubt they're willing to deal their franchise hitter right now when they might be able to load up offensively and try again with a fair expectation of success.

Well, it is about a partial American recolonization of Britain through its sports teams, but yeah generally, point is taken.

I'm not interested in the slightest in trading Clay Buchholz for one year of Adrian Gonzalez when he might hit free agency at the end of this year and the Yankees won't be in a position to compete for his services.

And they used Boston as their shipyard, and a lot of their money went there as well. It's a fact, it happened. I don't think it belongs here though. History is what it is, fans are more interested in what's here right now.

Meh, you have that in common with Boston actually. A lot of shipbulilding money from New England was made on the hulls of slaver vessels. Isn't our proudest moment of course, but it's there, it's foolish to pretend it isn't. On the other hand, Massachusetts (and by extension my home state of Maine which was at the time part of Massachusetts) was the first state in the Union to expressly outlaw black slavery so at least we have that going in our favor.

It's done, pending league approval. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/oct/06/liverpool-sale-american-owners

Or a Tito from a Tek, for that matter. We're aware by now and fully braced for it.

It's cool, generally I don't like megathreading myself, but there's nothing new here, such as news or informed speculation. Its just "this is what I think" so while you're just as welcome to post your opinion as I am, of course, it probably belongs in the big thread where everyone says what they think.

I did forget Wagner. And yeah, I'm not saying that the 2010 bullpen was anything but a disappointment but there's a couple factors involved there, not the least of which was injuries to our shortstop and second baseman that kept those two VERY pivotal defensive positions in flux all year. When the defense is bad, pitchers rate a partial mulligan if their numbers follow suit.

And this couldn't have been posted in the duly sanctioned Hot Stove thread?

You'd think the folk in Liverpool would get that, considering how often people react to all Brits based on what a Londoner does.

Don't worry buddy we know what a troll is and it's nothing we haven't seen before. Welcome, and good luck to Liverpool FC.

Saw the blurb at Yahoo as I was looking up something else. Absolutely stunned. Is this a sign that the team is officially "transitioning" and building up its younger core instead of shooting full-out for a championship at this time?

Ahh. I like to pride myself in thinking I know a little about the world although I've never travelled, good to know I was close. I used to think Liverpool was somewhere near Portsmouth, got disabused of that one rather emphatically at some point.

Gonna say this without referring to Wiki or Mapquest, see how I do. Liverpool is as I recall it in the northwest of England, a former shipbuilding industrial city which still does a lot of business of the making-things-out-of-steel type. It has a very old reputation as a factory and blue collar town and was much involved in not just the building of ships, but also had a fair-sized harbor of its own and did a lot of shipping and still handles a lot of seagoing traffic. It's actually not really all that close to London, and is in fact on the diagonal opposite corner of England from London if I remember my facts right, not all that far from the old Scottish border though not quite a real border coommunitty How close did I get?

I do think the MLS experiment is taking root. Soccer isn't as foreign in the States as it used to be. Getting shafted in our efforts to host a World Cup didn't help matters though, one would think the world soccer community would be interested in getting a market as large and active as the US on board. I guess it's just a reverse of the metric system thing with everyone used to the status quo and no one really all that interested in letting it change. I wish they'd just shrug and get it over with, America go metric and Europe get used to the idea that some Americans actually watch soccer. (even if we do call it a strange name for the sake of clarity with another better established sport with a similar name)

Have Liverpool FCcome play the Revs (New England Revolution, our MLS team) during exhibition season. God knows the Revs could use the interest. It'd be something to see, even if the Revs did get flattened. If you want to see soccer thrive in America, bringing in good European clubs and exhibitioning them against Major League Soccer teams is one of the ways to give it a quick boost. I bet we'd be willing to reciprocate for British baseball, if such a thing exists.