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Defeat to Manchester City last night showed the club is already struggling to keep up, despite their manager’s best efforts

The distress of Liverpool’s 3-0 defeat at Manchester City lay in the fulfilment of the worst suspicions about the state of the club. Those who took part in the game itself were not really the culprits. The centre-half Daniel Agger, for instance, has scarcely been pleading for the left-back post, yet he is stationed there.

This is no lapse either from Roy Hodgson, a manager whom Liverpool are lucky to have. The CV shows that he has worked in eight countries and that confirms not just his adaptablity but also a standing in football that is beyond dispute. Even he, however, can run into insuperable problems.

His appointment, indeed, was partly a reaction to the risks Liverpool run. Onlookers wonder whether a deal is feasible that will meet the asking price of Tom Hicks and George Gillett so that new owners can revitalise Anfield. While Liverpool, in that regard, are in a state of suspended animation, the challenge of the Premier League is constant.

Hodgson’s side was freakishly unlucky on the opening weekend as the goalkeeper José Reina bundled the ball into his own net in the 90th minute when Liverpool were leading 1-0 against Arsenal. Their fortunes were only slightly better in the next fixture and Joe Cole’s missed penalty means they are ahead by just a single goal in the Europa League qualifier with Trabzonspor that resumes in Turkey on Thursday.

The programme allows little time to work at length with players who need the sort of organisation that might compensate for limitations. Fragility has been predictable. The core of the midfield began to disappear when Xabi Alonso left for Real Madrid and it will have gone entirely if Javier Mascherano’s move to Barcelona proceeds as anticipated. Some of the income from the latter deal must surely be put at the manager’s disposal.

It is, after all, critical for Hicks and Gillett to see the valuation of their asset sustained and events on the field have a bearing on that. There were many reasons for appointing Hodgson but Fulham’s run to the 2010 Europa League final may not have been the key factor. Liverpool will have taken at least as much note of the 2008-09 campaign when his Fulham side finished seventh, ahead of clubs such as Tottenham and Manchester City.

Hodgson looked then as if he had the secret of levitation as his team resisted the severe pull of gravity that affects such clubs. It is, of course, galling for Liverpool supporters to see a Champions League spot turn into a distant target. All the same, there are modest developments.

Cole, who has collected a red card as well as faltering with that penalty, will catch the eye for better reasons and introduce some guile. Milan Jovanovic, a Bosman signing, has swiftly become popular. At 21, the striker David Ngog is starting to look more mature. Ryan Babel, two years older, has generally been a disappointment since the £11.5m move from Ajax in 2007, but there was a glimmer of hope when, as a lone striker, he took the only goal of the home game with Trabzonspor.

Hodgson will still not suppose that the answers to his concerns are already on the books. There is trading to be done. The transfers of Albert Riera and Yossi Benayoun brought in around £10m. Emiliano Insúa’s departure may take place in the near future although he could not agree personal terms with Fiorentina last month after a £5m fee had been negotiated.

No one even pretends that there can be a grand vision for Liverpool while circumstances are unaltered. In a moment of candour, the chairman Martin Broughton explained last month that Hodgson had been appointed “to steady the ship.” Stability is welcome, but a club with Liverpool’s heritage cannot treat that as their real ambition in the longer term.

Hodgson will still accept the tranquility that comes with a victory or two in the League. Such results would come more readily if Fernando Torres was at all reminiscent of the forward Liverpool knew before his knee surgery in April. The Spaniard featured in every match of a glorious World Cup campaign but did not score.

The club will truly be on the rise when no single player matters so much. For the time being, all the same, Hodgson seeks demonstrations of the impact that Torres or Steven Gerrard can have on Liverpool’s fortunes.

LiverpoolKevin McCarraguardian.co.uk

• Shareholding in baseball expected to raise nearly £350m
• Uncertain whether funds will be invested in Liverpool

Liverpool’s co-owner Tom Hicks has agreed to sell his majority shareholding in the Texas Rangers baseball team but doubts remain over whether the American will reinvest funds from the deal in the Merseyside club.

Hicks is expected to receive close to $500m (£350m) for the franchise, which he has owned through Hicks Sports Group since 1998, from a consortium headed by the Pittsburgh-based attorney Chuck Greenberg and the legendary former Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan.

