2009: A Review

Despite the disappointing first half of the 2009-2010 season, the calendar year of 2009 has been a good one for Liverpool FC. It was so nearly a great one but some shockingly biased refereeing decisions at Old Trafford prevented Rafa from ending our twenty-year wait for a League title. However, between March and May we were treated to some of the finest attacking displays that supporters of my generation have ever had the pleasure of witnessing with such consistency. We were good enough to win the League and deserved to be Champions. In how many other calendar years could we have said that since 1990?

2009 began badly for Rafa with the media savagely attacking him after his criticism of Alex Ferguson and his stooges. Failure to win a single League game in the month of January (for the second successive year) enabled Fergie’s chums in the media to claim our boss was cracking up and that “Rafa rant” had derailed our season. It was pure nonsense, of course, but drab performances at Stoke and Wigan sandwiching derby draws did little to help Rafa’s cause.

February saw some mixed results beginning with a richly deserved 2-0 home win over Chelsea to complete our first ever Premiership double over them. An injury-ravaged team was then dumped out of the FA Cup at Goodison Park after having to play over an hour with 10-men after Lucas got himself sent off. We never looked like winning but appeared on course for a penalty shoot-out until some fat kid fluked a deflected winner in the dying seconds of extra time. For the Bitter Blues, this was better than winning the Cup itself – good job really seeing as they couldn’t manage to win the Cup itself despite leading in the Final. A Mickey-mouse team then did its best to lose at Portsmouth before the big guns came off the bench to snatch another 3-2 win at the death. We then failed to perform at home to Man City and a 1-1 draw appeared to have killed off our title chances. Thoughts turned to the Champions League and with a memorable 1-0 win over Real Madrid in the Bernabeu, Rafa gave us yet another fantastic European glory night. If the draw over Man City had killed our title hopes, the game at Middlesbrough was like a funeral procession with quality and character nowhere to be seen.

Then came March...

From the minute David Ngog opened the scoring against Sunderland to help us to a nervy but much-needed 2-0 win, we transformed into a ruthless juggernaut on a direct course to the League title. In surely one of the finest weeks ever to be a Liverpool fan, Real Madrid were battered 4-0 at Anfield and days later we steamrolled the Mancs 4-1 at Old Trafford. Suddenly the chants of “Rafa’s cracking up!” stuck in the throats of the simpleton Mancunian scumbags and instead it was Fergie who wilted. United lost at Fulham and the title chase was back on. We hammered Aston Villa 5-0 before doing what the Mancs couldn’t by winning at Fulham. The Mancs meanwhile, went 1-0 and 2-1 down at home to Aston Villa before some helpful refereeing and wonder strike from a rookie Italian gifted them 3 more points than they deserved.

Without Mascherano we lost 3-1 at home to Chelsea in the Champions League and looked dead and buried. In truth, we were but we wouldn’t go without a fight. At Stamford Bridge we took a 2-0 lead before half-time needing just one more to complete a remarkable comeback. Then after a rare error by Reina allowed Drogba to halve the deficit, Chelsea’s divers took centre stage conning the referee into awarding a succession of free kicks that enabled them to take a 3-2 lead. Game over... or so you would think. Back we came to 3-3 then 4-3 and again we needed just one more goal to go through. Unfortunately, in chasing the game, Rafa had taken off the majority of our defenders and an unmarked fat bastard luckily clipped a shot off the post to level at 4-4. We were out but with pride intact.

In between those Chelsea games, we gave Blackburn a good 4-0 spanking to take our goal tally to 21 goals in 7 games while the Mancs were bailed out by a deflected goal from their rookie Italian as they looked certain to drop points at Sunderland. Then in one of the most ridiculous matches ever, we played Arsenal off the park at Anfield only to concede four goals to a player who did little else but shoot four times. Our second 4-4 draw in two matches had now left our title hopes hanging by a thread but hope remained as the Mancs looked anything but Champions in waiting.

The title race was decided at Old Trafford when referee Howard Webb awarded the Mancs a penalty against Spurs for no reason other than to help United overturn a 2-0 deficit. Spurs had led and defended bravely but the farcical decision shattered their belief and they ended up losing 5-2.

Had United lost, with Liverpool at the time top of the table following their 3-1 win at Hull, Liverpool would surely have gone on to win the League. Webb ensured the title went to Old Trafford.

Our season wound down with a couple of 3-0 wins over Newcastle and West Ham followed by a 2-0 win at West Brom and finally a 3-1 home win over Spurs in which we said goodbye to Sami Hyypia.

We finished the 2009-2010 season with our highest points total in any Premiership season; the highest points total by any runner up in a Premiership season; the fewest number of defeats by any runner up in a Premiership season, and top scorers in the Premiership that season. We deserved to be Champions but ultimately Webb ensured that did not happen.

Expectations soared after our near miss and we fantasised over which star players might join us in the summer to boost our squad ahead of a new challenge. Instead we lost one of our most important players after a disgracefully arrogant pursuit by Real Madrid. The striker we craved was not signed and we were forced to bring back Voronin from the Bundesliga. With a weaker squad, our only hopes to win the League rested on Torres and Gerrard remaining fit and in form. Sadly, they both got injured along with pretty much everyone else in the squad.

The desperate misfortune on the injury front was coupled with some outrageous bad luck on the pitch as we conceded goals by players who should have been suspended, beach balls, once-in-a-lifetime wonder strikes by fairly average players and jammy Russians. As if that was not bad enough, more than 10 clear-cut penalties we should have been awarded were waved away by referees and then Lee Mason declared war on Liverpool FC making it his mission to send as many of our players off for no reason as he can get away with before the FA realise he is corrupt.

As a consequence we go into 2010 chasing fourth place in the League and competing in the Europa League. It is not what we wanted or expected as the 2008-09 season came to an end but it was an inevitable consequence of the refusal by Gillett and Hicks to invest money in our football club – money that they had promised to invest in order to convince the former establishment to sell them the club.

For 2010, my hopes are as follows:

• That Torres and Gerrard stay fit and in form and bang in loads of goals between January and May
• That we put together a run of wins and finish in the top four
• That we win either the FA Cup or the Europa League
• That Gillett and Hicks either fuck off or find a way of giving Rafa the funds required to make us competitive in the Premiership
• That Rafa uses his budget well and signs players that improve the strength of our first team and squad
• That other clubs are dumb enough to give us money for Voronin, Dossena and Babel
• That Man Ure do not win the Premiership
• That City’s owner goes bust
• That we end 2010 top of the Premiership (and in through to the Champions League knock-out stages)

If all or most of that comes to pass, 2010 will be a very happy New Year!

Prediction for Villa game

I don't like going public on my match predictions because I usually end up looking a bit stupid when I'm later proven wrong. However, the flip side is that no one believes me when I predict the scoreline right and keep it to myself until after the game!

I'm going for a nil-nil today. We've not lost at Villa Park in our last 11 League visits and Villa haven't beaten us home and away in the same season since the 1992-93 season (17 seasons ago). The last time we went to Villa Park having lost 3-1 to them at home earlier in the season, we won 2-1. A repeat would be great but I'm going for a 0-0 on the basis that it has been the most common result in this fixture in the last 10 years occurring 4 times (including last season). During that period we've won 5 and drawn 5 (the other draw was 1-1).

Update (Post Match): I was nearly right but happy to be wrong!

Liverpool 2 Wolves' First Team 0

Perspective.

Everton are currently 14th below teams such as Burnley, Stoke, Birmingham and Sunderland. By their recent standards, consensus suggests they are having a bad season but if they were, say, 7th and within striking distance of Man City, Tottenham and Aston Villa, the view would be that they were having a decent season and were potential challengers for the top four.

Currently, Liverpool are 7th and within striking distance of City, Spurs and Villa yet our season is considered to be terrible. That is because teams are judged by different standards. For Liverpool to be so far behind the League leaders and out of the Champions League is short of the sky high expectations that they would challenge for the title as they did last season and breeze through to the knock-out stages of the Champions League as they usually do.

For Everton, the bar is set quite a bit lower. They are still falling short of expectations but the fans and pundits are relatively calmer about it as they know any sort of winning run would propel the Blues into the top ten and into ‘decent season’ territory.

For Liverpool the media scream “Crisis” and demand the head of a proven manager less than a year after he nearly won the Premiership even though a winning run would propel the Reds into the top four and into ‘decent season’ territory.

People’s perspectives are bizarre. Yesterday the Wolves fans were goading the Anfield faithful by signing “Channel 5! Thursday night!” in reference to our relegation to the Europa League following Champions League elimination. This is a team who would be lucky to remain in the Premiership after this campaign and which certainly won’t survive more than a couple of seasons and they are mocking us for playing in a European competition. What would teams like Wolves give to qualify for the Europa League? For us, it is a disappointment.

Those same Wolves fans jeered: “Your gonna win fuck all!” Yes, the followers of Wolves whose highlights of the noughties included two promotions to the Premiership, one followed by immediate relegation and the other probably followed by immediate relegation, are mocking the supporters of a team which, in the same decade, won two League Cups, two FA Cups, the UEFA Cup and the Champions League plus two European Super Cups and two Charity/Community Shields. Most teams win ‘fuck all’ but Wolves do so more consistently and more effectively than Liverpool.

People’s expectations are mostly based on history – recent or not. During the ‘commentary’ to yesterday’s match, Jon Champion compared the current side (unflatteringly) to the “Liverpool of old”. Which Liverpool of old would that be?

Could it be the Liverpool of 5 years ago containing legends such as Igor Biscan, Djimi Traore, Josemi, Antonio Nunez and Salif Diao who managed to finish fifth? Or maybe the vintage of 11 seasons ago who finished 7th? Or the crop of 16 years ago whom Souness guided to a magnificent 8th?

