Sins of the Father

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Let’s get a couple of things out of the way. I’m gutted about being out of the Champions League – but the Europa League is still a trophy, so let’s win it. And I still want Rafa to stay.

But I’ve been thinking about just how abominable our form and also our luck has been this year. Late goals have gone in, in the Champions League especially, Inanimate objects have helped other teams beat us ( and I mean the beach ball, not Darren Bent ), the injury list is truly dreadful, and even those who have been on the pitch have been barely fit.

This isn’t an ordinary run of bad luck. In an ordinary season, even playing badly as we are, we’d have scraped a couple of draws from the defeats, or a win from the Birmingham game. I don’t think even the most hardened anti-Liverpool football fans would begrudge us a little bit of sympathy.

Why is this, do we think ?

Well, here’s a theory. And it really is just that, because I for one don’t believe in fate and the like. But the more this goes on, the more I feel like it’s some sort of payback. Liverpool Football Club hasn’t been well run in a long time. But recently it has become more and more difficult to like the club ( not the fans or the players, but the club. Consider, in the case for the prosecution

1. Not supporting the Royal British Legion on Remembrance Day. Yes, we have a red kit, yes we supported them on other ways. But can someone tell me why we didn’t see fit to support them in the same way that all the other Premier League teams except Man Utd ?

2. The PTS scheme. Now I’m a little bit biased about this, because I was on the PTS scheme. I do appreciate that there is now wider access to tickets and that is a good thing. But whatever way you look at it, the disbanding of that scheme was a shabby way to treat people who had been shelling out £50 for 6 years and buying match tickets.

3. Rafa. I wouldn’t swap him for anyone. But he treated Xabi badly. He isn’t close to the players. And he isn’t friendly with other managers. He is a brilliant manager, but he is also aloof and distant and single-minded.

4. David Moores. He sold out. I understand the reasons why, but it is nevertheless true that we went from being a family run club to a corporate entity, with all the good and bad that entails.

I love the club, and it’s the fans that are at the heart of it – that is something that won’t ever change, we won’t let it. But I really feel that the club as the institution has lost it’s heart of late, lost its joie de vivre. And that we are somehow being punished for that. Odd things are happening – how many teams have turned us round recently so that we attack the Kop End in the 1st half – Everton and Man U aside, I don’t remember that ever happening before. There is dressing room unrest and some pretty lost souls on the pitch. Quiet in the stands.

I understand this isn’t a fully formed argument, but it’s a feeling I’m trying to articulate that maybe we need to be a family again before we can share success.

6 Comments

  1. I wish my fellow Liverpool fans would stop blaming this “bad luck” nonsense for our current predicament, along with injuries and everything under the Sun aside from the players woeful play and the Manager’s tactical blunders and stubborn ineptitude. Not too long ago it used to be said that good team, (or more broadly a good competitor or athlete) made their own luck and that fortune favored the brave. Even Liverpool were long beneficiaries of this theory, what with Istanbul and the success of past Liverpool teams.

    I’m not saying that injuries, bad form and, yes, even luck had not had an influence on out play this Season. But when you resort to blaming those things constantly at the cost of looking at and rectifying your own shortcomings, then you’re perpetually doomed to failure. I wonder how many times Newcastle, and even Leeds before them, went through spells of blaming bad luck and injuries on their plights before they descended into mediocrity.

    Rafa has a lot of blame to take for out current mess, and I would even argue, most if not all of it. Liverpool are not the first club to have bickering and miserly owners, nor will we be the last. Liverpool are not the only team playing on a small ground with less resources than their rivals. But Benitez made all those buys that have now exposed this team to be the empty shell it is sans Gerrard and Torres. Benitez is the one that makes all the (far too) late substitutions to have any impact on a game. And he’s the one with the awfully poor man-management skills that have so far alienated (and driven out) some of our best and better players.

    And can’t blame any of that on injuries or bad luck. Simple as.

  2. We’re playing much better now than a month ago. The result: from losing to drawing. But what’s important is that we are playing better. This can only mean that we’ll start getting the results.

    Also, give Lucas a break. The guy’s improved remarkably from last season. Macherano, who is still a much better player, on the other hand isn’t playing as well as we’d like. So, I don’t see why Lucas is taking the blame for everything.

    One more thing: if Rafa isn’t letting Aquilani play, it means the guy isn’t ready. It’s not just that he has to be fit. He also needs to adapt to the team, adapt to English football and everything. The guy’s Italian, he doesn’t speak the language. He’ll take some time. If he isn’t playing, means he isn’t ready yet. Full stop.

  3. Just in case anyone has forgotten how prestigious the Europa League is (formerly known as the UEFA CUP) here are the winners of it since 2000. How many can remember these winners let alone the beaten finalists?

    2000 Galatasaray
    2001 Liverpool
    2002 Feyenoord
    2003 Porto
    2004 Valencia
    2005 CSKA Moscow
    2006 Sevilla
    2007 Sevilla
    2008 Zenit St Petersberg
    2009 Shakhtar Donetsk

    What a huge honor will it be if Liverpool CAN win it!

  4. The whole Poppy on the shirt thing is a complete PR STUNT. A few clubs started doing it 2 or 3 seasons ago and now the rest of the league has followed suit. At the end of the day the club sold of the kit from the game and donated the money to the British Legion.

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