Liverpool: The Sleeping Giant?

First of all I'm going to get this out the way before anyone else can accuse me of it. This blog may seem like bitterness, or sour grapes, or jealousy, or whatever other things you want to describe it as. And maybe it is, but to be honest I don't really care.

Anyway, the reason why I mention all of the above things will soon become apparent, as I'm going to start off talking about Manchester United. Liverpool and Manchester United have always been inextricably linked. As cities, they stole our industry by building the ship canal, something that United (and City to be fair) still flaunt by having a ship in their badge. In football, the rivalry has always been there. I would argue that the obsession has been far more intense on the Manchester side though. It's only from United fans that you'll hear songs about Liverpool during every game no matter who they're playing. And Alex Ferguson made it clear that his career goal at Manchester United was the emulate Liverpool when he said "My biggest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch." It meant a lot to him.

Fergie the grass

The thing is, in Ferguson's time at Old Trafford, there is no denying that United went through a glorious period overshadowing Liverpool who, by their standards, have gone through a darker period in their history. Now, however, I firmly believe these days are over for United. It may only be early days into the post-Alex Ferguson era, but there is no way they can ever recreate the sort of dominance they had over this country without him.

Alex Ferguson had a lot of control over the referees, the FA and the press. When I say that he had control over the press, people often question what difference that would make anyway. Well here's how it works, if a journalist criticised Ferguson or United, or even just broke a story that Ferguson wanted to stay private, he would ban that journalist and his particular news outlet from attending press conferences at the training ground and from attending Old Trafford. For a sports journalist, this could ruin their career. So as it was, Ferguson was practically immune from criticism so his job was never in question. The media have a lot of power when it comes to getting managers sacked as they have a great influence over public opinion. If you make a comparison to David Moyes who's in charge now, if he banned a journalist from press conferences for writing something he didn't like, if that journalist had anything about them he could ruin Moyes' career. It's like how newspapers win general elections. If a big newspaper turns against a manager they can sway huge portions of the supporters against them and get them sacked. Of course, numerous newspapers tried this many times with Rafael Benitez at Liverpool, but we're different, so they failed.

This power over the media is ultimately what gave Ferguson the control over referees. He could easily ruin careers. The main example I give of a referee bottling it from fear of Ferguson was in 2009 when United were 2-0 down at home to Spurs. That was until Michael Carrick went through on goal and Huerelho Gomes tackled him fair and square. However, Howard Webb decided to give United a penalty. They went on to win the game 5-2, but I believe that without the free goal from Webb they would never have got back into that match, and that was the game that won them the title that year in my opinion. If you want to see the blatant wrong decision yourself it's about 1 minute into this video:

However, it's not entirely down to Alex Ferguson that United have had so much "luck" over the years. Ferguson probably couldn't have had the same sort of control at any other club in the country. It comes down to the fact that Manchester United have always been this country's favourite football team. It dates back the The Busby Babes and the Munich Air Disaster, and ever since them days they're the club that the country has always wanted to be it's top team, and any other club that's been the best has never received the same sort of credit. I remember this video from the television show The Street from a few years back, and I've always felt that everything that Officer Slater says in it is entirely true, even if it wasn't meant to be taken seriously: (sorry I have to post it as a link but for some reason they won't let me embed it)

I Hate Manchester United

As a side note, that video is a good 6 or 7 years old but describing Wayne Rooney as a "fat, money grabbing bastard" is still perfectly truthful as of this week.

Liverpool, in contrast, have always had to do things the proper way, the hard way, and we've never even received much credit for what we've done. The reason I decided to write this blog, apart from the fact United hilariously got beat by Olympiakos yesterday, is because I was also made aware yesterday that it was the 5th anniversary of when Liverpool went to the Bernabeu and beat Real Madrid 1-0. This followed another anniversary memory from about a week ago of Liverpool defeating Inter Milan 2-0 at Anfield. 

The results of the English teams in the Champions League over the past couple of weeks got me thinking how much I miss being in the competition. But not only that, looking at our games from years gone by made me think that the Champions League is actually crying out for us to return to it. England as a country should be crying out for Liverpool to return to the Champions League. But they're not, of course. I was thinking about what Liverpool achieved in Europe from the period of around 2004 to around 2009. We went to the Bernabeu and won, we went to the Nou Camp and won, we went to the San Siro and Won. We knocked out Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan, Juventus, Inter Milan, Chelsea and Arsenal from England. There's not really any top teams from Europe we didn't beat, but we never really seemed to be given any credit for what we achieved. Before the games the pundits in the media wrote us off, after the games they seemed shocked, but that was it. I haven't researched this before saying it so I might be wrong, but I don't think any other English team over the past 10 years has had the same sort of results against the top teams in Europe as we have, yet the other teams are the ones the country seemed to get behind.

