The glossy brochure that Fenway Sports Group are able to present for interested investors in Liverpool is surely an intriguing one.
Despite the bumpy nature of this particular season on the pitch, where a place in the top four is now firmly established as the overriding objective, the Reds appear to be a club in rude health.
Liverpool train at one of the best facilities in European football at the AXA Centre in Kirkby, with the £50m base barely two years old. From August, a brand new Anfield Road stand will help usher in the biggest crowds of the Premier League era of up to 61,000, and the club retain one of the most loyal, passionate and sprawling fanbases of any sports team on the planet.
BREAKING: Liverpool hit record revenue as £107m surge confirmed in new club accounts
ANALYSIS: Liverpool accounts show £545m challenge that gives the game away for FSG
On the pitch, one of the most gifted managers of his generation, in Jurgen Klopp, is less than a year into a brand new contract that will keep him and his staff in place until 2027, while the playing squad still houses a core of elite operators who have won every top-level trophy available to them between 2019 and 2022.
A relatively sharp rise from seventh to third in the recently-published Deloitte Money League also paints the picture of a club with its house firmly in order off the pitch.
Overtaking storied rivals Manchester United for the first time in the Money League's 26 editions, the Reds were one of only five to report more than €100m (£88m) in matchday revenue, which was aided by their third Champions League final appearance since 2018 back in May's fixture with Real Madrid at the Stade de France.
Only the Spanish giants and Manchester City posted bigger numbers than Liverpool and only those top three earned over €700m.
If FSG's job is to showcase Liverpool as attractive an asset as possible for would-be investors, then it is surely not a hard one for the Boston-based owners to get right for the 19-time champions of England.
But still, even if all the above aspects were likely included in the sale presentation that was produced to seriously interested parties in recent months by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two major US banks instructed to act on FSG's behalf, there appears to have been little movement on the surface.
"I know there has been a lot of conversation and quotes about LFC (Liverpool Football Club), but I keep to the facts: we merely formalized an ongoing process," Liverpool's principal owner, John W Henry told the Boston Sports Journal last week.
"Will we be in England forever? No. Are we selling LFC? No. Are we talking with investors about LFC? Yes. Will something happen there? I believe so, but it won't be a sale. Have we sold anything in the past 20+ years?"
The most pertinent point of Henry's statement was that Liverpool are now, effectively, no longer for sale after FSG had privately tried to assess their options around a full-scale departure after 13 years as owners. The open secret of their willingness to listen to the right offers where investment is concerned remains in play, however.
So the news that the club has returned a profit for the first time since 2019 this week will be further evidence to display to those who are mulling over buying in.
In figures that were released on Tuesday morning, the club has grown revenues by £107m, with a pre-tax profit of £7.5m. The return of supporters back to Anfield in full for the 2021/22 campaign helped see a leap of £83m from the year previous when the Reds, like every other team in world football, were forced to exist behind closed doors.
The commercial revenue of the operation continues to thrive on Merseyside with a £29m rise up to £247m. A record-breaking new £50m-a-year agreement with shirt sponsors Standard Chartered, which will begin before the start of next season, will see that figure increase further down the road, but it is the current terms with kit suppliers Nike that is helping that area of the business flourish.
Liverpool's managing director Andy Hughes said: “Some of the numbers in these latest accounts look slightly skewed as a result of the previous reporting period being impacted by the global pandemic.
"However, the underlying strength of our financial position remains strong and we continue to operate a sustainable club which is our main objective from a financial perspective. It was really great having supporters back at Anfield and returning to some sort of normality after a really challenging period for everyone.
“For our men’s team to play the maximum 63 games in this reported season is an incredible achievement and winning more trophies is exactly what we continue to strive for. Our women’s team also had success by gaining promotion to the WSL was a great achievement and exactly where we need them to be competing.
“The cost of running a football club does continue to rise. But we maintain our position of growing this club with significant investment with new and existing players signing contracts and the construction of the new Anfield Road Stand which we look forward to coming on stream in the summer. In the last five years we have invested over £250m in infrastructure and created world-class facilities for our players, staff and supporters.
“What’s important now is to finish this season as strong as possible, both on and off the pitch, while we continue to manage costs and explore opportunities for growth in our commercial operations so we can continue to reinvest revenues in players and infrastructure.”
But if the figures published on Tuesday show a football club that is financially robust and able to stand on its own two feet without the bankrolling of a billionaire benefactor, it is being privately recognised that it is becoming harder to compete at the cutting edge of the game in the manner that FSG have always enforced.
The sums in football have dramatically increased in the last five years and it is understood that operating costs at Anfield have gone up by a whopping 40%. Senior sources put that upturn down to wage costs, labour-based contracts, utilities and rates, while there has been a 100% increase in utility bills during that time.
Over the past five years, administrative expenses have increased by 70% from £320m to £545m, while staff costs have gone up by as much as 76% to an eye-watering £366m.
For the past few years, Liverpool have been made to absorb one of the biggest wage bills in football and a £54m rise was the outcome of deals for the likes of Ibrahima Konate, Luis Diaz and Fabio Carvalho alongside new contracts for as many as 22 players.
The summer of 2021 was integral for Liverpool in their efforts to retain their top-tier talent as Alisson Becker, Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Fabinho, Jordan Henderson and Andy Robertson all penned new terms.
The most costly of all those contracts, however, was the record-breaking one handed to Mohamed Salah in the summer of 2022, when the Egypt star ended months of increasingly intense speculation by signing on until 2025 on a deal worth around £350,000 a week. That biggest deal ever penned for the Reds will only see the wages swell further in next year's accounts as a result.
It's why Henry has been so quietly determined behind the scenes to bring in fresh capital at Anfield. It is getting harder and harder for a self-sustainable club to challenge at the very top, particularly when state-ownership is seemingly becoming more common in English football.
Liverpool's problem, for all the aforementioned virtues, is that their owners are looking for an injection of funds at a time when so many others have a 'for sale sign' on their emblem. Manchester United remain up for grabs, with talks of Qatar-based bids, while Tottenham Hotspur have also been linked with a takeover in recent weeks.
This uncertainty follows on from the purchases of both Newcastle United and Chelsea, by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and Todd Boehly's Clearlake Capital consortium respectively, inside the last 18 months.
But perhaps the one thing FSG are able to point toward is the fact that their desire for capital is to simply rebuild the team as opposed to the need to commit hundreds of millions to infrastructure? Everything else is neatly in place at Liverpool.
It's getting tougher at the top but as the worldwide search goes on for FSG, the latest figures do at least show that all is well on Merseyside. As a result, the promise of on-field investment is surely the only real one the Americans need to hear from anyone who may eventually be welcomed aboard.
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