I SAW TONY EVANS two nights ago. Pint in Cask. You know the drill – loads of talking, mostly done quickly.
I tried to explain my issues around Suarez going. I don’t think I was doing it very well. He said I was too concerned about entertainment. Winning, he said, was entertainment.
I agree with him entirely about this. Winning is entertainment. At the core of my football watching soul is an ideal season which goes:
P38 W38 F39 A1.
Thirty seven 1-0 wins with the other being two hotly disputed injury time penalties when 1-0 down at Goodison. Imagine the fume. It’d be a fume that would last a season, last a lifetime. Liverpool brutal, the opposition bowed. That is what I always wanted. That is what I will want again.
To win is everything. To win and win and win. I’d like us to end football. Have them say Liverpool have done it so brutally and brilliantly, there’s no point any more. Liverpool have won the football with so much depressing regularity we might as well not bother. There is nothing other than victory. The Liverpool Way I most recognise is a Scouse boot stamping on the face of humanity forever. All I want is for Liverpool to be built up so they would have to submit. Give in.
That was my ideal. Endless Liverpudlian domination at home and abroad.
By 2010, specifically 23rd August 2010, I thought that dream, that ideal was finished for at the very least a decade if not even more. I thought that was that. Collective submission to our will was so far away and it would need the fairest of winds to reach it. FSG coming in was a step. But a small step. A baby step.
In the slipstream of FSG’s arrival was endless talk from so many including, especially, our own supporters about projects, about timescales, about visions. Loads of people like me, possibly even including me, wrote loads of articles on websites like this one the essence of which was that Rome wasn’t built in a day and accept that we would have to be patient, accept that progress wasn’t linear, accept, accept, accept.
The setting of this compulsory acceptance was the end of Benitez, back end of Dalglish, entirety of Hodgson, start of Rodgers. Accept and you’ll see. One step at a time. One small step at a time. One small, stuttering baby step at a time.
Anfield was dark then. We like to think of Anfield as ablaze but those days were dark and dank. There were spots in the darkness but the gloom would always return. It would always pull you back. Unlucky defeats, a shortage of momentum, so many meaningless games whose negative outcomes rendered them all the more meaningless. Dark, dank and drab. We went to endless football matches short of quality, shorn of vitality. Meaningless games with the occasional chink of daylight – the league cup win, FA Cup semi final, Spurs at home 2010. Moments within the gloom.
And then this season gone Luis Suarez lit and fired a flamethrower in the darkness which had been consuming us. He decided he wasn’t having it. He just wasn’t having it.
There had been hints of it and his brilliance was undeniable. Those chinks in the darkness were so often Luis Suarez orientated. 3-0 against United for instance. Suarez briefly relieving the gloom before we all succumbed to it again, wondering about the direction of travel, being assured about the importance of small steps while watching too much dank, drab, pointless football. I barely remember a thing about the home Merseyside Derby in 2013, for instance.
The last day I felt that darkness wasn’t Chelsea at home. That was a defeat in a tight game. It wasn’t even Hull away. That was a defeat when we were in the shake up. The last day I felt the darkness was Southampton at home. The last league game before Suarez’s ban expired and Suarez came back and decided he wasn’t having the darkness. Instead he was going to be the best player in the world. The best player you’ve seen in your life. He was going to carry and inspire a team almost every week between Sunderland away and Spurs away. He exploded all over this football team. It was superhuman. Hyperhuman. It was everything you’ve ever wanted. It was everything we needed; he was a bolt of lightning thumping life into Frankenstein, he was McNulty on the stoop, he was Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer. Luis Suarez really, truly happened and nothing was going to be the same again.
This wasn’t the processes the well meaning and greybearded wanted to impose. Not gradual improvement to the sweet relief of the grave. He was this riot. This pyro. This party. He set himself and his team on fire so the stands didn’t need flares any more. They were redundant – how could they shine brighter than this?
He captained this side to its definitive performance, away at Tottenham Hotspur. It was a team in his image. Rambunctious, endless, exhausting. He was the shortcut up the mountain. He was giant strides, not baby steps. He built Rome in a day. This wasn’t a one man team but it was a team hewn in one man’s image.
