Liverpool's new owners have vowed to vastly boost revenues from their global fanbase and welcomed Uefa's forthcoming financial fair-play rules as the key to transforming the club's fortunes.

John W Henry, the club's principal owner, said this week's appointment of Damien Comolli as director of football strategy was the first step in putting together a new structure that would still have Roy Hodgson at its core. "We are building an infrastructure, we're building a team," Henry said. "In Boston, we have a collegiate atmosphere and we build consensus," he added, referring to the Boston Red Sox, which New England Sports Ventures also owns, as the model.

"We don't change coaches very often. Stability is very important in an organisation. Roy has been unfairly criticised. He didn't build this team and it takes time for a new manager and a club to really click."

Henry said Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's baseball team and the inspiration for the book Moneyball and a forthcoming film of the same name, recommended Comolli for the job. Hodgson was not consulted but was "delighted" with the choice of the former Spurs director of football, Henry said.

Tom Werner, the US media executive who will shortly take over as Liverpool chairman from Martin Broughton, and Henry also admitted that redeveloping Anfield or building a new stadium would inevitably mean taking on fresh debt at a club where the borrowings of the previous owners provoked a state of open revolt.

Henry said he was confident fans would be able to distinguish between acquisition debt of the kind taken on by Tom Hicks and George Gillett and borrowing money to rebuild the stadium or finance a new one. "I don't think Arsenal fans are complaining because they used debt to build the Emirates," Henry said. "I think fans all understand that stadium debt is different to acquisition debt."

Their track record at the Red Sox, where "every dollar" of profit has been reinvested, should give fans comfort, he said.

Werner said he had recently met Liverpool city council's leader, Joe Anderson, to discuss the stadium. Werner said it was "too soon" to come to any conclusion, but conceded ground-sharing with Everton would be "enormously unpopular" with some fans and was "not our favourite way to go".

The pair spoke of their admiration for the "sustainable" Arsenal model, while Werner said there was "enormous potential" for growing commercial revenues in Asia and elsewhere.

"We consider Liverpool to have untapped potential globally and we're focused on how to increase revenues so we can compete with Man United and Arsenal and Chelsea," Werner said. "One place we've been focused on is Asia. We're making a trip there after the season ends. When I saw the support the club had in Singapore a few years ago, that's the tip of the iceberg."

He also admitted that a global footprint was even more important for Liverpool than their rivals. "We don't have the wealth London has. If we were Chelsea or Arsenal, we'd concentrate on London but we can't concentrate on Liverpool when it comes to generating the kind of revenues that will compete with other clubs."

Henry said Uefa's impending financial fair play rules, which will be introduced in 2012-13 and eventually require clubs to break even on football operations, had been a key factor in persuading NESV to buy the club. He said they would leave Liverpool much better-placed to compete with such clubs as Manchester City and Chelsea: "They are operating under the current rules. The rules are going to change."

The commodities trader, who won a bitter battle with Hicks and Gillett to take control of the club, admitted he was "upset" with suggestions that Fernando Torres and José Reina could leave in January and insisted there was money for Hodgson to spend if required. "Tell me what the opportunities are going to be in January and I'll tell you how much we're spending," he said. "I was heartened by the response and by the intelligence of these players. They really understand what Liverpool is about, perhaps more than we do. They were good discussions."

Comolli will be tasked with developing more homegrown players and bringing down the wage bill. Werner said: "There is a lot of work to be done. We feel we can do a better job bringing in more players that are homegrown and we can improve our system. It's a big job to bring in players and analyse the quality of players coming up. We are trying to bolster Roy's operation and Damien is a first step."

Henry said the size of the Anfield wage bill had shocked him, as had the power wielded by players on this side of the Atlantic. "There were a number of unpleasant surprises during our due diligence. The wage bill is high, it's going to be higher next year and we're not a young team. That was disappointing," he said.

"It's a completely different system here from what we're used to. If a player has a contract in the US, they fulfil the contract. Over here, it seems players have much more say so. We don't want players who don't want to be here. It's up to us to provide the leadership and make sure we have the right people on and off the field so that every player and every potential player wants to be there."

Henry and Werner said the statistics-based approach expounded by Beane was something they would try and import to the less ordered world of football economics.

"In the US, we're thought of as Moneyball type people in that we use statistics above everything else. Our philosophy isn't that statistics mean everything, but it's a valuable tool," said Henry. "If you can find any objective measures, you're going to use them. The problem is finding relevant data that is meaningful. That might be difficult in football."

Werner said the objective was clear: "When we arrived in Boston they hadn't won in more than 80 years. We knew that our job was to win more than one World Series. We know coming in here that since the Premier League was created we haven't won. That's what our charge is, first and foremost."