Well Red issue 10

WELL RED

THE INDEPENDENT LIVERPOOL FC SUPPORTERS’ MAGAZINE By the fans, for the fans

10 09

Issue 10: Oct/Nov 2011 £2.70

LEAVING ANFIELD?

WELL RED CONTENTS

“...the lunatics have not so much taken over the asylum as set the asylum alight with a casually discarded cigarette, watched as it becomes engulfed in a sea of dancing flames, pissed all over its smouldering ashes, before skipping off into the night cackling like demented chimps.”

4: 6: 8: 10: 12: 14: 16:

Mustn’t Grumble – Neil Scott p4

30:

20: 22: 24:

Mustn’t Grumble Coates Bellamy Sky Rat: Gary Neville The Big Debate: Aquilani Do one Meireles Liverpool FC: The Complete Record Luis Garcia Henderson – the new Lucas?

Leaving Anfield: Special report on how it would feel to leave our spiritual home Manc Love: We’ve found one who likes us

32: 34: 38: 40: 42: 46:

Stuart Downing We’re not Spanish, We are Scouse.

Loving Lucas Leiva Window Pain Feature: Own goals A Life in Liverpool Matches

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16/09/2011 14:01

INDEPENDENT LFC SUPPORTERS’ MAGAZINE

No.10 OCT/NOV 2011

Still work in progress S O Liverpool are not going to storm to the title – unbeaten, sweeping aside all before them – in Kenny Dalglish’s first full season in charge.

The King, it seems, is human after all.

He, like any manager, makes mistakes.

Who knew?

Not many judging by some of the overreaction to consecutive defeats to Stoke and Spurs. A glance at the squad at the start of the season should have been enough.

It’s good, but it’s still not good enough to challenge for the top prize. The teams who will fight it out for the title (you know who they are) have greater quality and depth in their squad.

That’s not to say the current Liverpool team should lie down and die. Far from it.

This side is more than capable of upsetting the title favourites on a one-off basis.

But over the course of a season?

Liverpool is work in progress. It’s a much tougher ask for Dalglish this time around.

We’re playing catch-up, and unlike the teams that have caught up in recent years, we don’t have a blank chequebook on our side. That’s not a criticism of FSG, far from it. The owners have been great so far (although they are still to tackle the stadium issue).

But look at the transfer fees and wages forked out by Chelsea and Manchester City.

It’s a different world. Everyone at Liverpool is pulling as one to close that gap but it’s never going to be easy.

The realistic aim is, and always was, to challenge for the top four – to get in the Champions League then trade up the playing staff accordingly.

Two away defeats at two grounds that have repeatedly caused Liverpool problems doesn’t put an end to that.

What it does do perhaps is sharpen the mind as to where we are as a club. The Reds have lost a couple – they’ll undoubtedly lose a couple more – but they’ll win more than they lose.

Money has been spent, of course it has, but Liverpool are not the top payers in the league and they didn’t have the lure of the Champions League to buy the ready-made world-class players that others have regularly plucked from the shelves.

That’s why Phil Jones and Gael Clichy chose Manchester instead of the right end of the M62.

Instead, the cash has, in the main, funded purchases for solid Premier League

performers – players that have improved the squad, but players that need time to gel as a team and settle at Anfield.

The big gamble was Andy Carroll – and the jury is still out. Should he stay in the side and find his feet and fitness, or is his presence hindering the kind of football that we’d all like to see on a regular basis?

It’s a huge dilemma – a difficult decision that needs to be made.

But it must be remembered that this was the man who was tearing up the league not long ago. Fit, firing and happy he IS a force to be reckoned with. The problem is making sure he is all of those things.

Meanwhile, there’s the waning powers of the local heartbeat – Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher – to contend with.

There’s the fragility of Martin Skrtel and the injury-prone Daniel Agger.

And in Sebastien Coates there’s a promising youngster new to the country to bed in.

There’s plenty of work to be done. Perhaps Dalglish and the backroom staff have to take stock, too.

It’s a good side, a promising side – but not perhaps a side that should be going to Spurs balls out.

We’re not yet at the stage where we can turn up on a good team’s doorstep and expect to play them off the park.

Dalglish loves to entertain and play good football but in the modern game there’s times when shutting up shop and trying to nick one is a tactic that, at least on occasion, must be employed.