On that evidence, comparisons with the ‘Liverpools of old’ is hardly unflattering. Perhaps Champion was referring to the Liverpool of even older – the 1988 vintage perhaps, but then few teams in any era would be flattered by such comparisons. Why stop there though? Why not compare this Liverpool team with say the great Bill Shankly’s team of 47 seasons ago who finished the 1962-63 campaign in 8th place only a year after winning the League or the team of 45 years ago who followed up another title winning campaign with a 7th placed finish in the 1964-65 season?

Why only judge Liverpool by comparison with their previous sides? Why not state how shit Mick McCarthy’s current bunch of cloggers is compared with the great Wolves sides of the 1950s?

But then, Wolves are not expected to replicate past glories in a totally different era whereas Liverpool, for some reason, are.

Oddly I’ve heard numerous people expressing sympathy for Mark Hughes after his sacking by Man City. It seems there is a common view that in addition to £250 million worth of players, the man should have been given more time to turn them into title challengers. The same people criticise Liverpool for not challenging for the title this season despite Rafa having no money to spend on improving his playing staff and having lost a key player in the summer.

The truth is, if Man Ure and Burnley were to swap squads, people would still expect Man Ure to challenge for the League title and the Champions League whereas Burnley would be praised to the hilt just for getting near the top four.

Man City have a squad that is, on paper, stronger than any bar possibly Chelsea’s and possibly Man Ure’s. Their spending dwarfs that of any club and their wage bill is among the highest in the League. Despite that, people claim it would be an achievement for them to break into the top four rather than actually challenge for the title. Liverpool, despite the emergence of a number of seriously powerful rivals, all of whom have outspent us in this calendar year, are still expected to canter into a top four spot and are criticised for not competing for the title.

Shouldn’t perspective be based on actual resources available rather than history? Does history win you matches?

I’ve no sympathy for Hughes. He knew what he was taking on when he went to City. He ditched Blackburn thinking that their lack of finance was holding him back as a manager but, when given unlimited funds, he proved to all and sundry that he is not a top manager. He is a manager who can get the best out of players like Craig Bellamy and help a limited team like Wales overachieve to glorious failure but at the highest level he could not get the best out of top players.

With just over a third of Mark Hughes’ transfer budget and with a vastly inferior wage bill, Rafa Benitez has been expected to deliver more and has been widely castigated for failing to do so this season. Hughes was the real underachiever and he deserves his place on the managerial scrap heap.

What has annoyed me of late is that rather than report what happened in games, commentators and journalists are simply droning out their own opinions about pretty much everything except what is actually happening on the pitch and some apparently are able to see the outcomes of matches in alternative realities where certain things that happened in games didn’t happen. For example, yesterday ESPN’s finest were trying to convince us that had Wolves’ captain not been sent off, Liverpool would not have taken the lead. “Before the sending off, Liverpool never looked like scoring” they droned. So Liverpool never looked like scoring when Hart was forced to make saves from Torres and Gerrard? And did we not have a very promising goalscoring opportunity when Lucas was running into the Wolves penalty area before Ward bowled him over to earn his second yellow card? It was the very fact that Liverpool did like look scoring that forced the clogger’s captain into making an illegal challenge (which admittedly Lucas made a meal of).

Last week after the Portsmouth game, the match report on SKY Sports.com amazing claimed: “Had Liverpool played with 12, though, they would still have lost.” Not only is this statement pure fantasy but it defies any kind of logic. Does anyone believe that with a one player advantage, Liverpool would have lost to the team that was bottom of the table? Pompey were bloody fortunate in that game and the farcical dismissal of Mascherano was undoubtedly a key reason Liverpool were beaten. To suggest a Liverpool side with 12 men instead of 9 would have been as ineffective in the second half is just outrageous.

Yesterday, Champion questioned whether it was still appropriate to talk about the ‘big four’ given that Liverpool were so far off the pace. Let us see how, not just this season but next season pans out first, Jon. Liverpool might not finish in the top four this season but that does not necessarily mean the end of the world as some pessimists predict. After all, we missed out to Everton in 2004-05 but finished in the top four in every subsequent season. Arsenal almost missed out to Spurs in 2005-06 and looked extremely vulnerable at this stage of last season but in both campaigns they recovered to finish fourth and secured top four positions more comfortably in the following campaigns. Two seasons ago after losing at West Ham in late January, we slumped to seventh place behind Everton, Aston Villa and Man City. We still recovered to claim fourth place and then rose to second last season.

If we scrape fourth or if we don’t, there is every chance we will have a better campaign next season when the team has adapted better to the impact of losing Alonso and when, hopefully, we have fewer injuries and refereeing howlers.

And who is to say that missing out on Champions League qualification would result in a cut in Rafa’s transfer budget? After all, despite five consecutive qualifications, Rafa was given nothing to spend this summer. You can’t reduce nothing. Last season, when Spurs found themselves in a relegation battle, their American owner spent heavily to safeguard his investment. For Liverpool to repeatedly miss out on the Champions League would be a disaster for Gillett and Hicks so perhaps a failure this campaign might force them to get their sodding cheque books out and let the manager buy players who will make us competitive again.

Unlike reporters on SKY Sports.com and ESPN, I don’t know what the future holds in this reality or any other. So I won’t worry too much about it.

Finally, I just want to say what a hypocrite Mick McCarthy is after he claimed "Liverpool were desperately in need of a break and I think they've been given one because we were down to 10 men". After he threw Wolves recent match at Old Trafford by fielding his reserves, he can hardly complain about teams getting breaks. His dishonesty and cowardice enabled Man Ure to collect three points without having to beat Wolves' first team. We, on the other hand, had to beat Wolves' first team. A break for us would have been playing against Mick's reserves and being able to rest first team players for the Villa game. After what he did at Old Trafford, Wolves should have been stripped of all points earned on the road with every opponent awarded a 3-0 win against them by default. Then we wouldn't have had to play yesterday, would have been 1 goal better off and would have been able to rest players for the Villa game. That would have been a break. Personally I think McCarthy should be banned from football for life.

Portsmouth & Lee Mason United 2 Liverpool 0: Are we shit?

The 2009-2010 season has been a nightmare. Result after result has disappointed. It has been one of the most wretched and demoralising seasons I have endured in my time as a Liverpool fanatic. In terms of results, it is down there with the seasons of 1997-98, 1998-99, 2003-04 and 2004-05.

What is notable about those seasons I listed is that two were the first seasons of new managers and two were the last seasons of established managers. Is this the last season of Rafa’s reign? Should it be?

Interestingly, in terms of points accrued after the same number of games, this season is extremely close to those other seasons. After 18 games, in 1998-99 we had just 25 points; in 2003-04 we had 26; this season we have 27; in 2004-05 we have 28 and in 1997-98 we had 31 (by comparison last season at the same stage we had 39 points). However, before concluding that because this season is sandwiched between four shit seasons in terms of points accrued by games played, it should be labelled alongside them as another shit season, it is worth noting that in the following seasons we also had 31 points (the tally we would have had if we had won today) after 18 games: 1995-96, 2006-07, 2002-03 and 2000-01. 2002-03 was ultimately a shit season despite us winning the Worthington Cup as we finished fifth and missed out on Champions League qualification. 1995-96 was a pretty decent season as we finished third after years in the wilderness setting a record for our highest proportion of points in a Premiership season (previous seasons involved 42 League games) and reached the FA Cup Final. 2000-01 turned out to be a dream season as we won the League Cup, the FA Cup and UEFA Cup as well as finishing third to achieve Champions League qualification. In 2006-07 we also finished third and reached the Champions League Final.

In other words, we are three League points short of some seasons that were considered either decent or outright successes - seasons in which we mostly finished third and always at least reached a Cup Final.

What’s nagging at me is that having lived through the seasons of 1997-98, 1998-99, 2003-04 and 2004-05, I know what it is like to watch a team that I can see is clearly not good enough but to my mind (and maybe I just haven’t accepted it yet) this season’s team is better than them. In terms of personnel and potential based on previous evidence, I believe this team is capable of far more than it has achieved so far this campaign. By comparison, I felt that in those other seasons we pretty much got what we deserved. This season I really feel we have been undone by ill fortune and unjust refereeing decisions that have not, as yet, evened themselves out.

Today we lost to Portsmouth who were, going into today’s game, bottom of the League. We can legitimately complain that the referee Phil Mitchell (a.k.a. Lee Mason) sent Mascherano off in the first half for an offence worthy of a yellow at worst just after Pompey had taken the lead against the run of play. Even then we dominated possession in the second half only to again concede against the run of play.

In isolation, this was a game in which we were desperately unfortunate. Had Liverpool taken the first half lead our play deserved or had Belhadj not benefited from the sheer incomprehensibility of the off-side rule before uncharacteristically hitting an inch-perfect wonder strike past Reina at his near post or had Lee Mason not sent Mascherano off for little more than a “feisty challenge”, Liverpool probably would have won the game. Even after those three outrageous kicks in the ghoullies by Fortune, we might have levelled had we taken one of our chances but then Piquionne miscontrolled the ball in our penalty area to fortuitously loop it over Carra and then hit it on the volley into the tiny speck of the goal Reina could not cover. In winning 2-0 Pompey profited from fortune of Lottery-winning proportions while we got nothing like what we deserved.

In isolation it was a hard luck story of epic proportions. “We were robbed”, we cry. The trouble is, this season, we seem to be crying that a lot. How many hard luck stories can we put forward this season? Allow me to list them...

Tottenham Hotspur & Phil Dowd United 2 Liverpool 1

A defender yet to score hit a wonder strike against us to give Spurs a 1-0 lead after an unimpressive first half performance by both sides. Then within minutes of us equalising, a player who should have been suspended headed in the winner before we were denied a blatant penalty by Mr Phil Dowd.

Liverpool 1 Aston Villa 3

We failed to convert first half dominance into goals and then scored an own goal against the run of play. We then conceding a second 2 minutes after the first half should have ended. After dominating the second half and halving the deficit, our “Captain Fantastic” (© SKY Sports) conceded a penalty after an uncharacteristically reckless challenge. Then Ashley Young who missed his previous and next penalty scored from the spot. The penalty was correctly awarded but then how many times this season have penalties that should have been correctly awarded in our favour not been given?

