How Chief Exec Ian Ayre Helped Shape Rodgers’ New Look Liverpool

As any Liverpool fan can tell you, there are very few positive things that one can recall about the era of Hicks & Gillett. The three years in which Hicks & Gillett presided over the ownership of the club were marked by ceaseless internal turmoil, in which factionalism and realpolitik pushed the club towards the brink of administration, as off-field strife marred what was paradoxically one of the best Liverpool sides of a generation. To paraphrase Brian Reade (in his famous and excellent work, An Epic Swindle), Liverpool’s offices on Chapel Street were so volatile that one could leave at the close of one season and return at the start of another to a raft of all-new faces. It is an era that Liverpool fans have long sought to expunge from our history books, every remnant of it removed from the public consciousness, so that we can continue to further our status without being haunted by the memories of owners past. However, one man has quite notably remained a prominent figure within the club, and has impressed consistently enough to ascend the corporate ranks from Commercial Director, to Managing Director, and then to Chief Executive; Ian Ayre.

Headhunted in August 2007 within the first few months of Hicks & Gillett’s tenure, Litherland-born Ayre proved himself to be one of the shining lights of an otherwise barren and turbulent corporate structure in his role as Commercial Director. Boasting a background in several disciplines - from involvements in sports marketing in Asia, to the negotiation of TV deals, to a time spent in charge of Huddersfield Town - Ayre was able to maintain ‘Brand Liverpool’ in the face of increasing uncertainty and monetary restrictions. Between 2007 and 2010, Liverpool’s commercial revenue increased by 85% through a series of very lucrative deals and ventures. Key amongst these was the renegotiation of Liverpool’s official sponsor in 2009, where Ayre was able to negotiate an £81m partnership with Standard Chartered whilst also maintaining Liverpool’s previous shirt sponsors, Carlsberg, as secondary partners. Ayre was kept on in his role upon the arrival of FSG (formerly known as NESV) in October 2010, and in March 2011, was promoted to Managing Director, in co-operation with the newly appointed Damien Comolli as Director of Football.

This infrastructural shakeup, however, brought Ayre into a position of visibility and scrutiny far removed from his typical brief. Following the disastrous tenure of the self-proclaimed “Fernando Torres of Finance”, Christian Purslow, the role of Managing Director was a known and distrusted one amongst the Liverpool fanbase. Ayre, in conjunction with Comolli and manager Kenny Dalglish, was now intimately involved with the primary concern of the club’s on-field development; the identification, procurement and securement of playing staff. After a significant summer outlay of over £100m in 2011/12, Liverpool fell way wide of their objective of Champions League football, finishing a dismal 8th. Further reconstruction of the backroom followed, and Comolli and Dalglish paid for their lack of success with their jobs. However, Ayre maintained – and arguably augmented – his position in the shakeup. Why did Ayre keep his role when Comolli and Dalglish didn’t?

Damien Comolli (centre) - “Aye, lad - well I’m off, like.”

The answer comes down to one of the first primary objectives of FSG; the reduction of the wage bill. Ayre, firstly, was able to ship out several big earners that did not justify their wage value. Permanent or temporary moves were found for expensive flops such as Milan Jovanovic, Joe Cole and Alberto Aquilani, who all commanded six-figure weekly salaries, as well as less financially draining but equally as unwanted flops such as Paul Konchesky and Christian Poulsen – residual chaff from a previous era that had no place at the club. Secondly, however, Ayre was able to negotiate several key deals coming into the club that represented significant value for money. Primarily, this can be found in the deal for Luis Suarez. Despite out-scoring Lionel Messi during the previous season, Suarez was signed from under the nose of such clubs as Tottenham and Manchester United for a significantly modest fee of £22.7m (modest considering Darren Bent was bought for £18m in the very same window). However, what is most surprising about the initial deal for Suarez was that he started on a salary of only £40k a week – a salary doubled upon the end of the season nonetheless, but once again only to an equitable £80k a week. It is examples of contract negotiation like this that renewed the owners’ faith in Ayre that Comolli and Dalglish had failed to manage.

The appointment of Brendan Rodgers and the establishment of the fabled “Transfer Committee” altered Ayre’s role once more, into a de facto lead negotiator, and it is in this role where Ayre has reached the most prominence in the eyes of the fanbase and his involvement within the club. To a certain extent, the committee as a concept has experienced some teething problems, firstly with the identification of targets that satisfy both club and manager, and then with the negotiation of some particularly complex deals. Liverpool, so far, have had to deal with duplicitous agents – as seen in the attempted deals for Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Mohammed Salah – as well as deeply suspect decisions from reluctant owners – as seen in the farcical eleventh hour collapses for Willian and Yevhen Konoplyanka respectively. In these cases, the committee has taken on board several lessons, and has now demonstrated a fresh and confident approach to this summer’s business.

Coupled with attracting top class talent, however, Ayre also faced the tantrums of a wantaway Luis Suarez, whose temptation by league competitors Arsenal and subsequent public pleas for a transfer threatened to dominate and derail the summer’s objectives. During this time, Liverpool were faced with contending with rogue national interviews, complicated contractual loopholes and the looming threat of legal action that was touted by both Suarez and Arsenal, and yet Ayre – in conjunction with Rodgers – was able to convince Suarez to stay. It was Ayre’s role during this saga, allegedly, that convinced John W. Henry to promote Ayre to the role of CEO.