White Hart Lane was perhaps that time. All that said, the situation at Anfield is infinitely brighter than just a short time ago. Around about this time last year, Christian Purslow was describing selling Liverpool to FSG (then NESV) as a “bottom of the barrel” deal.

“There is no extra money on the table to enable short-term investment in what remains a squad palpably needing more quality if we are to be definitively top four,” he wrote in an email that was later revealed in court.

We now know that claim about the cash is not true. FSG have backed the manager.

They’re a world away from the vultures.

And if ever there was a time when we were at the bottom of the barrel, it was when Purslow and Hodgson were stalking the corridors of Anfield and Hicks and Gillett had a claim on the club.

That’s well worth remembering the next time Liverpool simply lose an away game.

WELL RED Editor Gareth Roberts @robbohuyton Email editor@ wellredmag.co.uk Website wellredmag.co.uk Write to Well Red Publishing Ltd, Office 113, Imperial Court, Exchange Street East, Liverpool, L3 2AB Twitter @wellredmagazine Facebook wellredmagazine Next edition on sale November 30 Copy deadline November 11 Advertising Call Graham on 0845 638 0704

HAPPY DAYS?

NEIL SCOTT says he’s got nothing to complain about

I

T’S a good time to be a Red. After a bruisingly intense couple of years, rife with protest, distrust and division, we have emerged blinking into the light, stunned at the brightness of the new day. There’s a lot to be positive about.

Our greatest servant is back where he belongs, leading once more from the front. We appear to have a stable, forward-thinking ownership model, underwritten by a philosophy that chimes nicely with the history and ambition of the club.

We have witnessed a much-needed overhaul of the playing staff, a purging of the fabled ‘deadwood,’ to leave a leaner, hungrier, stronger first-team squad. And we have seen the reemergence of a lost tradition, where incoming players choose to sign for Liverpool for the right reasons, exhibiting a welcome determination to prove themselves worthy of the badge on their shirts.

The age of the Anfield mercenary is over; for once, the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ can be seen as a genuine call to arms and not as a meaningless platitude from a shiny-faced Torybot.

Yet, judging by some of the comments I’ve heard since the start of the season, it appears that this is all a mirage and we are in fact still in the midst of a crisis. You can see it on any LFC internet forum, hear it on local radio phone-ins, watch it develop on Twitter. You can even get a taste of it at the match.

This morbidly compelling negativity seems to find its focus, in the main, when the club’s new signings are discussed.

Logic dictates a player targeted by a manager like Dalglish, and painstakingly researched by the kind of highly professional and burgeoning scouting network favoured by Damien Comolli, will be of a certain standard. Plainly speaking, they’re not going to bring in any old dud.

That’s not a guarantee of their success; some transfers, for a myriad of reasons, just don’t work out. But it does 4

mean that they have been identified as players with qualities that can benefit the club and who are willing to buy in to its ethos.

To some, however, that’s not enough.

A new breed of critic is on the rise, fuelled by impatience, anonymity and a searing demand to have their voices heard. Their wisdom, often gained from Sky’s La Liga coverage, coupled with years of gruelling late-night Football Manager sessions, is, in their eyes, infinitely more meaningful than that of people who have spent a lifetime at the highest level of the game.

And so we see Stewart Downing, an established England international with a proven track record, dismissed as “a joke of a signing” and “staggeringly average” before he even pulled on the shirt. We see Charlie Adam, one of the league’s most effective creative forces over the previous season, sensitively adjudged to be “complete and utter dogshit” during an efficient away victory at Exeter. And we see Jordan Henderson, one of the

Our worst ever signing? Tell that to El Hadji Diouf

country’s most promising talents, still adjusting to life at a world-renowned club, written off after just two games as “a disaster” and “a waste of a shirt.”

(Sadly, all quotes are genuine.)

And when it does eventually dawn on people, after, say, the kind of fluid attacking football that destroyed Bolton, that maybe, just maybe, these players might not be so bad after all, then it doesn’t take long before another target settles in the cross-hairs — Andy Carroll, come on down!

Let me clarify my position. I don’t have a problem with any criticism that is reasoned and rational. Or, frankly, if it’s funny.

I confess I spent much of the 80s decrying Ronnie Whelan for what I perceived to be his anonymity on the pitch (for the first half of his Anfield career, at any rate). Of course, I could appreciate his vital goals and his composure in possession, but I always felt his contribution should have been greater, and that he never quite fulfilled

GRUMBLE

his early promise. And, in truth, he had the haircut of an extra from Grange Hill.

