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Their QC said that they accepted it was time to “sell up and go” but that the only issue was price

Today’s judgment would appear to leave Tom Hicks and George Gillett with nowhere left to turn, But close observers of their actions long ago learned not to write the Americans off. One thing seems certain, though: the duo have finally resigned themselves to having to sell the club they bought together for £220m in February 2007 amid such misplaced optimism.

It will bring the curtain down on three and a half years of fractious and debilitating infighting that led to their falling out with the fans, with the manager, with each other, with their lenders and finally with the board of the club. Their QC, Paul Girolami, said today that they accepted it was time to “sell up and go” but that the only issue was the price.

Hicks contended in his witness statement that the “English owners”, who he claimed to have discovered by accident called themselves “the home team”, were conducting negotiations in secret and behind the backs of himself and Gillett. The judge effectively dismissed his version of events but Hicks still feels himself to have been a victim in the whole affair.

Assuming the NESV deal goes through, the purchase price will clear the debts but leave nothing for Hicks and Gillett. They will lose the £101m in loans extended via the club’s holding company. Gillett is already believed to have in effect relinquished his shares to Mill Financial, the private equity group that helped support an earlier refinancing of the loan he used to buy Liverpool.

In 2007, Hicks was widely reported to be a billionaire but in the wake of the enforced sale of baseball’s Texas Rangers, which was ordered by a court after 40 lenders were left with an estimated $600m (£378m) in unpaid loans, interest and fees, there are questions about his finances. That history may well have influenced RBS when it drew up April’s refinancing agreement, which empowered Broughton to sell the club and, presciently, included the clauses that led to victory at the high court.

Hicks is also trying to unload the Dallas Stars ice hockey team but has rebuffed several offers. Gillett was the majority owner of the Montreal Canadiens and their home the Bell Centre. After repeatedly insisting they were not for sale, he sold them for $550m in June. In court this week, several references were made to the liquidity of the pair and, given that their wealth is all held offshore and privately held, it is impossible to ascertain just how damaged they have been by the recession. But today’s judgment will add further to the liabilities they have already racked up – solicitors on the high court steps estimated that their costs would be anywhere between £250,000 and £500,000.

All eyes are now on whether they attempt to lodge an appeal in a final throw of the dice. That would likely take the form of a claim for damages against the club on the basis that they ignored higher offers. But for an appeal to be granted, their lawyers will have to persuade the court that there is a reasonable chance of winning. Experts think it unlikely they would succeed.

“Hicks and Gillett are money men and can be expected to fight to the last to increase their chances of some return, so we have not heard the last of this,” Daniel Hall, a partner at Eversheds, said. “It appears that the club’s constitutional documents enable the board to accept a reasonable offer. I think it unlikely that the courts would intervene to review a considered decision of the board provided it was not malicious.”

LiverpoolBusinessOwen Gibsonguardian.co.uk

The stock of Liverpool’s chairman Martin Broughton has rocketed in the eyes of the club’s supporters after his victory against owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett

Liverpool is littered with heroes and this morning, a few minutes after 11 o’clock, their supporters greeted some more. As Martin Broughton, the club’s chairman, stepped out of Court 18 of the Royal Courts of Justice, followed by his fellow directors Christian Purslow and Ian Ayre, and the trio’s legal team, they were met by roars of approval from waiting men carrying Liverpool scarves and shirts emblazoned with Liverbirds. It was a curious sight but a wholly inappropriate one given the momentous victory that had just been achieved.

Unrelenting despair has come to characterise this once mighty football establishment but after events at the high court today, Kopites can truly start dreaming of better times to come. That is because after a case spreading over two days and taking in more than six hours of legal arguments, Mr Justice Floyd has ruled that Liverpool’s current owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, can no longer continue with their attempts to block a sale of the club, most likely to New England Sport Ventures, owners of the Boston Red Sox, who had a £300m bid for the club accepted last week before Hicks and Gillett tried to derail the process by replacing Purslow and Ayre with two of their own cohorts.

