GIVEN the fact Liverpool doesn’t operate the open cheque book policy Manchester City has enjoyed and profited from in recent years, the club should really be light years behind the boys in blue.
They’re not. Instead, Liverpool Football Club is breathing heavily down Manchester City’s neck. And while there have been obvious ups and downs, that has been the case for 18 months.
“You nearly won the league” was gleefully belted out from the corner of the Anfield Road housing the City fans yesterday afternoon.
Yes. Yes we did. And that should bother you. We’re not going away.
The riches of Sheikh Mansour seem somewhat wasted on Manchester City in the same way a lottery jackpot is somewhat wasted on the bloke from the local biscuit factory who lives for the company and claims that the millions won’t change him one little bit.
If it was all about the money, Manchester City should be streaking ahead of everyone in this country bar Chelsea. They should be right up there with the big names on the continent. But they aren’t light years ahead of everyone else and instead somehow insist on making heavy weather out of being able to buy and sell whoever they want to.
If Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers had the benefits Manchester City enjoy where would they be? Maybe we would be the Roman Empire Bill Shankly dreamed of. We could be that “bastion of invincibility”.
But there’s no use in dreaming. Not of that. Not when Liverpool has a manager that has a vision which could make it all possible without the benefits that Manchester City enjoy. That could make it all possible against all the odds. And that would be so much sweeter.
This Liverpool sees angles that others don’t. We are Keanu Reeves in the Matrix, while no matter how much they change and modernise themselves, a part of Manchester City will always be Kevin Reeves. They just aren’t imaginative enough it seems. Not yet.
Yes, they are very much capable of throwing out some fantastic shapes on the Premier League’s dance floor, but I don’t get the feeling that they can create new shapes like all the great teams do. They’ve reached the bar but then failed to raise it. Just as Oasis are a tribute act to music’s great and good City are a tribute act to football’s great and good. They imitate rather than innovate, it seems. Now, already, talk is that Manuel Pellegrini will not see in the new season come August.
Meanwhile, Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool has created new shapes. It has adapted and changed. It isn’t yet one of the great teams. But carry on along the path they currently travel and they will no doubt have a good go at becoming one. If this Liverpool is allowed to grow and evolve then the title is going to come home sooner rather than later. It must.
Maybe Rodgers might never see eye-to-eye with European club competition, it remains the big question mark, but domestically he is again suggesting he can be the ruler supreme. That would be just fine with me. Bill Shankly always declared the title to be our bread and butter. It’s a dish I crave to see on the Anfield menu once again.
It was Marvellous Marvin Hagler vs Sugar Ray Leonard at Anfield on Sunday. Manchester City stood in the middle of the ring and hit us as hard as they could. They landed a blow. And came close with others. But instead of flinching, Liverpool danced and ducked, found the impossible angles and landed bigger blows, better blows. And landed them with style.
Manchester City are probably now busy trying to convince themselves and anyone who will listen that they should have won the game. But their Anfield hoodoo continues and Liverpool knows differently. Anyone who witnessed this game knows differently.
I love Jordan Henderson. Not even Nivea and bad TV adverts can ruin all that. I love the goal he scored to put us 1-0 up, I love the way he is maturing — transforming from the rabbit caught in the headlights with a big price-tag weighing him down to the man who will one day soon could hoist the title trophy high in the air to end more than a quarter of a century of waiting.
Jordan Henderson looks like a man who could lead us to the bread and butter. I love the way Jordan Henderson bows his head and puts his hands behind his back when being lectured by referees. “Yes, ref. You’re absolutely correct ref.” He disarms them. He’ll save us from countless yellow and red cards in the coming years. No-one talks about Jordan Henderson’s price-tag anymore. £16million in case you had forgotten. Money well spent.
Dejan Lovren did pretty well. Anything is possible for this Liverpool Football Club. Simon Mignolet was a little more hesitant than he has been in the last few games and he got told off for it by a man emerging from a shell. I said it at one point during the run-in last season, but this Liverpool are a band of mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits, raised on a diet of broken biscuits. We dance in a unique manner. We are a club empowered, we are a collective. No more talismanic figures please, just equal component parts — a collection of small cogs working in unison to turn the wheel full circle back to title-winning ways.
