Here to win! NESV complete £300m Liverpool takeover and promise to make them kings of Europe

By Ian Ladyman for the Daily Mail and Matt Lawton for the Daily Mail
Updated: 12:25 EDT, 16 October 2010

Liverpool's new owner John W Henry will travel to Merseyside to meet manager Roy Hodgson and his players on Saturday and tell them: I’m here to win the Premier League.

Another day of twists and high drama in the battle for Liverpool ownership ended at 4.30pm on Friday when Henry’s American company New England Sports Ventures paid the £300million needed to wrestle control from the discredited Texan duo of Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

On Friday night Henry immediately convened an emergency board meeting in the London offices of Liverpool’s solicitors Slaughter & May to discuss the way forward for a club who are third from the bottom of the Barclays Premier League ahead of Sunday's Merseyside derby at Everton.

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The Boston Red Sox owner briefly addressed the gathered media, saying: ‘We are not going to say what we are going to do. But we are here to win.’

It is understood Henry will head to Liverpool’s training ground, where he is expected to address the club’s players this morning and meet manager Hodgson, who earlier in the day pleaded publicly for time to turn his team’s season around.

Henry talked of his new acquisition to the media gathered outside Slaughter & May, adding: ‘We have a history of winning and we will do whatever it takes. I am proud and humbled to be here and we have a lot of work to do.

Relief: Cole (right) and Gerrard raise a smile on the day Liverpool changed hands

‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to have finally done this deal. I have no idea about how much the deal is worth as at the moment I can hardly tell you what day it is.’

After a day that saw a final, desperate bid from Hicks and Gillett to thwart the deal fail, Liverpool’s creditors, the Royal Bank of Scotland, signalled they had received the £237m owed to them late in the afternoon.

Henry spoke only briefly to say that he won’t be present at Sunday's derby game — preferring to attend a home game at Anfield first — and stopped short of making any firm promises about how much he will spend on players or when he will commit the club to a new stadium.

He added: ‘It is too early to say what we are going to do. We are not here with a lot to say but we will be doing a lot of listening. We have a lot to learn but our actions will speak for themselves.’

Henry confirmed he had not borrowed to complete the deal. He was flanked by chairman Martin Broughton and chief executive Christian Purslow, who between them saw off the challenges of Hicks and Gillett in the courts this week. Broughton will remain as chairman in the short term but, having been appointed by RBS merely to arrange a sale, it is thought unlikely the chairman of British Airways will be asked to extend his involvement with the club.

He was cheered by Liverpool fans in London on Friday, and said: ‘Every football fan knows that the most nerve-wracking way of winning a match is by penalties. But the important thing is we have won and we have got the right result. I will stay on as chairman in a transitional role as the new owner decides how he wants to run the club.’

Earlier in the day, manager Hodgson was asked questions about his future as he looks to beat Everton and bring relief to a side who have won once in the Premier League this season.

He said: ‘It’s a sad day for everything if, after a bad start of six or seven games, people think the solution is to find someone else with a magic wand. We all know a magic wand solution doesn’t exist.

‘I would be very disappointed if, after such a short time to do the job, people decided they wanted to get someone else in. I know I can turn the situation around. But I will have to be given support and I will have to be given the patience to do it.

'I have a three-year contract. If someone wants to get rid of me, presumably they would have to pay it up.’

Centre of attention: The tug of war for Liverpool has been big news on Merseyside and beyond

Hicks and Gillett agreed at 7am Texas time on Friday (1pm UK) to a High Court order to drop a restraining order that had been blocking the deal.

However, sources said on Friday night news that the former owners were trying to raise finance through the US hedge fund Mill Financial to pay off RBS had left Henry ‘a little twitchy’ until it emerged they would have been in breach of an agreement made with RBS in April.

Battle: Hicks (left) is not going quietly

Sources revealed the strain of the last few days. One told of a bad-tempered board meeting involving Hicks and Gillett on conference call on Wednesday while another described the frantic activity as being ‘like a farce’ with ‘people running from room to room’.

Henry made his first attempt to buy the club after a board meeting on October 5 and he reaffirmed his commitment during Wednesday’s gathering, when he flew over from Boston.

Hicks and Gillett had talked of suing Purslow, Broughton and RBS for $1.6billion, claiming they had sold the club too cheaply, but they gave up that claim.

Liverpool chief executive Purslow said: ‘NESV have cleared us of all the debts which, frankly, shouldn’t have been on the club in the first place.

'They’ve done so in a way which leads me to believe they will learn the lessons of the past and approach the challenge of owning Liverpool Football Club in a way which I think our fans will judge over time and which I’m optimistic will prove to be a very positive improvement on what we’ve been through.

'Our club has been transformed financially this afternoon.’