It’s an argument I’d still be prepared to engage in.

But I don’t recall ever resorting to blind abuse or assuming that my opinion carried any weight when measured against the beliefs of consecutive Liverpool managers, managers whose combined trophy haul was arguably even more impressive than my Warbreck Wanderers Under-15s ‘Player of the Year’ award (1981-82).

There’s clearly a genuine debate to be had about whether Andy Carroll’s style is suited to the free-flowing passing game Dalglish favours. It’s also fair to say that, a couple of games aside, he has yet to fully show the form to justify such a substantial transfer fee. But when the level of analysis entails brash assertions that Carroll is “pathetic” and represents Liverpool’s “worst-ever signing,” then it’s clear the lunatics have not so much taken over the asylum as set the asylum alight with a casually discarded cigarette, watched as it becomes engulfed in flames, pissed all over its smouldering ashes, before skipping off into the night cackling like demented chimps.

Of course, when challenged the inevitable comeback is always along the lines of “I’m entitled to my opinion”.

Well, yes you are. But you’re not entitled to pollute my ears and eyes with kneejerk hysteria every time Adam misplaces a pass, Downing cuts inside or Carroll’s control lets him down. Because to be honest, it makes you look a bit of a pillock. And, let’s face it, some opinions are just, well, wrong. Anyone who’s ever watched Sky’s Sunday Supplement can tell you that.

The impression given is that some of the more vociferous commentators are so desperate to see their opinions validated that they actively relish any possibility to seize on what they interpret as a sub-par performance. In the rush to dispense their negativity, to be the first to say ‘I told you so,’ any semblance of perspective or context is ignored.

In a culture that increasingly promotes the concept of instant gratification, any kind of long term view is deemed irrelevant. It’s all about the now, and if an immediate impact isn’t apparent

Jordan Henderson has been written off by some already then any kind of coherent thinking goes out the window, replaced by apocalyptic rants and lazy scapegoating. But what if the big picture is more than just something Rolf Harris hangs on his bedroom wall?

Have we always been like this? To an extent, I suppose we have. But it’s been magnified tenfold by the internet’s role as an undiscriminating platform for people to present their opinions,

however extreme, ill-conceived or factually dubious. Technology has made pundits of us all. Whereas in days gone by, supporters would discuss a player’s merits or otherwise over a couple of pints, it’s now all too easy to become entrenched in on-line jousts, where each exaggerated response has a guaranteed audience and assumed personas must constantly be reinforced.

It would have been instructive to have gauged the collective response of such salient judges to the signings and initial impact of some other Liverpool players who struggled to instantly adjust to life at Anfield. Ray Kennedy, Terry McDermott, Peter Beardsley, Ian Rush – all would have been dismissed as woeful wastes of money who were simply not good enough if measured by the criteria of the modern-day McCarthyists. Given the subsequent careers of each, it is worth regarding them as an illustration of the value of patience in assessing a player’s long-term worth.

If we’ve learnt anything from our history (and clearly some haven’t), it’s that prolonged success stems from bringing in the best player for the team.

This may not be the most obvious or eye-catching acquisition, like a Mata or an Aguero, but the player who can, over a sustained period, prove themselves invaluable to the overall team dynamic and can excel in the job they have been assigned to perform.

I’d contest that each player brought in since Kenny returned has the capacity to achieve that. Each one has improved the squad and strengthened us as a unit.

There was a glaring need to freshen up a set of players that had long become stale and de-motivated and, in many cases, lacked the requisite quality. The turnaround, in such a relatively short space of time, has been nothing less than remarkable.

We may not win the league, but I look at the club now and compare it with 12 months ago, and I know that the future is a bright one. Stability, ambition, confidence have all returned. Everyone at the club is pulling in the right direction and, at last, there’s genuine cause for optimism.

You can’t complain about that.

Can you?

5

SEBASTIAN COATES – THE SOUTH AMERICAN SAMI HYYPIA?

SUHAIL SEEDAT reckons we’ve got a real gem in our second signing from Uruguay

M

UCH like several recent international tournaments, the Copa America saw the rise of an unexpected winner.

Unsurprisingly so, considering Uruguay were the sole South American representative in the semifinals of the World Cup. Part of their success has been down to the management strategy implemented by Oscar Washington Tabarez — the need for youth development and constant cultivation of talent to the top was required after Uruguay failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2006.

