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The abuse on social media used to be constant.

Write anything vaguely positive about Liverpool Football Club's owners and you would get accused of taking backhanders from Boston.

One particularly irate fan used to bombard the ECHO with one particular image from Brokeback Mountain. The faces of Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger had been replaced by John W Henry's and my own.

If you weren't advocating a change of ownership then you didn't want what was best for Liverpool apparently.

It was ridiculous and, predictably, in recent months the FSG Out Brigade have gone very quiet.

(Image: James Maloney)

In fact they must be in hibernation with the 'Liverpool are hamstrung without Zeljko Buvac crew' and the 'John Achterberg can't coach goalkeepers unit'.

With eight straight league wins and a six-point lead at the top of the Premier League table, it's difficult to find anything to moan about at Anfield right now.

Even Jordan Henderson's critics were put back in their box after his dominant performance against Newcastle on Boxing Day.

This hasn't happened by chance. Liverpool 's current place at the summit of English football isn't a freak occurrence.

For FSG, this is the result of years spent laying the foundations since they completed their £300million takeover of the Reds in October 2010.

“We’re here to win and we’ll do whatever is necessary,” said Henry when he first emerged from the London offices of law firm Slaughter & May as Liverpool's principal owner.

(Image: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

A sense of impatience among the fanbase has been understandable at times over the past eight years. There have been false dawns and some agonising near misses.

Mistakes have been made along the way and FSG have had to change their approach. The transfer strategy has shifted from investing in potential to buying proven talent.

Many FSG dissenters will tell you that all they ever wanted was for Liverpool to spend big in the transfer market and that they have been proved right with the impact of signings like Virgil van Dijk, Alisson Becker, Naby Keita and Fabinho.

But that ignores the fact that to get to that position FSG had to put the Reds in a financial position where they could actually afford to compete for the biggest names. The club also needed an elite manager with the pulling power to attract the best.

It's not rocket science. The owners inherited an absolute mess and needed time to turn things around.

FSG made it clear from the off that Liverpool would have to live within its means and it would be a case of building up the club rather than simply throwing cash at it.

The Reds' total annual revenues virtually doubled from £184million in 2011 to £364million for the financial year to May 2017. Hefty losses have been turned into healthy profits.

When the next set of accounts come out in March the picture will be even brighter. The previous set of figures covered a season without European football.

Since then Liverpool have reached the Champions League final and cemented their place among Europe's elite by qualifying for the knockout stages once again.

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They have also taken giant strides forward commercially with a host of new sponsorship deals across the globe.

Matchday revenues have been bolstered by Anfield's impressive new Main Stand – part of a £200million investment in the club's infrastructure which is continuing with the building of the new training ground at Kirkby.

But arguably their biggest achievement to date was appointing a world-class manager in Jurgen Klopp , who has proved to be the perfect fit and has galvanised the dressing room and the fanbase alike.

FSG have backed him to the hilt and delivered Klopp's top targets. They have put in place a structure that works with Klopp valuing the input of two shrewd operators in sporting director Michael Edwards and FSG president Mike Gordon.

Liverpool have bought well and sold even better. When you consider the quality of the squad now to the one Klopp inherited, it's remarkable that his net spend is only £126million.

The table-topping Reds boast the third youngest starting XI in the Premier League and have all their key personnel on long-term contracts.

No wonder FSG recently dismissed talk about them preparing to sell Liverpool for £1.5billion as “unfounded speculation”.

Yes, buying the Reds has been a fantastic investment for them. But if they were only concerned with making a quick buck they would have cashed in their chips long ago.

Glory was always the target and everything is now in place to achieve exactly that.