Sunderland 1 Liverpool 0

After the Villa defeat, we had picked ourselves up and gone on a winning run and become the League’s top scorers. Then came an International break that resulted in injuries to our three most effective outfield players: Torres, Gerrard and Johnson. Meanwhile, our central midfield pairing travelled all the way around the world resulting in Rafa selecting a severely weakened team for the away trip to Sunderland. In the event, the weakened team dominated possession only to lose the game to a goal scored by a beach ball thrown on by a fat kid who had travelled all the way from Merseyside only to cost his team 3 points.

Chelsea 2 Liverpool 0

We were denied another clear penalty at 0-0 when Drogba fouled Skrtel. We were good at Chelsea – not great but good enough to merit at least a point. Mascherano made a mistake and we lost.

Fulham & Lee Mason United 3 Liverpool 1

After Chelsea, we beat Man Ure at home and everyone thought our luck had changed. That was until Lee Mason was appointed referee for Fulham versus Liverpool. Despite our injury problems, we dominated the game at Craven Cottage only to concede twice against the run of play. The first was a joke; the second came from a terrible error by Dirk Kuyt. In between Torres had levelled for us. At 1-2, we might have pulled one back and even gone on to win but then Mason sent off Degen followed quickly by Carragher. The red for Carra was debatable; Degen’s was not: it was never a red card. For Carra’s, Mason showed the red because of the furore over Carra’s clash with Michael Shithead in the previous week’s game. All week Fergie had orchestrated a media debate over whether Carra should have been red-carded for tangling with Shithead after the Judas-bastard had first pulled the Liverpool Legend’s shirt. Having no ability to judge situations in real time, Mason flashed his mind back to that debate and concluded Carra was owed a red on the basis that there can be no smoke without fire (I hope there is fire and smoke in his house tonight with him in the midst choking and burning).

Liverpool 2 Birmingham City 2

It’s debatable how lucky or unlucky Liverpool were in this game. Having to play our bogey team (Birmingham) in our bogey slot (Monday night) without our best attacking players (Torres and Gerrard) being fit enough to start and with Carra suspended was pretty unlucky. As it happened we started well, dominated and took the lead. Then against the run of play we conceded an equaliser from a set piece and late in first half stoppage time, went behind to a wonder-strike (wonder-strikes by their nature are flukes). We dominated the second half but realistically created few clear chances and then profited from a debatable penalty. Through my red-tinted spectacles, I believe the penalty should have been awarded as, to me, Lee Carsley’s challenge made no contact with the ball yet prevented David Ngog from progressing towards the goal in the penalty area. Some (Andy Gray, Paul Merson and other Liverpool FC-hating twats) thought it shouldn’t have been a penalty because Ngog dived. The same twats think Man Ure deserved to win the League ahead of Liverpool last season despite the crucial penalties awarded for dives by Cristiano Ronaldo and those awarded in Man Ure’s home games against Bolton and Spurs where neither foul nor dive was committed but the referee thought a penalty might be well-received by the home crowd. On the basis on that one decision, it could be argued that Liverpool were fortunate to draw 2-2 but on the balance of the full game we should have won by a cricket score.

Liverpool 2 Man City & Phil Dowd United 2

After a spirited start by Liverpool, the momentum of the first half was sucked out of the game by a series of stoppages – mainly resulting from fouls by City players. One such foul involved a reckless two-footed challenge by Nigel De Jong on both Ryan Babel and Steven Gerrard in City’s penalty area. Firstly, the two-footed challenge should be rights result in a straight red card. Secondly, given that De Jong succeeded in missing the ball and fouling two separate opponents in his own penalty area, a penalty kick should have been given. It wasn’t. We just ended up with two injured players. Later on De Jong was hailed by SKY Sports’ commentators and pundits as City’s best player. Imagine how the game might have turned out had he been sent off in the first half. As it happened, we took the lead after half time, then conceded after a defensive error; then conceded an off-side goal that was wrongly allowed to count before pulling one back. We should have won it late on but missed our chances.

Liverpool 1 Arsenal 2

When your luck is out, your luck is out. Just to really rub salt into the wounds, pretty much every other result had gone our way before this match kicked off. We then dominated the first half and, despite being denied yet another clear penalty when Gallas fouled Gerrard, we took the lead and deservedly led at half time. Then inexplicably we didn’t get going in the second half; conceded a calamitous own goal, and then conceded from another wonder-strike. After that we have only ourselves to blame for the lack of effort and quality that allowed an unimpressive Arsenal side to canter to victory but perhaps all those other games had taken their toll on the players’ confidence and belief.

Liverpool 2 Wigan Athletic & Phil Dowd United 1

We won this game but I still had to list it as Phil Dowd's performance was utterly disgraceful. It becomes clear after a point that certain referees are not having poor games but are actually deliberately attempting to influence games against certain teams. Thankfully on this occasion, we beat the bastard and Wigan to boot.

Portsmouth & Lee Mason United 2 Liverpool 0

Finally today we dominated; should have scored; didn’t; conceded against the run of play to a fortuitous goal struck uncharacteristically well; had a man wrongly sent off (by Lee Mason again); missed more chances, and conceded another uncharacteristically well-struck fortuitous goal against the run of play.

That amounts to nine games – half of the 18 we have played – in which I feel we have been hard done by. The ill-fortune in those games has included uncharacteristically good goals scored by players who do not normally score such goals; penalties not given when they should or could have; penalties given against us when, whether deserved or not, they might not have been given; own goals; missed chances; highly contentious red cards, and a goal scored by a beach ball. This is all without mentioning the horrendous injuries we have had this campaign. With the possible exception of the beach ball incident, the other misfortunes could befall any team and, over the course of the season it would be considered extremely fortunate if a team did not concede at least one wonder strike or uncharacteristically clinical strike from a player who would normally not be so clinical or an own goal, or receive a contentious red card or miss chances to score, etc. However, how many team experience these scenarios in 50% of their League games (sometimes a few within the same game)?

Forget the bullshit about decisions evening themselves out over the season. This season has been the equivalent of flipping a coin 100 times and it landing on tails 90 times. You would call it a 50/50 chance but it is possible if not improbable that each flip of the coin could result in tails. Similarly, any team can experience an unlucky result but the probability is that these will be rare. In our case, we have struck tails virtually every time.

It’s horrible right now but we have to stick with the team because the probabilities suggest that our miserable luck cannot hold out much longer. Sooner or later, things will start going for us. We will win some penalties whether they are deserved or not; we will get away with a few challenges that should have resulted in penalties or red cards; our opponents will be reduced to 10 men for a change; we will score the odd wonder goal or deflection against the run of play, and Phil Dowd and Lee Mason will be jailed for match-fixing.

I believe. The day I don’t is the day I stop following the team and walk away from football altogether.

Liverpool 1 Arsenal 2: The Torture Continues...

This wretched season just rolls on and on. The month of May cannot come soon enough bringing a welcome end to the horror that is the 2009-2010 football season. Fate is shitting and pissing on us every match day and it is simply a nightmare.

We were really good in the first half and deservedly led at half-time but inexplicably we went missing in action as the second half began allowing Arsenal to take the initiative and then, typical of our luck this season, they equalised with the jammiest of own goals. The rotten luck continued when for the second season in succession the only thing Arshavin did in a Liverpool v Arsenal game was score. Of course, typically, Howard Webb refused to award us a clear penalty at 0-0 when Gallas fouled Gerrard in the box but then why should we expect the benefit of a refereeing decision this season given how few we have had. I’ve lost count of the number of penalties we should have had but didn’t this campaign.

From the point we went 2-1 down, we only had ourselves to blame for not salvaging at least a point. We were rank from back to front. Kuyt and Benayoun were useless; Torres and Gerrard were ineffective – not that they had any decent service; Aurelio made the best possible case for Insua being first choice left-back; Aquilani couldn’t get into the game after coming off the bench, and fucking Carragher, Lucas and even Glenn Johnson reverted to type knocking the ball backwards and sideways and anywhere else other than near the Arsenal goal. Why Aurelio was taking all the free-kicks despite some consistently atrocious delivery in recent weeks is a question I can’t answer. I am equally mystified as to why Rafa replaced Johnson with Degen. Perhaps Johnson was injured or just lacking the match fitness to play the full 90 but surely even Cavalieri would have made more impact than the useless Swiss.

I’m really disappointed that we deteriorated so much after half time and that we lacked any sort of goal threat after we fell behind. In the end, it was an easy 3 points for Arsenal and that is simply not good enough.

At the end of the day, players of the calibre of Lucas, Kuyt, Benayoun and Aurelio are decent players to have in your squad. Each is capable of having spells of good form and can contribute when the team is playing well but not a single one of them can dominate a game against a top opponent. We are having to rely on too many players in the ‘decent’ category because we have too few in the ‘world class’ category.

We’ve known for some time we’re not good enough to challenge for the title but the question now is what are we good enough for? If you took away the two best outfield players from each of Liverpool, Villa, City, Spurs and Arsenal, I believe our best XI would be inferior to Arsenal’s and City’s and it’s pretty debatable whether it would be better than Villa’s or Spurs’. Certainly at the moment, Villa’s players are doing a damn-sight better on the pitch.

With no money to spend, the manager needs to make some really shrewd purchases in the next few transfer windows. Forget your David Villas. If Rafa was given anything like £20m to spend, it would have to be spread out on two or three players costing between £5m-£10m. Unless every one turns out to be a transfer masterstroke, that doesn't buy you titles and, the way City have been spending, it won't even buy us Champions League football.

Right now, I'd just be happy with a team that could win a football match.

Liverpool 1 Fiorentina 2: Fuck SKY and Souness

“...And Liverpool concede yet another late goal”

It was the perfect story for the English media. Had we won, the story would have been about how we bowed out with pride. As it was, even better... The media can endulge in their favourite past-time - slaughtering Liverpool!

