by the Guardian

The chaotic situation at Anfield sums up the state of England's elite league, where penury and prosperity go hand in hand.



Liverpool fans protest against owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett, who have burdened one of the giants of the game with massive debts.

How proud Richard Scudamore must be when he looks at the certificate, the ink on its citation barely dry, telling him that the Premier League has just won a Queen's Award for Enterprise, granted to organisations which distinguish themselves in one or more of the fields of "international trade, innovation or sustainable development". The plight of Portsmouth FC suggests that sustainable development was probably not the relevant category here.

Innovation? Such an award would require firmer evidence than a few fireworks and a hand-shaking ceremony before even the most humdrum match. So, not surprisingly, given the Premier League's unashamedly mercenary imperatives, international trade turns out to be the heading under which the award was applied for and granted, specifically the generation of hundreds of millions of pounds a year in worldwide broadcasting rights.

Such apparent prosperity, however, flies in the face of the known facts. In Portsmouth, local butchers, bakers and candlestick makers are being forced to queue up behind the super-agents to get their money. Yesterday Hull City faced the prospect of administration after two years at the top. And Burnley's chairman seems to have begun budgeting for relegation even before his team had kicked a ball in the top flight, a move which is both laudably prudent and a terrible indictment of the system.

Yet somehow it is Liverpool, living in fear neither of administration nor relegation, who most starkly express the strange paradoxes of the Premier League. Here is a giant of English football, the proud winner of 18 league championships, seven FA Cups and five European Cups, flashing its knickers by the kerbside in the hope of persuading someone to meet the imminent repayments on an injudiciously incurred £270m debt.

To make it worse, the club's shirt is being worn by a disintegrating team holding out for a sniff of glory only in a competition for Europe's also-rans, and threatened by the loss of the manager and star players this summer. If Rafael Benítez departs, either to Juventus or Real Madrid, then he may be followed out of the door by Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano, and perhaps even by Steven Gerrard, who would surely exchange the cherished status of a one-club man for a last shot at a league title in the colours of a genuine contender.

The arrival of a certain Portuguese manager would change that situation, and much else besides. But why would José Mourinho want to join Liverpool at this stage in their history? Wherever he goes after Internazionale, he will be looking not for a glorious tradition and a huge fan-base but for the resources to enable him to continue to win trophies at his customary rate.

Short of a miracle, that will not be on offer at Anfield. Having failed to improve the club in any respect since their arrival three years ago, Tom Hicks and George Gillett recently appointed Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, to spend one day a week in the same role at Liverpool, with the sole task of finding a buyer for the club, something that they and their chief executive, Christian Purslow, have failed to achieve.

In this environment, to put up a For Sale sign outside the house is to admit that no realistic buyers have emerged and that there are none on the horizon. And why should there be? It would take the owners of a bottomless purse to meet the sort of terms demanded by Hicks and Gillett, and there is only one of those, currently at the disposal of Manchester City. How clever of the rulers of Abu Dhabi to spot that they could buy a club whose new stadium has already been paid for by the people of its home city rather than having to fork out for such an expensive necessity themselves.

For all the Premier League's international success, these are the matters that should be uppermost in Scudamore's thoughts. A league in which shame, humiliation and penury are as prominent as glory, popularity and prosperity is nothing of which to be so proud.