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Until yesterday, Martin Broughton had barely talked about his role as Liverpool chairman. When he did, it was incendiary

Martin Broughton had, in public, barely talked about Liverpool since his appointment as the club’s chairman in June, keeping his counsel in a way that seemed to befit a blue-chip City gent brought in to effect a sale. Yesterday, Broughton went out of his way to condemn the club’s American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and explain why he is going to court for the right to sell the club over their heads.

While explaining his confidence that the high court will allow him and his allies – the managing director, Christian Purslow, and commercial director, Ian Ayre – to sell the club to New England Sports Ventures, Broughton accused Hicks and Gillett of “flagrantly abusing” agreements they had made with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

As a departure from the Liverpool Way, in which, during the years of success, all disagreements were kept within the club, it could hardly have been more complete. Broughton revealed to supporters some of what has really been going on inside Liverpool over recent, tortuous months.

He said that he, Purslow and Ayre had been able to consider themselves semi-independent from Hicks and Gillett as they searched the world for a buyer, to deliver the club from the £200m the pair borrowed to buy it, then loaded on to it to repay. Crucially, Broughton said, before his appointment Hicks and Gillett agreed that only Broughton could appoint and remove directors – a clause that was written in to the club’s articles of association. Secondly, he maintained, Hicks and Gillett had agreed with RBS that they would seek to sell the club and “take no action to frustrate any sale”. It was those undertakings which Broughton said they had then “flagrantly abused”.

Purslow, in an interview on Liverpool’s official website a fortnight ago, said RBS had been instrumental in his own appointment: “I was very well known to the banks and I am sure when they were asked their view they were supportive.”

Purslow, after months of searching, came up with the Rhône Group, which is based in Paris. It was to buy 40% of Liverpool for £110m, leaving Hicks and Gillett, together, with a 60% majority. The pair rejected that deal for the reason they are resisting NESV now – it did not give them enough “value” for their shares.

That, Purslow said, “precipitated a further series of changes” that were imposed by RBS. Hicks’s son Tom Jr had resigned in January after the email exchange in which he had told a fan to “Blow me, fuckface”. In 28 April, two more directors, Casey Coffman and Gillett’s son, Foster, resigned. The articles of association were then changed, by agreement with Hicks and Gillett, on 27 May, to include Broughton’s key power to appoint or remove directors. “The board was rejigged and, most importantly, the owners agreed they would seek a sale of all the club,” Purslow said.

Broughton accepted the chairmanship on 8 June and yesterday he explained why he believed Hicks and Gillett agreed to his appointment: “To add credibility to the process because they no longer had any credibility.”

The sale has seemed slow and undignified at times, prompting some to question whether Broughton was really doing very much. The boardroom battle erupted this week. Broughton said they had been talking to NESV for months, and another bidder from Asia; that Hicks and Gillett were kept informed; and that the board meeting on Tuesday was called to review the bids and decide which one to approve.

Broughton, Purslow and Ayre gathered for the meeting at the City of London offices of Liverpool’s solicitors, Slaughter & May, beginning at 3:30pm. Just 15 minutes before that, they received a faxed notification from Hicks and Gillett that they were sacking Purslow and Ayre and replacing them with Hicks’s son Mack and Mack’s assistant, Lori Kay McCutcheon. When Hicks had said on buying Liverpool in February 2007 that his was a “multi-generational family commitment”, nobody envisaged the appointment of another son in a last-minute cling

• Managing director admits boardroom divide
• Liverpool have no plans to sell Gerrard or Torres

Liverpool’s managing director, Christian Purslow, admitted today that the club can barely service the debts and interest which were loaded on to the club by Tom Hicks and George Gillett when they took over Liverpool in February 2007.

“Can we afford to meet [our loans, interest costs and bank charges]?” Purslow said. “Just about. Do I wish that every penny spent on interest was available to spend on players? Passionately.”

In a series of strikingly frank answers to emailed questions from anxious supporters published on Liverpool’s official website, Purslow acknowledged that the “leveraged buyout” employed by Hicks and Gillett, loading their own £185m loans onto the club to repay, is a severe financial problem.

That principle has been consistently denied at Manchester United, where the chief executive, David Gill, has argued the £716m debts and £400m interest, costs and bank charges imposed by the Glazer family’s takeover are not a burden on the club. “We are highly profitable,” Purslow said. “The issue is that too much of that profit is being used to service loans put into place when the club was bought.”

