It's 12 years since Sir Martin Broughton left his temporary role as Liverpool chairman after helping the club's new owners navigate the acquisition of the Reds and also the early months of their tenure.
Broughton, who was knighted in 2011 for his services to business, had previously served as chairman of British Airways and was recommended as the perfect candidate to hold the fort during the takeover process and early days of the Fenway Sports Group (then New England Sports Ventures) reign by Wall Street financier Michael Klein, a key man in the club being acquired by FSG from Tom Hicks and George Gillett in 2010 for £300m.
Klein knew Broughton well from their time together as co-chairmen of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, an advocacy group consisting of more than 70 corporations that focuses on trade and investment issues relating to the UK and USA. Klein, through an existing relationship with both FSG chiefs and Hicks and Gillett, presented Broughton as the best option to manage the club through the turbulence.
READ MORE: Paris Saint-Germain hand Liverpool and FSG £3.5bn sale boost
READ MORE: Mohamed Salah in line for stunning hat-trick as Gary Neville sends Liverpool warning
The appointment was only ever designed to be for the interim period, and upon Broughton's exit he was replaced by FSG's second in command Tom Werner as chairman, a role that Werner still holds.
But more than a decade on, with Werner still in situ as Liverpool chairman, Broughton's name is once again mentioned alongside the words 'Liverpool' and 'takeover'.
Earlier this year Broughton had been leading a consortium that had been in the running to acquire Chelsea after the sanctions placed upon Roman Abramovich had seen the club forcibly put up for sale.
Explaining what he felt the group could offer, Broughton told talkSPORT back in March: "I am optimistic. We've got the key ingredients for success. Personally I've been there and done it all at Liverpool. I know what I'm letting myself in for. But we've got a bid which combines a group of individuals; there's no one person in charge. All the risks around a single party owner - geopolitical like we are seeing now, financial, health, which can throw a club into confusion - don't get impacted if you've got a proper consortium. That all goes on in the background and can be sorted out. It gives stability to the club."
He added: "The people who are going to invest have no exit timeline. They are committed to keeping the club at the level it has been recently. They've all willingly gone along with it being a very fan-friendly bid and encouraged the supporters' trust to get much more involved in the process. [If] we become the legal owners, we have to remember that the emotional ownership is with the fans. You've got to involve them one way or another."
After a frenzied spate of bidding where parties interested in Chelsea were knocked out at various stages, it was the Toddy Boehly consortium with Clearlake Capital and Hansjorg Wyss as backers that won through with a £2.5bn deal concluded.
Broughton, a Chelsea fan, had been leading a group that included former chairman of the London 2012 Olympics, Lord Sebastian Coe and Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive. A major part of that particular consortia was Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE), the US firm that had ownership stakes in the Philadelphia 76ers NBA team, the New Jersey Devils NHL team and the Real Salt Lake MLS side. Josh Harris and David Blitzer both had an 18 per cent shareholding each in Crystal Palace, something they would have had to divest if the Chelsea deal would have come to fruition.
Blitzer, when speaking at the Sportico Invest in Sports conference in New York last month, where the ECHO were present, hinted at their approach if a major Premier League asset became available again.
"At the end of the day I love Crystal Palace, and people who know me well will know I love Crystal Palace," said the 53-year-old, an extremely well known and well connected figure in investment circles in the US.
"But there are a handful of teams/brands out there on a global basis, and Chelsea is one of them. The opportunity to invest in that particular situation with a very small number of people, frankly, given it was a complicated situation, we were comfortable giving that our best shot.
"We would have had to divest our interest in Crystal Palace had that come through. If that had happened it would have been a really sad day in one sense, but again back to the investment part it would have been a really interesting investment in terms of what's out there for Chelsea."
Now, months on from their unsuccessful attempt to land Chelsea, HBSE have been linked with Liverpool, with Broughton and his existing relationship with the Reds and their owners strongly linked with a role in any interest.
He may be a Chelsea supporter at heart, but it is fair to say Broughton's loyalties are divided. Speaking to the ECHO shortly before Liverpool's title win in 2020, he said: "I've been going down to Chelsea regularly for 66 years. I first went when I was seven. The allegiance is extremely strong. But you can't come into a club like Liverpool and not build an allegiance very quickly. Chelsea vs Liverpool games are very difficult. I find myself supporting two teams and I don't like it when they play each other."
In that same interview from June 2020, Broughton gave an intriguing response when asked about the prospect of FSG selling Liverpool: "This isn't meant to be alarmist, but it would be normal to be thinking of an exit strategy. I don't know any more than you do. But what I would say is, exactly the same situation is in play at Red Sox. [FSG] have got a lot of money tied up in sport.
"They have taken Red Sox from being an also-ran, tradition team to a very successful team. Every baseball club's valuation has gone up dramatically over the period of their ownership. And they've owned it a lot longer than Liverpool.
"They haven't sold it. But the same equation must be going through their heads. What's it worth? What did we buy it for? What could we get for it? Are we at the moment for selling or just happy to carry on with it? It's a capital valuation process. Ultimately you've got to realise the capital value to make a profit. To me they would always be looking at - is it the right time to sell?"
That time, it seems, has now arrived. But the burning question of who may take control at Anfield lingers.
The ECHO were informed by US financial sources earlier this month that HBSE were "mulling their options" when it came to Liverpool, assessing their position but stopping short of any formal talks. It was understood that Broughton was in their thought process should they decide to proceed.
But while Harris and Blitzer, with a combined fortune of around £7bn, may have some interest in a potential deal, another well-placed US source told the ECHO that the likely price point that would be required to enter into meaningful takeover talks with FSG may prove prohibitive unless there were more parties added to a bidding group, stating that it was unlikely HBSE would win out in a bidding war and that the FSG position remained that they were "testing the waters".
Little is understood to have materially changed on that front since the start of the month and the revelations of FSG's willingness to listen to offers first emerged, certainly when related to HBSE's potential interest, with the firm having also been loosely linked with Manchester United now that they have hit the market.
The simpatico relationships that already exist between FSG, HBSE and Liverpool make for an easy link, although it is one where the interest is thought to be more than just erroneous gossip. Klein, such a key cog in the transition from Hicks and Gillett to FSG, was involved in the HBSE/Broughton bid for Chelsea earlier this year and is a figure that has remained close to HBSE.
For Broughton, 12 years on from him helping Liverpool navigate their way through some of the choppiest waters, his name being linked with a return would see the whole story go full circle from where it was back in 2010. But with HBSE just mulling options and many other interested parties with deeper pockets eyeing up whether a play for Liverpool in the current climate makes sense, and if the decisions of both US ownership groups of FSG and the Glazers to try and exit the Premier League should be seen as a pre-cursor to a something of a decline after the failure of Project Big Picture and the European Super League to get off the ground, a return for Broughton and arrival of HBSE, as sources have said, seems unlikely.
READ NEXT:
- Liverpool signing fell out with manager, got into fights and was 'sacked for playing poker'
-
Liverpool sale: 12 potential buyers as FSG 'enter talks' with Saudis and Qataris
-
'Become robotic' - World Cup icon sends scathing Trent Alexander-Arnold message
-
Big Liverpool Forum: Your views on FSG sale, Jurgen Klopp and transfers