The deal must first be approved by Major League Baseball and creditors of Hicks Sports Group but is expected to be finalised by 5

Elimination from the Champions League knockout stages would put the Anfield club under serious financial pressure

It is never a happy prospect to be staring at a possible Champions League exit and bonfire of title hopes even before 5 November but for Liverpool this autumn’s struggle for form is particularly ill-timed. Pride, history and the nagging sense of unfulfilled promise soak Anfield with highly-strung, permanent expectation, but at a time like this, to put it bluntly, they cannot afford to fail.

This run of four consecutive defeats, which is already seriously threatening Liverpool’s fortunes in the Premier League and in Europe, has come as hired professionals scour the world for money to shore up the club. Liverpool’s north American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, have produced not a sod of the new stadium they arrived in 2007 with a promise to build, but have saddled Liverpool with debt, including the £174.1m cost of their own takeover. In the summer, they did manage to refinance their borrowings, reportedly with a commitment to reduce the £313m the club owed down to £250m. That was not an apparent boost to Rafael Benítez’s transfer kitty, and still leaves Liverpool seriously stretched.

In their 44,500-seat home, Liverpool have for years now been the relatively poor relations in the Premier League’s top four; their income last year, £159m, was way below that of Arsenal and Chelsea, and almost £100m behind Manchester United, who loom as the next Premier League opponents at Anfield on Sunday.

Financially, Liverpool rely more than those other three clubs on the euros which come from the Champions League, because they earn less domestically, in a north west city which cannot support the comparatively extravagant ticket prices of Stamford Bridge or the Emirates. The defeats so far in the Champions League to Fiorentina, then Lyon on a flat European night at Anfield on Tuesday, mean Liverpool have a daunting task if they are to qualify for the knockout stage. They face a real challenge away at Lyon on the eve of Guy Fawkes night, and even if they win there, and beat Fiorentina and Debreceni in their other two games, they could still not qualify if the other results go well enough for Fiorentina and Lyon.

The financial hit from failing to qualify for the knockout stage is substantial, although not as calamitous as it would be for Liverpool to lose to Manchester United, fail to pull round their Premier League form and drop out of the top four completely. Uefa share out the Champions League sponsorship and TV income according to a complicated formula which rewards clubs for the size of the TV market in their home country. As we are a large nation of football-on-telly watchers, our clubs share major payments from this “market pool” even at the group stages. The “market pool” payment does increase as a club qualifies through the knockout stage, although it is less if the other clubs, from the same country, progress too.

It is therefore impossible to put a figure on what Liverpool might lose out on if they fail to qualify from their group, but last season, when they reached the quarter-final while Arsenal and Chelsea reached the semi-final and United the final, the knockout stage was worth around €8m (£7.2m) to Liverpool. This season, the cost would be greater, because Uefa has provisionally announced an increase in Champions League TV and sponsorship deals, from €820m to €1.05bn (£950m). It is safe to say that if Liverpool were to be knocked out, they would fall markedly behind financially, especially if the other three clubs go through.

Failing to qualify at all for next season’s competition, a prospect nobody at Anfield is prepared to contemplate with barely two months of the season gone, would involve missing out on a very important slice of Liverpool’s income. Last season’s earnings were €23.2m from Uefa directly, plus unspecified income earned at Anfield from the Champions League matches themselves, and the money available next season, which four English clubs will certainly be earning, will be almost 25% higher.

The arrival of Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City, with ambitions for the top four and the money to support it, together with a generous cheque book unfolded for Harry Redknapp at Spurs, make Liverpool’s claim on Champions League qualification subject to more competition than for years, so now is not the time to suffer a serious loss of form.

Last month Hicks and Gillett were prompted to issue a rare joint statement confirming that they have appointed two banks to look for new investors, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are said to be in the Middle East pursuing the rich men who could wipe all these troubles away.

Yet despite persistent rumours, and the recent excitement over whether Prince Faisal bin Fahad bin Abdulla of Saudi Arabia was going to invest, there are as yet no signs of anybody solid. At Manchester City, Mansour’s advisors have explained that an attraction of the club was that there was no stadium to build, so they could spend their millions directly on buying players to fulfil football, not construction, ambitions. Having a £450m new stadium to build is not the best sales pitch Liverpool’s bankers have in their briefcases.

So for now, Liverpool remain seriously in debt, with a manager about whom questions are being asked seriously for the first time, two owners perpetually seeming at odds with each other, and a team desperately seeking some form, fast.

LiverpoolChampions LeaguePremier LeagueDavid Connguardian.co.uk