Memories, like the corners of my mind
Misty, water colored memories, of the way we were.
Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind,
Smiles we gave to one another, for the way we were.
Can it be that it was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me would we… could we…?

I have no idea what made me think of those lyrics. I don’t own a copy of the song. It’s not on my iPod.
I recognize it’s only marginally less gay, (not that there’s anything wrong with being gay if that’s your thing, its just not my bag) in a football forum, than quoting lyrics to say, a Judy Garland song.
Its could be a slippery slope that leads to me comparing Kenny to “the very model of a modern major general”

But I think there’s an odd aspect to being a Liverpool fan, that is inescapably tied to memories…
…and maybe that’s been even heightened due to the fact that Kenny Dalglish being Liverpool manager, is a constant reminder of something none of us really need reminding of…
… just how very, very good the 80s Liverpool F.C. was…
… and the inevitable comparisons that brings.

It was always going to happen…
… unfair comparisons of today’s LFC to 1980’s LFC
… unfair comparisons of today’s LFC players to 1980’s players
… unfair comparisons of today’s LFC ownership/board to 1980’s ownership/board
… unfair comparisons of today’s Kenny to 1980’s Kenny

…and it is unfair… simply because 2012 is NOT 1980.

The league is different… not just structurally and financially, but from 3 points for a win, to the no back pass rule.
Our prominence in the league is different.
The media coverage of it all is different.

Some suggest that we must win the Premier League because we haven’t won it for 20 years.
Some suggest we must win the Premier League to regain our “perch”.
I get the arguments… and to some extent I even agree with them… but I want to win the Premier league, simply to win the Premier League.
Not because I’ve seen us lift a title, and want to see it again….
…. not because I haven’t seen us lift it for 20 years…
… not because it wasn’t called the Premier League the last time we won it…
…but simply coz it’s the top prize, and I want LFC to be winning prizes.

So I get it… I do.
But I don’t get how people can let that desire for the title cloud their judgment of winning cups, any cups… an egg cup with an LFC logo on it… if its there to be won… win it and get it in the cabinet.

We won an FA Cup semi-Final … we beat Everton to do it…
… and the muted response to that victory form certain sections of our fan base really shocked me.

Let’s be clear about something here.
The title is what we ALL want…
…it is a bold statement to suggest I speak for every LFC fan … but in this singular, particular instance, I can….
… there isn’t a single Liverpool fan out there… from Anfield to Anaheim, Bootle to Bombay, Crosby to Cape Town, etc. you get the idea, that does not want the title, does not treat the title as the #1 goal/target.
… but Liverpool Football club is among the most successful clubs in the world, not just because of its title haul, but because of all those shiny trophies that sit alongside the titles in what was a Trophy Room, but is now a Museum.

Think about that for a moment…
…we don’t have a trophy cabinet…
…we don’t have a trophy room…
…we have a Museum!
… a fuckin stocked full of silverware Museum!
… and its not a Museum of past successes as some would suggest.

Spurs have past successes. Everton have past successes.
Aston Villa just dropped out of some sort of Euro “top 20” clubs listing… that’s a club living on its past.

Liverpool’s successes are recent… the Treble in 2001, The Champions League in 2005, a few Carling and FA Cups sprinkled in there…. And appearances in at least a half-dozen other finals.
That is not the recent form of an unsuccessful club… of a mediocre mid-table club.

This is not about me being a better fan than anyone, but honestly… when it comes to LFC’s reputation… Sky distributed the cool-aid and a lot of our fans willingly drank of it.

We finished 7th last season and will finish somewhere between 7th and 10th this season…. And that simply isn’t good enough.
It isn’t. Period. All in agreement. End of discussion.

But how you allow that to pour clouds in your coffee (seriously? …a Carly Simon reference? WTF?) when looking at a Carling Cup already won, and an FA Cup final achieved at the expense of Everton, is something I simply do not understand.

If its simply that you’re a miserable git and want to be left alone in yer misery, so be it… but I’d much rather “look on the bright side of life”
(Life of Brian, now that’s more like it.)

There are 20 teams in the Premier League…
… only LFC already has silverware in the bag, AND the possibility to bag a 2nd.
1 of 2 teams WILL win the title, the other will end the season with nothing.
Only 1 other team has two remaining chances to win something, if they fail on both counts they finish with nothing, and LFC stand in their way of one of those chances.

We may well finish the league campaign in a very poor position, but we have hardly become some sort of insignificant mid-table team.

7th isn’t good enough… you’ll get no argument from me.
But I usually find the implication in that statement being that Kenny or anyone at LFC somehow thinks it is.
I don’t know Kenny, I’ve never met him… but I’m fairly confident in suggesting he probably thinks 7th isn’t good enough for LFC… and that he’ll be working behind the scenes to rectify things next season.
The expression on Henderson’s face at the end of the disappointing/infuriating West Brom result suggested that even a young lad from Sunderland (a real midtable team) thinks it isn’t good enough.

I know people don’t want to hear about us hitting the post 42 times this season.
I know 42 times we’ve missed scoring.
But that crossbar hit from Henderson, came back off the bar, hit the goalkeeper in the arse and actually bounced 90 degrees from the goal… it was almost physically impossible for it to do so, and yet it did.
Compare that to the shot that hit the post, then bounced in off the back of Pepe’s head.
The best team in the world can hit the post 3 times, and a proven goalscorer can miss a penalty and get knocked out of the Champions League… sometimes luck fucks you in one game… sometimes it fucks you over a season.

There’s a lot that’s wrong with Liverpool Football Club.
I can’t escape the impression that a lot of people thought that the minute the gavel dropped on G&H, and FSG stepped in, that everything was gonna be hunky dory.
Well it wasn’t, and it isn’t, and it probably isn’t going to be for a while yet.

FSG for all their supposed good intentions are not football men. They have sought (by their own admission) information and opinion on how to proceed with LFC, and they’ve sought that information from a wide array of sources, with a varying opinion on what’s best for LFC.
They’re gonna need to filter all that and decide on the right course of action… but again, remember that these are men with no history or knowledge of the sport, let alone the club…
… last summer’s investment was 40 million not 100… player sales accounted for the other 60… sell to buy… same as it ever was (eh? Talking Heads… eh?)
… since FSG took over they sold Torres and added 10 million to it. And provided 40 million to a grab-bag of player sales. What Kenny’s (or a replacement’s) budget will be this summer is anyone’s guess, with or without Comolli.

No … this is not 1980’s Liverpool run by Peter Robinson, with a direct descendent line of Shanks to Paisley to Fagan to Kenny… all pulling in the same direction with the same goals…

…this is the LFC2K of Hicks and Gillete, of Parry and Purslow… of every man for himself, of whispers in players ears… of undermining self interests on ever shifting sands… and of Hodg, oh dear god… of Hodg…

… 2 years… well 18 months really, was never gonna be enough time to correct all that damage…
… so “good owners” and Kenny aside, mistakes have been made and mistakes are gonna be made…
… our job in all this is to remember “the way we were”…
… the highs of our climb to the top in the 60s, in the 70s, in the 80s…
… but how we stumbled in the 90s, regained our feet and then got tripped up in the late 00s…
…. and yes, we’ve run down some dead end roads in those recent times…
… but we did so on the bumpy dirt trails, the potholed roads, the washed out bridges, and in a vehicle that self inflicted a leaking radiator, a broken water pump, punctured tires, a cracked windscreen, a malfunctioning heater, the loss of power steering and a ground out gear boxes…

We have had to endure all that in recent years…
… yet all while still winning 7 trophies, competing in 4 more finals, with one left to play, which could yet take the trophy count to 8 (and can we count semi’s, coz if we can… after all, 4th is supposed to be some great achievement, so how is a CL semi-final… the last 4 in the competition, not? Then you’re adding 4 more items to the list of achievements.) …all since 2000
…all while our competitors ran their businesses on sound financial footing. (and only 2 of those competitors can point to more than 7 trophies in 12 years.)

Rose-tinted revisionist history… or a bit of perspective for “spoiled rich kids”?

We want the title, we need the title sooner rather than any later.
You’ll get no argument from me on that.
How we go about “demanding it” is where I seem to be opting for a different route.

We’ve been close a few times, and so it can seem some seasons, like we get further from it… but we’re still a top club, with a LOT to be proud of… and we will get there.

“America isn’t easy. America, is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center-stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.”

…that’s from the movie The American President…
… and you know what…
…since George Gillette and Tom Hicks rode into Liverpool…
Liverpool hasn’t been easy.
Liverpool has been advanced citizenship.
We’ve had to want it bad, ’cause it has put up a fight.
It has far too often been about saying, You want to support Rafa (or now Kenny)? Let’s see you acknowledge fans whose words make your blood boil, who stand center-stage and advocate their dismissal at the top of their lungs.
Even when that voice grew ever increasingly extreme, those of us who would spend a lifetime opposing such opinions were still expected to even-handedly discuss and debate it, rather than oppose it at the top of our lungs…. coz when we did, somehow that made us Superfans, or Uberfans.