Of course, anyone who saw the game would have seen that we fielded a weakened side with two players making their full debuts, one making his first team debut from the bench and, in Dossena and Cavalieri, a couple of fringe players making rare first team appearances, yet still were as worthy of winning as our opponents.

In how many of Liverpool’s five matches prior to tonight did we concede late goals? Two. Home and away against Lyon. Two out of five. Yet apparently it has been “a theme of this campaign”.

SKY want us to believe that Liverpool are out because they keep conceding late goals and because Rafa Benitez is a shit manager. Ironically there was even discussion during the “commentary” (not that there was any commentary on the actual game) about the fact that Gerrard and Torres hadn’t played together since the 4th October. Since then we have played 11 games without one or both and been without our other most creative players in Johnson, Aquilani and Benayoun. Is it such a shock that we have struggled to score goals? And with that struggle to score goals, is it any surprise that we have conceded late goals when we have had to press and opponents have been encouraged by our failings to go for the win themselves?

Rafa was even called a "lucky general in Europe" as though Liverpool's recent success in the Champions League was fluked - unlike, say, Man Ure's! Do they really think it was by pure dumb luck that Rafa elminated Juventus, Chelsea (twice), AC Milan, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Arsenal and Real Madrid in the last five campaigns?

Fuck SKY, they spew out lies for idiots lacking the intelligence to formulate their own opinions.

I actually enjoyed much of the second half tonight and took a number of positives from the game. Ultimately we lost because our rookie right-back Stephen Darby was caught out twice and our reserve 'keeper was beaten. With no disrespect whatsoever, though I thought Diego Cavalieri had a decent game, he is not Pepe Reina. To prove that point, back-passes from Agger and Mascherano were highlighted on SKY as being played short. Of course, the “experts” completely failed to understand that normally Reina would be racing out to meet those passes a lot quicker than Cavalieri.

Though he was at fault for both goals I won’t criticise Darby or the manager for selecting him. He is a kid and tonight was as good an opportunity to give him a taste of first team action as any. He wasn’t terrible but wasn’t brilliant either. He would need to improve an awful lot to have a future at Liverpool FC.

The other full-debutant, Aquilani was a real pleasure to watch. You know when you are watching a quality player and some of those clean and accurate passes he played to team-mates' feet, particularly in the first half, have been conspicuous by their absence in recent Liverpool games. SKY were happy to piss on his debut telling the watching ignoramuses we hadn’t seen much of him but the difference between me and them was I was watching. I saw plenty of him and I liked what I saw.

He was not the man of the match and this will not go down as the greatest home debut of all time but to put it into perspective, this is a lad coming back from a long term injury who has been deprived of the opportunity of a preseason in which to develop an understanding with his teammates. In the circumstances, I thought he showed a lot of potential and I look forward to seeing him become an established first team player. I don’t expect him to start against Arsenal - although he did enough to suggest he might feature off the bench – but I do think he will start against Wigan next week and that is when his season really begins.

It was also great to Pacheco come on for his first team debut but the best thing tonight was seeing both Gerrard and Torres on the pitch at the same time and being involved and looking mobile.

It’s easy to call Liverpool a 2-man team but the thing about Gerrard and Torres is not only are they our two best players, they are our two best attacking players. Take out the two most attacking players of most teams and they would struggle to be as prolific in front of goal. But what are the chances of that happening? How much bad fortune was it for Liverpool to lose both Gerrard and Torres during the same International break to injuries picked up playing for their respective countries? Have we have a jot of sympathy for that misfortune? No. We have simply been criticised for being over-reliant on our best attacking players to score goals as if no other time relies on their best attacking players to score goals!

The biggest joke of the night was Graeme Souness saying of Liverpool: “My big fear is they’re in melt-down”.

Graeme, Liverpool went into melt-down on 16th April 1991 when YOU were appointed manager and we have yet to recover. How SKY can sit you down alongside other failed managers like Ray Wilkins and Jurgen Klinsman and give your hypocritical views air-time is beyond me. Your legacy will be that you were the man (not Alex Ferguson) who "knocked Liverpool off their fucking perch". Judas Iscariot killed himself for a lesser crime! Where is your honour?

Houllier: Re-examined

[Warning: This is an essay! I will probably continue to edit this piece.]

Houllier’s reign can be split into two periods – three years of success followed by two years of failure – Chris Bascombe, Liverpool Echo May 24th 2004.

The above statement is one that I want to re-examine particularly because it sums up how I evaluated Houllier’s tenure as Liverpool manager around the time of his sacking in 2004 and I believe it reflects the views of the majority of Liverpool supporters. So many times, I have heard people suggest that the man never truly recovered from the illness that almost claimed his life in 2001, that this somehow affected his judgement and he was never the same manager again.

It’s an understandable conclusion to draw given that prior to the illness, he seemed to be getting most things right and afterwards (pretty much immediately) he seemed to be getting most things wrong. The common opinion seems to be that after returning from illness, his tactics, team selection and judgement in the transfer market were inferior to the standards set previously while the man himself appeared to display a sense of paranoia and began spouting verbal diarrhoea in a way that he did not before the illness.

Can the line that splits the successful Houllier period and unsuccessful period be drawn on 13th October 2001 – the day Houllier was hospitalised – or is the situation perhaps not as black and white as some people think? Could it be that there was no line at all – that we, in fact, had the same Houllier all along?

In this piece, I will look at the main things Houllier is perceived to have done wrong following his return from illness and consider whether there is evidence that his judgement deteriorated or whether these 'mistakes' were symptomatic of his overall performance as manager including before the illness.

Before that, I want to examine the statement of Chris Bascombe’s above. Did Houllier really preside over three successful years and two years of failure?

Three Years of Success

The first argument against that statement is that Houllier held the title of manager for six years, not five. He is often and understandably excused his debut season as it began with the farce of him sharing management responsibility with Roy Evans. However, Roy had quit by early November and Houllier was sole manager for the remaining 5 months of the season. Liverpool were still at that time in the UEFA Cup and FA Cup and had 26 League games remaining in which to improve from their position of 8th in the League Table (not 12th as Phil Thompson claimed in his autobiography). As it happened, Houllier managed just two more fixtures in each of the cups prior to elimination and improved the League position by one place to 7th.

Clearly it would be harsh to crucify Houllier for the failures of that campaign. The squad contained Evans’ players, not Houllier’s and the difficult transitional period under the new manager had been made more difficult by the board’s failure to remove the previous manager before appointing his replacement. However, there is plenty of evidence that Houllier hindered rather than helped the progress of the team during this particular campaign. After all, virtually the same squad had finished third in the previous campaign before Houllier’s appointment. While the consensus had been that Evans had taken the team as far as he could and was incapable of leading a sustained title challenge, no one thought it imminent that the team was about to drop to mid-table mediocrity. Suddenly Houllier was telling us of his “five-year plan” to improve this side sufficiently for it to challenge for the title. Should a team that finish 3rd in 1996, 4th in 1997 and 3rd again in 1998 really need 5 years to improve sufficiently to compete for 1st place? How did the Frenchman get us to stop talking of final pieces in jigsaws to celebrating a 4th placed finish in 1999-2000? The answer is that his team underachieved so gloriously in 1998-99 that any improvement felt like an achievement.

It’s not as if Houllier was powerless in 1998-99. There was no transfer window in place at this time. We all knew we were light-weight in defence. Houllier signed Rigobert Song... No impact. We knew we lacked consistency and a bit of steel in midfield. Houllier signed Jean Michel Ferri... and played him twice from the bench. Meanwhile, Houllier seemed set on alienating the players he had inherited ahead of shipping out most of the established first team regulars in the next two summers.
The “five-year plan” was an ingenious piece of propaganda by Gerard. Not only did it buy him time in the job but it effectively laid the blame for the failings of 1998-99 at the feet of Roy Evans. “This is the mess he’s left me to work with” Houllier seemed to say. And if we’re honest, we fell for it.

After a summer of heavy investment in 1999, results improved and a fourth place finish was achieved in 1999-2000. Compared with 7th the previous campaign, this appeared to be a massive achievement and Houllier was quick to hail the improvement in League position as evidence of progress. In reality, this was still a place lower than Evans’ average League position over his final three full seasons as sole manager. Liverpool had missed out on 3rd place and Champions League qualification by 2 points having failed to win (or score in) any of their final 5 games. One win from home games against Leicester and Southampton or the final away game against Bradford would have secured the third Champions League spot. This season was an improvement on a terrible previous season but to call it a success (with early exits in both domestic cups) is overstating things.

No one can argue that 2000-01 was not a successful season. Three trophies were won and Champions League qualification was secured for the first time in the Premiership era. The third placed finish was an improvement on fourth from the previous campaign and there were plenty of highlights including home and away League wins over Everton and Man Utd. We can debate the luck Houllier’s team rode on its way to winning the Worthington Cup, the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup but history shows they were won.

2001-02 was also a success of sorts. For the first time under Gerard Houllier, Liverpool mounted a genuine title challenge although ultimately finishing above Manchester United (for the first and only time to date in the Premiership era) was not enough to win the title. This was also the season in which Gerard suffered his illness and was missing for 5 months. Houllier left the team in seventh place in the League. On his return, Phil Thompson handed back a team that immediately went top after winning 1-0 at home to Chelsea. The question is, how much was the title charge down to Houllier given it only materialised after his absence and ultimately extinguished following his return? How much was Houllier’s illness, with Thommo’s rallying calls to “Do it for the boss” actually a motivating factor behind the team’s improvement? Of course, we’ll never know how the team would have fared had Houllier not taken his leave of absence but my guess is that it would have been an inferior campaign.

When all is said and done, Houllier inherited a team that had finished 3rd in 1998 and after four years and £81.35m spent (£33.675m net), that team peaked in second place in a season that the Frenchman himself predominantly missed. Finishing 4th, then 3rd, then 2nd appeared to be progress but only when compared with the 7th placed finish in Houllier’s first season. Before then, under Evans, we had finished 3rd, 4th, 3rd – an average of 3rd place. 4th, 3rd, 2nd also averages at 3rd place. Evans was forced out of the club because this was deemed unacceptable. Houllier achieved the same and it was hailed as success. In Evans’ final three seasons, his team averaged 68 League points per season while the Champions in those campaigns averaged 78. In Houllier’s three seasons, generously excluding 1998-99 and including the whole of 2001-02, his team average 72 points while the Champions averaged 86 points. In other words, Houllier was achieving an average of 4 points more per season than Evans while the gap was widening between Liverpool and the title winners.

