Liverpool Football Club will sit down with supporters to discuss increasing ticket prices which have forced Anfield into a no-flag protest in recent weeks.
Following an absence of the club's usual pre-match flags and banners for the previous two home fixtures wih Stoke and Hull City, there were fears that the protest would again run into the crucial upcoming Champions League visit of FC Basle and possibly beyond if the club did not agree to meet with supporters groups Spirit of Shankly and Spion Kop 1906 .
Although on Wednesday afternoon the two supporters groups confirmed that they have “had confirmation that the club will meet with them” and that as a result “the flags will be back out” for this weekend’s Premier League match with Sunderland.
Open letter
Last week the two groups had also followed up on their protest with an open letter to club owner John W Henry.
The supporters threatened a continuation of “no surfer. No flags celebrating triumphs. No wavers celebrating club legends. No colour. No ceremony.
“This isn’t merely a withdrawal of our ‘support’. It’s because we support the team and this football club so much that we persist in protesting. No, this is something much bigger. It is a warning of what is to come. Not because the support won’t be forthcoming but because the support will be priced out.”
In a brief response on Tuesday Henry explained that the club would “be in touch soon”, and following a thread of tweets from the supporters groups a day later it appears that the meeting will take place next week.
A responsibility
The open letter continued; “as our current owners and custodians you have a responsibility, a very significant one, to preserve and safeguard the future of this football club. This does not just exist on a spreadsheet under profit and loss – it is about the future of our support and ensuring that the things that have made the club famous and successful in the past continue into the future.
“The current generation of support face being priced out, so how can we expect a future generation to take their place? It leaves us asking a worrying question – just what will our support be like in the next five, ten or fifteen years?
“It is an opportunity for us, as a football club to lead the way again. To help show how the whole of football can tackle this growing problem. If we do not begin to tackle this now, the question we will be forced to ask ourselves is: Just what is important to OUR football club – the colour of our flags or the colour of our money?”
Flags brandished by supporters in recent weeks have pointed out that the price of tickets increased from £4 in 1990 to £24 in 2000, then to £43 in 2010.