… but honestly… Liverpool HAS been easy…
… take a deep breath and think about Everton fans for a moment…
… okay, now when you’ve stopped laughing…
… think about being an Aston Villa fan…
… a Bolton fan…
…god forbid a Wolves fan, the poor fuckers…
…even an Arsenal fan… how many trophies have they won in the last 12 years, with their regular champions league appearances, in their shiny new stadium, with their silky skills and admirable French youngsters?

When Spurs broke into the top 4 they spent a shedload to do it… at least Newcy did it on a budget, they’ll have achieved something if they finish 4th.
I look at Newcastle this season and I think, (since we’re out of it) go on then, take it, take 4th place and best of luck to you… coz that achievement is not indicative of some new Newcy dynasty… I doubt they’ll be as strong next season in both the Prem and the Champions League.

Spurs haven’t kicked on from last season… and with speculation hanging over the heads of their manager and senior players like Modric, Bale Van Der Vaart and Adebayor… next season could hold a bigger question mark for them than it holds for us… and what have they won lately?
Anything? …Beuhler… Beuler?
(have I made up for the Streisand yet?)

Yes its gnawing to the bone that the Mancs have won so much, and that the Chavs continue to buy things…
… but those two groups of cunts… errr, I meant fans… are the only ones in the Prem that have more to dance and sing about than us… and they don’t!
Not one song for Slur Alex, or Scholes or Giggs..

Nah… sorry lads… but Manc co-workers aside… being a Reds fan is fuckin easy.
We’re spoiled rotten to the core… spoiled as fuck and we need to take the silver spoon out of our mouths long enough to recognize it.
That’s not a suggestion that we get complacent about our title dreams.
It all too often gets twisted that way…. Its just a suggestion that we inject a bit of perspective into the discussion.

… later in that same American President monolgue it says this…
“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it.“

We do have serious problems to solve… still… just as we did 3 or 4 years ago… when far too loud a voice among our fanbase suggested Rafa Benitez was the problem and getting rid of him and bringing in good old Roy Hodgson was the solution.

I appeal to every Liverpool football fan to not make the same mistake in giving FSG (men who don’t know footy yet) ANY excuse to even think for one fleeting second, that getting rid of Kenny Dalglish (who does know football) is the way to solve our current problems.

We’ve had a bad league campaign… no doubt… no one argues that.
But it has been offset by a very decent double cup campaign.
And we ARE better off than we were under Hodgson.
We DO have a better squad under Kenny than under Hodgson.
And the last thing we need is for someone else to come in and start all over.

Hold Fast. Keep the Faith. Support.
… and maybe, just maybe… the way we were… you know…
… standing in front of St George’s Hall watching Shanks talk about winning the FA Cup…
…will be where we ARE….
…Not just watching Kenny and his team hoist One, and possibly still two, Cups in that same location…
…but at the beginning of something great…
…like when Shanks and his successors went on to parade a nearly unprecedented series of them…

Time has rewritten every line…
… but Kenny only just got handed the sheet music and new lyrics… give him time…
Hold Fast. Keep the Faith. Support.

By Aitch

So here we are….
With roughly 24 hours as I type this, before the biggest game of the season so far, instead of being able to prepare quietly under the radar while the press sharks wrestle over the chum that is United losing to Wigan (coz you know, top sides don’t lose to Wigan) and City winning to “open up the title race”…
… we jumped feet first into the already blood soaked water like a hemophiliac with a self inflicted knife wound and started thrashing about like a drowning and bleeding hemophiliac.

There has been a lot that has impressed me about Henry and Werner and the way they took over.
There has been much that has unimpressed me.
The termination of Damien Comolli… and certainly the timing of it…
…for me… falls into the latter.

We should be talking about the FA Cup Semi-Final… instead, as John Lennon put it, “now there’s all this.”

Some people have already made up their minds about “his” transfers, so I’m not entirely sure a reasonable discussion is even possible. I’d hoped to wait until the end of the season to have that debate… which is why I haven’t yet answered the pointed questions, put to me in that regard.
I had hoped to have Kopblog reel back a little and keep its powder dry on such opinions, coz I think there is an element to the timing of Comolli’s firing that could be driven by groundswell of opinion on blogs and forums.
It shouldn’t be that way… but our owners are not footy experts… and have openly admitted to widely casting their nets for knowledge and opinion on the subject…
…and while I applaud them in this attempted knowledge gathering (our former Yank owners made no such attempt)… there is a real danger in that there is a wide array of truly outrageous opinion out there, that they are gonna need to filter in forming their own.

It is for that reason I have called on people to stop openly questioning Kenny (and certain players) in such harsh terms… not coz the man is somehow untouchable or beyond reproach, or “bigger than the club”…
… but because his bosses that make the decision on his future (and more importantly ours) know less about football than many people who feel the urge to pontificate on it in forums and blogs. (said in pontificate fashion in a blog.)
(apparently necessary disclaimer stating: that is not directed pointedly, veildley, or in any other way underhanded, disguised or perceived, at anyone specific in Kopblog by name or loose inference… for fucks sake!)

The headlines this week should have been all about questioning United and Fungus, and posing the idea that they might just stumble and hand the title to City, should they find the wherewithal to grab it.
… but it wasn’t.

I suppose we have no choice but to discuss Comolli now… but with an FA Cup semi-final against Everton at Wembley on our doorstep, I’ll leave that discussion for the comments section after the game.

Is this be a make or break moment for the Club?
… for certain players?
… for Kenny?
I think Yes, very possibly, and very probably in that order.

Does or Will our League form have any bearing on the 90 minutes (or more) that will be played at Wembley?
My opinion is no… just as it didn’t when we faced United and City.

Cup games are one-offs… and Cup games against Everton even more so.
There is so much coming into play here, from the history of these match-ups and their results, to Moyes unhidden hard-on for us, to the far less friendly “all-merseyside derby atmosphere” that these things used to get played in back in the 80s…

…and that’s before you get into 3rd string goalkeepers, poor form, Bellamy’s knees, Andy Carrol, where to best play Stevie G., Howard “the Manc” Webb, and the enigma that has become Stewart fuckin Downing!

So my prediction, barring likely interference from Webb, is that while Everton have been on a good run lately, that’ll go out the window the minute they step out on the Wembley turf and their inferiority complex will once again scupper their ability to play footy, allowing Liverpool to run out traditional 3-1 winners!

Come On You Reds!

What kind of Liverpool fan are you?
Take offense at my audacity if you please… but that’s what I honestly need to ask of you.

Before I get into it… let me reiterate something I’ve stated in the past… my flag, nailed clearly to the mast on said issue…
These guys get paid a lot of money to play football. They get to do it for the “Greatest Team the World Has Ever Seen” and with that comes the adulation, the supermodels, the Ferraris… so for fucks sake… play football will youz?
All that is required of them is to show up for practice 4 hours per day and play 90 minutes of footy twice a week… and for that they get paid the equivalent of a very good yearly salary… weekly!
If you don’t have two feet… practice it.
If you don’t have a corner or a free kick in your arsenal… practice it.
If you can’t read the game… get a fuckin tutor and see if you can’t get up to at least rudimentary “cat in the hat” game reading level.
It is your chosen trade… one we’d all love to be able to ply… so don’t take your good fortune for granted, and better whatever natural ability you came into this world with, for the love of God, Mike or Whoever!

The players have a responsibility to the shirt, to the club, but mostly, to the fans.
I’m not going to go any further into the players’ individual and collective abilities, performances, mentality, whatever….
… suffice to say, they need to do some looking into the same mirror… and ask of themselves… some very serious questions.

Now having said that… let’s get to OUR part in “this great fiasco” that has become following LFC.

I’ve been traveling a lot this last month, and was armed only with a poxy 10inch netbook, which in a nailed on imitation of a Chelsea player under Villas Boas, decided it simply was not going to work with Kopblog.

Just as well really… the responses I would likely have typed to some of the comments, had I been able to log in, would surely have seen me stripped of my temporary blogger status faster than Andy Carrol can beat two players, round the keeper, then fall over for no apparent reason.

I would most certainly have alienated a few people had I been able to type the responses I wanted when occasionally checking in to read Kopblog these past weeks.

I guess it was a good thing I was unable to login… things get put into stark perspective when suddenly LB with whom I’ve largely agreed in the past, is ranting and railing against the machine, and Digger with whom I’ve so often disagreed, is the one calling for a calm even handed approach?