Was this really the ‘success’ we replaced Evans in order to achieve? No. The truth is we were dazzled by the glory of the treble of cups after a decade in which we won only an FA Cup and a League Cup in finals against lower division opponents. We were taken in by talk of five-year plans and progress measured against one truly awful season that we were told was the fault of the previous manager. I would call it one year of success, one decent season and four seasons of disappointment and underachievement.

Transfers

The summer of 2002 was a key turning point in Houllier’s tenure. Signing El Hadji Diouf for £10m has to rank as arguably the worst piece of transfer business in the club’s history. That Houllier declined to sign Nicolas Anelka because of fears about his character made his decision to pay over the odds for a cheating, disloyal scumbag who would spent the next two years gobbing in rival supporters’ faces all the more baffling. To compound the error, Houllier also signed Salif Diao for £4.7m and “the next Zinedine Zidane” aka Bruno Cheyrou for £3.7m. Those amounts may not sound huge compared with today’s transfer fees so to put them into context, Diouf became Liverpool’s second most expensive player ever, Diao cost fractionally more than Gilberto Silva who joined Arsenal that same summer while Cheyrou cost more than Joseph Yobo who joined Everton that summer as well as Marcus Stewart who joined Sunderland two seasons after he had won the Premiership’s golden boot with Ipswich.

Of course, Houllier also wanted to sign Lee Bowyer for £9m but eventually Rick Parry pulled the plug on the deal due to the outraged reaction by supporters. Again, I point out that Nicolas Anelka was not signed due to concerns about his character but Houllier was happy to bring in a racist thug who soon after would be sent off for having a punch up with his (black) Newcastle teammate Kieron Dyer in the middle of a Premiership match.

It was terrible business and it seriously undermined the supporters’ faith in Houllier’s judgement. Houllier had one chance to redeem himself in the summer of 2003 but Harry Kewell, Steve Finnan (who eventually went on to become a good signing) and “French gems” Anthony Le Tallec and Florent Sinama-Pongolle failed to arrest the side’s slump towards mediocrity. As a final insult, Houllier left us committed to bringing in Djibril Cisse for a club record £14.5m depriving his successor of funds with which to operate in the transfer market himself.

Certainly Houllier’s record in the transfer market post-recovery was atrocious but was it really so much better before?

Houllier’s first four signings included three players who would make a minimal impact on the football club – Jean Michel-Ferri, Frode Kippe and Rigobert Song – and Djimi Traore who would at least achieve some success with the club despite being, by common consensus, crap.

Look at the team Houllier inherited from Evans: James/Friedel; Heggem, Carragher, Staunton, Bjornebye; McManaman, Ince, Redknapp, Berger; Fowler and Owen with the likes of Matteo, David Thompson, Riedle and an up and coming Steven Gerrard on the bench. Should that squad really have finished 7th? Did Houllier really need to make so many changes the following season?

Out went James, Ince and McManaman (although the latter was enforced). Riedle, Friedel, Matteo, Bjornebye and Thompson would follow within a year while Staunton, Heggem, Redknapp and Fowler had also been moved on before Houllier’s triumphant return against Roma.

Over the following two seasons, Houllier spent nearly £57m on 18 players to assemble the squad that would win the treble of cups in 2001 but, with a few notable exceptions, those players would have no more than a short-term impact with most being moved on within 3 seasons.

The signings of Hyypia and Henchoz for a combined £6.1m stand out as transfer masterstrokes while Hamann was also a good signing though not cheap for the time at £8m. Gary McAllister was an inspired capture on a Bosman free but beyond those, it’s hard to credit any of the other signings as successes. Club record signing Heskey had one excellent season followed by a decent season but was crap in his final two seasons at the club. Despite his contribution in Istanbul, Smicer flopped for much of his Liverpool career. Camara and Meijer came and went within a year. Westerveld – not cheap at £4m for a goalkeeper – was callously ditched after just two seasons. Diomede barely kicked a ball for the club in 3 seasons despite costing £3m. Babbel suffered a freak illness that curtailed his Liverpool career after just one season. Arphexad made just 5 first team appearances. Barmby arrived for £6m but lasted only two seasons starting only 2 Premiership games in his second campaign. Ziege lasted only one season before leaving for a loss of £1.5m. Litmanen and Vignal made few appearances while £1m Daniel Sjolund never played a first team game. Igor Biscan at £5.5m was a dreadful signing.

Of those 18 players the club received sell on fees for just 5 and in each case the fee represented a loss compared with the fee paid. After spending £56.85m, the club recouped only £20.35m making a net loss of £36.5m. That was the true price of our cup treble.

After that Houllier’s erratic spending continued with £6.25m on Chris Kirkland on the same day as £4.85m on Jerzy Dudek (the pair left for a combined £3.5m – a net loss of £7.6m). All these players were signed before Houllier’s illness.

Of the players who departed under Houllier most did so for less than their market values. Several players left for nothing including Steve McManaman, Phil Babb, Brad Friedel, Steve Staunton, Jamie Redknapp, Bernard Diomede, Pegguy Arphexad, Patrik Berger, Vegard Heggem and Abel Xavier. Of those, Steve McManaman had the highest potential market value (estimated as £11m at the time). Perhaps his departure was not strictly Houllier’s fault but he was the manager before and at the time when Macca signed for Madrid on a Bosman. Paul Ince and David James were both sold for less than their market values. James was sold to Villa for £1.8m who made a profit of £1.7m when they sold him to West Ham after two seasons. James still fetched £1.2m 7 years later in 2006 when he moved from Man City to Portsmouth.

Perhaps before Houllier's illness there were no catastrophes of the magnitude of Diouf and Cisse but you can compare £5.5m Biscan to £4.7m Diao or £3m Diomede to £3.7m Cheyrou or even £5m Kewell as equally poor signings. While £6.25m might not leap out as a massive fee, it was a lot to spend on a goalkeeper and that fee, paid for Chris Kirkland, remains the highest fee we have paid for a ‘keeper to date. Pepe Reina cost less! Kirkland made just 45 appearances for the club and, let’s be honest, the man was born to concede goals.

In conclusion, Houllier’s performance in the transfer market was consistently unimpressive throughout his tenure and though he made a few excellent signings, these were exceptions to the rule.

Houllier himself might point out that, like his successor Benitez, he never had the financial muscle to pay ‘top dollar’ for the world’s top players like some of his rivals. Until the signing of Cisse for £14m which was completed after Houllier’s dismissal, the Frenchman’s record signing was Emile Heskey for £11m. Up to the same point Manchester United had signed 6 players for fees in excess of £11m while Chelsea had 8 (most of which were signed ahead of Houllier’s final season). Arsenal, Tottenham, Leeds, Newcastle, Fulham and Man City all had more expensive record purchases than Houllier.

Perhaps Houllier could argue that if he’d had the funds of his rivals, his record on the transfer market would have been better but then, had his team not failed to qualify for any European competition in 1999 and for the Champions League in 2000 and 2003, and had it not been eliminated at the first group stage of the Champions League in 2002-03, the club would have generated far greater income which, perhaps may have increased his transfer kitty. Similarly had any of his signings actually increased in value whilst at the club, he might have been able to trade up as Benitez later did when selling Sissoko at a profit to finance the purchase of Mascherano.

It was also Houllier’s decisions to spend his average annual transfer kitty of £21m on a number of players rather than investing it in on maybe one or two proven superstars. For example, the £18.4m spent on Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou in the summer of 2003 might have been used to purchase Hernan Crespo who in that same summer moved from Lazio to Inter for £16.6m or Fabio Cannavaro who also joined Inter from Parma for £14.75m at the same time. For the combined £21.5m spent on Barmby, Diomede, Ziege, Vignal, Sjolund and Biscan in 2000-01, Houllier might have purchased the following players who moved that same season: Frank Lampard for £11m (West Ham to Chelsea), Robbie Keane for £12m (Inter to Leeds), Pablo Aimar for £13.6m (River Plate to Valencia), Tomas Rosicky for £18m (Sparta Prague to Borussia Dortmund), Rio Ferdinand for £18m (West Ham to Leeds) or Sylvain Wiltord for £13m (Bordeaux to Arsenal).

The fact that Houllier’s three most expensive acquisitions (Cisse, Heskey and Diouf) were hardly the most successful - two were outright flops - suggests that had greater funds been available, we would simply have ended up with more expensive flops.

Tactics

The allegation is that post-Houllier’s recovery Liverpool played some of the most boring and negative football seen since the Souness years and possibly even before. The team seemed to be largely set up to play on the counter-attack utilising the pace of Owen and the (ever fading) strength of Heskey. The back four featuring Hyypia, Henchoz, Carragher and another lacked pace so tended not to push high up the pitch while their defensive shield Didi Hamann was never renowned for his creativity or goal threat.

But was this down to increasingly negative tactics by Monsieur Houllier? I would contend that in 2001-02, we were equally negative and displeasing to the eye yet with infinitely more success. Could it be that by 2002-03, opponents had sussed our tactics and learned how to combat them? Team after team would come to Anfield, line up defensively and our counter-attacking game plan was stumped. We had no natural wide players to get in behind full-backs, no players with the skill to dribble through defenders and few players with the quality to deliver an incisive pass through a crowded penalty area. When the pressure was on us to break teams down, we struggled.

