bradley headstone
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Posted: April 30th 2008
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I’m musing here, some three hours before the start of the European Champions League Semi-Final second leg between Chelsea and Liverpool. I find myself in a completely new situation. I am a neutral. I don’t mean I don’t support either team, there’s nothing special about that. What makes this particular game different for me is that I don’t want either team to win! I honestly cannot think of another time where I couldn’t find a reason to have a preference for either side in a match.
It’s not unusual to find someone happy to dislike Chelsea, it’s become a reflex action for most right thinking individuals. Spearheaded by the toad-like Kenyon they are a byword for all that’s perceived to be wrong in modern football. Like Leeds United, I’m sorry they don’t exist, I mean ‘Leeds2007’, under Ken Bates. But that’s only part of the reason I’m anti Chelsea, but it’ll do for me!
Liverpool is a less obvious dislike. I’m reliably informed that there is a mutual hatred between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, but I’m taking other folks’ word for that. For me it’s a combination of two factors, almost forty years apart, but both resonate strongly with me.
I originate from the North West; a mass of League football congregates in the area. When I reached the susceptible age for claiming a team, somewhere between 5 and 10 I always think, Liverpool overshadowed everyone else. There was a huge electromagnetic pull from Anfield. Many of my friends never escaped and remain trapped like the living dead in a shopping mall.
I rebelled, contrary little bugger that I was. I hated their success, the remorseless jack-booted trampling of anyone who dared oppose them (apart from in Europe, with no likelihood of a successful England team, supporting them was the next best thing). I hated how they expected success and the ‘cracking sense of yoomer’ that accompanied it all.
I’ve followed my team, selected on the basis of kit and degree of difficulty for actually seeing them, for 35 years. They’ve given me some highs and many lows, but right up with any high they’ve given me is Arsenal pipping Liverpool for the title in 89. Brian Moore’s commentary of Thomas’ winner is oft repeated and still makes me feel funny.
Nowadays there is more reason to feel sorry for Liverpool than dislike them. But they are showing precious little class. Public squabbles in the boardroom, Benitez, the king of shabby chic, constantly moaning, the deplorable behaviour of the ‘so called’ best fans in the world in the recent Merseyside Derby. All this helps.
What really gets my goat (goatee? – Rafa-obsessed Ed) is the possibility that they’ll win a sixth European cup (the best team in Europe is the fourth best team in England) and that they seemingly show no interest in improving. It’s obviously financially worth Liverpool’s while perennially finishing 4th. Why else do they rest their best players through the first four months of the season?
This year they might well have failed to do that were it not for the signing of Torres, a 25 million pounds investment to recoup the 40 million they get from European competition. I believe it’s fair to suggest that there’s a big three and that Liverpool are merely the best of the rest.
There is a small part of me that can admire them. The public demonstration of disgust at the scab-picking antics of the Kenyon of the newspaper world, Kelvin Mackenzie, was breathtaking. Yet whenever I think of Liverpool I’m more likely to see a portly Robbie Fowler, his huge wallet being supported by at least two clubs he’d be on the way to ripping off, waving four (as it was then) fingers at Man Utd fans to denote the four European Cups won by Liverpool. None of the five they’ve now won had anything to do with the rotund landlord.
So tonight the permanently whining Benitez will prowl the sidelines, mentally preparing a list of people to blame if it goes wrong. This he’ll file with the list of transfer targets that he ‘needs’. How much has he spent already? Why not try using the shabbily treated Crouch a little more?
So is the acceptable alternative a Chelsea win? Well I can’t countenance them winning the thing…that would be deplorable! Although it’s sweeter that they lose in the final…but do you want to take the risk? I don’t know…it’s tricky.
Perhaps most unsettling in all this is that it all means that I want Manchester United to win! Now how did I end up there!