Philippe Coutinho hit a mesmeric winning goal. I have no stats to back up my opinion, it’s just not my thing, but I feel confident of victory in games when we reach the 75-minute mark on level terms. By nature games slow down once they hit that point, partly due to energy levels understandably dropping and partly due to the game becoming more cat and mouse.
No one wants to make the late mistake that costs his team the three points, so the game slows down and that suits us. We have a team that sees the angles when the game is running at a million miles per hour, so when the game slows down those angles suddenly appear in flashing neon to players like Coutinho. Too often he hasn’t been on the pitch when we reach the 75-minute mark. This time he was. A deserved rest followed by a deserved goal.
Arguably we scored the winning goal too early. Manchester City got a bit angry and tried to come back.
They blew the wind out of their sails and ran out of ideas eventually. They couldn’t find — or even see — the angles we could. I don’t envy Manchester City. I sort of feel sorry for them. Someday soon we’re going to win the league.
And then they’re going to believe us.
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda
I liked the little Pulp qoute you managed to get in.
great article, love the Pulp reference, dare I say we were a different class yesterday?
We want a team of common people like us.
I told my mate watching the game yesterday ( a City fan) that we will win the league in the next 5 years, and i’m confident we totally will.
We need a few more solid players who can contribute when asked, as we want to participate in more than one competition, but I absolutely believe we will be popping champagne soon, soooo sooo excited!
‘No more talismanic figures please, just equal component parts — a collection of small cogs working in unison to turn the wheel full circle back to title-winning ways.’ This. Communism with a small c.
Without the Gulags, hopefully.
No-one would be happier than me to win the EPL without the need to shell-out 30mill on one major star, but I’ll be genuinely surprised if we manage it (in this era).
I think a 2nd or 3rd ( more realistically) place finish this season (automatic entry into CL) on the back of last year will make us a much more attractive proposition to genuine world stars than we were in the summer just gone. It would give players at the Reus level something to think about.
Do you know your Liverpool history Brownie? That was a quote from the great Bob Paisley who also noted:
At Anfield we have always believed in players supporting each other and concentrating on not giving the ball away. You can’t go charging forward all the time, willy-nilly. You must have patience.
Don’t confuse Communism with the aberration that was Stalinism btw! :-)
Genuine question, but what should we associate communism with?
Kruschevism? Brezhnevism? Maoism? Chavezism? Ceucescuism? Titoism? Castroism?
Speaking as someone who is very familiar with life under a Communist regime, I can tell you first hand that it is a flawed, fantasy concept, because it fails to take into account human nature.
Try Marx. Groucho, not Zeppo.
A bit like Thatcherism, like? Stalin shared, with Thatcher, a contempt for common people. They each saw them as cannon fodder, but Stalin had real cannons in mind.
Let’s just hope we don’t get a fit of overweening self-confidence over the next few weeks.
On a more serious note, The Manifesto is the place to start, Communism was unable to take root in Russia due to the civil war, a civil war, moreover, in which Britain, the US and much of Europe sided with the anti-Semitic Whites. Lenin admitted that the game was up following the failure of Soviets elsewhere in Europe.
For an example of actually existing Communism, look towards a small village in contemporary Spain:
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/11/power-pueblo
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/marinaleda-spanish-communist-village-utopia
Agreed Kevin. Brendan’s making the right noises thus far.
Human nature is moulded by ideology Jason. As true under Capitalism as Communism. i’ve little time for older forms of Communism, however. I’ve little time for any philosophy or rule of law that uses fear as a weapon: you can’t tell people what not to think, you have to encourage critical engagement.
You do know that Engels came to England to learn how to run his family’s factories? He lived the high life, riding to hounds when he wasn’t dining at some of London’s most exclusive clubs.
