HOWEVER infested Anfield may be with executive-level in-fighting, it may be safely disregarded as a potential hindrance to Liverpool's chances of beating Chelsea in their forthcoming Champions League semi-final.
The English club's co-owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, chief executive Rick Parry and manager Rafael Benitez are all involved in a very public and quite acrimonious power struggle, but the notion that boardroom turmoil can adversely affect the p
erformances of players was contemptuously dismissed a number of years ago by none other than Alex Miller, coincidentally now Benitez's first lieutenant.
Our conversation took place when he was manager of Hibernian and the Easter Road club were going through those hard economic times when it was threatened with bankruptcy, ultimate closure, or, much more serious, amalgamation with Hearts under the aegis of the late Wallace Mercer.
Soon after Sir Tom Farmer had intervened with a life-saving re-funding package, I suggested to Miller that he and the players would be greatly relieved, able to look forward to the new season free of anxieties and with renewed zest.
"Well, I know I'm relieved," said Miller, "but let me tell you something about players. The truth is that, almost to a man – there may be one or two exceptions – they don't give a toss who is the owner, the chairman, the chief executive, or even, most of the time, who is the manager.
"What they do care about is their wages. You won't hear a squeak from them until they discover one day that their money hasn't been paid into the bank. You'll hear them squawk then, all right. Otherwise, the stadium could go up in smoke and they wouldn't notice."
Those who represent Liverpool these days, of course, enjoy earnings that would have seemed like fiction to the Hibs players of 18 years ago, but it is extremely unlikely that the present generation's self-absorption will be any different from that of their predecessors. If, in the event of failure against Chelsea, Rafa makes any reference to the damaging impact on the team of the executives' squabble, it should qualify for The Scotsman "Excuse Of The Week" feature.
The full article contains 370 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