The case against Hicks and Gillett was not actually brought by Liverpool, but instead by the Royal Bank of Scotland, who are owed close to £235m by the Americans, the deadline for which expires this Friday. They deemed the actions of the pair as a breech of an agreement signed in April, which gave them the finances to extend their control at Anfield in exchange for an agreement that the Americans would allow Broughton, appointed by RBS, to see through a sale of the club within six months.

“Breathtaking arrogance” was how Richard Snowden QC, representing RBS, characterised the conduct of Hicks and Gillett in trying to block the sale of Liverpool to NESV. It was “as clear a breech of contract as you will ever see” he went on to say yesterday in a packed Court 16, where the case initially started. During the course of that day, a catalogue of counter evidence was heard which turned this already stupefying sporting saga into one of even greater drama and intrigue. Paul Girolami QC, representing Hicks and Gillett, admitted they had breeched their sales agreement with RBS but claimed they only did so because Broughton, Purslow and Ayre, the other members of Liverpool’s five-man board, had overlooked two other offers for the club, from the Singapore billionaire Peter Lim and Mill Financial, a US hedge fund which is understood to have assumed control of Gillett’s stake in the club. Girolami accused the “English directors” of excluding Hicks and Gillett from the sales process and creating their very own sub-committee, which they were accused of referring to in emails as “the home team.”

This accusation, among many other put forward by Girolami, was dismissed not only by Snowden but also Lord Grabiner QC, the much-experienced, much-respected and, at times, amusing representative for Liverpool. He claimed the “home team” reference was simply the name of a conference call line the board used to speak to bidders and described Hicks and Gillett as “slippery” for attempting to adjourn a meeting to discuss the NESV offer by a week knowing full-well that the group, headed by John W Henry, wanted an answer to their proposal by last Friday.

All this took the case into another day and into the smaller Court 18. “It’s as packed as the Kop” remarked one observer pressed up against the wall as Justice Floyd summarised the case and prepared to give his verdict. It duly arrived at about 10.40am when the judge granted RBS a mandatory injunction against Hicks and Gillett, preventing them from again trying to restructure the club’s board and meaning Purslow and Ayre were back on it. He also threw out an attempt by the Americans to have an interim injunction placed on the board as well as ruling that they should pay the court costs for both RBS and the Liverpool board. Lord Grabiner estimates those costs will be between £250,000 and £500,000.

In a final kick for the Hicks and Gillett, who took over at Liverpool in February 2007 with promises of building a new stadium and ploughing millions into the club before reneging on both of those promises, their QC was advised by Floyd that it would be “inappropriate” of them to appeal the ruling. They may, however, still decided to do so.

What now? Well, Broughton will reconvene a board meeting for 8pm this meeting for which, he stated clearly afterwards, Hicks and Gillett, are “certainly invited”. That meeting will confirm the sale of the club to NESV and it is hoped that the sale, which will clear the club’s £200m-plus debts, can go through before Friday’s deadline with RBS.

All this begins to lift the dark, spreading cloud that has hung over Liverpool for over a year now. It also means they are unlikely to go into administration – the heaviest cost should Hicks an Gillett have won – and, as such, avoid a potentially devastating nine point penalty, which would have seen them go into Sunday’s Merseyside derby against Everton bottom of the league on minus three points.

There is no great evidence to suggest that NESV will be any better for Liverpool than Hicks and Gillett were but they cannot be any worse. Little wonder then that the supporters who gathered inside and outside the High Court today were so relieved to hear that the owners could no longer block a sale of the club, which it was widely accepted they were only doing in order to minimise their own individual financial losses and not, as they argued in court, for the benefit of the club they have seen to ruin.

Fighting their actions throughout have been Broughton, Purslow and Ayre, who up to today have all been treated with great suspicion by Liverpool supporters. No more, however. “We love you Martin, we do” they chanted as the trio departed down Fleet Street. It was that type of day.