Marx, for all his supposed desire to elevate the worker, kept servants, financed by Engels who, at Marx;s insistence, embezzled funds from the family firm to keep Marx in the style to which he desperately wanted to become accustomed. If I wanted to look for a champion of the working man, Marx would be the last person on my list.
Communism is a bit like the player who appears to have all the attributes, but somehow never quite manages to put it together on the pitch. Your archetypal “great on paper, shit on grass” merchant.
Or to put it another way, communism is the Ryan Babel of political ideology.
I do Jason. You asked, I responded.
Fair enough. Who would be, out of interest?
And Hitler was a dog-loving vegetarian with a penchant for sentimental music. Go figure.
Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
I think it’s time to look for a new ism. I look around the world and there’s nowhere I think ‘that seems to be working well’. A new and better ideology will emerge that takes the best of the past and applies it to the present. It may sound far fetched but there’s a collective consciousness that’s had enough of all this division. In a few generations a fairer society will emerge based on more moralistic principles. It’s the way it’s going. The answers in the future not the past. I’m thinking it’ll be called something like co-operatism. It’s like a big business trying to make as much money as it can but based on sound principles and if it does well then the workers benefit not the shareholders.
Just read that back and thought I should mention that these views were formed while reading the above comments. I think I need a bit more time to work on them.
I agree Robin, and it won’t old farts like us who come up with it. Young people are finding solutions as we speak. As the great (ahem) James Timothy Pursey once opined: If the kids are united, they will never be defeated; the kids are allright.
“Don’t confuse Communism with the aberration that was Stalinism btw! :-)”
Just curious about how many “aberrations” there needs to be before they stop being aberrations?
I could pose the same question with regard to capitalism and financial crises Brownie. Still, let’s be clear, this is a footie site, and I’m not Homo-sovieticus. I’m a man of the left who believes that capitalism can and should be better. I just hope it doesn’t take another world war for others to reach the same conclusion!
Paying £150-200k per week will solve that. Offering £60k/week plus bonuses isn’t going to persuade the level of players we need to improve starting positions. I can’t see FSG changing their tune, and being honest, I think this summer transfer window will be rather barren.
I used to have admiration for Manchester City and their fans. Now it is ambivalence. It’s not hatred like I have for Chelsea, it is just meh! The club attracted record attendances in the old third division, their fans wallowed in their misery sado masochisticaly. They wore it like a badge of honour. They loved their goat and their inflatable bananas and their renditions of Blue Moon as much as they rebelled in their hatred of their chairman Peter Swales.
Now with their choice of the worlds finest players they play in a modern stadium often with rows of empty seats, having won the title twice with an empty atmosphere and with fans with an empty space in their hearts.
Does the lack of atmosphere at Etihad, and the Emirates, not reflect more on the stadium designers? What I mean is, I’m sure the City and Arsenal die-hard faithful sing their hearts out, but perhaps it gets lost in cavernous coliseums designed by architects with little feel for acoustics or atmosphere?
I’ve noticed here (Australia) that as the old grounds are phased out and the new ‘modern’ stadiums come on line, a lot of the atmosphere gets lost in the ether, so to speak. Sure, they have more toilets, ergonomic seats and better ‘traffic flow avenues’ to ensure the crowd can get out in case of emergency, but it seems that ‘soul’ has been sacrificed for safety.
I admired them for their volume before the start of the game and all the way through YNWA.
Then about 30 seconds in they pulled out the Gerrard song and that admiration changed into resentment.
I entirely agree. I have actually never met a Mancunian, socially, who wasn’t a City fan. I watched a repeat of Eggheads a few weeks ago in which the challengers were from Manchester, and the host asked them to confirm a comment by Ferguson. Their leader said ‘We wouldn’t know, Dermot. We are all from Manchester and so by definition not Manchester United fans.”
All you say is true Steven.But don’t forget the power of superstition in all this.We were talking about this recently.
I was saying about not putting my cat out as a last resort before the penalties against Besiktas last week.Her name is Ellie by the way.Well it’s Eleanor actually.Eleanor Rigsby.Eleanor after one of the most sincere women in history (Franklin D Roosevelt’s wife) and Rigsby after that cantankerous old git from Rising Damp because she can turn on you with no warning at all.
