By Alex Miller
A tiff. A 13-minute separation. An apology. That’s all it took to heal the relationship.
After what FSG collectively described as ‘a tumultuous week’, it’s business as usual once again in the soap opera that is LFC, at least if rumours of a 77th minute applause during the game against Augsburg comes to fruition. The fact is, in this case, a little has not gone far enough. Not by a long way.
The fact is that FSG should do more. The very acceptance that £2m gate receipts are neither ‘here nor there’ when it comes to the enormous LFC balance sheet should beg the question – why not take £2m OFF the price of tickets? Why not £5m? £10m? Why not make Liverpool Football Club a forebearer for change across the world of football, the Premier League especially, by putting their heads above the parapet and climbing aboard the ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign?
It would appear, for now at least, that this is the stuff of fancy. But as a fanbase of dreamers, whose club has been modernisers in the past, why not? Why not build on the momentum of the last couple of weeks and pressure the LFC boardroom to switch sides? Why not push them into engaging in conversation with the government (at arm’s length at the very least), and put wheels in motion for appropriate change across our national game?
After getting it badly wrong, the backtrack was an open goal PR win for the Americans. Had the protest groups not been so well organised and had the media not swept up the story and run with it, then make no mistake, those tickets would have been increased. In big business, public image is paramount, and whilst the apology has been spruced up to give the appearance of sincerity, this was an institution backed into a corner, a damage limitation strategy perfectly executed and a PR exercise that has no doubt resulted in the lighting of cigars and pats on backs in offices all over Boston.
Red-faced for a minute, the owners now look like men worthy, to some quarters at least, of a minute’s applause. Scrap that. This fanbase is better than a half-baked apology and a half-baked solution.
Get behind Spirit of Shankly, get behind Spion Kop 1906. Look on their websites and consider what you can do to help make our club a forebearer for change and bring our national game back to the working classes.
The fight goes on. Dare to dream.