So who will you blame when Liverpool fail to win the championship for the twentieth season running? We know who George Gillett Jr will be pointing the finger at.

“If it’s not getting better, it’s not because of Gillett and Hicks — it’s the manager, the scouting,” he said. So there you have it; Rafael Benítez and his staff nominated by the club’s co-owner to carry the can should the season end in failure.

The circumstances in which Gillett passed the buck are perhaps as notable as the words themselves, and tell you everything about the dysfunction that exists at Liverpool. Instead of a club striding forward, Anfield is a place where everyone is already preparing their excuses should it go wrong (again).

When a group of protesting fans from the Spirit of Shankly group pursued Gillett from the Melwood training ground to the club’s academy at Kirkby on September 26, the American invited one of them inside for an exchange of views. He expected it to be a private chat, but The Times has obtained a transcript.

Taken aback by the belligerence of the interrogation — “let’s try and have you take your attitude out of these questions,” he says at one point — Gillett launched into a feisty defence of his emotional and financial investment.

Among his claims were that: “The club is in extraordinarily good financial condition. Far better than United, Chelsea or Arsenal.” That Liverpool “are not falling behind” despite the long delays in building the new stadium. “I can’t speak for Hicks but I would love to build a new stadium as soon as the markets allow ... if we could figure how to do it I would have done it yesterday.”

That he and Hicks have contributed £128 million for player purchases on top of the income from sales which has all been given to the manager, including the £30 million for Xabi Alonso.

“We put that back in, we didn’t take it out, we didn’t do like Man U did,” he said. “They took all the money they got from player sales and they owed so much money they had to use it to pay down the debt. We didn’t do that.”

And that there is not a £20 million annual limit on purchases. “It’s not a cap, it’s a goal, a programme for spending,” he said. “There was plenty of money, so any complaints you have, you should take a look at the ins and outs. Whether you see the value is a different issue.”

Gillett has taken so much abuse that he rides around Liverpool with personal security but he will hope that his words might sway some of those who have campaigned so vociferously against him. He talks of the “vitriol, suspicion, calling me a liar on half a dozen different counts” not just taking a toll on him but the club’s chances of fresh investment. “They say, ‘Why would we invest in that club?’ ”

When it comes to putting money on the table, there is no denying that Liverpool did spend more than Arsenal, Chelsea or United this summer, investing £18 million in Glen Johnson as well as the £20 million for Alberto Aquilani and a new contract for Fernando Torres.

Yet what Gillett singularly fails to address — in fact he exacerbates — is the disharmony at the club which is what truly distinguishes Liverpool from their title rivals and which continues to be the cause of off-field paralysis.

Note the way Gillett calls his co-owner “Hicks” not “Tom”. His disdain for his fellow American, even on the subject of the expenses each claim, is palpably clear. “The fact was that Hicks promised a stadium in 60 days,” Gillett insists at one point — despite mountains of evidence that it was actually he who spoke way back in February 2007 of putting “a shovel into the ground” within that period.

Gillett goes on to describe the “genius” of Benítez and yet, in the same conversation, makes it clear where the hard questions should be asked if Liverpool fall short this season.

This is how it is at Anfield where there is so much tension, and so little common ground, that everyone has someone else to blame from boardroom to manager’s office, dressing room to terraces.

The jury remains out on Benítez himself. Is he part of the problem or the solution in the matter of Liverpool falling just short of the championship?

Certainly no other top-level manager treads a more dangerously thin line between motivation and alienation of his players. Benítez may have crossed it earlier this season when after the defeat at home by Aston Villa, he came out publicly and talked of “senior players” needing to take more responsibility, to stop the rot. It was an outburst which caused consternation in the dressing room, and led to representations being made to the manager’s office.

The desire to prove him wrong can drive players on, but there are some who are tiring of Benítez’s cold-shouldering. The uncertain form of Jamie Carragher certainly suggests that he could do with some support rather than use of the stick while Johnson evidently needs some tutorials in the art of defending rather than any more blows to his fragile confidence.

This is the dynamic at Liverpool where, given the strains, it sometimes feels more of surprise that the team has remained buoyant in the top four — although that place is now under threat from Manchester City and three league defeats have raised the pressure.

A time then, to pull for the common cause. As Gillett says to his invited guest: “Why can’t we figure out a way for you guys to understand we are better off working together?”

Working in harmony is not really a subject on which he, or anyone at Anfield, should be giving lectures.

National treasures need a fitting home

The other day I saw Stanley Matthews’ boots, Diego Maradona’s shirt and the orange ball that Geoff Hurst thumped three times past the German goalkeeper. I watched the Busby Babes play their last match and heard a tuneful Kop sing “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”.

All of this, and much more, was on show at the National Football Museum (NFM). A fascinating couple of hours it was, too. Only one drawback — it is in Preston.

The location is why about as many people, roughly 100,000, annually visit the River and Rowing Museum in Henley as the NFM.

For our national sport, it could and should be at least five times that number.

That is the promise now that the museum could be moved to Manchester, where the city council has offered space in the Urbis Centre.

But what also of Lord Triesman’s promise, laid out in his grand “Vision” document last year, to develop a “Football Experience” at Wembley that can bring in 500,000 visitors annually?

There is even a huge space set aside at Wembley. Surely the national stadium should be home to the game’s treasures?