LiverpoolSachin Nakraniguardian.co.uk

• Cole hopeful of central role but says he’d play anywhere
• Hodgson dampens hopes saying club are ‘a long way off’

Roy Hodgson has brought such sanity and perspective to Liverpool that it seems a shame to interrupt his work with a new Premier League season. The hyperbole that Liverpool’s manager seeks to avoid is easily ignited at Anfield, however, and this summer Joe Cole provided the spark. He may be only one top-class addition to a squad in need of “four or five”, according to Fernando Torres, but he has made Liverpool expectant once again.

The commitment of Torres and Steven Gerrard to Hodgson’s vision gives genuine foundation to Liverpool’s confidence for the new season, while other signings made since the end of the last morale-sapping campaign offer a clearer picture of the club’s situation than the free transfer from Chelsea. The return of Fábio Aurélio on a two-year contract, two months after being released by Liverpool, demonstrates a lack of resource and a lack of options at left-back, although Osasuna’s Nacho Monreal is under consideration. Christian Poulsen, although decorated and highly prized by his former manager at FC Copenhagen, will represent a £4.5m replacement for Javier Mascherano should the Argentina captain get his wish and leave. Yet Cole has injected some much-needed fantasy.

A four-year contract worth £90,000 a week enabled Liverpool to demonstrate that, even in the dying days of Tom Hicks’s and George Gillett’s ownership, they still possess the finances and status to entice the coveted to Merseyside. His new captain, Gerrard, has been unable to refrain from the hype, installing the 28-year-old as an immediate favourite for player of the year and saying: “[Lionel] Messi can do some amazing things but, anything he can do, Joe can do as well, if not better.”

One impressive performance in a Liverpool shirt, against FK Rabotnicki in the Europa League last week, offered further encouragement to his new club. But after a sporadic end to a fruitful seven years at Stamford Bridge, where his career stalled after a serious knee injury, Cole faces Arsenal on Sunday accepting that, just like his new club and his new manager, he must capitalise on a fresh start.

“Arsenal is a tough game for anybody, especially so early on in the season because they have such young players,” Liverpool’s No10 said. “The young players tend to get fitter and sharper quicker. I think it’s the toughest game we could have had to start the season, but I’m just looking forward to being part of this great team.”

Hodgson will grant Cole the first-team opportunities he was denied by two Italians, Carlo Ancelotti and Fabio Capello, for club and country in recent months. The question for Liverpool, ultimately, is where? Liverpool’s manager said today that he sees Gerrard as a central midfielder, thereby allowing Cole to play centrally behind Torres, who could make the squad following a recent groin injury but is under doctor’s orders not to start. One suspects Hodgson put that tactical carrot before the England international as he considered his career options this summer.

Cole said: “I loved my first game at Anfield last week. I enjoyed You’ll Never Walk Alone and I made a point of putting that in the memory bank. That was a special moment for me. I enjoyed making the goal for David [Ngog] but mainly I enjoyed playing in a central position. It has been seven years since I have played there regularly. I was blowing the cobwebs off a little bit, but there are things that I need to work on and things I have done well.

“I want that responsibility of defending and attacking, and I think it suits my attributes better. I don’t have blistering pace so playing on the wing I have to be cleverer, but in the middle I can find more space and do things from there. Playing in the middle, you are more of a playmaker. A lot of the time you are keeping the ball simple, and it’s about feeding the wingers and centre-forwards, and it’s about understanding the game. But overall, I am just happy to be at Liverpool. I’d play anywhere.”

Hodgson said Christian Purslow, Liverpool’s managing director, was in London today but that is not believed to concern considering any viable bids for the club from China or the Middle East for the club. The manager said he would consider starting Mascherano against Arsenal, despite his public request for a move abroad, and made another attempt to keep expectations in check.

“Everyone is working hard on their game and trying to ensure we become a team and not just a group of very talented individuals,” Hodgson said. “But I would say after seven training sessions with what I regard as the key players it is pretty obvious that we are a long, long way from teams like Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea, who have been working under the same coach at least one year or, in the case of Arsène and Sir Alex, decades. I don’t pretend that after seven training sessions we are going to be anything like the team I hope we are going to be. It would be ridiculous to say we are at the top of our tree.”

Joe ColeLiverpoolAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk