More About Liverpool
Amazing Paranoid Fantasy Column: #2
Garth Crooks was getting excited. He cheered as Havant & Waterlooville scored their second goal at Anfield after dubbed Liverpool’s concession of a single goal at home to the non-leaguers as acutely embarrassing. It is comments like this that show why in the case of football management those who can do and those who can’t become pundits.
Havant & Waterlooville’s success - limited by the fact that in the end they did get beaten - is being celebrated as a glorification of the FA Cup and the way it levels the mighty and the minnows and of course in headline terms that is a nice way of selling the story but there was no magic about the non-leaguer’s performance at the Premiership side and very little to do with the big hearts and bold spirits that are being talked about.
In fact Havant & Waterlooville were - on the whole - a triumph of head over heart and of smart over spirit. They arrived at Anfield with a determination to stick to a well drilled game plan and rather than roaring into the game as mice against lions they took the approach that Liverpool were no different a proposition than Braintree Town or Bromley and should be met in the same way.
Back fours flat and well marshalled they went out at Anfield. Fullbacks supported by wingers coming back and midfielders protecting the back four they got the reward for an understanding that while they could do little to match the skill and fitness of Liverpool the majority of the battle of a football match is in approach and team discipline.
Who knows how manager Shaun Gale stopped his players from being phased but somehow he put them on the pitch drilled into a formation and with the belief that while Liverpool might - and did - possess the fitness and odd bit of skill to beat them if they could match the twice in three years European Champions League finalists for effort and keep to the tactics then they would make an account of themselves.
This is far from embarrassing for Liverpool - at least in the sense that Crooks intended - and such comments come from a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the game. The belief that being a “better” player in a “better” team means that you can utterly nullify the opposition is country to the experience of watching football week in week out and far too close to the increasing Pro Evo/FIFA inspired view of football that seems to have gripped terraces to the determent of the game.
Teams that keep to a disciplined formation and have self belief will always play well and likewise very skilful footballers will - when regiments are forgotten - look disjointed and ramblous. Be it Havant & Waterlooville or Manchester United the embarrassing thing for Liverpool - if such a term should exist in top class football - is that the non-league team were for much of the game more committed to a tactic and an ethic of belief than the Premiership side.
Amazing Paranoid Fantasy Column: #1
My girlfriend probably things I am having an affair. Every morning I furtively close my hands around the screen of my trusted N95 and sneak a peek at some covert information, these modern days such actions are tantamount to having lipstick on one’s collar in the list of telltale signs of infidelity.
Every morning I gaze longingly at every loving word crafted to speak of outlandish possibility and I know that such things will never come to pass but we can all dream. Every morning I covertly check out the BBC’s transfer gossip and rumours page.
Sitting all year round the scrapings of tabloid and broadsheet fantasy goes into a kind of meltdown every January when the transfer window opens and a parade of names are stapled to clubs in a cavalcade of would be transfer.
Most concern players few - if any - have heard of joining clubs that simply do not need them. Today we learn with lusty glory that Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez is set to spend £7m on Slovakia international defender Martin Skrtel. - or so the Beeb tells us that the Telegraph tells us - and we raise an eyebrow and ponder if the Anfield club’s failure to mount a serious challenge for the title is really for the want of a player who costs less than Newcastle United paid for Jean-Alan Boumsong.
“Failure to mount a serious challenge” is a phrase that haunts Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool side troublingly. Clearly The Reds are not winning the thing this year but to suggest that they have not mount a challenge is akin to suggesting that Scott and Oates were just having a wander in the snow just because they were beaten to the Pole.
The vowel light Skrtel may be Kendal Mint Cake to Benitez and our job is in the observation. In likelihood Skrtel will not be heard of again being swooped to play for Bryern Munich, Rapid Vienna or Fulham’s Reserves but for a day we can all imagine him wandering down the wing in Red. It is the pornography of the Subutteo generation.
Of course the Mighty Bradford City have not featured in this procession of names and clubs for sometime but this is no bad thing and not something one would complain about although Big Sam will save his job by pairing Michael Owen with Bradford’s Barry Conlon is probably as realistic to us Skrtel’s move to Anfield is to supporters of his - nameless - club.
Realism is not the point. Distraction is.
Football - as previously mentioned once or twice - had gone to Hell in a handcart at anything other than the top level and like the trappings of the French Lord’s of old the purpose of the big name club transfer gossip is to distraction joyless citizenry from the dullness of their every day existence. Never mind the fact your club cannot afford to have the stadium roof fixed - Manchester United are thinking of buying a Belgian who’s agent will take a cut the size of Luton Town’s much talked about debt.
It is football supporting as Hello Magazine reading - a glimpse at how some live with the far flung hope that you might one day move there yourself. Queens Park Rangers suggest that one day it will I guess, and I suppose one day we did too.
So furtively I look at my mobile phone to read this list of pipe dreams and I should be as offended as I am when I see those documentaries on the lavish fineries of Royalty I pay for but have no access to but for some reason I’m not.
So rest assured should you be worried Ria it is not an affair but with lusty eyes trained on what I want but can’t have it is - at least - flirting.
Do not feel the need to got to www.all4humor.com. The footage of the Bradford fire is not there any more - or at least I’m told and so with it go the lies about City fans watching the game and the pictures of 54 Bradford City fans and 2 Lincoln supporters dying.
Do not go to the site and leave these sick bastards to show videos of footballer’s breaking their necks, of trains crashing, of suicides, of executions, of children being sexually exploited, of guys on the 115th floor of the World Trade Centre.
If they re-post the video - or if it is still there now - then it is probably not worth trying to reason with the people who find some kind of humour in the parade of videos on show. We live in a world - and I’m a liberal sort of guy - where morality is relative but I’m perfectly happy to call this sort of entertainment for people who need mental help.
It is probably not worth trying to get this sort of video removed. YouTube constantly show the footage and someone connected to Yorkshire Television or the Fire Services who used it as training footage but allowed it to escape should take a look at themselves but this constant process of discovery and - one assumes - emotional negotiation to have the footage removed from whichever service or server has it on is becoming far too frequent.
It is never short of amazing the difference between the treatment of the Hillsborough disaster and Liverpool supporters and Bradford City fans and 11th of May, 1985. The combined weight of that club descending is enough of a threat to prevent even the mention of the 95 who died that day yet our tragedy is traded and - by some - enjoyed.
If someone believes that watching 56 people die in a horrible way is amusing, if they want to believe the lies that often accompany it then they can believe that. The people of Bradford - us - should act today as we did on that day and every day since.
Let them amuse themselves as they like, the sick bastards, we will never let them shake the refined dignity that marks Bradford City’s commemorations.
That is the last word.