Watch Liverpool

Liverpool’s new stadium prospects are now more remote than when Tom Hicks and George Gillett arrived

There are many bridges to cross before Liverpool’s co-owners must decide whether to accept the Rhône Group’s £110m offer for a 40% stake, but the bid lays bare the icy state the club are in.

The proposal’s key detail is that not a penny of all those millions would go to Tom Hicks or George Gillett but, instead, would reduce Liverpool’s £237m debts to Royal Bank of Scotland and the American bank Wachovia. Liverpool are only carrying that debt burden, or at least £185m of it, because the two Americans, who arrived as purported saviours in February 2007, borrowed the money to take over, then loaded the club with the responsibility to repay it.

Hicks and Gillett had said they would not “do a Glazer” and saddle the club with their own borrowings. But they did and now the new stadium they promised to build “as soon as reasonably practicable” cannot be contemplated until the debts they imposed are dramatically reduced.

Rhône’s bid, the first firm investment offer the chief executive, Christian Purslow, is known to have received, would reduce Hicks and Gillett to a 30% stake each and pay nothing to them for the 20% they have ceded. Intimations from Hicks that the deal is not lucrative enough for him are unlikely to wash if no other firm bids are prompted by Rhône’s offer. Hicks and Gillett are pinned to a deadline because RBS, which is 70% owned by the British public and last month announced a £6.2bn operating loss for the 2008-09 financial year, insists Liverpool must reduce their exposure to it by £100m by