It was part of Tabarez’s redemption following his ill-fated stint as Uruguay manager which saw him leave after World Cup 1990.

As a result of his youth development plan, players such as Martin Caceres, Abel Hernandez, Edinson Cavani and Sebastian Coates have emerged and are playing for some of the top European clubs.

Out of the four, Coates’ rise to the top caught the eye of many spectators in Argentina for the Copa America.

Though Luis Suarez delivered emphatically and deservedly won the accolade of player of the tournament, Coates’ performances left many feeling there is another potential star in the making.

Similar to the forefathers of Uruguayan football, Coates’ ancestry is Scottish — though unlikely to make him understand what Kenny Dalglish will say to him.

His playing style is unassuming, a leader by example, similar to that of Sami Hyypia.

His 6’5’’ frame is a misnomer of his personality; incredibly reserved and humble, there is a lust for success.

At both international and club level, Coates has played in major competitions, albeit unsuccessful in reward.

But that experience has matured the blond locked giant, 6

as Tabarez would have wanted. Going as the fourth choice centre back in Uruguay squad for the Copa, injuries meant his chance would arrive prematurely on the grand international stage.

Partnered by the lionhearted legend of Uruguay football Diego Lugano, their defensive styles complemented each other.

Lugano plays like it always matters, illustrating incredible endeavour and dedication to the cause at all times.

Coates dovetailed by providing a breath of calming reassurance at the back, continuing to build the game from the back and also wanting to take responsibility for the situations surrounding him.

An excellent reader of the game, Coates demonstrated his willingness to win throughout the tournament — be it headers, tackles, challenges.

His pace is deceptive which will be a key asset in Europe where the defensive line is much higher to that of South America.

Liverpool’s knock rang loud on Nacional’s door — the club where Coates grew up since the age of eleven.

Rejecting moves from Manchester City and Atletico Madrid, he already has the trait which Dalglish is looking for – wanting to play for Liverpool, rather than assessing the various options.

At a modest price, there will be little pressure on Coates to succeed but as his CV shows, he has the capability to shrug off any obstacles and challenges which may lie in his path.

If his impact is anything like his dynamic compatriot Suarez, Liverpool will surely feel they’ve got their money’s worth.

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CRAIG BELLAMY MORE THAN A CLUB: Bellamy’s infamous celebration following his goal in the Nou Camp

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SWING WHEN YOU’RE WINNING I

F I ever wrote an autobiography - and I won’t - it would be called Don’t Google Me. So once said Craig Bellamy, who at 32, sealed a transfer-deadline day return to Liverpool.

For me, some fans are overly concerned that the Welshman could upset the mood around Anfield and Melwood, which, at the time of writing, couldn’t be better.

To me, it represented brilliant business for a player that cost £14million two years ago and adds another essential ingredient for success to the Anfield armoury – unpredictability.

As Damien Comolli so succinctly put it: “His work-rate is really good and what we really liked is the fact he is so versatile. He can play wide, he can play up front, he can play

off the target man, so he is an ideal complement to the squad we have built during the summer.”

He’s also got a bit of a reputation as a loose cannon, of course. He knows that, too, hence the quote.

But it’s a card played too often for a man who hasn’t been sent off since 2002 and who has pumped over £1million into the Craig Bellamy Foundation, an organisation which promotes “personal and social development through the power of sport” for the children of poverty-stricken Sierra Leone. Clearly he’s not all bad. But equally, it would be ridiculous to paint him as a saint.

As well as the infamous incident when he mistook John Arne Riise’s bonce for a new ball from Titleist, Bellamy cause untold upset in his time on Tyneside. Terry

McDermott, who labelled Bellamy “a little upstart”, described it in no uncertain terms: “I’ve never come across so much hatred and unrest over one person.”

With a charge sheet ranging from aiming a headbutt at the Dynamo Kiev defender Tiberiu Ghioan to throwing a chair at coach John Carver, it seemed fair comment at the time.

Reports said he had to be pulled apart from Graeme Souness during a Newcastle training session.

Only one winner there, Craig, and he’s not from Wales.

But that was then and this is now. This is Bellamy’s last chance to cut the mustard at a big club.

On his arrival at Liverpool in 2006, Bellamy confidently declared: “I believe I have a wiser head on me now. But I’m not naive to

think that people will suddenly start saying what a nice bloke I am.”

The golf club incident means it’s easy to forget what he can actually do on the pitch. And that, as a fan of players who put maximum effort into games, is the bit I like.