Was this only the case post-recovery? We were pretty defensive and negative in 1999/00. We accepted this at the time because for the first time in 10 years we were defensively solid which in turn helped us achieve results while we also reasoned that had Michael Owen and Robbie Fowler not spent so long on the treatment table that campaign we would have carried a greater goal threat. By 2000/01 we seemed to have improved as an attacking force but was this down to tactics? I believe the difference between 2000/01 and 2002/03 was less to do with the tactical approach and more to do with having greater quality in the squad. The creativity of players such as Gary McAllister from open play and particularly from set pieces, plus the energy and directness of Nick Barmby and the width that Markus Babbel brought from full-back all gave us an extra attacking edge that we had lost by 2002/03.

Though our football was considered to be better during our treble-winning season, it should be noted that we predominantly played counter-attacking football throughout that campaign. It won us some memorable scalps against teams who would attack us such as Man Utd (a), Arsenal (h), Roma (a) and Arsenal again in the Millenium Stadium, though it should also be noted that each of those teams outclassed us on the day only to be hit by sucker punches. That season, we also struggled to break teams down who did not come out to attack us – the best example being Birmingham in the Worthington Cup Final – and attracted some criticism of our style of play. In particular Johan Cruyff said of us "Liverpool are just like Bayern Munich. They're all about name and prestige but, in football terms, we're talking about two horrible teams. You might think I'm exaggerating but in my opinion a team are horrible if they are incapable of stringing three passes together.” Anyone who saw the 0-0 we played out in Porto which the press labelled “Snore Draw” would find it hard to disagree.

One of the biggest criticisms of Houllier’s teams concerned their inability to win from losing positions. By my count, Houllier’s Liverpool recovered to win League games having gone behind on only three occasions post-Houllier’s return (Tottenham (a) and Charlton (h) in 2002-03 and Birmingham (h) in 2003-04) which suggests any opponent who took the lead against Liverpool was likely to at least draw if not win. However, in 2000-01 and 2001-02, Liverpool won only once after falling behind in the League suggesting that Houllier’s team never had the know how to break down opponents defending a lead.

If 2001-02 proved anything, it was that fans will accept any style of play as long as it keeps delivering wins but no one will accept bad football and bad results which is what we had after Houllier’s return.

I believe those bad results came because of a combination of fielding inferior players and opponents adapting to our limited tactical plan.

Team Selection

It was 9th April 2002. Liverpool were level on the night and 2-1 ahead on aggregate with an away goal in the bank. 30 minutes remained at the Bay Arena. All we had to do was prevent Bayer Leverkusen from scoring twice before the final whistle and a Champions League Semi-Final spot was ours. Earlier in this campaign we had kept clean sheets in the Westfalen Stadium against Borussia Dortmund, in the Stadio Olimpico against Roma and in the Nou Camp against Barca. Houllier, having declared we were “ten games from greatness”, then made a tactical substitution. Dietmar Hamann off, Vladimir Smicer on. Leverkusen scored three more and we were five games from winning sod all.

To this day, no one can understand why Houllier did it. Was this, as some people suggest, the first sign that during his illness, Houllier had lost the plot? The highly dubious decisions continued the following season when for a Champions League away tie against the reigning Spanish Champions (managed by one Snr Rafael Benitez) Houllier selected Diao at centre-half and omitted Owen and in-form Baros in favour of Heskey and Diouf. Then throughout the 2003-04 season he continually selected Igor Biscan at centre half. Was all this bad judgement only in evidence after his return?

In 1999-2000, with five League games to go we were in second place ahead of Arsenal and Leeds (both of whom we had beaten home and away) and in pole position to claim a Champions League spot. We capitulated. Failing to score again that season, we drew two and lost three, gifting the two remaining Champions League qualifying places to Arsenal and Leeds. One win from those 5 games would have been enough for us to finish third. For our final home game of that season facing a Southampton side that finished 15th in the table having lost 11 away games conceding 40 goals in the process, Houllier inexplicably selected five defenders and three strikers. Fowler and Redknapp who had missed most of the season through injury were thrown back into the first team while Michael Owen was left out of the squad. The midfield consisted of Redknapp and Berger. The match was drawn 0-0.

In 2000-01, club record signing Emile Heskey was on a hot streak with 12 goals in his last 12 games. Liverpool faced newly promoted Ipswich Town at Anfield before a League Cup tie at home to Fulham then of Division One. Houllier ‘rested’ Heskey. Ipswich won 1-0. Their goalscorer Marcus Stewart described the reaction in the Ipswich camp on learning of Heskey's demotion. "We were very surprised," he said. "If he had started, who knows what would have happened? All the lads were delighted." Houllier subsequently claimed he would have "done it again" denying that his tactical change had any bearing on the result.

These examples stand out as really bad tactical decisions by Houllier but there are plenty of others, some of which he got away with. For example, not using Michael Owen in the Worthington Cup Final against Birmingham when we needed to put the game to bed; leaving out in-form Gary McAllister for the FA Cup Final against Arsenal, and using Igor Biscan at right-back in the Merseyside derby (he was sent off). I am sure there are plenty more but the point is, Houllier was no more a tactical genius before his illness than he was afterwards – he just got away with more gaffes before.

Verbal Diarrhoea

"At some stage, the club will win the title and win the Champions League under me. That's for sure," declared Houllier in January 2003. The club had just failed to win for the eleventh consecutive League game turning a potential title challenge into a desperate and ultimately unsuccessful scrap for fourth place.

"It's not a crisis," he emphasised. "We have young players who just need time and patience to develop."

The word “crisis” is over-used in football where the media tries to sensationalise everything but when Liverpool can’t win a game of football in eleven attempts, it is a crisis.

Houllier tried to convince us this was normal saying: “We've had three good seasons, finishing fourth, third and then second, and won trophies along the way. This season is what happens sometimes when you are making progress. We reached a phase of plateau.” This was odd. Last season we were “ten games from greatness”. Our own manager had apparently gone from expecting us to win both the League and the Champions League to telling us it was a normal occurrence for the same team to go so long without winning and to fall so far from the summit of the table.

It was utter nonsense and insulting to the intelligence of supporters famed throughout the world for their knowledge of the game.

As Houllier’s team deteriorated further and further over the following season, we heard more and more nonsense from him. Over the course of the 2003-04 season, supporters were regularly being told by Houllier that their eyes were deceiving them. According to Houllier, we weren’t watching one-dimensional turgid football bereft of creativity and lacking the nous to break down any team that stuck 10 men or more behind the ball but were witnessing a side on a par with Brazil at their finest being denied only by sheer bad luck. “We created [X] chances”, “We won [X] corners”, “We had [X] shots on goal” (usually from distance) bleated Houllier.

Cup failures such as the 2-0 home defeat to lower division Crystal Palace were dressed up as a “blessing in disguise”. In his programme notes for the final game of the 2003-04 season, Houllier declared that finishing fourth was a “massive achievement”. Remember Evans finished third, fourth, third in his final three seasons and it was not deemed good enough. Houllier had spoken of his five-year plan to take Liverpool to the summit of the League and after five years he was telling us fourth was a “massive achievement”.

If the results and performances hadn’t made Houllier’s position untenable in the eyes of Liverpool supporters, these ludicrous statements had. He had become an embarrassment and many felt he had “lost the plot” but was this ‘verbal diarrhoea’ a symptom of madness or was it a more cynical attempt by a devious human being to deflect blame from himself and remain employed in a role he in which he was obviously failing?

I would suggest the latter and on that basis, Houllier certainly had previous form predating his illness.

Cast your mind back to the 3rd April 1999. In Houllier’s debut season as Liverpool manager amidst the thrill of winning a Merseyside derby for the first time in 5 seasons, Robbie Fowler responded to sick taunts from Everton supporters by using the pitch markings to simulate snorting cocaine. It was ill-advised though completely understandable (and actually quite funny at the time) but, of course, the politically-correct brigade immediately jumped on the bandwagon with Bitter Blues, who were more pissed off with the fact Robbie’s brace had led to them losing than with his goal celebration, and Robbie was earmarked for a public flogging.

"It was really nothing," said Houllier. "Rigobert said they did this at Metz and the players were doing it in training. Robbie was just pretending to eat the grass. I spoke to Robbie about it and also to the referee, and he said he would not be putting it in his report. You can say it was inadvisable in the circumstances but when your heart is going at 180 these things happen. It was certainly not a response to the Everton fans."

Whether you believe Houllier was justified in trying to protect his striker, the fact remains that Houllier told an outright lie in an attempt to deceive the watching world. Was this so different to regularly claiming his team deserved to win games in which they had never looked like scoring a few years later?

In August 2001 Liverpool lost 2-1 away to newly promoted Bolton Wanderers. Houllier left the world in no doubt over who was to blame for the shock defeat.

"I'm absolutely disheartened and gutted," he said. "I really feel sorry for the players, who played a really good game of football but were very unfortunately let down by that blunder.” That blunder was made by Sander Westerveld who allowed a speculative shot from Dean Holdsworth squirm under his body in the 88th minute. Undoubtedly it was a howler by Westerveld but was it fair to lay the whole of the blame on the goalkeeper? Did the team and indeed the manager not deserve a share of the flak for only being level with the Premiership’s new boys up until the final minutes of the match? Had those players really played “a really good game of football” only to be “let down” by Westerveld? What must Westerveld have felt to be so publically blamed for the defeat by his manager?

Houllier went on to say: "Nobody needs to say anything to Sander to deepen his sorrow. There will be other days and other nights when he will save us." Actually, Sander never played for the team again and before Liverpool’s next match, Houllier had signed two new goalkeepers in Jerzy Dudek and Chris Kirkland.

"Jerzy Dudek is a proven international," declared Houllier. "I can confirm he will be the No 1 goalkeeper." I guess nobody needed to say anything to Sander to deepen his sorrow after that!

All this very cleverly deflected any responsibility for a shocking performance and result from the manager. It was all the fault of the goalkeeper but thankfully the manager had done something about it.