I’ve titled this blog “Mirror Mirror” coz I’ve been dismayed at some of the opinions and attitudes of a large section of our fanbase…
… not just in Kopblog, but in other forums, and even in Liverpool itself…
…it reminds me too much of the final year under Rafa Benitez, when to some, everything was his fault…
…despite people like FatScouser consistently warning that there was more to the situation than met the eye…
… despite many providing the context for the situation…
…then he was gone… and the truth began to emerge… and the sudden realization of what had really been going on, became public.
…and now those same people are pointing their bony fingers Kenny’s way.
Madness.

We were relieved beyond description when NESN stepped in and finally wrenched the club from the cold dead hands of a pair of Cowboys.
Our nightmare was over, and we stared into the sunrise of a brave new dawn.

…Except the nightmare wasn’t over.
Freddie had been ripping and slashing his way through our Dream for too many years, for it all to be over in a flash.

I simply cannot help myself from laughin at the idea… the very notion … that some of our fanbase actually want to compare Kenny Dalglish to Roy Hodgson.
Staggering doesn’t even begin to describe it.
And such opinions lead me to only one conclusion….I can’t help but subscribe to the feeling that we simply aren’t investing enough money into special needs education.

Let’s clear that little nugget up right now.
If G&H hadn’t completely destroyed the club… if their CEO wasn’t a bonafide Championship Manager addict… Roy Hodgson’s name would never have been even remotely associated with a club like LFC… PERIOD.

For any meaningful discussion to take place about where we currently are as a football club to be taken seriously… it must start from the knowledge that we were a sinking ship.
It had been suggested that we were listing under Rafa, and that Roy had been brought in to right the ship.
But that’s just it… It wasn’t Rafa who was causing the list… Rafa didn’t drive us into the Iceberg… G&H and Purslow did.
Rafa… as it turned out… was the only bloke with a bucket, keeping the fuckin thing from sinking.

It had been put to me at the time that Rafa needed to fall on his sword for the good of the club. The fanbase was so split, went the logic that his removal was necessary for us to move forward.
He had lost the dressing room, it was suggested.
Well in hindsight (and not that I’m always right, but I made this suggestion at the time) maybe it was the fuckin dressing room that should have been shitcanned?
(after all, most of it has been anyway now.)

If… and it is now an even bigger IF… Rafa did have to go…. then Roy Hodgson should never have even been considered as his replacement… it was like hiring someone who had once sat in seat 12C on a Ryan Air flight from Liverpool to Dublin, to pilot a 747 from Manchester to New York.
And that’s not hindsight… I had that argument when he was simply an ill-advised rumor.

I bring this up because there is criticism being leveled at those of us who continue to vehemently support Kenny Dalglish… that we did not afford the same support to Roy.
What I will say to that, is this… while there were those misguided souls who did allow themselves to be convinced Roy was a good choice in the summer of 2010…
…those of us not in special needs programs… who knew better, didn’t want him in the fuckin first place…
… the 2 situations do not compare…
… in any way, shape, or form.

So now to where we are…
Languishing in a very unacceptable 8th place, with Everton 1 point above us.

…and what I’d like to say about that comes straight from that which is supposed to be our anthem, our blood oath in a way…
“When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high, and don’t be afraid of the dark…”

Well we in a storm of biblical proportions my fellow reds… and frankly…
…well, some of you are holding your heads low and cowering in the dark.

I’m sorry if that offends some of the delicate sensibilities out there, if it is somehow an affront to the opinions you all claim such right to.
…but there it is.
The words speak for themselves… they speak for us as a fanbase, always have…
….and so do our actions.

“…hold your head up high, and don’t be afraid of the dark…”
maybe the players aren’t doing that… but too many of our fanbase sure as steaming shite aren’t doing it either.

There has been much discussion about what is good enough and not good enough for a club like Liverpool.
…discussion about the quality, or lack thereof, of its players, its manager, its coaching staff.
… discussion about roles of its manager, director of football, owners.

There was an interesting comment on the last edition of The Anfield Wrap, that went something along the lines of …
“I’d rather have one player on 100k per week, than 2 players on 60k per week”
…which sort of ignores the players we did have on 100k per week last season…
… you know… like Joe Cole, or Jovanovic.
… no matter how bad Downing, Henderson and Adam have been this season, we’ve gotten far more out of them than we ever got out of Cole and Jovanovic…
… and that’s before you get into Konchesky and Poulsen.

Too many seem to want to completely ignore the almost total rebuild that took place in the summer.
As I mentioned above… the perspective we must judge this season on is that Kenny Dalglish did not take over the reins of a “stable club”.

Sure it looked stable… with its silver-haired fox of an owner and his foxy raven-haired companion.
Such glamour gave us back a gloss that the runtish troll and his Texan ork had long since rubbed off.
The club had been systematically stripping itself of its best assets for a number of years, and replacing them with journeymen who sounded good on paper, but who in practice were anything but.
Out went Alonso, in came Poulsen… Out went Rafa, in came Hodgson.
…(and some of you wonder where the stormy clouds and darkness come from?)

FSG did the right thing when they fired Hodgson… even if it was 4 months too late.
He should never have been given the job in the first place.
And they did the right thing when they hired Kenny to take his place… well, not really his place, but Rafa’s… Hodgson had been nothing other than a placeholder really …only keeping the seat warm.
Barring a Rafa return (largely judged as populistly impossible) there were few names that could realistically have been considered.
You have to remember the names seriously associated to us… Hodgson, O’Neill, Jol… Christ even Curbishley at one point???
You think we’re seeing mid-table mediocrity at LFC now?

Nah… Kenny Dalglish was in some ways… the only choice.
What Kenny then had to do was completely rebuild the first team and its subsequent squad.
18 players left the club last summer. EIGHTEEN!
And only 1 could really be judged as a mistake.

Its pretty easy to judge this season as a failure… 8th place should never be accepted as good enough for LFC.
But where most people go wrong, is assuming that it IS being accepted as good enough by anyone… in the fanbase, or at the club.

But… It is no longer August.
Where we are right now, as Carling Cup Winners, is in 8th place… a place you win nothing for.
4th place has been out of reach for a while, and there is no real tangible benefit from finishing 7th… except to usurp Everton…
… or even finishing 6th… since Europa League Football is assured.
The financial difference between finishing 7th and 12th is negligible.
So while I would prefer to not see us finish below Everton, or any lower than our current 8th, I really don’t give a fuck where we finish this season… it is what it is and essentially, its done already.
What is important now, is not our league position… we’ve avoided relegation… so concentrate on the FA Cup.
Its all or nothing in that competition now.
(even more so given our semi-final opponents.)

Does that indicate an acceptance of mediocrity?
No of course not… just an acceptance of our current reality.
Where we finish (caveat being above Everton) shouldn’t matter now… what should is beating Everton in the semi and then winning the final… to use a poker term… ALL IN.

In that regards… it has been suggested that LFC is now a mid-table team.
Technically, we are in 8th place, so….
… but I simply can’t subscribe to that.
If we were, we’d be happy as pigs in shite at the one piece of silverware we do have, and not really arsed about anything else… that’s what mid-table clubs are.

(I can hear some people already typing that I’ve just argued against myself… I haven’t. I’m not arsed about finishing 6th or 7th or 8th, coz it will do nothing to enhance our reputation… but in order to win the FA Cup, we’d have to beat Chelsea or Spurs in the final and that will enhance our reputation… we might not be in the CL, but beating CL teams gives the impression that we are “ON THE UP” and therefore makes us attractive to better players… who at the end of the day care about 2 things, and 2 things only, enhancing their bank balance, and enhancing their medal collection.)

While we currently sit 8th, we have finished 5th once and 6th once in the past 8 years… all other seasons saw us finish in the top 4…
…and in that time, we have won 1 Champions League, 1 FA Cup, 1 Carling Cup, appeared in 1 other CL Final, and Carling Final, and 2 CL Semi-Finals…
… is that really the definition of a mid-table club?

“Yeah, but what have you done for me lately,” I hear the Janet Jackson’s of the fanbase hollering from the rooftops.
There is no doubt that a 6th place finish and a potential “8th place” finish are an indication of going in the wrong direction…. And if we had been a stable club, I’d be willing to entertain such an idea…
… but we haven’t been a stable club for a very long time.

“The ‘Buy British’ policy isn’t working” is another vociferous complaint… as though this is going to be a long-term strategy, rather than simply the first step in what was a large-scale rebuilding plan, one that we’ve only seen the first stages of, and that will continue to take place over the coming transfer windows.

You think the price of English players is stupid now?
Just wait for UEFA’s minimum home grown quotas to kick in this summer…
City, Arsenal, Chelsea and even Spurs are all gonna have to go out and buy English players to meet quota…
… while our summer buys haven’t pulled up any stumps this season… they may very well look like bargains and good business soon… especially if one or two of them recover from first season syndrome… like soooo many players do… and deliver even just a few of the goods next season… albeit from the bench after being replaced in the first team by the quality Euro players I now expect our policy to concentrate on..
They haven’t pulled up stumps, but we’ve seen glimpses of talent there… remember Lucas and resist the urge to rush to judgment.

