AMERICAN FOOTBALL

Liverpool's embattled owners may have to slash up to 20 per cent from the asking price for the club if they want to sell, even though investors are back in the football market.

Keith Harris, the influential executive chairman of Seymour Pierce, the investment bank, predicted yesterday that the new economy after the banking meltdown meant a radical revaluation of clubs up for sale.

George Gillett Jr and Tom Hicks, Liverpool's American - and frequently warring - owners, put the club on the market last year but failed to achieve a sale, with an asking price of about £ 500million. But the relaxation among banks anticipating an end to the credit crisis may mean that they could buy themselves some breathing space by successfully renegotiating their £ 350million debt, which is due for repayment in July to the Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia, according to Harris.

He said that the first green shoots of recovery are poking through the mire of the football economy. His phone is ringing with calls from buyers based as far apart as "leafy Buckinghamshire" to the Middle East, as the economy puts it behind what he described as "shocking three months at the end of last year when there was no interest in football or anything else. It was disastrous. "

But the days of the leveraged deals that allowed Malcolm Glazer to buy Manchester United by purchasing debt piling his back on the club, and the high-risk strategy of Hicks and Gillett, are probably over.

"It is not just football that applies to, but just about everything," Harris said. "Banks are either incapable or unwilling to lend money on a highly leveraged basis. Instead, we are now looking at institutions, corporations or individuals who have disposal cash. There is a cocktail of potential owners - a sheikh, an industrialist, a financier, every kind of buyer.

"There is huge interest in both the Premier League and the Championship. The world is feeling better, which means a more encouraging environment for investing. Football is not there yet, but it is much brighter. There is some renewed interest now. "

Harris also welcomed moves this week by Premier League executives to address the issues of massive debt and financial losses, which are an embarrassing to counterbalance the league's huge success.

"This is a business that takes in a couple of billion and still loses money - overall there is something wrong with that," he said. "One thing you can avoid is having such a debt burden that it drives you crazy on a day-to-day basis."

But Harris told the Soccerex London Forum at Wembley Stadium yesterday that he did not believe in government regulation, after criticisms of football's governance by Andy Burnham, the Sports Secretary.