Liverpool FC Sponsers: A good deal?

Pity poor Standard Chartered the investment bank that sponsors Liverpool FC. At the time, the deal set a new benchmark for top-flight football sponsorships and success seemed assured.
A year later, and the deal is looking like a disaster: The club is engaged in a civil war with American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett; the team crashed out of the League Cup to lowly Northampton Town and have struggled in the Premiership this season. Technically, Standard Chartered have hitched their flag to a club that’s fighting relegation to the second rung of English professional football (although that fate remains unlikely).
Worse, fans have started selling protest shirts with “Standards Corrupted” on the chest and the bank’s logo — two intertwined ropes — represented as snakes.

None of this is Standard Chartered’s fault, of course; it’s merely the sponsor.