One thing fans of Liverpool Football Club have witnessed in abundance in recent years is miracles. From the 3-1 at Olympiacos to the win in Istanbul we’ve seen our fair share of great comebacks and results on the European stage. After the dissapointing draw at Lyon yesterday we need to pull another one out the bag.
Going into our next two games I still have a relatively high-level of confidence that we will qualify for the knock-out stages of European footballs biggest tournament, simply because we’re specialists in showing just how could we are in the face of adversity, it’s the Liverpool way, some may say it’s the hard way of doing things. It’s one of the things Rafa has built into the team, a passion to win, even if everything is against them, it’s something that never goes away no matter which players line up on the pitch, it’s another form of the mentality Bill Shankly built into his Liverpool team, something we haven’t seen since the days of Kenny Dalglish.
It’s one of the reasons I hate it when people say Rafa can’t ‘man-manage’ we’ve proven time and time against that his pre-match and half-time team talks can inspire our players to go out onto the pitch and get a result no matter how far behind they are. Istanbul was a prime example of this, going in at half-time trailing and coming out in the second half looking like a different team. That can be partly attributed to those of us in the stadium that night of course, but a large amount of credit must be given to our manager.
So, when we go into our last two games of the Champions League Group Stage get behind the team, believe we can do it. It’s that belief that has brought us success time and time again, without that belief we’re not a shadow of the club that we have been since the early days of the late great Bill Shankly.
M. Owen
michael@empireofthekop.com