Monday, October 10, 2011

Reina: Ex-owners blocked move


Pepe Reina has revealed he was "depressed" at Liverpool under the previous owners and was refused the chance to speak to Arsenal because he was needed as "a bargaining chip" in the sale of the club. Reina, 29, signed for Liverpool in 2005 and enjoyed success in his early years at the...
club as he won the 2006 FA Cup and a runner-up medal in the 2007 Champions League, but things began to fall apart as the ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett turned sour. When Arsenal made a £20 million bid in 2010, Reina - returning after the World Cup success with Spain to find a club in turmoil - was considering his options. "I went from elation one minute to depression the next as the realisation dawned that Liverpool were going nowhere fast," he wrote in Pepe: My Autobiography. "When I signed my contract in April 2010 I hoped that better times were just around the corner, a feeling that was fuelled by the promises of improvement from people at the club.

Reina made public his belief that Hicks and Gillett needed to leave for the good of the club and he believes Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher could have backed that view to help force the sale. "I was probably one of the loudest objectors because I believed it was important the supporters knew I was with them," he wrote. "All I wanted the owners to do was sell up to people who could take the club forward, so I said so. "The way I saw it, Stevie and Carra are the two principle members of our squad, the ones who the people love and if they had said something maybe it would have put Hicks and Gillett under real pressure. But in their view, it was more important to try to keep things as normal as possible."

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