I have nailed my colours to the mast on this before… 4th place is nowhere.
4th place is important solely for the financial consideration of Champions League qualification (well the chance to qualify for qualifiers.)
Rather than being seen as success, I’ve always viewed a 4th place finish as the least acceptable failure.
…But 4th is beyond us now, and I’ll save my recriminations for the summer.
Where my opinion lies at that time, regarding our final Premier League place, will largely depend on the result of the semi-final, and should we prevail, the result of the subsequent final.

So I’m amazed that given the choice, some would take a poxy nothing of a 4th place finish, for which you win fuck all but a tentative entry ticket, over hardcast, shiny, paraded on open topped busses, Silverware.

I don’t care if it’s the Carling Cup, the FA Cup, or a fuckin autographed Tea Cup…
…Liverpool Football Club is in the business of winning trophies.

In the past, you had to be the best and beat the best to win things….
… with today’s structure of qualifiers and league positions… that is no longer the case.
There are now DEGREES of Success and Failure…
… did anyone else notice how the Europa League suddenly became a “big trophy” that Man United took seriously… for about 2.5 seconds until they got shafted out of that one too.
Interestingly, the only team that didn’t embarrass itself in Europe this year is Chelsea.
Spurs may be able to offer CL footy, but do they offer a realistic chance to win the bitch?
Europe is not, contrary to popular belief, everything.
Yes its important, but it drives too much.

We’ve won 1 Trophy already…
…and to do so, we had to beat the teams currently in 1st place and 2nd place…

….A 2nd Trophy beckons…
… and to win that, we will have to beat the current 7th place team, and then either the current 4th or 5th place team… all teams above us.

And if we can do so… and that open-top bus parades the cups around the city…
I’ll bet you money, right here, right now, that more people would turn out to see it… than do so to see the Scum parade another Title.
(the only thing that bothers me about that is that many of them would be the same knife wielding fuckers who’ve been bitching and moaning about wanting Kenny out… surely they should be staying home, no?)

It was suggested that if things keep going the way they are, that there will only be 30,000 people watching games at Anfield.
Well to the other 14,000 I say this…
The exits are clearly marked, feel free to put yer LFC Merch on eBay and fuck right off!
You’re low-held head won’t be missed.
… and when you get home, take a long look in the mirror, and ask yourself what kind of Chelsea/City/BarcaTeam-du-jour fan you want to be.
But don’t bother letting us know the answer to that puzzler… coz frankly the rest of us won’t give a fuck…
… you’ll be walking alone, the 30,000 will “NEVER WALK ALONE”

So for all those suggesting that this season has been a failure, I suggest you calm the fuck down and take a deep breath… at least until we’ve seen just exactly how things pan out.
Then maybe we can have a reasonable discussion (though I doubt it )

So if I’m understanding football correctly these days…
Manchester United struggle against Norwich for 90 minutes, requiring a bloke who cheats with a relative’s bird to salvage their dignity with virtually the last kick of the game…
… and it’s the mark of champions…
whereas
Liverpool beat the best teams in England en-route to a final that they win on penalties, despite their best player and bang-on-dead-to-rights penalty taker missing one, as well as the guy who scored 12 pens while his corners were worth 10 million alone at Blackpool hitting a penalty so wildly that it hit Richard Branson in the face… in one of his hot fuckin air balloons…
… And we were lucky!

Fair enough.

We won the Champions League Final in 2005 after having conceded 3 goals before halftime, leveling the score in the 2nd half, dodging certifiable, on-a-plate, Christmas present goalscoring opportunities, then scoring more penalties than the opposition…
…and while many opposition fans will begrudge us that success, it is still widely regarded as the BEST, GREATEST, Champions League final.

We won the UEFA cup in 2003 by a “golden goal” that was also an own goal from a long free kick, after see-sawing to a 4-4 result over 90 minutes…
…and while many opposition fans will begrudge us that success also, it is still widely regarded as the BEST, GREATEST, EUFA Cup final.

These are just two examples of “great victories” that were achieved in, at best description, “marginal” fashion.

The Carling Cup final against Birmingham, hell even the glory that was Rome” was a penalty win, even if it is to “justify” it as having been against the 2nd best team in Europe.

Is this really any different to winning a CL by scoring 2 goals in extra time??
I mean come on… THAT really is… lucky as fuck!

Many a discussion takes place in the hallowed halls of kopblog about the manner in which players ply their trade, or games are won and lost… and so often, people like to suggest that none of that really matters… 1st is 1st and 7th is nowhere…
To use an American expression… “Scoreboard Baby!”

In the end, does it matter how you won something?
(my own personal caveat being… as long as you kept your dignity, didn’t cheat.)

When we shout loud and proud that “We Won It 5 Times”, we don’t add, “err, but one of those was a lucky 1-0 win against Bruge and one was a lucky win on penalties in Rome.”

If you win the Title on goal difference… it matters for about 3 months… until the next season starts… then all anyone in a history book is gonna remember is how many of the fuckers you’ve won, not how you won them.

I took great pride in chanting “You Lost The League On Merseyside” with the rest of the Kop Faithful back in that final game of 1992 when Ian Rush scored that 2nd goal against the Mancs.
Leeds fans weren’t the least bit concerned how narrowly they had won the league…
… neither were the Arsenal fans on that fateful day when Thomas scored an unexpected goal in the 89th minute.

Yet we are supposed to feel guilty because we won a fuckin cup… on penalties.

“But it was against Cardiff, not top opposition” I hear the retort.

“FUCK OFF!” says I
The engraving on the Carling Cup reads… “Liverpool 2012”
… not… “Liverpool 2012, but only very luckily, by penalties, err, against lower league opposition.”

We all love to reminisce about the 4-0 drubbing of real Madrid, or the 4-1 thumping of the Mancs…
…the number of times those results get trotted out on various blogs/forums as indicative of how good our team WAS, in comparison to how poor our current team is…
… is frankly a bit embarrassing when you consider that while both results/performances were enjoyed immensely and proudly brandished…
… that team didn’t put a trophy in the Cabinet…
… Sunday’s team DID!

Granted Sunday’s game certainly doesn’t do the heart any good, or the blood pressure, or a world full of poor cats.
But winning such a game is just as entertaining than 4-0 routes… even if it is only because of the silverware awarded at the end.

I won a Cup on penalties as a High School coach of 16year old lads.
The cup didn’t say “won on penalties”… just the cup name.
(Though admittedly, as we celebrated with the cup, I shook the opposition coach’s hand and said “Sorry mate, it’s a great way to win, but a shitty way to lose.”)

We went on to add a League Title to that cup… in an undefeated season.
That trophy didn’t say “undefeated champions”… just our name, and a date, atop a list of names and dates.

All that mattered at the end of that season was that we had won a league and cup double… the first for any school in the area… how we did it provided a certain euphoria for that season’s end… but that was all forgotten when we went into the subsequent season.

So yes… Cardiff made a game of it.
And while I wasn’t happy about it at the time … instead of complaining about it, I’m simply gonna say …
Congratulations to Cardiff…. for showing themselves to be worthy finalists… and for making the victory that much sweeter for having had to work so hard for it.

Had they won, they would have been worthy winners.
But we did, and were equally worthy.

It was a struggle, but I’m a little dismayed at the general opinion that Liverpool were somehow poor.
We went at them from the off, and in true Liverpool fashion this season… destroyed the fuckin crossbar in the 4th minute.
For the subsequent 20 minutes, Cardiff didn’t get out of their own half, and “were lucky” not to have been shellacked out of the game at that point.
Had that Johnson strike gone in… with the way we started the game… it really would likely have been a very different story…
… but in their first foray forward, Enrique went walkabout, Downing fell asleep and they walked their first effort into the goal.

Of course that was gonna do 2 things…
…the first… give Cardiff a massive boost of confidence (along with the old “fates are with us” mentality)
… and issue a massive body blow to LFC… (again along with the old “fates are against us” mentality)

If I had to chose one complaint about our team this year… it wouldn’t have anything to do with the quality of certain players, their efforts, or the tactics in which they are employed…
… that discussion will go on and on…
… Downing, Henderson, Adam, Carroll will be discussed…
… they’ll be tagged as useless… just as Dirk Kuyt was…
… they’ll be tagged as “not good enough” or “offering nothing going forward” just as Lucas was…
… because some people just can’t differentiate between poor player and poor performance…

I’ve read many a comment about how good or bad this collection of players is.
I find myself often disagreeing with most.

