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• Henry was initially unconvinced about Dalglish
• Liverpool have spent £110.5m on players since January

John W Henry, the principal owner of Liverpool, has suggested his Fenway Sports Group has overpaid for players, particularly in Boston and also in Liverpool, since they bought the football club a year ago this Saturday. Kenny Dalglish, appointed Liverpool’s manager in January – which Henry described as “a calculated gamble” because he was not initially convinced Dalglish should return to management after an 11-year absence – has since spent £110.5m on players.

Liverpool’s outlay includes £35m on Andy Carroll, £20m each for Jordan Henderson and Stewart Downing, as well as £22m for Luis Suárez and £6m for José Enrique, the latter two generally felt in football to represent fair value. The Boston Red Sox, the baseball team Fenway owns, took on $300m (£191m) in new payroll commitments on two players, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, before this season, which nevertheless ended in dramatic collapse for the Red Sox.

Asked whether Liverpool achieved value in the transfer market or overpaid for Carroll and the other players signed at Liverpool, Henry suggested they felt they needed to show fans of both clubs they were prepared to make signings for big money: “There was a lot of criticism in Boston that we weren’t going to spend money on the Red Sox after we did the LFC transaction. We spent something like $300m in the off-season in Boston, and then there was the fear we wouldn’t spend in Liverpool.

“It is really surprising, ironic, to be now accused of overspending. Usually owners are accused of the opposite. Hopefully the fans of both clubs will eventually see what we see clearly – that there is nothing to fear from the existence of the other club and that Fenway Sports Group is much stronger financially because of Boston and Liverpool.”

Asked if the signing of Crawford, the left-arm outfielder contracted for $140m in wages over seven years, whose performances were disappointing this season, represented overspending, Henry defended the 30-year-old, saying the player had only “had a bad year”. Then he acknowledged: “Choosing players in any sport is an imperfect science. We certainly have been guilty of overspending on some players, and that can be tied to an analytical approach that hasn’t worked well enough.”

Henry, Fenway and the Red Sox general manager, Theo Epstein, reportedly about to leave for the Chicago Cubs, have previously been famed for using sabermetrics, a data-driven assessment of which players represent good value to buy, to which Damien Comolli, whom they appointed Liverpool’s director of football, is said to subscribe. Comolli was hired following a recommendation by Billy Beane, the former general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, who Henry said was his “initial adviser on the football side of Liverpool”.

However, Henry said people have now become fixated on sabermetrics because of Moneyball, the book on baseball statistics by Michael Lewis, and said “football is too dynamic” to base recruitment largely on a statistical approach. Liverpool’s signings, he explained, ultimately relied on scouting, not purely statistics. Comolli, he said, impressed with the all-round rigour of his approach rather than purely a reliance on data.

Henry, discussing Dalglish’s appointment during three days of exclusive access granted to the Guardian in Boston, said he had not wanted to appoint the fans’ idol, who had not managed since a brief stint at Celtic 11 years earlier, and Henry wanted Roy Hodgson to stay and revive Liverpool.

“Kenny is certainly charismatic and beloved by the fans,” Henry said. “I wasn’t convinced when we arrived that Kenny should be back managing and I wanted things to work with the manager we inherited. But the fans knew much more than I did. It took me a while to get up to speed. Then Ian Ayre [whom Fenway appointed Liverpool's managing director] was a catalyst.

“Damien was a gamble. Kenny was a gamble. But they were both calculated gambles. They both have the advantage of being passionate about their work and are both very clever. We didn’t feel we had a lot of time to wait, and we hope things turned around.”

LiverpoolJohn W HenryBoston Red SoxUS sportMLBDavid Connguardian.co.uk

The Premier League clubs collectively lost close to half a billion pounds in 2009-10 but how in debt are they? Find their income and expenditure by club
• Get the data

The premier league season has drawn to a close for the season, with Manchester United winning a historic, 19th league title but how are the clubs operating financially?

Despite a record income, the 20 premier league clubs collectively lost nearly half a billion pounds. Rises in revenue saw a £2.1bn total revenue for the premier league clubs in 2009-10 but large debts and interest rates have stopped the income from soaring as 16 out of the 20 clubs recorded losses.

David Conn has written:

Across Manchester, United made £286m turnover, more than any other club if Arsenal’s property income is discounted – yet the costs and interest on the debts the owners, the Glazer family, have loaded on to the club, pushed United into a losing £79m.

Double-winners in 2009-10 Chelsea, whose owner, the Russian oil oligarch Roman Abramovich, is always cited as a supporter of Uefa’s break-even “financial fair play” principles, made the next biggest loss, £78m. Tottenham’s successful push for Champions League qualification was achieved with a £7m loss and £15m investment from the owners, principally Bahamas-based currency speculator, Joe Lewis.

The table below shows turnover plus income from things such as gate/matchday and tv and broadcasting as well as net debt for each club and wages as a percentage of turnover. The spreadsheet to download includes additional accounts details such as losses, profits and which money put in by the owners.

There’s a pdf of the accounts too. What can you do with the data?

Data summary

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• Liverpool manager hopes new evidence will reveal truth
• Players and club set to mark 22nd anniversary of disaster

Kenny Dalglish believes that the families of the 96 Liverpool supporters who died at Hillsborough are close to obtaining the answers and justice for which they have campaigned since 1989.

is the 22nd anniversary of the disaster, at an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, for which no one in authority has been held accountable, despite Lord Justice Taylor ruling that South Yorkshire police, Sheffield city council and Sheffield Wednesday football club were culpable.

An independent panel is examining documents relating to Hillsborough and this week James Jones, the bishop of Liverpool who is chairing the panel, told the Guardian it intended to reveal “the full truth” having obtained previously unreleased information.

Dalglish, who was Liverpool’s manager in 1989 and who is their manager now, said: “I think it’s getting closer to some positive news for the families, but it has taken a long time to get to this point as well. Two years ago Andy Burnham [then secretary of state for culture, media and sport] came up to the memorial service and promised that he would do the best he could to get access to some papers that were not due to be released for another three or four years and to the man’s great credit he has done that. They have got access now to some papers that they’ve never had before and have now got to file through them and that’s why I’m saying it’s getting a bit more positive for the families.”

The Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath were a contributory factor to Dalglish stepping down as Liverpool manager in 1991 and on Friday he and the entire Liverpool squad will attend the annual memorial service at Anfield.

“I don’t think what happened there will ever be removed from anybody and neither should it,” said Dalglish. “I don’t think anybody should ever forget it. I suppose the people who where there are the ones who have the strongest opinion on it. There are people now passing an opinion on things but I’m sure had they been there they would have a different opinion.

“For ourselves also, it has been that long that there is a generation of our supporters now who know about it but obviously weren’t there. I’m sure it is to the forefront of their minds as well. Everybody knows what it means to the football club and everybody knows how difficult it is for the people who lost someone there. The sooner they get the justice for themselves, the happier they will be and we all will be for them.”

Hillsborough disasterLiverpoolKenny DalglishAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk