LET me take you back to a painful day in our recent history.
Sunday April 27, 2014. Liverpool 0 Chelsea 2. That one.
I was low down on The Kop that day with my mate Tony. Front row, corner flag. We were so close to the action that we could have tapped Iago Aspas on the shoulder and said “Back post for this one, Iago lad. Trust us on this,” had we the benefit of hindsight. Had there not been a tabarded steward in the way, we could have stepped over and touched the pitch.
Before the game the enormous flag, which is passed over the stand as the players come on, was taken out from the corner of the Kop/Main Stand and unfurled. Given our position we were handed the task of unravelling it and helping it on its way. As we were stood underneath it we noted two things:
- It had pen marks on it. Proper marker pen graffiti.
- It absolutely stank.
This led to a discussion about how you wash a flag of that size. Surely it was too big for a washing machine and a hand wash would require a sink of enormous magnitude and, in any case, where would you hang it to dry? It’s almost as big as the stand.
I digress.
Of course, the most notable incident of that day involved a man falling over. Again, we were close to this, close enough to hear him grunt as he fell. We all know what happened next. Demba Ba, timewasting, Andre Schurrle coming on to play as a second left-back, Fernando Torres breaking free and a man with the temerity to wear a body-warmer going mad on the side.
As we left the ground, dimly hoping that Crystal Palace might cause an upset against Manchester City, there was one thing which bothered me more than anything. It wasn’t the realisation that the dream of a 19th league title was evaporating in front of our very eyes or that the greatest player of his generation was somewhere in the bowels of Anfield, blaming himself for a human act. No. It was this.
“Wolves’ fans are never going to let us forget this.”
We got back to the car. Silence was the main order of the day save for Marc shouting ‘cunts’ every now and then as he steered us through the crowded streets of Old Swan on the way to the M62. City were already beating Palace at that point but, for the others, it was the horror that it was Chelsea and Jose Mourinho which hurt the most.
Not me, though. I just couldn’t get those horrendous thoughts out of my mind.
“And Plymouth! They’re going to sing about this if we ever play them. Possibly with fervour. I just know it.”
It was a matter of days before the song was aired. Our own version about him being ‘big and fucking hard’ or the sanitised ‘he’s better than Frank Lampard’ if you had kids with you at the match, was twisted into the new Chelsified version to be sang by Chelsea only. Of course, it would be. They were the opponents and no team other than them and the club who gained the most – City – would sing about that.
“Oh, Jesus! And Exeter! I’d forgotten about Exeter! Those guys are going to troll us about this for generations! The ‘lolz’ and ‘bantz’ will never end.”
Alright, there might be a small amount of sarcasm attached here, but as the fans of Wolverhampton Wanderers – themselves a club of some success in a bygone age – amassed in the Anfield Road end a fortnight ago, and went through their repertoire of shite songs, it was the ‘Demba Ba’ song which stood out.
I fell into a reverie about this. How had they arrived at that choice of song? Did they leap for joy that sunny day and check out the Chelsea website for song updates? Was Chelsea’s success theirs too?
It’s like me breaking into pro-Oldham songs at the Manchester derby.
I’m not just picking on them either. I’ve been to countless games where the opposing fans sing it with no relevance to themselves and – and here’s the thing – to us either! Steven Gerrard doesn’t play for us anymore. We don’t have the same manager. City won that league but have also lost it since. How is that supposed to wound us now?
We’re not blameless for this either. After 2005 you’d often hear the ‘Fuck off Chelsea FC’ song ring out when we were playing other sides, but I don’t think we ever sang about a specific incident in a game where we ourselves did not gain an advantage.
One of the great joys about supporting Liverpool is that we have a wide variety of songs – some basic, others unusual. How many other clubs have ditties based on the dying thoughts of a soldier in the Boer War? Anthems from musicals of 1945? Wit has also been a thing. Singing John Wark’s name in a high-pitched squeal when he was whacked in the bollocks once and, in 1987, exaggerated applause from The Kop every time QPR made a successful pass when their own fans celebrated winning a throw-in like it was a goal.
Something new, something unusual. Something sporadic.
Other clubs have traditions too. I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ and the way Spurs sing ‘Oh When The Spurs Go Marching In’ really slowly, but much of that has been dropped. These days most visitors at Anfield run through the standard selection of ‘Sign On’ (notably from the economic powerhouses of Newcastle and Sunderland), ‘Demba Ba’, ‘Where’s Your Famous Atmosphere’, and, if they’re desperate to be seen as an enemy, ‘Always the Victim’? Didn’t really work that last one, did it, Hammers?
I’m fine with that to some extent as it just shows a lack of imagination. I just wish they could be a bit more original and give us an opportunity to shout something back rather than the standard weak, sarcastic applause.
In the 1959-60 season, Wolves were denied a third consecutive league title when they lost the league to Burnley by a single point. A 3-1 defeat to Spurs in the penultimate game proved too much for their championship ambitions and even the presence of Player of the Year, Bill Slater, was not enough. Liverpool weren’t even in the same division at the time so naturally we were in the perfect place to gloat about it.