Downing has been the worst of the new boys so far this season… his poor performances have far outweighed any glimpses of good.
Yet his performance at Wembley was one of the standouts… and suffice to say, his contribution was instrumental in our win…
Could the exact opposite not be reasonably said about Steven Gerrard?

For all the complaints about Andy Carroll, he has been instrumental in almost all the goals we’ve scored in the last few weeks.
That’s points on the board, and a cup on the shelf…
… is that not AS important as 20 goals to his personal tally?
(with the obvious caveat that were he to be scoring 20 goals, the assumption would be more comfortable scorelines and a better league position.)
Have LFC pulled up stumps this year?
No.
Does that define us as a mid-table team?
I can see why some would say Yes, it could yet be a Yes if that stump-pulling doesn’t start again soon, but after only 2 seasons out of the CL (following being in it for 6 out of the past 7 seasons, which saw us prominently featuring in the finals, semi-finals and at worst quarter-finals) its NO … at least for the time being.

This group of players has been repeatedly described this season as “flattering to deceive”.
Again, I get where that’s coming from…
…but…
Could they not also be “deceiving to flatter”?

I don’t know the answer to that yet… but neither do any of you.
And neither does Kenny (though he probably knows a damn sight better than any of us, working with them in training every day, seeing what their daily attitude, aptitude, and effort is.)

Personally, I’m seeing the potential of a player like Henderson… and not writing him off as useless, but suggesting that there is a real possibility he’ll do what Lucas did… struggle for a bit, then be the player everyone seems to think we can’t compete without?

Personally I watch Dirk Kuyt play and I’m reminded of…
… how many people complained about Didi Hamman being past his sell-by date…
…so we sold him and the “better players” who replaced him struggled or got injured and what we desperately needed that season was an experienced head to put his foot on the ball and yell “achtung, calm down lads,”…
…I’m reminded of…
… how many people thought Sami Hyppia was getting slow and past his sell by date… …until he left, and our back up that year was an even older Greek and a Spanish kid…
…and suddenly people remembered all the “good” Sami brought to the team, and forgot about how many times he got skinned for pace in his last season.

What such players bring to the squad, is not your Xabi Alonso passes, not your Danny Agger strides out of the back, but an experienced head in a dressing room where only 3 or 4 guys have actually competed in a major competition, let alone actually won anything major.

SG, Carra, Pepe, Dirk and Suarez were the only players out there on Sunday with a major medal in their collection.

Nah…. If I had to chose one complaint about our team this year… it wouldn’t have anything to do with the quality of certain players, their efforts, or the tactics in which they are employed…
… it would be the seeming lack of any mentality that causes a response to an incident such as a goal completely against the run of play, in a game you were dominant in to that point…
…as opposed to a collective dropping of shoulders and widespread “here we go again” sigh.

When that goal went in… it consigned us to going in at half-time a goal down, such was the response in mentality from virtually everyone in the team, bar Pepe, Skrtel and Luis.

Sadly… If anyone put in a “captains performance” at Wembley it wasn’t our Captain, it was Martin “the Ninja” Skrtel.
The lad was there to score the goal, didn’t fuck around celebrating, was so eager to get back and restart the game to get a 2nd goal that he fuckin clotheslined Charlie Adam with his forearm when he tried to celebrate it with him, put his foot through the ball when it was needed, but most importantly… several times… simply put his foot on the ball and stopped… when everyone else around him was PANICKING in their attempts to move the ball forward.

There were moments when we were simply losing our nut…
… moving the ball quickly forward… then panicking with the final delivery.
Skrtel (along with the substitutions) helped put a limiter on this madness, and got us back into the groove of playing footy.

Anyway… like I said… we won the damn thing… FOR THE 8th TIME!
Yet another record for the Anfield History Books

Oh and while you’ve got your editor’s pencil out… go ahead and add Kenny’s name to the short list of Managers who have won every trophy going…
… and that one is not just at Anfield…
…that record would be in the Football History Book.

The Business of Winning Trophies…. Check!
The Business of Creating History… Check!

… were you watching John and Linda?
…THAT is what you bought!

This current incarnation of LFC might not be as exciting to watch as the 86 or 89 teams…
… but it is a team built for the future, and while we all want a greater present, longer-term thinking is required… its what a lot of people didn’t get about Rafa.

But a present is what we’ve got…
…and okay that present is not the Title Challenge some of us genuinely hoped for at the beginning of the season…
… and its not the easy top 4 finish many genuinely believed should be a walk-in-the-park at the beginning of the season…
… but it has been a Carling Cup…
… it is an automatic place back in Europe, even if it is in the much-maligned Europa League…
(a competition remember, in which we are among only 4 teams to have won it as many times… editing record books IS the present for LFC…)
…it is a “still alive” chance at the FA Cup… (and perhaps even another all-Merseyside Final?)
… and yes… it is still very much, at the time of writing this…
… a “still alive” challenge for a 4th place finish…

id 4th good enough for LFC?
Not at all… I have often remarked that 4th is the “minimal acceptable failure”…
… but it is a reality of the new world order of football… that due to the financial considerations of the CL, 4th place is considered a success…
… but winning the Carling Cup is not… really…

… like I said…. “Fuck Off! We’ve Won It 8 Times!”

Aitch

There are those among us that will always try to look beyond the obvious.
There are those among us that think anything that happens is a simple case of black & White.
And there are those among us that simply take whatever SkySports, or their media-source-du-jour, say as the truth.

“among us” is such a general reference… it applies to every walk of life or society, but in this particular instance, what am I about to go rabbiting on about…

Liverpool Football Club is and always has been different from other clubs.
Other club’s fans can try to make that claim, but we are… we just are… deal with it.

It is generally accepted that we should embrace the 21st century and stop living in the past.
There was much to be said for “The Liverpool Way” but as much as it propelled us forward from the advent of the 60s… from the advent of the Premier League it began to hold us back.
We were not like the rest and we would not be like the rest, we would go about our business as we always had done.
…and the simple truth of it is…
…the thing we clung to, that which we loved, and still love, so much about our club, that which contributed so integrally to “our” greatness…was the thing that to some extent, stood in our way, the barrier to us being left behind.

Now I’m not suggesting for one moment that we should have scrapped The Liverpool Way in the 90s…
…or that we should do so now (FSG be forewarned, you would do so at your peril… see H&G’s reign of terror, and where Poulsen and Hodgson took us.)

…but we do need a New Liverpool Way…
…one that holds true to everything we hold dear about our past, but one that takes us into the 21st Century…

… and it is how you bridge that gap that counts.
Rafael Benitez “got” that, he understood it.
Kenny Dalglish understands that, he “gets” it.
Some of our fanbase simply doesn’t, and never will.

My hope is that FSG, while they go about trying to make sense of a foreign game, a foreign premier league, and a fuckin sludge alien with spiky tentacles English media…
… will try to understand that WE (at our core) are not just a group of people who follow a team, no matter what…
…we are a group of people who follow a team in a unique and different way, no matter what.
(well many of us still are anyway.)

A large part of getting to grips with this Brave New World of the Premier League…
…was getting to grips with it’s New World Order, and the demands of not only the league and it’s new structure, but the demands of the 24/7 media, and later, of the internet.
(It is worth noting here, that while we dominated domestically in the 80s, our income suffered from the post-Heysel Euro ban, and this weakened the financial footing we stood on in the years leading up to the launch of the PL… it provided a foothold for other teams to compete with us, where one had not previously existed.)

I’ve read more than a few comments about how disastrously poor our handling of the PR has been lately… and I think those comments are to varying degrees, quite accurate…
…. we’ve been shite at it for a long time…
… and I think part of the reason for that, is that fairly simple…
… PR in its true sense of the word, is something that is manufactured, and Liverpool never needed to manufacture PR… we simply had it…
… The Holy Trinity, that Great Man called it… Club, Manager, Supporters.
… the Club “got it”, He “got it”, WE “got it”…
… the PR of Liverpool F.C. of the 60s, 70s and 80s was an organic living breathing thing…
… an integral part of the Liverpool Way.
…all part moving in harmony, to the same goal, in the same manner…
… you wanna bring your Panorama Cameras and have a look at it, we’ll show it to you, we’ll try to help you “get it” and if you do, then great… but if you don’t, well frankly, fuck anyone who didn’t “get it” … I am a Liverpudlian and I come from the Spion Kop.

Oh how lyrical that waxes.
There is no denying that so much of who WE were and are, is mythology, plain and simple.
There is no denying that so much of who Shankly was and is remembered to be is mythology, plain and simple.
But it is a mythology borne from truth… an inflated story, not a manufactured one.

Bill Shankly understood the city, he understood the fan base, and yes to some extent, he pandered to that, but in a way that was genuine.
He knew how to “big up” his players, his club, his people, and he did it… but there was nothing fake about it…
… Bill Shankly’s time was to some extent “the perfect storm” … that confluence of club/players, fanbase/city… and the man.
The Dynasty was created, then perpetuated in the same manner, by Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish.