He was about winning. All about winning. Not entertaining, winning. At Southampton away when Liverpool were 0-2 ahead he threw his head at a lad’s knee ninety yards from his own goal in order to stop a break from developing. Whatever it takes. Win. It was every type of winning. Win through tripping a man with your head. Win through headers, win through volleys, win through blamming it against an opponent. Whatever it takes. Win. Find new ways to provoke handballs like Shane Warne looking for an LBW. Beat men, get into their head, anticipate their every weakness, their every inadequacy. Whatever it takes. Win. He made everyone around him be about winning. Always be winning.
I said to Tony I’d never seen anyone want to win more. He paused and said “Souness.” He might be right. Where Souness is concerned Tony normally is. But that’s what it takes – the man who may well be Liverpool’s greatest ever captain to match the will of Luis Suarez. And just as with Souness it isn’t about him alone, that’d be the wrong impression to take from any of this. It was as much the impact he had on everyone else. He told his teammates, his supporters that anything, absolutely anything is possible. Watch what I do. We can achieve together. It’d be profoundly wrong to underplay the role of a manager who let him be – who helped him be – the best possible version of himself, not least when we’ve just seen another manager create the circumstances where he is the worst. It’d be wrong to do that and it’d be misguided to think that same man can’t come up with solutions going forward. Brendan Rodgers is very, very good at the football managing.
But more than anyone Suarez beat back the darkness. Suarez realigned everything.
Now I no longer want F39 A1. For one more year I want F136 A64. I want chaos and mischief, football as incendiary device not as steamroller. Headers from the edge of the box. Volleys from the halfway line. Not because it entertains me but because of what it means to me. What it says to the world, a world that is still that bit unsure about Brendan Rodgers’s Liverpool. I want to scream it out. We’re madder than you can conceive of. We’re not submitting to convention; convention can damn well submit to us. We’re Liverpool Football Club and you know what you can do with your two nil home wins.
I reject two nil home wins. I spurn them. He realigned everything.
I don’t want him to go because even if this daft ban is upheld, I know that if Liverpool is dark in October it won’t be in November. He won’t stand for it. I don’t want the darkness back. Even now it swirls around us. Can we spend the money his sale would raise well enough? Can we capitalise? Can we kick on? What does this say about us? The old questions return. We were coalesced into something the second half of last year. We were a mass. We were an army, a red wave. Now though – the post match singing, dancing, laughing are all under threat from the dreaded, dark questions. The rock hard certainties of 13/14 drift away. Four weeks ago I was trying to guess when the league would be won. Now I’m looking at Arsenal (ARSENAL!) concerned.
I don’t want him to go because he is our cheat. Not a cheat (though like most great players he is that as well), but our cheat. Our thing which means we can skip the process, skip the journey. He can accelerate us to our destination. If he goes can that still happen? Or do the greybearded win?
I don’t want him to go because it feels unnatural. The job is two thirds complete. We’re mid cycle and suddenly everything changes. I want him there at the end if the end is in sight and I am convinced it is. I want him vanquishing Europe’s finest under the lights, in front of The Kop. But it now feels like everything is up in the air. There’s no clear replacement. There’s no clear solution. More good players but a poorer first eleven? Possibly. Probably.
Me and Tony and Adam and Sarah (who were with us) kept talking and talking. You know the drill. The subject got on to favourite football songs. Tony’s starts “They all laugh at us…” They did laugh at us. They had said our days were numbered. They had counted us out and the so-called sages were counting and reveling in the months and years it would take to get counted back in again. They’d reckoned without Luis Suarez. Now it looks like we will have to reckon without him and this makes me worried.
More than anything though it simply makes me sad. There could be loads of wisdom in it. We could get more points, be able to compete on every front, we could even get someone who doesn’t bite people. Luis Suarez doesn’t make me feel proud. But he has made me feel more alive than any footballer ever has. This isn’t about entertainment. It’s about feeling berserk and unhinged and unbridled and seeing everybody else is like that too. It’s about feeling the impossible is possible and anything could happen next.