I’m just off to write about song about it.
Bill Slater, Slater…
Recent Posts:
[rpfc_recent_posts_from_category meta=”true”]
Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda Photo
The only thing that will take away the pain of that moment and that song is Liverpool winning the league.
Seeing as that’s unlikely to happen any time soon, it looks like we’re just going to have to put up with it.
Everything about the slip has become something of a false prophecy. It didn’t cost us the game, a combination of not reacting well enough and Jose’s 11-0-0 time-wasting from minute one tactics played much more of a part. Had Chelsea themselves beaten Norwich and Sunderland in their last two home games, they’d have won the league. That’s much more of a choke job than being smothered by a “Mourinho masterclass” and then trying to beat Palace by a million goals and failing. I get that people take some joy in things *like* this, but the reverie that other supporters have never ceases to amaze. Especially the Man United fans, who aparently love singing about Man City winning the league. It makes no sense for them to do it, and until we make it right, it’ll hurt. That’s probably why they do it. Let them have their awful awful banter. When all you can do is take pleasure in others failure rather than look to inspire moments of greatness in your own, then you have and are truly lost.
The best chant was when we played Blackburn in the cup the other year and their fans all stood up and started singing ‘stand up if you’ve won the league’. Er, we’ve won it 18 times dickheads, 15 times more than you have as a matter of fact!
But yeah, I just don’t get this thing about going to an away ground and spending the whole 90 trying to taunt the home fans with shite like ‘this is a library’ and ‘shall we sing a song for you’. It’s just boring, tiresome nonsense, no-one’s arsed. Go away and sing about how boss you think your team are or how great your big number 9 is instead, i.e get behind YOUR team!
I went with a mate to watch Gloucester City and they were singing the ‘by far the greatest team, the world has ever seen’ song, seemingly with no irony.
Fans do it because they know it winds up LFC fans, as this article shows. It’s probably not these random clubs celebration but a chance to get under the skin of the Anfield faithful. Possibly to give a sense of meaning to a fixture that lacks any sort of edge. Don’t forget, fans of these clubs are grim, their clubs are unsuccessful and unglamorous, they’ve no ambition of winning, so they will resort to this sort of thing in a heartbeat.
Just to be pedantic – poor scouser Tommy died under the Libyan sun (although some sing Arabian) and was shot by an old Nazi gun. The Boer War was where the “spion kop” reference came from.
It still makes me feel slightly queasy thinking about that Chelsea defeat. To channel a bit of KK – it would make me so happy if we could win no. 19, with Gerrard on the coaching team, at Chelsea. Now that would be something to write a song about.
Conceded. Meant to check that as I knew it was wrong when I typed it. Thank you.
I don’t care what away fans sing. Doesn’t bother me one iota. Who gives a fuck?
It only becomes more noticeable when we aren’t playing well, and our lot are muted.
It’s not like we hold the moral high ground on this. Plenty of dicks in our fanbase.
To put the brakes on these taunts, maybe it would help if we ACTUALLY won something. Anything.
I’ve had a lot of comments about this, particularly ‘well it clearly winds you up’. It really doesn’t. What I don’t understand (and should have said as much) is that I couldn’t go to a game, borrow someone else’s song about one incident that had nothing to do with me and gone home happy. This is a common confusion I hold about other fans. How can you go to the game every week and sing something which stopped being relevant a month later and sing the same songs ‘blahblahblahsblueandwhitearmy/is this a library/it’s nice to know you’re here’ etc and not have the slightest concern that your fanbase has no originality at all. I don’t mind Chelsea singing it. It’s about their game. We’ve done it about Garcia often enough. It’s the stupidity of other clubs doing it which irks me.
For me seeing Maureen stabbing at the Plastic’s emblem on his chest and taunting the crowd is what remains.
I so wanted Gerrard to lift that trophy and repeat the same chest thumping after that game.
As for the song, it doesn’t bother me, but when they sing it during our poor runs/spells in the game and we are on the verge of losing, it is annoying.
When Jurgen wins the league this nonsense will stop.
ah yes ……the Johnny Wark, Johnny Wark falsetto…i remember it well
Big brother, little brother stuff isn’t it.
When Terry slipped over taking his pen and they lost the European cup we all thought it was funny but I doubt anyone thought about making up a song?
Away fans at Anfield are shocking, almost all of them, and yet they fail to see how utterly ridiculous they are. “Sign on”, “Where’s your famous atmosphere”, “you robbed our stereo”, “feed the Scousers” and “shall we sing a song for you” usually belted out by idiots whose own towns have higher unemployment, higher crime rates than we have, who can’t fill their own grounds and whose songs consist of rip-offs of our songs (the Torres, Suarez, Riise, Maxi Rodriguez and Lucas Leiva songs being usual favourites for ripping off by fans who have no songs of their own). But should we be wound up? Nah, see we are blessed with living in a world famous city, with fantastic people and culture, and we follow a football team known the world over. I’d rather be living here, watching Liverpool, than in some shithole somewhere else….