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In March 2014, Ayre was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Liverpool Football Club, essentially retitling his former role as Managing Director, but also establishing a firm sense of leadership over his running of the day-to-day operations of the club, both on and off the pitch. Liverpool have just come off the back of their greatest league performance in 25 years, and have attained their long-fabled return to the upper echelons of European football, and so this summer has been a significant one in terms of strengthening the squad.

It is in this summer that Ayre has truly come into his own. Throughout the tumult of the Luis Suarez saga (vol. 4), the club handled itself spectacularly, being made aware of Suarez’s intentions and conducting the requisite deal with Barcelona with a dignity and comfortability not often found with transfers of this magnitude. It only takes one look across to Manchester United and their dealings with wantaway superstars that demonstrates absolutely how wrong a deal can go. On the one hand, they lost Cristiano Ronaldo in a blaze of verbal agreements, illicit contact and an all-pervading sour taste. And on the other, they made Wayne Rooney – a spent force for both club and country – the third-highest paid player in the world at a time when moving him on would have been the best possible deal for all involved. In this respect, we cut ties amicably and succinctly.

Luis Suarez - yeah, you remember him.

On the recruitment front, it appears that Ayre has enjoyed success after success, overcoming obstacles that in summers past posed a genuine problem to the workings of the committee. A reluctant and incremental triple deal was finally made with the signings of Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren from Southampton, which represented the club stopping at nothing to achieve the signings of their primary targets, and disregarding the posturing of under-threat club owners. For example, the demands for £30m and £20m upfront for Lallana and Lovren respectively were overcome by patience, steady nerves and a true confidence that they had the player secured before they had the deal secured – a lesson learned through the pursuit of Mohammed Salah. In Lazar Markovic, Ayre was able to negotiate a bizarrely complex deal which involved navigating first-option clauses, third-party ownership and pre-existing verbal contracts, in order to secure Brendan’s number one target for the summer. Ayre was also able to exploit a loosely-tied contract in order to capture Emre Can, who by all accounts was intended to spend another year at Bayer Leverkusen before his pre-determined transition into the Bayern Munich first team. Despite the presence of a transfer clause in Can’s contract with Leverkusen for non-German clubs, Ayre still had to convince Bayern to waive their existing option in Can in order to facilitate his move to Liverpool. With a recent long-term injury to Javi Martinez, this deal would almost certainly not have happened if Ayre had not moved quickly to secure Can’s signature in June. In the case of Divock Origi, – a long-term target, it seems, of Brendan Rodgers – Ayre was able to agree a fee of £10m prior to the World Cup, in which Origi emerged onto the global stage as one of the young stars of the tournament – echoes of Man Utd’s purchase of Javier Hernandez before the 2010 World Cup. Most recently, in the case of the young Spanish youth internationals Alberto Moreno & Javier Manquillo from Sevilla and Atletico Madrid respectively. In the case of Moreno, Ayre left an initial bid of £12m on the table from May onwards, eventually capturing him in August for £8m less than Sevilla continued to demand, and once again, securing another primary target. For Manquillo – already a starter in the new-look Liverpool side – Ayre managed to arrange an unusual two-year loan for the young starlet, with a purchase option of €5m available at the end of the loan: a move that appears virtually risk-free.

What appears to be one of the canniest moves, however, is Liverpool’s surprise capture of Mario Balotelli for £16m from AC Milan. In his purchase of the mercurial forward, Ayre demonstrated great proficiency in ensuring both a deal and a contract with the potential to pay enormous dividends. To complete the deal, Ayre was obliged to negotiate with two of the shrewdest and most Machiavellian characters in world football: Adriano Galliani (Milan’s Chief Executive) and Mino Raiola – the eminence grise behind the careers of Dennis Bergkamp and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Given that Liverpool have clashed with both of these formidable characters in the past, – in deals regarding Alberto Aquilani and Henrikh Mkhitaryan – Ayre was able to liase with both and hammer out a deal. Through a combination of the player’s desire to leave, Milan’s weakening position as a global force, and an agent keen to move his client into the right environment, Ayre was able to capture Balotelli – a marketing superstar, if not the occasional PR headache – for a sum only £4m more than the cost of Shane Long. Once again, a deal with minimal risk, and the potential of great reward.

It is not just in the transfer market where Ayre has excelled. Work on the long-delayed redevelopment of Anfield has finally begun - a relief to many supporters. Similarly, Liverpool has secured a series of very lucrative partnerships that have only continued to enhance our global presence. Coupled with our pre-existing partnership with Warrior Sports (a deal which was, at the time, the largest shirt deal in English football), we have now partnered with Subway and Dunkin’ Donuts, two enormous global brands. Liverpool’s tour of the US only furthered to re-emphasise our stance in world football, where we played a host of top European clubs in several globally iconic stadiums, from Yankee Stadium to Fenway Park. We have also been able to negotiate the biggest TV deal in the country - £97m for the season - in a deal that, given his background in global sports licencing, bears the visible influence of Ayre as CEO. Coupled with our expansion into the North American market, we have also made further forays into the Asian markets with our partnership with Garuda Indonesia – the new sponsors of our training kits and official partners of the club.

A lot has been said of the dynamism of Brendan Rodgers, but it could be said that Brendan is not the only young and promising leader within Liverpool Football Club. In an era where the role of the CEO has become increasingly marginalised to become the acceptable mouthpiece of a faceless, shady ownership, Ayre is the only CEO within the top-6 who seems to have such a firm, pro-active role in the progression and evolution of the club. Liverpool, as a club, are currently moving forward like no other club in the league, with keen designs towards re-establishing our dominance on the European stage, and Ayre is in prime position to become a truly world-class Chief Executive.

@hipsterscumbag