We were different. We were Liverpool Football Club.
We’d toured the world, and brought back, not just the t-shirts, but silverware… Big Fuckin Silverware… the Biggest… taken from the very hands of the Biggest teams in Europe.

We were Kings of Europe, Kings of the English game, and just as important…
… we were top of the pops among the people… the neutrals…
… of course, there were those who always begrudged us our success, but we rarely inspired the sort of hatred among the neutral that Manchester United did and do… (we were so often a person’s “2nd team”)

But with the advent of the Premier League… the game changed.
Not just on the field… coz this new league creation coincided with the emergence of 24/7 news coverage, mass satellite Broadcasting, and the soon to emerge internet.
All would grow alongside each other… and society would change as football did.
If you can say one complementary thing about Manchester United, and I would be loath to say more than one, it is that they “got” the “new way” quicker than any other team, and leveraged it for themselves.
(taking a shower now, feel dirty, back in a mo…)
(now where was I…)

…I would go so far as to add Roy Evans to the above list. I believe he “got it” and went about his job in the truest spirit of the predecessors under whom he had apprenticed…
…but unfortunately for him, as I said, the game changed on him…
…he had to deal with the “perfect storm” of the emergence of the Premier League, the explosion of media/satellite coverage, and the first generation of truly obscenely paid “football stars”, who’s behavior and egos exponentially out-measured those who’d come before, let alone those whom they ultimately represent… US.

So United grew, worked the media, reinvested, worked the media, grew more, and worked the media…
We were Liverpool, we had a way, went about our business in that way, coz it had always been successful…

Who needed to learn this pesky newfangled IBM or MacPlus, when we had a perfectly functioning Olivetti Typewriter, from which we had “penned” so many a best seller?

Now again… don’t get me wrong…
I am not for one second advocating that we should have shunned ourselves of our colors, like some plummeting Heavy Metal Star who in an attempt to stay relevant, cuts his hair, burns his leather and spandex, and signs on to sing a ballad duet with George Michael or Cliff Richard, donning matching powder blue suits for the Video and adding dancers for the Grammy’s performance.

But the landscape was changing, and the club either didn’t see it, didn’t know how to handle it, or ignored it.
Throughout the “wilderness years” WE as a fan base stayed true to this WAY of ours.
We prized it.
Each season’s failure we clung to it like a life vest.
Even when it became obvious we were being left behind, most didn’t want the “Way” abandoned completely for the sake of the money that was deemed “necessary to compete”

The Liverpool Way did not change…. and again, I’m not suggesting that we should have thrown it out, or turned it upside down…
… but it was a Brave New World, and at the very least, the “Way” needed new carpet and drapes.

And a big part of our stasis, was recognizing the growing power of the media, the way in which United and their Odious Leader in particular, were manipulating it, and not proactively responding… not to just deal with it, but to get out in front of it.
Ask any PR professional, or Political Advisor… and they’ll tell you…
…if all you have is a response… you’re dead in the water …
… your actions must get you out in front of a situation/story…
… or you might as well not bother…

We have spent 20 years “responding” to the changing landscape… that was being shown to us.
Initially we ignored the new landscape…
… then we tried to poke one toe into it…
… then we put a foot in…
… then shifted out weight to that foot…
… then cautiously moved onto its fringes…
…all the while…. clinging to what was becoming an Antiquated Approach to this new landscape…

We needed a “New Liverpool Way” if we were to survive.
The beginning finding that, was the rather bumblingly handled transition from the “boot room” Roy Evans, to the “continental” Gerrard Houllier … a Frenchman who had a more worldly football approach, while still having Liverpool at his heart.
He dragged us into the 90s, just as the clock ticked over into the 2000s.
I’m still not entirely sure if Houllier fully “got” The Liverpool Way entirely… he seemed to initially, then seemed to badly lose his way…. perhaps the task of transforming it into a “New Way” was just so monumental, that he was destined to get lost within that task.

Then came Rafael Benitez… benefiting from the work Houllier had done… and able to fit in and “get us” almost immediately.
It initially looked as though we were about to finally enter the 21st Century on even footing with our immediate rivals and launch a campaign to retake our Crown.
… and then came G&H and it all went so terribly, horribly wrong.

FSG, for all their naiveté of Football, the Premier League, and the fuckin sludge alien with spiky tentacles English media, appeared for all the world like men who knew a thing or two about PR.
Initially they played a pretty good hand, and seemed to have “the house” on the ropes.
But personally, I think they’ve been a bit of a mixed bag.
One minute scoring PR success, the next falling a bit short…
(… coincidentally I’ve just recently read a few interesting articles referring to their use of PR during their acquisition and subsequent running of the Red Sox, which concern me a little… especially moving forward from the incidents of the last few months.)

Regardless of the Truths, Accusations, Lies and Fabrications of the last 5 months.
Regardless of the disproportionate Indignation, Outrage, and Cultural Differences of the last 5 months.
The club simply did not handle their affairs in a competent manner.

Kenny was responding… the player’s were responding… and as somnath said, the foot soldiers (US) were doing their part.

The club needed (and had time to formulate) a unified message.
It clearly didn’t.
I wonder (and would like to think) that was because they never took the accusations seriously.
The original accusation was so clearly inflammatory, manufactured and overtly false, and coming from a serial accuser, that I almost don’t blame them if that was their initial response… I am giving them the benefit of the doubt in thinking that they would be found out for what they were and the case would be rightly dismissed.
… but…
…. coming from Fungus, they should really have known better.

… everything else that has happened… regardless of the minutia… stemmed from that failure.

To quote a line from the movie A Knights Tale: “We have been weighed, measured and found wanting.”

…as for the handshake…
… well we botched that royally too… in just about every way we could… and that includes the 3 statements, and particularly the wording of them.

It is my hope that behind the scenes, “things are not as they appear” and all are still working towards a common goal… that Luis has been asked to do what Rafa was asked to do, fall on his sword for the good/reunification of the club…
… and that the “foot soldiers” who so openly backed the lad, have not been left twisting in the wind…
…that statements have been made to appease the press (whether we agree with that or not) and try to get the story off the front and back pages…
… and that in addition to all still pulling in the right direction…
… measures are being taken to drag our fuckin PR and legal team into the 2nd Decade of the 21st Century, and have them armed and equipped with fuckin stealth fighters and smart bombs instead of the pathetic 2 inch knives they’ve been bringing to the gunfights recently.

The next few weeks and months will hopefully give us some insight?

… to borrow another line from a different movie.
There’s a saying in prize fighting. When you get knocked to the canvas, the getting up is up to you. (not the direct quote, before some of you jump in)

Well, we just got knocked down… the getting up is up to us.

Aitch

NOT sure how fitting it is to steal one of Gerry’s own blog title’s for my first touch as a substitute, but like an eager teenager coming on for Steven Gerrard, there it is.

So without further ado… somebody pass the choc-ice and let’s get this party started.

Its been a rocky start to the season, with points, like a bar of soap in the Prison showers, dropped where they shouldn’t have been. But for all the wrist-slitting that a lot of fans were doing (more so elsewhere than at kopblog,) over recent, pre-Manc performances, by-and-large the Reds have been playing pretty well since the start of the season.

Unfortunately, the reality is that we did not amass the points we needed to from many of those good early performances, and so we find ourselves, a bit off the Premier League pace going into a big game against Spurs.

Conversely, while Spurs have collected points from their good performances, they also did so from the few dodgy ones they’ve put in… leaving them lying in a relatively comfortable 3rd place, and giving credence to their claims of “top 4” pedigree.

We had a tough time of it at White Hart Lane. There’s no getting around that.

They blitzed us for the first 15 minutes of that game and we were looking very ropey. But as many a game has shown… just because they dominated us for 15 minutes and got an early goal for their troubles, doesn’t mean we’d have been under that cosh for the full 90. We’ll never know though, coz in stepped the referee, sending Charlie Adam to an early shower.

Now Charlie Adam makes some stupid fuckin tackles, of that there is little dispute, but there was very little wrong with the tackles for which he got either of his yellow cards that day. The same could be said for the two shown to Skrtel.

Suffice to say, we were up against it, once Charlie walked… and it left them in a position to continue their dominance in possession, and us with a much bigger task in attempting to turn that around…yet we still kept the scoreline respectable until the 2nd red card.

Excuses… or Circumstance?

I think I’ve explained my take on that in the past… which brings us to Monday.

Spurs are on a decent run of form… but they have had a few injuries of late… and good ole ‘Appy ‘Arry is not so happy at the moment… being in the dock and already admitting to perjury… he even missed his chance at a good old through-the-car-door-window, deadline day, SkySports News interview… so with a bit of luck, we’ll catch them a bit off peak.

