Dear Kenny:
I am sure this is not the way you wanted to wake up on your birthday morning. Following the defeat at the hands of Arsenal our Champions League qualifying hopes have taken a very serious dent. Football can be a cruel sport, in a game that we dominated, missed a penalty and hitting the post twice we ended up losing it in the dying seconds.
One week ago we were all celebrating the Carling Cup Victory and I am trying to comprehend why fellow Reds claim that a 4th place finish is better than another trophy in our cabinet. I travelled over 10,000 miles in less than 4 days to see Steven Gerrard lift that Mickey Mouse Cup and spent lots of my hard earned money. If I wanted Mickey Mouse I could have driven 120 miles up to Orlando, so why did I do it?
I did it because I craved a trophy, it had been six years since we last won some silverware and winning silverware is what it is all about. I did it also because I had never been to Wembley (New or Old) and my dad had told me the stories of 1965 and 1966 when as a young doctor he worked just a couple of blocks away from the stadium. Liverpool were playing at Wembley for the first time since 1996 (the year that my father passed away). So was my trip worth it? HELL YES!
So the excuse by the haters is “We barely beat Cardiff”, well “We barely beat West Ham in 2006” and “We barely beat AC Milan in 2005” and “We barely beat Roma in 1984”. A victory is a victory, a trophy is a trophy and that I will cherish, thank you very much for bringing what is important. And of course these haters and moronic knee jerking idiots don’t know Liverpool F.C., we never do it easy. Our anthem sure fits it when we sing “At the end of the storm there is a golden sky”.
We even have a chance to lift the FA Cup this season and we really need to focus on that now, if we can clinch that than this will make the season a glorious one and can easily be compared with those of 2000-2001 and 2004-2005 in the books. Not too shabby for a season of rebuilding and not too bad for a season that saw almost half of our first team changed. Yes we have some great individual players and it will take some time until they start playing as one cohesive unit. It will happen but on the road there we will suffer some setbacks and we need to be patient and learn from the mistakes. If we wanted a new manager every season or we wanted Prima Donna players with fancy surnames than we could have chosen to support Real Madrid or Chelsea.
Champions League qualifying only lasts for one season while a trophy stays in our history books forever.
Happy Birthday Kenny, thanks for bringing the happy days back.
Y.N.W.A.
-Antoine