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Tom Werner insists Fenway Sports Group remain fully committed to taking Liverpool forward as he reiterated: “This club is not for sale.”

The Reds chairman dismissed recent speculation that the American owners have been holding talks over a potential £1billion takeover by a Chinese consortium.

“I have said repeatedly this club is not for sale,” Werner said.

“I don’t know how many more times I can say it. I am saying it today and I am emphatic about it and that is all I can say.”

Werner is looking to the future with relish following the official opening of Anfield’s new Main Stand on Friday. He believes the facility, which is expected to generate an extra £25million per year, will help Liverpool in their quest to compete for silverware.

The stadium dilemma was an issue FSG inherited when they bought the club six years ago and Werner is proud of what’s been achieved in redeveloping Anfield. He will take his seat in the directors box for Saturday’s clash with Leicester City, alongside fellow FSG chiefs John W Henry and Mike Gordon.

“We recognised this was a challenge not just for us but our fans and for us to compete at the highest level we needed to come up with a stadium solution,” Werner said.

“We felt it was important to try and improve on the extraordinary facility that is here rather than start from scratch. There were a lot of challenges and we had a lot of plans that we had to tear up.

“The challenge of having to acquire every single property and make financial arrangements with every single owner - that is a prodigious challenge but we obviously knew it was a predicate to expanding the Main Stand.

“I think eventually you can see when you walk around, this only improves the atmosphere at Anfield which is so special. I am very proud that we did it.

“We did it with a lot of support from Mayor (Joe) Anderson and Liverpool City Council and Your Housing Group. This is not really about us and our ownership, it is about our supporters.

“I am so excited for the game. As everyone knows Anfield has been a fortress and a place where people have feared to play. When Leicester come I want them to be intimidated and I feel these extra 8,500 seats will create an even more special atmosphere.”

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Liverpool chief executive and lifelong fan Ian Ayre admits there were times when he doubted whether they would achieve their dream of redeveloping the stadium.

“I’ve been here a long time so there were a few days when I thought it would never come,” Ayre said.

“It’s a great testament to the owners to have the vision and then empower us to deliver that. When we went through this, one of the things that helped deliver this against a lot of obstacles was being realistic at each stage.

“We never said we were building it until we had certainty. We needed the right funding model, the right economic model, the right planning permission, the acquisition of all the houses. At each stage we never promised something we couldn’t deliver.

“Once we started the building process, it was really about delivering. I just saw a video inside of this summer when the roof was taken off and the tunnel was moved. They were the sleepless nights, when you just couldn’t imagine today and it being finished only two or three months later. It’s a fantastic addition to what is already a fantastic stadium.”