Almost as famous as the incident itself, is the brilliant win in Barcelona which followed. The Catalans didn’t lose to English sides in their own backyard in the Champions League.

They did now.

Less well remembered is a performance he put in at Wigan.

It promised to be a dull game, and the large travelling support which had swelled the JJB Stadium crowd to 22,000 was already busying themselves with goading the home fans when the match got underway.

You couldn’t blame them. Back then, December 2006, the Reds had gone over 10 hours without an away goal in open play.

Bellamy set off on a one-man mission to change all that.

This was the fired-up, feisty, wasp-like Bellamy that won’t leave defenders alone. It wasn’t long before the Wigan defenders were feeling the sting.

Nine minutes in, he’d latched on to Riise’s long ball, shaken off Matt Jackson and sped into the left side of the area before placing his finish past Chris Kirkland.

Seventeen minutes later, Bellamy scored right-footed from 13 yards, after racing clear of the back four after being released by Steven Gerrard’s volleyed pass.

The Wigan backline couldn’t handle Bellamy that day and they were grateful to see the lineman’s flag save them from more punishment on a couple of occasions.

Bellamy also had a hand in the third goal when he set up Dirk Kuyt to fire home.

Ok, Ok, it was ONLY Wigan etc, but what’s even better about Bellamy is that when he’s one of yours, you can enjoy the fact he gets up people’s noses.

Take David Hopps for example, who wrote the match report from that Wigan game for The Guardian.

After describing Bellamy as the Premier League’s most “caustic” striker, he went on: “It was Bellamy’s

brilliance which delivered Liverpool’s first goals from open play, away from Anfield, in the Premiership all season.

“But the term “open play” does not really fit. He does not play openly.

He skirmishes, niggling away on a defender’s shoulder and in the grey areas of the laws. His boundless energy and ambition gave Liverpool a cutting edge, and suggested that Rafael Benítez’s gamble on his dubious history might yet be rewarded, but much of it carries a disagreeable air.

“There can be no more galling experience in the Premiership.

Bellamy does not defeat an adversary with respect and humility, as one of Liverpool’s greatest strikers and another Welshman, Ian Rush, was wont to do, but cuts him down like a two-bit mafia hitman, then returns to backchat over the body.”

Bless. The best, and most important bit, once Hopper had stepped away from the character assassination?

He concluded: “Man of the match: Craig Bellamy. Bellamy’s insistent and abrasive display shook Liverpool out of their away-day lethargy.”

Bellamy of course left Anfield after a season – mainly to help balance the books after the purchase of Fernando Torres.

Now he’s back and Torres has gone who would you rather have considering current form and the money that has changed hands?

Even after Bellamy left Anfield he still proved he could cut it.

That 4-3 Manc derby may best be remembered for ‘he who shall not be named’ taking the splinters out of his bench-warmed arse to score the winner.

But remember Bellamy that day?

I’d wager Rio Ferdinand does.

Because after firing in a 25 yarder to upset Surrey, he pounced on the mistake from Plug from the Bash Street Kids to score another.

United won it in the end but they were shit-scared of Bellamy, you could see it in their eyes.

If we can harness a bit of that and unleash it on defences tiring after tracking Luis Suarez, Stewart Downing and the rest, he could be a potential matchwinner. And you can

never ever have too many of them.

As for his character, attitude or anything else the tabloid bores never tire about banging on about, well how about this as an endorsement from a fellow pro?

West Ham’s Mark Noble went so far as to describe Bellamy as “one of the best professionals I’ve ever worked with”.

He said: “He’s so fired up and wants to win every game, and I can’t see anything wrong with that.

For all that’s written and said about him, he one of the best professionals I have worked with.

“He’s great for the young lads.

He’s good for them and good for the team.

“He says what he thinks and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I know a load of players like that.

But he gets the best out of people around him.”

Eddie Niedzwiecki coached Bellamy at Man City, and while he seems to endorse Sir Bobby Robson’s assessment that Bellamy is the “gobbiest footballer I’ve ever met” he’s another to pop the myth of him being an uncontrollable firebrand.

He said: “People make assumptions about Craig and, often, they’re wrong.

“He’s matured a lot and he’s a top, top professional who wants to be the best and demands the best from his coaches and team-mates. He’s a winner who cares passionately.

“Don’t get me wrong I know why people say he could start a row in an empty room.