Kenny on the other hand, looks like he might be getting things to click a bit. Suarez is back, Spearing is back, hopefully Stevie was just resting, Downing is starting to perform a bit more consistently, Bellamy has been a revelation, and even Andy Carroll scored a goal! We raise ourselves for the big ones, and we’ve kept better teams at bay, so hopefully that will be the case this weekend.

So there it is… not the most earth-shattering blog in the history of kopblog, but something to get the discussion rolling going into of the weekend.

Come On You Reds, YNWA, Patrice Evra is a Liar and The Red Are Coming Up The Hill Boys!

Aitch

We would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the recent lack of blogs and general contact from Kopblog and us at This Is Anfield.

As we are sure you are all aware, Gerry had some health problems earlier this year and the blogging took a back seat for him. He is now struggling to update the blog again, but we can reassure you that we have been in touch with Gerry and he is doing well. He is hoping to return to blogging soon.

We hope to have the blog back up and running in one form or another in the new year.

Until then, happy christmas to everyone –

Matt and Max at thisisanfield.com

I’ve had other things occupying my mind and have hardly even been online for the past couple of months. But just like King Kenny at Liverpool I’ve managed to turn things around. I’m well on the road to recovery and have also just got myself an extended contract at work, so life is good again! Many thanks to those who sent me some e-mails they were much appreciated. Anyway I just want to brush off the cobwebs now and get back to some serious (ish) blogging, so let’s get on with it.

The one bright spark I’ve had over the past few months has been the turnaround in fortunes of my beloved Reds. You talk about a season of two halves, since King Kenny has returned to the Liverpool dugout we’ve made one of the most remarkable comebacks since Lazurus!

When I think back now to where we were just 6 months ago with all of the doom and gloom among our players and supporters not to mention the bloody awful football we were playing, I shudder to think where we might have ended up. But thankfully the FSG guys took the necessary action of removing Gandalf the Grey and returning the King to his throne, and the effect was immediate and even beyond what I had hoped for.

Considering the position and mood at the club when Dalglish took over I would have considered it an achievement just to come within a mathematical sniff of a European qualifying place but the fact that we actually got ourselves into a position where we were in control of fifth spot with an outside chance of the top four was just amazing.

Granted it was a bit of a disappointment that we finished the season with two defeats and ended up finishing in 6th spot but from an overall point of view you’ve got to say that since Kenny returned we’ve gotten more positives than Wayne Rooney at an STD clinic!

The pass and move football we are trying to return to, the players coming together as a team, the amazing signings of Suarez and Carroll, the appointment of Steve Clarke and the terrific performances of the young players coming into the team. The list goes on and on, and getting into the specifics of it all will give us plenty to discuss over the close season but for now I’m just going to stick with the overall picture.

I was split pretty much 50/50 on the question of us qualifying for the Europa League. On the one hand I thought being in it would give us more games to continue to blood the youngsters and build up their experience and it is also a competition that we could realistically win. But on the other hand a season out of Europe might not be a bad thing for us right now in fact focusing on things domestically without a European distraction might turn out to be just what the doctor ordered.

As I’ve already mentioned, things have been great since Kenny returned. The performances have been much improved and we’ve played some really entertaining football at times. Suarez has been superb, the energy of him and Kuyt upfront has been like watching Jedward on Acid! Raul the Merciless has also been terrific in midfield as has the ever improving Lucas. The young players have all been brilliant when called upon, particularly Kelly and Flanagan. Pepe has been solid as ever and I really enjoyed the double hat-trick by Maxi recently, the guy was running around with a smile wider than the Mersey, brilliant stuff!

So while it didn’t seem likely at the start of January, I do have some happy memories of the season but the fun is over now and the real work must now begin. When Kenny arrived his task was to turn things round, get the players performing and get the team climbing the table. He certainly achieved all that and more, and has thankfully been given the job on a permanent basis. But he knows and we know, a lot more will be required next season.

The honeymoon is over now and this is the end of what will hopefully be the beginning. We’ve got to kick on from here and at the very least be aiming for a return to the top four next season but that is not going to be easy. We finished the season in 6th spot and the five teams that finished ahead of us are all likely to spend heavily over the summer and we can’t afford to do any less.

I believe the FSG guys will make cash available, especially considering that beyond the Suarez and Carroll signings we had another £20 to £30 million in unsuccessful bids for other players in January. But no matter how much we have to spend it’s important that we spend it wisely. Obviously quality is important but so is the character of the players we target. Our dressingroom seems to be a happy place at the moment and there’s a good team ethic among the players so we wouldn’t want anyone coming in who might upset the balance.

Equally important in terms of generating funds and freeing up space on the wage bill is getting rid of some of the deadwood that is clogging up our squad and we’ve got a lot to ship out. I remember a report of some German side bidding £6 million for Jovanovic in January. So if I take that as his value and add in my estimated value of Konchesky and Poulson, then getting rid of those three would by my reckoning generate a total of £6,000, 003.57p, a fun size Mars bar and a Chicken McNugget!

There are also plenty of other players we really need to be rid of. A lot of them have been out on loan but there are others in the current first team squad I’d rather see the back off. Joe Cole has turned out to be a disaster. Granted he’s had a bad run with injuries but even when he has been available he’s been about as much use as a chocolate tea-pot but he’s apparently on mega wages so he might be a hard one to shift.

Aquilani is a difficult one. Considering the lack of depth of quality in our squad I thought it was an absolutely crazy decision to send him out on loan for the season, particulalrly as we’d spent most of the previous season getting him fit only for Juventus to reap the rewards of our efforts. From the bits and pieces I’ve seen of him playing for Juve over the season he seems to have done very well for them. I can’t blame the guy for wanting to stay in Italy after the way he’s been treated at Anfield under the previous regime but a part of me thinks a player like him could really flourish under Dalglish so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this works out.

Another one I’d like to see the back of is David Eggnog. I don’t have anything against the lad and I’m sure he’ll go on to have a good career in the game but I just don’t think he is good enough to be playing for Liverpool. If you consider that Suarez, Carroll and Kuyt are our three main strikers and each of them have different qualities then you would want to have a fourth choice striker who might offer something different and be at or near their level but Eggnog is a long way off.

There have been times when he’s shown flashes of quality and he has scored a few goals but even a blind squirrel can occasionally find an acorn. He’s also not somebody who can be a game changer coming off the bench. I’ve seen him brought on many times in games and he’s really made no difference, in fact most of the time he looks as if he couldn’t hit his own arse with both hands and a GPS!

So I’d definitely get rid of Eggnog if possible. I noticed recently the club have placed an £8 million price tag on him, I don’t know who came up with this price but whoever it was I wish they’d come over and do a valuation on my house!

As regards incoming players, I’ve read recent press reports linking us with the likes of Aguero, Mata, Coentrao, in fact just about every player whose surname ends in a vowel! The one common thread in all of these reports is that they are all total bollocks. This is the usual press tactic of firing buckshot in every direction in the hope that they might hit on something and then proudly proclaim “you read it here first”.

It may turn out that we end up signing one or two of the players they have us linked with but this would be just a lucky guess on their part. I think we all know enough about Dalglish and Comolli at this stage to realise that they both play their cards very close to their chest and these press guys know as little about their potential transfer targets as we do.

A left back, some width and another attacking option is the priority in my opinion, more cover in central midfield and central defence would also be nice if possible. But there are only so many quality players around and there is going to be a lot of competition for signings. We’ve also got the added disadvantage of not being able to offer European football to our targets so Comolli really has his work cut out. I’m still not too sure about this guy but if we get through this summer with some quality signings coming in and some of the squads dead wood going out, he will make a believer of me.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there for now and just finish off by saying congratulations to Barca for their very well deserved victory over the mancs in the Champions League final yesterday. They are a great club with a great team and some of the football they play is really quite beautifal at times. In Lionel Messi they have beyond a shadow of a doubt the world’s greatest player. I’m glad they won it and I hope they go on and win it again next season, but the season after that may be a different story. Because somethings stirring at Anfield and after we get through knocking the mancs off their perch we might turn our attentions to Barca!

Keep the Faith

The energy and commitment from our players was terrific, everyone played like a Dirk Kuyt except for Dirk Kuyt who played like a Gary Lineker and Suarez zig zagged through the manc defence as if he was trapped in the crosshairs of Carlos the Jackal! I’m really enjoying the football at the moment, the little Red shoots of recovery and the mini revival we’ve been having under Dalglish. I’ve obviously particularly enjoyed our victories over the mancs and the chavs but I’m not getting too carried away because the games we’ve played between those matches have shown us there is still a long road ahead of us and a lot of work to be done.

