Voice of the Echo: Hicks and Gillett must leave Liverpool FC now

Therefore, the message today to American co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett is blunt, passionate, and heartfelt.

For God's sake, get out of a wonderful, treasured football club which so many of our readers, plus millions more around the world, love and cherish so deeply.

And get out now - before you kill their beloved Liverpool FC.

No more time can be wasted. No more words can be said or spun.

Because right now one of the world's greatest and most successful football clubs is facing a grave financial and operational crisis this summer.

And, unless things change radically and fast, Liverpool faces falling from the pedestal which the late, great Bill Shankly first placed it upon in the 1960s.

It's a revered place where men like Paisley, Fagan, Dalglish, Houllier and Benitez have sought for decades to continue to hoist the Reds.

But with £40m a year spilling out of Anfield every year in interest payments to service the disgusting debts two brazen businessmen reversed into Liverpool FC, there is no prospect of that lofty position being maintained any longer.

Hindsight shows that previous owner David Moores, ex-chief executive Rick Parry and the rest of the then Reds board - for all the pressures they were under to keep the Reds competitive - clearly made the biggest mistake in Anfield history when they agreed the sale to Hicks and Gillett.

Because the Hicks and Gillett regime has been a shameful, unedifying catastrophe for Liverpool Football Club.

They broke their promises 'not do do a Glazer' and saddled Liverpool with massive bank loans the club cannot bear - just to pay for their greed and their ruthless desire to sell at a hefty profit one day.

They promised a stadium they have never delivered.

And most cruelly ironic of all, they promised to be good custodians of a club they have now near-ruined.

Today their own selfish, avaricious dreams lie in near tatters too - their partnership of chance and convenience broken beyond repair and with it the harmony and professionalism for which Liverpool FC was once renowned.

The only good news from them came a few weeks ago when they formally admitted that the Reds were up for sale.

Every Kopite prays they mean it - and they will now offload the Reds to fit and proper owners who can begin to repair the terrible financial damage they have wreaked upon Liverpool FC.

The Echo calls upon the Americans now to realise their unsavoury hopes of making mega-millons in profit are dashed - and urges them to sell the club at a realistic price before another day is wasted.

As it stands, weary Reds fans are deeply worried about the future of the club they worship and support like no other supporters in the world.

They desperately fear players like Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres - brilliant talents who love Liverpool to their core and who fit the Anfield culture and character so clearly - may feel the need to abandon ship.

They fear a manager, who for all his critics and his mistakes many still admire, will have nothing but buttons to spend on new players this summer after a season of so much disappointment and despair.

It has all got to stop. And stop now.

Because if this drift of despair goes on any longer, it could stop the heart of a football club known worldwide for the size of that heart; for its brilliance and its unrivalled, precious history.

Those magnificent Liverpool fans have protested so many times and tried so hard in the past three years to their enormous credit to broker change.

But their patience is more than wearing thin.

It is utterly exhausted - and understandably, rightly so.

There is still a chance for Liverpool to find a safe shore and recover. The club's potential - even now in Anfield's darkest hour - is too big for even men like Hicks and Gillett to totally destroy.

But it is a slim chance and today a last chance.

As soon as transitional chairman Martin Broughton, managing director Christian Purslow and the rest of the Reds management team find a decent new investor whom they and the Kop can trust, then the Americans must allow them in.

Hicks and Gillett have to get on with it and get out - and go well before another ball is kicked again at Anfield.

They know it. We know it.

And every Liverpool fan has long since known it.

Their time is up.