"This is Anfield... and what?" proclaimed Spanish newspaper Marca, before Liverpool destroyed Real Madrid 4-0 at Anfield

Throughout history Liverpool have never been given that much credit for their achievements. We beat Real Madrid in the 1981 European Cup final, but when supporters of other clubs talk about it they say it was a poor Madrid side. A poor Madrid side who made the European Cup final? In contrast, when talking about the 1978 victory we hear that it was "only Club Brugge". Club Brugge just happened to be one of the best teams in Europe at the time and one of the favourites to win the competition. The same thing happens when people try to belittle one of the biggest nights in our history, St Etienne, by questioning how great it was due to the opposition. Etienne, at the time, were one of the most feared teams in Europe due to the fact they were the most successful team in France, European Cup finalists the previous year, and had one of the best strikers in the world in Dominique Rocheteau. The same with Borussia Monchengladbach who Liverpool defeated in the final, they had a famous rivalry with Bayern Munich at the time which is still remembered in Germany but long forgotten or just not cared about here. St Etienne and Monchengladbach were pretty much the two favourites at the start of the tournament and we beat them both. Just because a team isn't great at a certain time doesn't mean they once weren't. You could take an example now, even though the chronology is reversed, that 5 years ago beating Paris Saint Germain would have meant nothing, but now it's a great achievement.

Dominique Rocheteau against Liverpool

So even though I described the past couple of decades as a darker period for Liverpool earlier in this blog, we did have some good times. However, it's fair to say we were overshadowed by United. But now, I truly believe, that without Ferguson United have had their day. And personally, I would quite happily see them be crippled by their debt and go into administration and drop through the leagues like a stone. They've had everything handed to them on a plate for years so they'd deserve it. Even though Ferguson may have knocked us off our fucking perch, we're still here, and right now we're ahead of United in the league and our future looks a lot more promising.

I've gone on for quite a bit now so I think I will just leave you with this final thought: When Liverpool's era of dominance ended, after we won our last league title in 1990, we had 11 more league titles than Manchester United and three more European Cups. Now, the Ferguson years are over at Manchester United and they have two more league titles than Liverpool and are still two European Cups behind. 

You may have knocked us off our perch, Sir Alex, but we never fell very far. 

Up The Reds!

@adamheath

(Credit to Joe O'Brien for the title of this blog @joe_obrien34)

Religion And Stuff...

The reason I'm writing this is because I saw a story a few weeks ago, and I felt like I had to share a few thoughts about it. This is the story...

And since I saw that I've just been thinking about how completely crazy it is. The thing is, to me, the idea of religion actually seems more absurd than the idea of homosexuality, and I can't believe in 2014 people can still use religion to justify a hatred. 

Now let me first of all point out that I have nothing against people who are religious. I went to a Catholic school and I studied the bible, and I actually think the bible is full of really good messages. I just get the feeling that we've spent so long studying it that people are just getting it all wrong now. 

To paraphrase the comedian Jim Jeffries, you could replace the entire bible with the simple phrase "don't be a cunt." Because that's all the bible is, it's a book telling you how to live your life the right way. All the other parts are irrelevant, but people take these irrelevant parts and twist them to justify their fucked up views. There's people who hate Jews because they killed Jesus, and you feel like saying to them you're focusing on the wrong part mate. It doesn't matter who killed Jesus, it's the fact he suffered for other people. He was being a good person, and he wants you to do the same. And by hating others you're not doing that.

It doesn't matter if Jesus really was the son of God. But if he was, and God sent him to earth to spread the good news about him, and that good news became the bible, God would be looking down now, seeing what people do in his name, and turning to Jesus and saying "you've made me look a right twat here son."

But anyway, as I was saying, I have nothing against religious people, because most of them are just living their lives the right way. But you don't have to believe in God, or pray to him, to be living the right way. You can be a good Christian without believing in God and he's not going to punish you, because you've been a good person. It's like Beyonce once said, "hollering in a church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a Cadillac."

In general, people just don't like what is different to them. It's like Yul Brenner says in Cool Runnings, "People are always afraid of what's different." As with the story above, the guy doesn't like homosexuality because it's different. It's using religion as the justification for this dislike that's pretty much caused all the world's problems for the past 2000 years. Family Guy summed it up perfectly with this sketch...

How many people have died in the name of a particular religion. Not just Christianity though, it happens with all of them. And the thing is, they're actually all similar in how they tell people to be. They're all peaceful, telling people to treat others well, and they've all been butchered by us.

But anyway, that was just a little rant, and I hope I burn in hell.

@adamheath