It was a similar story post-recovery when Liverpool failed to beat Basle in Switzerland resulting in elimination from the Champions League. Again, this was not the manager’s fault; it was Steven Gerrard’s. Houllier told reporters that Gerrard had started to believe his own publicity and it had gone to his head. He said he was becoming “impatient” with the out-of-form midfielder and that he needs to stop reading his own hype. Gerrard was promptly dropped for the next home game (in which Liverpool failed to break down a Sunderland team that would that campaign take the fewest points of any team in Premiership history). The papers the next day all focussed on Gerrard rather than the team’s or the manager’s failure to qualify from a relatively easy group.

It was true that Gerrard had been out of form but could failures to beat Basle at home and away along with an inability to avoid defeat home and away to Valencia be caused solely by one individual player? Was Gerrard directly responsible for the three first-half Basle goals conceded by Jerzy Dudek who just days earlier had dropped a clanger at the Riverside to gift Gareth Southgate an unlikely match winning goal and who would soon be gifting Diego Forlan the softest goal of his career? Was the manager not culpable for only having Salif Diao or Igor Biscan in the squad as potential replacements for Gerrard?

This game of blame-shifting actually began as soon as Houllier arrived at the club. Whenever Liverpool lost it was Roy Evans’ fault; not Houllier’s. It would take Houllier 5-years to undo the damage Evans had done to our club such was the extent of his mismanagement. That 5-year plan was the ultimate excuse – for 5-years at least. Where did this figure of 5 years come from? Why not 6 or 7? Why not 2, 3 or 4? Or why not take the team from 3rd to 1st as he was employed to do?

Houllier was adept at deceiving the public, embellishing his own achievements whilst shifting responsibility for his failures. When Champions League qualification was missed in 2000 after the team failed to score in the final 5 games (soon after Houllier made striker Emile Heskey the club’s record signing), we were told to focus on the improvement from the previous season and the overall progress of the squad.

A year on from missing out on the Champions League by losing away at Premiership newcomers Bradford, Houllier’s men faced a similar scenario needing to beat Premiership newcomers Charlton on the final game of the season to seal qualification. With Liverpool competing in the FA Cup and UEFA Cup Finals before their final League fixture, Houllier spoke of three Cup Finals. Actually, we had two Cup Finals and then needed to beat a poor team who, unlike Bradford the previous season, were already safe from relegation. However, by hyping up the game and placing it on a par with the FA Cup and UEFA Cup Finals, it gave Houllier a potential excuse. Champions League qualification would not be won or lost over the course of the season but in a one-off Cup Final immediately after two other Cup Finals. Had Liverpool failed to win one or more, Houllier could have pointed to the exceptional demands of playing three Finals in a week while the fact Liverpool would be strong favourites for the games against Alaves and Charlton made it likely he would be basking in more triumph than failure. As it was, we won all three matches and the hype over the League game against a crap team with nothing to play for made our 4-0 win at the Valley seem far more impressive than it actually was and totally deflected attention from our failure to impact the title race that season.

To hear the players talk, you would think that game at the Valley was the Champions League Final itself. After the FA Cup Final Michael Owen actually said: “Two Finals to go – a UEFA and a Champions League – and if we can win that then what a season!” Do Charlton fans even know that they were beaten Champions League Finalists?

Houllier undoubtedly had a devious side which was never in greater evidence than in the Houllier versus Fowler saga.

Robbie Fowler wrote in his autobiography he “felt like [Houllier] was trying to get me out almost from the start” of his time at Anfield. It’s Fowler’s theory that Houllier’s early conflicts with Evans had alienated the Frenchman from the established players, most of him felt a loyalty to Evans, to such an extent that Houllier had determined the solution was to “clear out” the squad he inherited and work with new players instead.

It was easy to move out players like Paul Ince and David James, whose inconsistent performances and prima dona personalities had made them unpopular with the fans. Meanwhile, no fan would shed a tear over the departures of players like Neil Ruddock, Jason McAteer and Steve Harkness. McManaman’s exit was forced by the player himself while Rob Jones and Mark Wright were forced into retirement through injuries. Other than the kids (Owen, Carragher and Murphy) and some of the foreign players who were perhaps more used to and willing to adapt to a more professional environment, only Fowler and Redknapp escaped the early cull of established players.

Fowler was idolised by the fans and, despite evidence that “God’s” effectiveness was on the wane, Houllier knew there would be uproar if he sold him. He therefore instigated a smear campaign designed to undermine his number 9. Houllier used the Liverpool Echo’s Chris Bascombe – then a young journalist new to the role of covering LFC – to publicly criticise the striker. Bascombe was forbidden to praise Robbie and instead continually questioned his place in the team and at the club.

With Fowler ending 2000-01 in fine style, Houllier suspended Fowler from the first team over a non-incident when Phil Thompson overreacted to Robbie kicking a ball into an empty net in training. Houllier publicly declared Fowler would not play again until he had apologised to Thompson. Fowler felt he had done nothing worthy of an apology and so an embarrassing impasse was reached. With a treble of cups won in the previous season, Houllier’s popularity with Liverpool fans was at its peak and he knew it.

"What is he thinking about?" asked Houllier. "He knows what he has to do. He is acting as if he wants away." It was ingenious by Houllier. In one corner is our peerless manager with the club’s interest at heart and in the other is a fan’s favourite who might be planning to leave the club. Hadn’t Robbie’s best mate Steve McManaman recently ditched us on a Bosman? If Macca could do it, why not Robbie? Fowler’s character was being damned while the player himself was denied an opportunity to demonstrate his value and commitment to the club on the football pitch.

In the end Fowler was sold while Houllier was lying in a hospital sick bed. It was perfect timing. Who could criticise Houllier while there were still genuine concerns for his health? Could anyone say for sure that it was even Houllier’s decision under the circumstances? £11m seemed like good business for a player who was not actually a regular starter in the first team (which was ultimately because Houllier declined to select him!).

I cannot let a commentary on Houllier’s verbal diarrhoea pass without mentioning his outrageous claim that Bruno Cheyrou would be the next Zinedine Zidane. The expectations such bold proclamations heaped on the relatively unknown player did little to help him when he struggled to be even the next Vladimir Smicer while hindsight shows it to be a prime example of Houllier’s flawed judgement. This regrettable Houllier quote was delivered post-recovery but the hopelessly inaccurate over-hyping of players had been in evidence as early at 1999 when we were told that Djimi Traore was the next Marcel Desailly.

Following his return from illness in 2002, Houllier declared: “In sports you cannot programme success. You cannot plan success. You cannot say it will happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but you can prepare for it. All I can tell you is every single day, as I say, we prepare for it.” Great speech but what did it actually mean?

If anything, it was more comprehensible than the following statement made in 2001 after securing the treble: “I knew when they would win some trophies. I didn’t know whether we would win three in the same year but I knew we would and I think that you need to have a vision and that vision is not a dream, it’s just a target that I would say, you know, aim for the moon and maybe you will land among the stars.”

The truth is, Houllier told white lies and manipulated others perceptions of his team throughout his time as manager. It was inevitable that the longer it continued – particularly with the team disappointing on the pitch – that people would become wiser to it.

Conclusion

So overall I believe Houllier’s reign can be split into just one period – six seasons of failure to turn Liverpool into title winners – the job he was appointed to do. In one season his team won three cups but underperformed in the League during the same campaign. Aside from that, the only respectable League campaign coincided with the manager’s absence.

Could another manager have achieved more had the board made a different appointment in 1998? I believe that many could have and that, not for the first time that decade, the board made a bad decision.

Had they bothered to do some thorough research on the man they entrusted to run our club, they would have seen that he was unsuitable, unqualified and that many of the man’s flaws we subsequently witnessed during his time at Anfield had been in evidence long before.

Prior to his appointment as Liverpool manager, Houllier had been extremely unpopular in his home country having presided over France’s failed campaign to qualify for the 1994 World Cup Finals. This, of course, had not been Houllier’s fault according to the man himself. Houllier laid the blame for an unsuccessful two-year campaign (which included home and away defeats to Bulgaria and a home defeat to Israel) on David Ginola for failing to complete a pass to Eric Cantona in the final home game. Someone in the French FA must have been convinced as they rewarded his failure with a move upstairs from which he continued to take the blame for poor results during Platini’s tenure. After all, Platini was a national hero whereas Houllier was the patsy who couldn’t qualify ahead of Sweden and Bulgaria.

Here as early as 1994 was evidence that Houllier was (a) unable to succeed in a high-profile job, and (b) unable to accept responsibility for his shortcomings preferring instead to find scapegoats. Sound familiar?

The board went for Houllier because, at the time, all things French were in vogue – at least as far as football was concerned. Wenger had just led Arsenal to the League and Cup double using modern continental techniques and a host of French players and France had just become World Champions. Liverpool leapt onto the bandwagon.

We were told that Houllier was the mastermind behind France’s World Cup success. As their ‘technical director’, his contribution was recognised with the award of a special medal. Rumours that it was inscribed “I did my best” and filled with chocolate are unconfirmed.

The truth, as Robbie Fowler concisely put it was: We’d signed the French Howard Wilkinson. The man had failed as a manager and been moved upstairs where his reputation was enhanced by the achievements of others.

He was a bad appointment and a bad manager.

Phil Thompson defended his and Houllier’s record at the club saying: “We came back to win trophies and we did that. We also sorted out the discipline which had become a major issue and that achievement should not be under-estimated. We took the club from the front pages to the back pages and left a physical legacy in the shape of a wonderful training ground... We nurtured the likes of Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen, Sami Hyypia and Jamie Carragher.”

They won the treble and it deserves to be acknowledged as a great achievement that brought a lot of pleasure to Liverpool supporters at the time but, as Istanbul subsequently proved, the glory of that season would have been eclipsed by a single League title or Champions League win. That was the success we craved. The treble was ultimately like a nicotine patch for an addicted smoker.

Regarding the claims of nurturing Gerrard, Owen, Hyypia and Carragher, it should be pointed out that Owen pissed off as soon as Houllier and Thompson were sacked as they had failed to tie him down to a long-term contract and failed to deliver the success or lay the foundations for imminent success that might have convinced him to stay at the club. Did Sami Hyypia really need nurturing? This was not a rookie youth player. Meanwhile Gerrard and Carragher both developed into far better players under Rafael Benitez than they ever did under Houllier.

