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.