Firstly I’d like to see King Kenny sorted out with a decent contract as soon as possible. He is clearly the right man to get us back on track and he is a respected figure among supporters and players throughout the game. Getting him signed up to a contract is the number one priority to ensure we have continuity and take a little of the uncertainty away from next season when I think the minimum requirement will surely be a return to the CL places. I believe this will happen but I hope the owners don’t drag their heels about it and wait until the summer because announcing a contract for Dalglish would give everyone a huge boost and it would be a shame to waste it at a time when there’s no football to be played.

Once Kenny is signed up it will be time to sort out the squad. Under Rafa I always felt that with everyone fit we could put out a strong first eleven that could compete with anyone home or away but beyond that our squad was too weak and light on quality to sustain a challenge. These days our overall squad is still too light and even with everyone fully fit, I also have my doubts about our first eleven.

Kenny can be at his inspirational best but if he hasn’t got the tools to work with, he can’t do the job. John Henry recently said that everything they do at the club is designed towards bringing the title back to Anfield but to do that they are going to have to dig deep. By my reckoning we need to bring in at least five first team quality players in the summer, even more if possible. Players to beef up the first team and the overall squad.

In defence we need a good quality left back with attacking qualities that can get down the line and help the attack. Johnson and Kelly are good options on the right side and we’ve got a good mix of players for the centre, a new face would be nice but other areas are more of a priority for us right now in my opinion.

I think our midfield is the area that needs the most work. We need another option for the centre, if not Charlie Adam then a Charlie Adam-type would do nicely. Gerrard should no longer be an automatic choice. At his best he is a huge asset to us but his performance levels have definitely dropped over the last two seasons and he has also been picking a lot of niggley injuries. I wouldn’t be as harsh as some people seem to be about our skipper. He is one of our greatest ever players and has pulled our asses out of the fire countless times in the past but he is missing games and not really playing to his level when he is available so we need another option to cover and compete with him.

We also have the old chestnut of lack of width. We’ve been crying out for a proper winger for years and I’m hoping this will finally be addressed in the summer. Suarez and Carroll look as if they would form a good partnership in attack but we need quality in the wide areas to provide them with the ammunition. We need good crosses coming in for Carroll to get on the end of and we also need proper width to stretch defences and create more space for Little Luis to do his thing. One winger would be nice but two would be better and would frighten the life out of most teams if we could attack them down both sides and have Little and Large in the middle,

I also think we need another experienced striker in the squad. We’ve already brought in two big money signings and I think Deadly Dirk will start to be used more in attack then on the right but there are a lot of games and a lot of competitions to play in over the course of a season and we need a better extra option in the squad then David bloody Eggnog! We need someone who could be in the starting line-up or brought on from the bench to change the course of a game.

But all that’s for the future, tonight we are back in Europa League action against Braga. I have my fingers, toes and everything else crossed that we can go all the way in this competition because the final is in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin this year which is less than a 30 minute journey from my home and I’ve already got my tickets sorted. To have Liverpool playing a European final in my backyard would be a real once in a lifetime and there’s no way I’m going to miss it, but of course we’ve got to get there first.

The next stage of the journey begins tonight away to Braga. I saw a little of them in the last round and this is going to be another tough tie especially as we will be missing a few of our first team. It would be good to see Andy Carroll get some more playing time and Joe Cole getting a run out, but I really don’t want to see anymore of the likes of Eggnog and Jovanovic etc. They are about as much use as a one-legged tap dancer and it’s now gotten to the stage where I am actually annoyed to see them in a Liverpool shirt. These guys have no future at the club and I’d much rather have some of our young prospects in the side.

Anyway, whatever side Kenny puts out I’m hoping we can get out of there with a clean sheet and finish them off at Anfield, my money is on a 1-0 win for The Reds. Hopefully we also won’t pick up any more knocks to add to our growing injury list because we’ve got some big games coming up. On Sunday we’ve got a tricky game at Sunderland.

Our current league position is most likely as high as we can finish this season and we need to protect it. One of the nearest challengers behind us is Sunderland so if we can beat them on Sunday we’ll have a nice bit of daylight between us but the Stadium of Shite is a tough place to get a result. Hopefully we can create enough space for Little Luis, Raul the Merciless and Dirk Lineker to do the business and grab us a couple of goals because I’ve got this one down as a 2-0 win for The Reds.

Keep the Faith

The victory was made all the sweeter by the fact that it was Torres’s first game for the chavs since he turned his back on Liverpool and I think we are well rid of him. Now that he’s gone any anti-Torres talk seems like sour grapes but I honestly believe we are far better off without him. I was getting fed up with the sideshow when he was here and I’m even more fed up with it now that he’s gone.

While he was here it seemed that almost all of our games over the past 12 months or so had become part of the Torres circus. Regardless of the result of our games we would hear the same questions over and over again. How did he play? Did he look interested? What was his body language like? Did he look happy? Does he want to leave? Has the real Fernando Torres been abducted by aliens and replaced by a clone with the wrong coloured hair, a face like a slapped arse and a couple of dodgy hamstrings?

Ok, that last question was one of mine but the vast change in Torres both as a player and a person since his “supposed” surgery ahead of the World Cup last year is very strange and I don’t think we can rule out alien involvement. Alien abduction has long been a problem in football and particularly at Anfield but the authorities refuses to acknowledge it exists and brush it off with lame excuses about loss of form and confidence. I think there is clear evidence to suggest there is a bug-eyed alien behind this but so far David Moyes has denied any involvement!

Anyway enough from the parallel universe my mind sometimes drifts into, my point is that the circus that has been following the Torres clone around for the last year or so has been a distraction and taken the limelight off the team. Granted our results over the last year have been pretty poor but there have been some good performances within the team that have been largely ignored due to the spotlight been constantly on Fernando Tortoise.

For example, it’s good to see Lucas getting a little bit of recognition for his performances since Dalglish took over but the truth is the lad has been playing his heart out and has been our most consistent performer for the last two years. There have been other players as well who have put in good performances in some games that have gone unnoticed due to the media circus surrounding Torres.

I’ve also got a pain in my ass hearing a lot of the crap that has gone on since he left. First he said Chelsea are a bigger club, then he said that actually Liverpool are a bigger club and now he’s saying that Liverpool are a bigger club but Chelsea have been a bigger club over the last 10 years, or something like that. He’s also now said that he had lost his enthusiasm at Liverpool. This is a guy who was earning £110k a week at Anfield and had the adoration of Liverpool fans worldwide and yet he claims to have lost his motivation?

He also claims his move was for sporting reasons and nothing to do with money, so clearly the chavs making him their highest paid player on £175k a week is just an accounting error! I don’t know what he is looking to achieve with all of this crap he is spouting to the media but whatever it is, it’s not working. Torres’s actions have spoken louder than his words and those actions show that he is nothing but a traitor, a two-faced liar and just another petulant and greedy footballer. That’s not just sour grapes from a Liverpool fan, I think most neutrals are also coming around to this point of view.

So at this stage I’m sick of hearing about bloody Torres. As far as I’m concerned the matter is closed and if he wants to sell his soul and sign for a team with an average age that’s increasing faster than the State of Florida, that’s very much his loss and we will continue onwards and upwards without him.

Of far greater importance then Fernando Footnote is the way the team is playing and we are playing some great stuff at the moment. Kenny has the team playing as a team and they all seem to be enjoying their football which has made a huge difference to our performances and it’s terrific to watch. All of the players are playing their part. In defence, I thought it was a strange decision to move Glen Johnson to left back but I don’t think he’s ever played better for us and Kelly is playing some great stuff on the right, and with four clean sheets in our last four games our centre backs are also looking solid.

In midfield, Lucas is doing his best Ronnie Whelan impression, Gerrard is slowly getting back to his best and Raul the Merciless is playing some great stuff and just can’t stop scoring. In attack, Kuyt has been moved back to our forward line and it seems to have given him a new lease of life. Deadly Dirk may not have scored recently but he’s reminded us what it’s like to have a forward who constantly harries defenders, actually knows how to hold the ball up and has the ability to pass the ball to somebody in the same coloured shirt. I’m also looking forward to seeing Suarez. He looked very good when he came on against Stoke and it will be interesting to see what he can do when he plays from the start. All this and Andy Carroll still to come, life is good!

Whether we can keep this run going and claw our way a bit further up the table remains to be seen but at least we can now see some progress being made with the side and a style of play that we can develop and build on for next season. I’m really enjoying the football we are playing and I’m looking forward to our games with an enthusiasm I haven’t known in years.

Next up we’ve got Wigan at Anfield on Saturday. They are not having the best of times at the moment but they are one of those sides that is capable of springing a surprise if you give them half a chance. They will provide us with a different type of challenge but if we continue the form we’ve been showing lately I can’t see anything but a home win. I think Kenny might revert back to 4-4-2 and play Suarez and Kuyt upfront for this one and I’ll put my money on a 3-0 Reds win.

Keep the Faith