Anyway that’s all by the bye.And everything became very clear on Sunday.
But first of all I have had some success putting her outside as a last resort in the hope of changing our fortunes and she started sitting on my knee to watch the game then began to dig her claws into my t shirt if things weren’t going well.Clinging on;expecting any minute………
So,our home game against Besiktas.I couldn’t get to my seat in time so had to give my ticket away.Got in about an hour after kick-off and started watching on record.Ellie was sitting on my knee.I got into my usual routine of pause;go and do something;play no change;pause try something else.As a last resort I picked Ellis up to put her outside but she jumped off knee and walked over to the clock on the hearth and tapped her paw on it.Then she jumped up next to me and tapped her paw on the remote.I pressed play and there was Balotelli scoring the winner!I know you’ll find this hard to believe but……..
Got in from the game on Sunday.My Mrs (who has no interest in football) said “I bet you won” I said “How do you know?” She said “Ellie jumped off my knee about 10 minutes before the end and started scratching at the front door to go out!”
I swear this to be a true and honest account of events occurring over the past 48 hours your Honour!
take bloody good care of that cat mate
You should have called her Vienna!
Ah, Rigsby. Always gave you the impression he was playing with himself in those voluminous rancid-appearing kecks when talking about ‘Miss Jones’. Old Lenny Rossiter…
Great name for a cat.
Proved a great inspiration to Midge Ure, of course. My cat’s called Hapsburg. Not really, but I do have a couple of Golden Retrievers called Dante and Fidel. I can’t take the credit for naming them, but am more than happy with their monikers.
I’m liking the love for Jordan Henderson. Terrific player who is emerging from Gerrard’s shadow. At the risk of being slated (again!) I’m sure that without the presence of SG Henderson will blossom into a real powerhouse for years to come. Whenever the two have played together it always seems to me that Henderson has gone into his shell, partly because Henderson has been assigned the water-carrying duties for an ailing Gerrard, but mostly because he hasn’t felt in himself that he has the right to try and assert himself when Gerrard is on the pitch.
Some might put this down to a lack of confidence and use it as a reason for their claim that he doesn’t deserve the captaincy. I prefer to think of it as him just being a good lad who was bought up to respect his elders and his betters: when he arrived at the club Gerrard was definitely in both of those categories.
His goalscoring record has been poor, but you can bet he has been working tirelessly on that. He is building up a nice collection of quality assists and I can see him being a 10-15 goal-a-season midfielder in future.
(If I needed any other ‘proof’ that he is maturing nicely into a quality leader, it can be found in the increasing amount of slagging-off he is getting from opposition fans on other forums.)
As for the ‘collective’, sure, a club needs quality players, but as long as the team is greater than the sum of its parts winning the EPL without the 40m quid superstars is possible.
Anybody comparing last season’s Athletico squad with Barca and Real’s would have given them a chance in hell of winning La Liga. I’d also argue that the primary reason Moyes ‘failed’ at Manchester United was because the prima donnas he had to work with there refused to buy into the collective ethos he forged at Everton.
Sorry it was a bit long.
Hi Jason,
I have a lot of sympathy for what you’re saying. At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I’m happy to say that I was never one of those looking to write-off Henderson when he first arrived at the club and delivered some underwhelming performances in return for the 18mill we paid for him. I have a lot of family in and around Sunderland (I’m on a train back from there as I type this) and they had made me fully aware of the quality we were getting. At 21 after a big club move, I wasn’t going to get on the lad’s back because he failed to become Graeme Souness in his first 3 weeks.
The sky is the limit for Henderson. He has most of the attributes to become a top midfielder in the modern game. I take the point about potentially feeling inhibited alongside Gerrard, but they played alongside each other most of last season and we nearly won the title. And it’s not as if Jordan alongside SG was a peripheral figure, with many citing his sending-off in the City game as the most significant development in those last few, fateful games. So I don’t buy this narrative which adds Henderson to this endless list of players who seemingly are incapable of playing well in the same team as SG. It’s revisionism, imo.