We’ll see now if that is Brendan Rodgers’s Tricky Reds or if it was Luis Suarez or if it was a bit of both. Probably the latter. Almost everything is. But it’s another question to answer when all I wanted from 2014/15 was more of the same from 2013/14 but harder.
I just don’t want everything that was taken away from us.
No backward steps. Please. Please.
I’m with you.
But it seems blind faith in what money can buy (Such a great track record in these circumstances, money. Has always come up with the goods. To quote the cariacature that is Mark Lawrenson – Not.) and a new “players are like buses, there’ll be another one along in a minute” attitude is de-rigeour this week …
Simply not having that “modern players don’t deserve our admiration” thing by the way – our songs are built upon the names of our greats, not the benefits of a good squad and teamwork …
“… Stevie Heighway on the wing …”
I could accept Suarez leaving next summer. This summer feels like a love affair thats been forced to end too early.
Suarez has a stupendous record of something like 82 goals, 59 assists and has won 11 penalties in his short time here. How are we going to replace it? Just when it seemed like LFC were back taking 4 and 5 giant steps forward we have had our legs broke.
Sanchez aside – why aren’t LFC linked with World Class players to replace Luis? I’m trying not to negative but with the players brought in so far (Lallana aside) its hard to be positive.
Farewell Luis you biting scumbag…but for an all too short time you were our scumbag and we loved you.
You wont be loved by Barca fans like you were by ours. I hope you don’t end up like Owen and Torres who left this great club and have never been the same and haven’t been loved. I now have to leave this message as I cant see the screen for tears…………….
I’m right there with you, Steve. I didn’t think he’d stay past 2014-15, but I honestly thought he’d stick around for this season, to win the League, to leave without having been denied.
But the passion, the fire,all the brilliance doesnt have to go with Luis..that would be so unfair on his team mates. Stats can be dealt with another day! As much as he bought with him and my god it was a lot, we were not a one man team last year. That was and will be the narrative for some time. Daniel Sturridge, different but brilliant, possibly about to be the real main man which I suspect might just push him to even higher levels.
We all knew that this day would come at some point it was just when and to which of Spains big two. Brendan Rodgers – I dont do blind faith – but for me this is a fella who will continue to take us forward – yes, Luis liked to attack but he was backed by a man who appears to think of nothing else other than how many goals can we win by.
He wont want him to leave but I suspect it was long planned for as much as you can plan for brilliance leaving.
Souness – He left and we thrived in the end – so it can be done. It wont be quite the same but the darkness can be kept at bay.
Exactly, Suarez makes no sense, I could give one Holy F**k what opposition fans/ teams think of him and us, they want him gone coz it will weaken us, why should someone else reap the benefits!? He’s that force of nature no opposition team could control, his attitude, skills, play and aura made everyone play and believe they would win, score against us well just score more, well never ever see a god amongst players like Suarez in the Prem or Anfield again. Devo’d!!
Its a very sad state of affairs, not because of the impact on the success of Liverpool Football Club it will have (no one can know what that will be) but because as Neil says, for those of us in our mid to late 30’s he is the best player we have ever seen play for us since we starting watch it whilst on the ale. I have never enjoyed watching a player more and will continue you wear my Suarez shirt with all the pride I wore it last year. Its the maddness I will miss more than anything.
The greybearded always win. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some greybearded types embrace the mental in amongst the patient glacial attrition thing.
(It helps that the manager’s one of those I think.)
Great bit of writing. I’ll always love the fella but I suspect we’ll still be a little bit mental next season and beyond. Suarez’s residue will take a few cycles to rinse out of the squad.
There was a comment on the radio this morning about the Brazil match last night: the Argentines have Messi, the Brazilians have Neymar, but Germany has a team.
Bit glib, but it’s true. I love the crazy, biting bastard too and last season gave me some of the best rushes of my life, but he had to go sometime. And like Mr Atkinson says, he shaped the team around him in his image. He’s leaving the most talented English players in the country with the smartest manager in the league and he’s helped them taste what winning the league would feel like.
