Saturday's clash with Nottingham Forest will be a momentous occasion for numerous reasons. There will be home debuts for Jérémy Jacquet, Ronald Araújo and Víctor Muñoz, while Andoni Iraola will take charge of Liverpool in a competitive fixture at Anfield for the very first time.
Meantime, there will also be a fresh face up in the board room. Earlier this month, it was confirmed that 1892 Holdings have purchased a minority stake in Liverpool from FSG, described as a "strategic minority investment". It is believed to be a 38% stake, which is a sizeable amount.
The three most important figures in this takeover are Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Amit Bhatia who, while the least well-known of the trio, might just be the most important. The British-Indian businessman was on Queens Park Rangers' board for almost two decades, before resigning earlier this summer to make him eligible to work for Liverpool.
His expirence in professional English football should reassure fans that they are not in for a Clearlake Capital situation, with Chelsea's owners seemingly having no idea what they were doing upon arrival in 2022. It's difficult to know if they have any idea even now. Well, for the first time since this £2 billion investment, Bhatia will be in attendance at a Liverpool match on Saturday.
Ahead of the clash with Forest, he spoke to LFCTV to outline what his role at Liverpool will be, as well as his hopes and aspirations:
"I think it’s important to be very clear that this club remains under the ownership of FSG. FSG are the decision-makers... in any way that they think that we can add value for the betterment of the football club, is how we will make ourselves available at all times. "Amit Bhatia
Fenway Sports Group, led by John W. Henry and Tom Werner, have owned pretty much all of Liverpool since 2010, so relinquishing over a third of shares is a big change. This has led to many experts forecasting that, in the next two or three years, 1892 Holdings will launch a full takeover.
While not directly, Bhatia also addressed this too:
"We believe that the potential for the football club is still vast... hopefully if everything goes well, our association with the club will also be for a very, very long period of time... we’re very excited to see what the future holds for us in that regard."Amit Bhatia
Bhatia adds that it "feels surreal" and is a "huge privilege and a huge honour" to be apart of "the greatest football club in the world". It remains to be seen how things will pan out at ownership level for Liverpool, but Bhatia attending a first game could signal a significant change down the line.
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