The physical legacy that was the training ground was not built by the hands of Houllier and Thompson. They did not pay for it. They were not its architects and did not obtain planning permission or hire the builders. They just happened to be at the club at the time of a project that would have been undertaken irrespective of who had been in charge.

They may have inherited discipline problems but far from establishing a new culture with the same set of players, they simply made wholesale changes to the playing staff booting out any player they considered to be undisciplined. Any manager could have done the same. This was not on a par with Arsene Wenger turning round Tony Adams and his drinking buddies at Highbury. The equivalent would have seen Houllier flog Adams to Middlesbrough for £1m with Keown, Parlour, Winterburn and Dixon following hot on his heels – and he would have won nothing.

The true Houllier legacy is that he failed to do the job he was recruited to do taking the team from 3rd place to 4th in six seasons; he left the squad in arguably worse shape than the one he inherited; he wasted the talents of Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Sami Hyypia – all of whom deserved to win a League winners’ medal in their time at Anfield; he wasted serious amounts of money and left the coffers bare for his successor; he deprived Benitez of the chance to either work with Owen or sell him for his true market value in order to reinvest in the team, and he insulted the intelligence of Liverpool supporters leaving a bitter taste in the mouth.

SKY versus Liverpool FC (and reality)

“Reds held by battling Rovers: Ngog comes closest in dull draw at Ewood” screams the headline on SKY Sports. Not “Rovers held by Reds”. No, it was the away team that was held by the home team and only the home time ‘battled’.

“Liverpool's top four aspirations suffered another blow after being held to a 0-0 draw by Blackburn at Ewood Park,” continued the media giant’s latest propaganda release. Once again, note the emphasis on Liverpool’s aspirations. Do Blackburn have no aspirations of their own?

You would think that Liverpool had a divine right to be awarded three points simply for turning up at Ewood Park. Blackburn are an established Premiership club who are unbeaten in their last 9 home matches. Is it truly a shock that Liverpool – still without Torres – didn’t win? With City having drawn 6 consecutive matches including home games against Fulham, Burnley and Hull, is Liverpool’s third draw of the campaign really “another blow”? Disappointing for Liverpool supporters, yes, but in the context of the season, this was definitely a point gained and not two lost. If we were to miss out on 4th place by 2 points, I won’t be looking back to those dropped at Ewood Park thinking that was where it went wrong.

We deserved at least a point at Sunderland, all three away at Fulham and at home to Birmingham and were unlucky not to take more points from Tottenham away and Man City at home.

Had Man Ure or Chelsea played badly and avoided defeat, they would have been hailed for their resilience. We played badly but took a point. I’m not happy with the performance but I am happy we took a point.

“Blackburn deserved their point in a good week which also saw them beat Chelsea in the Carling Cup quarter-finals,” droned SKY. Logically, if Blackburn deserved their point then a draw was a fair outcome and therefore Liverpool must have deserved their point – not that we are given any credit. The report reluctantly acknowledges that “Liverpool substitute David Ngog came closest to scoring midway through the second half when he hit the underside of the crossbar from Glen Johnson's cross,” which would suggest that if any team might have won, it would have been Liverpool yet only Blackburn are credited with deserving their point.

Of course, this directly contradicts the ‘expert’ analysis from Matt Le Tissier under the headline: “No chance, Rafa: Blackburn the likelier scorers in Ewood Park stalemate”. How can it be true that Blackburn were “the likelier scorers” when also declaring “Ngog came closest to scoring” against the “battling” Rovers?

It is yet more negative bile spewed about Liverpool and is so, so typical of SKY Sports. Blackburn are praised for being dreadful to watch in a horrible spectacle of football whereas Liverpool get slaughtered. A point at home for Blackburn is apparently a good result whereas a point away for Liverpool is a “blow”. Blackburn were effectively relegated to the role of supporting act in what is ultimately an agenda-driven narrative about how badly Liverpool are doing.

A mate who watched the Man City v Arsenal Carling Cup game on Wednesday told me the commentators for that game were talking about Liverpool. It doesn’t surprise me as I hear that sort of thing all the time. Why discuss us during a match in which we are not playing in a competition in which we are no longer involved? SKY just want to take every opportunity to reinforce the view that Liverpool are doing terribly.

Before the derby, a mate of mine who supports Everton told me we were having a bad season. This from an Evertonian! They had just lost 3-2 to Hull City and were languishing in the bottom half of the Premiership. Do you hear SKY lambasting “the brilliant” David Moyes? Of course, not. In fact, I’ve even heard them acknowledging his injury crisis. Ever heard them do the same for Liverpool? When Moyes tried to play hardball over want-away Joleon Lescott, SKY insisted he has to sell the player to City and that not doing so would be detrimental to Everton longer term. The same pundits slam Rafa for selling want-away Xabi Alonso!

SKY’s agenda includes feeding the perception that Tottenham and even City are doing well whereas we, who were ahead of City and just 3 points behind Tottenham going into yesterday’s games are having a terrible season. Have either Tottenham or City been as handicapped as Liverpool firstly in terms of having no money to spend other than that which their managers generated from player sales and secondly in terms of suffering injury after injury to deprive them of their best players and any chance of a settled first team? In the circumstances, for Liverpool to be in and around those far more expensively assembled teams is an achievement but unfortunately most people can’t see beyond the name of Liverpool Football Club.

If we talk about history, prestige and size of fan base, Liverpool Football Club should finish comfortably above the likes of City and Spurs season after season but history, prestige and size of fan base don’t win football matches. Players win football matches and the best players cost the highest prices – prices we cannot pay.

Unfortunately, SKY have everyone by the short and curlies. Walk away from SKY and you won’t see much live football. Watch matches on SKY and you are forced to listen to the toxic views of bitter individuals who want nothing more than to see Liverpool and Rafa fail (like they did as players and managers).

Blackburn Rovers 0 Liverpool 0

Here are the highlights of the game:

45 mins + 1: The referee blew for half-time.

72 mins: Rafa substituted Albert Riera... Thank God for that!

69 mins: Ngog hit the cross bar.

93 mins: The referee blew for full-time. Both teams took a point that neither deserved.

Having given up 2 hours of my life to watch one of the most wretched excuses for a football match there has been over the years, I feel entitled to complain but I have real sympathy for the poor sods who actually paid and travelled to be there in the stadium.

I don’t give a shit about Blackburn but as a Liverpool fanatic I am not happy with what I’ve seen today. I can appreciate that we have had a rotten run of results of late; that our recent form has been lousy; that we have and still are missing our better players both in terms of fitness and form; that we have been shipping goals with an alarming regularity, and that against this context, a clean sheet and a point away from home is not a disastrous outcome. However, I cannot accept seeing Liverpool Football Club not even trying to win a game of football against an opponent that will deservedly finish in the bottom half of the League table and who on the day gave a performance that was somewhere south of utter shit.

I could question the manager’s decisions. I could ask why after the shockingly out-of-form Kuyt finally put in a decent performance against Everton, Rafa then shifted him from the right of midfield to play him as an isolated front man – a role he is clearly incapable of performing*. I could ask why Rafa brought on two subs costing a combined total of less than £2 million but chose not to bring on a £20 million attacking midfielder when it was clear we were lacking creativity. I could ask why Albert Riera was merely substituted rather than given a lethal injection.
*I think Kuyt can play as a lone front-man but not when as isolated as he was today and I think he is far more effective when playing as one of two strikers.

Ultimately I am knowledgeable enough to know that Rafa’s ability to manage a football club far outstrips mine and therefore for me to question his decisions is the equivalent of a paperboy questioning one of my decisions at work so I will accept that, with his greater insight and tactical acumen, he had his reasons for his team selection, tactics and the changes he made.

The bottom line is, despite a minor improvement after the introductions of Ngog and El Zahr, this was a terrible game to watch and, if that had been an exception to the rule, I would accept it but the truth is this is the third poor performance in a row.

We are having a horrible, horrible season. Football is fantastic when things are going well but this season following Liverpool has been a truly miserable experience.

It is horrible. It is soul-destroying. I am limping from game to game feeling so down about football. I dread our next game and can’t even bring myself to watch other teams – particularly the likes of Chelsea and the Scum who are performing the way I want my team to perform.

I realise now just how spoilt we were during March, April and May when we played the best attacking football seen from a Liverpool side arguably since the 1988 vintage and simply destroying opponents. During that period, we got to see the performances and the results we have always craved but this season has seen a return to the shite we are more accustomed to.

I’m not blaming the manager – if anything I blame the fucking Yanks – but I do despair.

I really became a serious Liverpool fan during the 1995-96 season. That was overall a good season though it ended in the most devastating experience I have ever endured as a supporter (losing an FA Cup Final to the Scum). The 1996-97 season was also a decent though ultimately disappointing season. 1997-98 was not good while 1998-99 was downright atrocious. 1999-2000 was more positive but only because it directly followed the 1998-99 season. 2000-01 put me in heaven as we won the treble while 2001-02 was also a good season that almost delivered the Holy Grail. Then it was back to misery in 2002-03 while 2003-04 was the worst season I’ve ever experienced as a supporter. 2004-05 restored the pleasures of watching the team despite several piercing results but it ultimately gave me the greatest moment of my life as a supporter in Istanbul. 2005-06 was a good season. 2006-07 was disappointing. 2007-08 was mixed and last season was excellent but ultimately delivered nothing. This feels as bad as 2006-07 and 1997-98 though not quite as bad as 1998-99 or 2003-04.

It’s not nice, but it’s nothing new. This is a season where victories will be nice but not expected while defeats and draws will not carry the disappointment they would have in better seasons. I will just do as I have done before. I will hang in there, support the team and wait for the season to end and hope (desperately) for better fortunes next campaign.

When you walk through a storm hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm there’s a golden sky and the sweet silver song of the lark. Walk on through the wind. Walk on through the rain though your dreams be tossed and blown. Walk on. Walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone. You’ll never walk alone.