'New owners will not saddle club with debt'

Liverpool's next owners will not be allowed to saddle the club with debt, new chairman Martin Broughton has said.

Speaking following confirmation of his appointment and the owners' intention to sell, first revealed by Telegraph Sport a week ago, Broughton said the club were seeking "the right sort of owners". He added that a heavily-leveraged takeover that relied on club revenue to service interest payments was unlikely to succeed.

Such takeovers have proved hugely unpopular with supporters at Anfield, where the club have £237 million of loans, and at Old Trafford, where the Glazers' debt runs to £716 million.

Broughton is confident that a deal can be done before the end of the year and he asked supporters to be patient. While the search continues, Broughton said that Rafael Benítez would stay in charge and be granted a transfer fund for the summer. He also insisted that there was no pressure to sell Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard.

"Whoever comes in has to be the right owner and the board will ensure that we make the right decision," he said. "We will make it very clear what the buyer needs to do from the point of view of the supporters, and Tom Hicks and George Gillett will make clear to us what they are looking for in terms of price.

"We will look at every offer that comes in for the club. We are ruling nothing out, but when you look at what we have said we want from a buyer it is very different [from someone with a 100 per cent leveraged bid]. That sort of bid is not going to be particularly attractive and we would need to be persuaded that it was in the best interests of the club.

"Some debt is inevitable, given the plans for a new stadium, and it would be foolish to run a club like Liverpool with no debt. You would be mismanaging the balance sheet, but there is a major difference between some debt and 100 per cent debt."

Broughton is to work alongside investment bank Barclays Capital with a view to completing the sale by the end of the year. Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia have agreed to extend a £237million financing deal until December and Broughton's confidence suggests there are interested parties in the wings.

Whether this position remains tenable depends largely on the speed of any sale. If a deal is agreed in principle by midsummer the club may be able to resist offers for their best players, but any prevarication could further destabilise a team in need of rebuilding.

Benítez, who has benefited from the regular divisions between Hicks and Gillett , welcomed Broughton's appointment yesterday and urged a quick sale. "I think it is positive to have a new person to answer your questions about issues and money and the investors," he said. "We have been talking for a while about investors but now we have one person we can talk with."

While Broughton is confident of completing a sale, he faces a challenge in balancing the search for responsible cash-rich owners capable of funding the new stadium and investment in the team, with the American's expectations on price.

Hicks and Gillett have valued the club at more than £500million, believing that the price should reflect the enhanced enterprise value of the club with a new stadium, and the value they have added through enhanced commercial operations.

This story has been reproduced from today's media. It does not necessarily represent the position of Liverpool Football Club.