In the first public acknowledgement of the boardroom divide at Liverpool between Hicks and Gillett and the three directors who can outvote them, Purslow said he, the chairman, Martin Broughton, and commercial director, Ian Ayre, would reject any proposal from the owners to replace the club’s £237m bank debts with further borrowings from elsewhere.

“Can you, Ian Ayre or Martin Broughton oppose the refinancing of the debt by the current owners?” one supporter asked. Purslow replied: “Any incurrence of indebtedness by Liverpool Football Club needs full Board approval. The non-owner directors have made it clear that’s not what we want to see happen.”

Asked whether the owners could refinance the debts and secure new borrowings against the club’s assets – the players, stadium or training ground – Purslow stated: “That would require Board approval and the other members of the Board have made it clear that’s not what we want to see happen.”

Throughout, however, Purslow stressed Liverpool is not close to being insolvent, saying it made record income in the year to July 2010, and will not sell players, including Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, to pay off debt.

Purslow said all the directors, including Hicks and Gillett, are committed to selling Liverpool, and a “small number of potentially interested parties,” whom he declined to name, are carrying out due diligence. Deutsche Bank, rumoured to be in refinancing talks after Hicks was apparently spotted outside their New York offices, are understood not to be involved.

Purslow hinted at the power wielded by Royal Bank of Scotland, to which Liverpool owes the bulk of the £237m, when he confirmed that the board’s reorganisation into its current structure, in which Hicks and Gillett can be outvoted, followed the owners’ rejection of a proposal by Rhône Group at Easter to pay £100m for 40% of the club. RBS is said to have pushed after that for the club to be sold.

LiverpoolDavid Connguardian.co.uk

• SOS group claims Christian Purslow was critical of owners
• Purslow admits banks demand debt reduction by £100m

The Liverpool managing director, Christian Purslow, has become embroiled in a dispute with a supporters’ group over allegations that he accused Tom Hicks and George Gillett of making “unforgiveable” promises and having no money to invest in the club, despite being ordered by the Royal Bank of Scotland to reduce Anfield’s debt by £100m before July.

Purslow denies the comments are representative of a meeting on 21 January with members of the Spirit of Shankly Supporters Union (SOS), which has led the protests against Liverpool’s co-owners. Purslow met 12 members of the group and although written notes, but no recordings, were permitted at the exchange the two parties have been unable to reach agreement on the minutes. The stand-off prompted SOS to publish its own and Purslow’s contrasting versions of the meeting today, with ­supporters invited to make their judgment on another embarrassing affair for the Anfield hierarchy.

Both sides record a frank admission from Purslow that the RBS want him to reduce Liverpool’s debt from £237m to £137m before the co-­owners’ refinancing deal comes up for renewal in July. But the Anfield official admits he “cannot guarantee” a time-frame for investment that would prevent Hicks and Gillett being forced to put the entire club up for sale.

Purslow confirmed in his version: “One of our key priorities is to reduce the debt by £100m. This is a requirement from our bankers and will allow us to look at a more flexible and longer-term refinancing with our bankers when this investment is brought in. Ideally we would like a three- or four-year refinancing deal rather than the shorter ones we have had recently. The targeted reduction in borrowings was agreed by the bank, CP [Purslow himself] and the owners when I was appointed. The £100m investment will be made by the issuance of new shares, and will not go towards anything else other than paying down the debt, reducing it to £137m. This new investment will also mean a dilution of the current ownership.”

Interpretations of the Americans’ and the RBS’s long-term positions differ wildly, however. Minutes recorded by SOS but not Purslow include an alleged admission that Hicks’ and Gillett’s £100m asking price for a 25% stake of Liverpool is deterring potential investors. “No one would invest at the level they want,” Purslow is alleged to have said. There was also a statement that, in terms of Rafael Benítez’s transfer budget: “We will only have what we make and generate. The budget will only change if we get a sugar daddy.”

Further claims in the SOS minutes include a bleak assessment of the capital available to Hicks and Gillett, despite their sale of sporting franchises in the US and Canada, allegedly given by Purslow while he attempts to convince the meeting that Liverpool will find investors.

“LFC is for sale. It will be sold,” record SOS. “The owners have to sell, they are out of money. The bank want it sold, the fans want it sold and people want to buy it. The problems on the pitch at the minute aren’t the fault of the owners. It is not simple enough to say that new owners will guarantee results on the