Just after Shelvey had a couple of indifferent games for us and my blue-nosed mate took the piss, I told him that one day Jonjo would captain England. He regularly ribs me about that but to the extent I no longer believe it, it’s only because I now believe Hendo will monopolise that armband in the years to come.
Agree with your first point Brownie, patience is a virtue.
On the second, I have a few issues. The Henderson we now know started to emerge in the Spurs game, he then spent most of the season playing alongside Allen or Coutinho in a diamond with Gerrard behind. When they did play alongside each other or as a two, it really didn’t work out: remember the Villa game? And it certainly didn’t work out well this season. So, all in all, I think its perfectly reasonable to conclude that he doesn’t play as well with Gerrard as he does, say with Lucas. As for the endless list, well there are plenty of players who did play well alongside Gerrard: Didi, Gary Mac, Nando, Mascherano and Alonso. I’d argue that claiming an endless list that didn’t play well alongside him is the revisionist strategy: it was always more about team shape, formation etc.
G’day,
Maybe I wrote that badly, in so much that I should have made the point about Hendo having to do the water-carrying duties for Gerrard a bit more forcefully. Paul makes the point below that plenty of other players have played well alongside Gerrard, but all of the names he mentioned were playing with SG when he was still in his prime. Maybe that is what I should have said – Henderson was in awe of Gerrard and was prepared to sacrifice his own game to do everything he could for a captain in whom the spirit was willing, but the flesh, alas, was weak.
Ah, never mind. It is just good watching a player emerge and fulfil his potential. I think he will be a terrific captain and I hope he gets it full time.
On Shelvey: about two years ago, on another forum, I declared to a Manu fan that Shelvey had so much in his locker he would finish his career regarded as a better England mid-fielder than Scholes. My tongue was only partially inserted in cheek when I said it!
I prefer winning the way we win over the way City or Chelsea do.
Now, obviously, I want us to win the league. There really isn’t any doubt about that.
But there’s something so lacking in the way City or Chelsea win. You have shitloads of money, bought
all the players you could. If you aren’t in the thick of the title chase then something’s amiss.
And there’s something so by the numbers about those two being at the top. It’s expected and frankly, dull.
Now us on the other hand, how thrilling is it to watch Liverpool go from the doldrums of earlier this season to being in the the chase for the top four. It’s unexpected, fun, thrilling and utterly entertaining.
Again, I want to win the league, not merely feel the thrill of battling like the underdog.
But there’s far better to be had watching your team rise above everyone’s expectations than watching them merely fulfil expectations.
And when we do win, there’s the feeling of having earned it, not bought it.
That’s sentiment I guess, but I wouldn’t have it any other way
Agreed. Imagine what Atletico fans must have felt like last spring. We should make them our official friendly cousin club or whatever. Don’t we have one in Germany at present?
Atleti’s championship also goes to show it can be done, even if the moneybags have grabbed the PL title every time since Abramovic (in reference to the TTT article linked on here earlier).
Hi Mark – I guess you’re Australian, by the poms dig
If Liverpool FC are so shit, why did 95,000 Australians turn up at the MCG, for a pre-season friendly ?
More than for any Australian cricket match ever.
If you see winning as THE most important aspect of sport, you’re not really getting it are you?
Why don’t you go support Chelsea, they’re top of the league right now
England are ranked higher than Australia last time I checked. Beat them easily last time they played too. And haven’t our cricket team just come out of a ten year period of kicking Australia’s backsides on a regular basis. Olympic medal haul their chief? Yeah I think you should keep your views on winners attitudes to yourself mate. Your curmudgeonly tone, we could all do without.
Any discussion of that match that fails to mention the influence of Joe Allen is singularly defective. It wasn’t just that he did his defensive duty well, it wasn’t only that he spread play when needed, it was because without him we wouldn’t have connected our defense with our attack. 74% of his passes went forward and only one didn’t hit the mark. That’s Xabi-esque. The injuries to our other central midfielders have enforced his current run in the side and we are raping the benefits of it. Long may it continue.