Basically, I don’t want him to go, but he’s leaving a much, much stronger team than when he got here.
Your very best Neil. Loved every word of it.
“Probably the latter. Almost everything is.”
Suarez was poor towards the end of the season and Raheem stepped up. He was suspended at the start of the season and Daniel stepped up. He was mad, he was great, he was always going to leave.
Stay positive, stay focussed. Believe that Brendan’s building has firm foundations. I do.
And feel blessed that you’ve seen a stellar talent, a madman in red, a talisman, a shaman, and at times, a liability. With players like Raheem, Coutinho, Sturridge, Markovic and Ibe, we’ve a lot to look forward to. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll win the league without anyone biting another player, or flirting with rival clubs every year. Maybe, just maybe, this club is built in Brendan’s image, not Luis’s.
Been nodding away at all your Suarez shouts throughout Neil and this is no different. The silver lining is Sturridge can become Torres to Rodgers’ Benitez. He’ll deserve to be the main man no. 9 everything’s built around. Just hope he doesn’t miss a couple of chances at the Emirates like he did in the FA Cup only for Sanchez to net because you know what (or who) everyone will be talking about.
You’ve shunted sane, Benitezian 2-0s but you’re not fooling me because you’ve referenced the cauldron Spurs walked in to in 2010 and the closest thing to your ideal derby is Kuytamania ’07. Balloons wrapped in Tesco bags and endless Clattenberg decisions going our way; the greatest ever for me. I honestly wouldn’t mind Rodgers doing what he did at the start of the season before Suarez came back which was basically first-goal-the-winner Houllier with Sturridge cast as Owen if it means points on the board but that’s probably not going to happen.
Can’t believe I’m going to have to get back into watching Barcelona just to see Suarez. I really can’t be arsed. Only watched them last season when they were playing Athletico.
Feel sad like everyone else. Thinking ‘the unknown’ could be fantastic with Brendan in charge – we’ve got that winning mentality back. Thanks Neil and co, TAW has kept me going. There’s nothing so infectious in the media that even comes close.
Could Suarez be our ‘Cantona’? A player that galvanised a competent but unimaginitive side into the team we’ve had to live in the shadow of all these years?
Whilst thats one of the best LFC related article I’ve ever read, I divide writing into two entities, what your saying, and how you’re saying it – how you’re saying it is full on brilliant; On the what, it’s a powerful argument, but I’m incline to slightly disagree. Let me lay down my cards, I don’t like Luis Suarez, basically I can’t get passed him being a racist…that said, he was operating as the second best player on the planet last season, hands down, and did indeed do most of things you talk about. But because of that distance I have from Luis, I can tell you from first hand experience that that bewildering joy came from other places as well as Luis, a lot of other places – Think of the Mignolet pen save, Sturridge doing keepy uppy’s whilst scoring at Stoke, Phillipe Coutinho, RAHEEM STERLING! – And, as with your caveat – I swing way more to Rodgers than Luis, he had us master about 5 different formations and tactical disciplines in the one season (I keep watching the world cup and thinking, yeah, we can do, and that, and…). Also we’re Liverpool, just to give some perspective Robbie Fowler scored 31, 36 & 31 goals in his first 3 full seasons – I think he was 19, 20 and 21 at the time, and he was mad (as an aside Luis scored (4) 17, 30 & 31)..we even got over 20 goals in a season from Heskey, think of Torres in his pomp. Would I rather have Luis over the money? Yes, but only because I want to win the league more than I want flat tops to come back into fashion, and that is miles more likely with Suarez than without, but not because I think the madness will stop. Apologies, I’m blabbering, I’m sneaking this in at work, thanks though.
When I told my 8 year old daughter that Suarez was likely to leave, she slowly started to cry, asking me why. She said that she just ‘enjoyed watching him play’ and that he was one of our best players. That sums it up perfectly for me. It is sheer joy watching him play. What a footballer.