jep

Liverpool Scandal

“Anfield Gate” was to become one of the most talked about corruption cases in football history. It was to bring a once proud football club with a great history to its knees, and send shock waves through the footballing world.

It can all be traced back to 10th January 2006 when American Sports Investors Tom Hicks and George Gillett had a chance meeting with Rick Parry, the then Chief executive of Liverpool Football Club. It was no secret that Liverpool were looking for new investment, and it seemed that this meeting could well solve this problem. The Americans had been looking to invest in Soccer, and this looked like an opportunity too good to miss. Rick Parry returned to England for a meeting with Chairman David Moores, in which he sold the Americans investment ideas and plans to take the club over. The potential millions that could be invested seemed to please Moores, and after a number of meetings and phonecalls, plans were put in place for the Americans to take over at Anfield.

Finally, on the 10th April 2006, the Americans took control of Liverpool football club and announced plans for investment in the squad and a new stadium. This was the answer to all Liverpool fans dreams, finally the chance to compete with the absolute best and once again return the club to its former glories…………

………….10th June 2006 and an FA announcement stated that Liverpool Football Club was to be demoted to league 2 after being found guilty of match fixing, financial irregularities and corruption. The dream had quickly become a living nightmare. It appeared that the Americans had their own way of doing business, and it wasn’t exactly legal. What was more shocking was that the whole idea seemed to be instigated by Rick Parry. The one time FA Chief Executive had engineered a plan to ensure Liverpool “won” the FA Cup, by offering bribes to various West Ham players in exchange for poor performances. Evidence of this only came to light once the cup final was over, and the West Ham board became suspicious that one or two of their players may have taken Parry up on his offer. As it turned out only one player – Shaka Hislop – did so, and by that time he had left the club. The FA were satisfied that no-one else at West Ham was involved, and they overturned the result of the final to show West Ham as the 2006 FA Cup winners.

This investigation allowed the FA to probe further into the new owners dealings over the last 2 months, and found major financial irregularities that included money laundering, tax evasion and illegal payments which had been made to agents and other 3rd parties to ensure players would sign for Liverpool FC. Liverpool’s appeal was thrown out, and with only a few weeks till the new season the club were without any owners, and had been forced to cancel the contracts of some of its top players. This was due to the fact Parry had been involved in negotiations during their signings, and it was unclear whether they were in fact “legal” Manager Rafa Benitez resigned immediately along with a number of his staff, and a number of other players took up the option to buy out their contracts, sighting the fact that in no way could they play at League 2 level when they were at the peak of their careers.

On the 1st July 2007, previous chairman David Moores returned to the club as the new owner. His love for the club is strong, and he has vowed to rebuild the clubs tarnished reputation, and restore it to the top. The new season however, is not exactly filled with optimism. Only Kop legend Robbie “God” Fowler has stayed from the first team squad, and the rest of the team is made up of youth players from Melwood. The club is financially solvent, but with very little money to spend, the days of big spending are long gone. For example, the new stadium which was due to be completed in 2-3 years has now been scrapped, and season ticket sales have plummeted due to the scandal.

Armed with only the clubs massive stadium, big reputation and fanbase, can you help David Moores with his dream of restoring Liverpool FC back to the Premiership, and once again become Champions of Europe ??

*Please note that this story is fictional, and in no way represents the real life characters of any of the people mentioned above.

I would also like to thank “Vegas Class” for giving me this wonderful idea from his own challenge with Man Utd.

You can find the link to upload the database here Liverpoolscandal Database

Best of luck to anyone giving this a go - I feel this challenge will gives a true indication of a fallen giant, and gives you plenty of opportunity to rebuild the squad, whilst making sure it will keep you interested long term.

Hom3r

Good idea, i like the fact that your only left with 1 key player unlike the Man Utd one.

Starting it up now.

LiverpoolSimplyTheBest

Will probably give it a go when I get bored of my Ajax save.

jep

Cheers lads, let me know how you get on.

fatski

I wanna start thid, can you explain where to save it etc??

The Rafalution

best place to save it is in ...My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2007\games but you can save it anywhere you like, then when you load up FM click load game and if you saved it somewhere else just click 'Up' to browse your folders

fatski

but it is a .rar file so will it open with fm?

jep

You need to open it with Winrar, then put the folder where Rafalution said.

theboydonegood

you transfer the files into the db folder then start a new game and select the liverpool scandal database

theboydonegood

just started this, going for free transfers and loans in the hope i get promoted this year with more or less the squad i have and i still get biggish crowds enabling me to spend 'big' to get out of legaue 1 and into the championship