“I’ve had my arguments with Craig and there are times when you have to pull him aside and have a word, but as long as you keep communicating with him properly and explain why you’re doing things he’s a joy to work with. He enjoys playing when things are properly organised and structured. If those things aren’t right he can become frustrated.”

Would anyone – other than “Big Sam” - be prepared to say the same about, say, El Hadji Diouf?

The final word, however, has got to go to Kenny Dalglish.

“I don’t think his temperament will be a problem - he’s given up golf!”

That’s swung it for me...

GR

RATBOY

Pic: feintzebra.co.uk

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Pic: Will Yates @xfade09

SKY RAT G

ARY ALEXANDER (arf!)

NEVILLE was always a massive gobshite as a player. He might have swapped his boots for a mircophone, and a shit kit for a shit suit, but nothing much else has changed.

Neville’s always prided himself on being a Manc – well someone from Bury – who wears his hatred of Scousers as a badge.

A badge to cover up the fact that he was a very average footballer.

After all, what better way to endear yourself to a collective that airs its obsession with Liverpool every home game than declare

yourself one of them: “Gary Neville is a red, he hates Scousers.”

Ah, that’s alright then.

No matter that he wasn’t fit to lace Rob Jones’ boots.

Now Ratboy is on the box, employed in the media. Yet he’s still sniping away.

Throughout his time playing football, Neville has constantly mouthed off about Liverpool.

“I can’t stand Liverpool, I can’t stand Liverpool people, I can’t stand anything to do with them,” he once told a Manc fanzine.

And of course there was the infamous occasion the tool ran the length of the Old Trafford pitch to

pump his fist and gyrate his hips (!) at the travelling Liverpool fans.

It was an action punctuated by the sound of snapping seats as rags were lost and missiles launched.

Neville’s actions were irresponsible, out of order and they crossed the line.

A five-grand fart in the wind of a fine from the FA didn’t really get up his nose afterwards, either.

“Are you meant to smile sweetly and jog back to the halfway line?” he said of the incident. “People want footballers to be whiter than white.

Do they want a game of robots?”

I hated the fella anyway, but that day sealed the deal. He did similar

to City fans at a later date, and was also caught on camera giving Carlos Tevez the middle finger. So all in all, just the kind of man you’d want in a TV job, eh?

But even now, after retiring to his Teletubby house, and working on a national TV station, he’s still refusing to tone it down, laughably having ANOTHER pop at Liverpool in his autobiography.

Finding time to write in-between attempts to tempt a real whisker from his upper lip, the monotone Manc said: “Chelsea had a little helping hand to win the 2009-10 title.

“Some thought it would be a big test for them playing at Anfield with a couple of games to go and the title still up for grabs, but at United we knew that Liverpool would ease off if that meant depriving us of the championship, especially a 19th championship that would take us past their record.

“We’d heard rumours during the week that some Liverpool players had turned round to one of their young lads and said: ‘There’s not a f****** chance we’re going to let United win this league.

“I’ve no idea whether that rumour was true or not, but you could see the game was a nice end-of- season stroll for Liverpool.

“You could see half their players were on their summer holidays. Yet we couldn’t complain, not publicly.

It was up to us to make sure we weren’t in a vulnerable position.

“But it didn’t say much for Liverpool.”

Seriously, what kind of shite is that? It would have been easy enough to laugh it off, make a joke of it – aim a bit of a semiserious pop at Stevie Gerrard for his perfectly-weighted through ball to Didier Drogba...

But it’s not enough for Ratboy is it? Got to keep up appearances, eh, Gary? Oh. But basically questioning whether the club, and the players, are professional? And based on some half-baked ‘rumour’? Where would he have heard that rumour exactly?

It’s not like any of our players are likely to be best mates with theirs, is it?

And if we’re going to throw conspiracy theories around, well,

Pic: Coop, Scouser Tommy five words: Howard Webb. Penalty.

Spurs. Bollocks.

Is Ratboy conveniently forgetting the Blackburn game in 1995?

Liverpool left the league there for the taking by beating Kenny Dalglish’s Rovers side on the last day on that occasion. Thankfully, the Mancs cocked it up at West Ham, drawing 1-1.

How we laughed.

Maybe he should take a closer look at the seven defeats and four draws (29 points dropped) in United’s 2009-10 campaign rather than using Liverpool as a scapegoat.

Neville also seems to gloss over the civil war taking place at Anfield at the time, and the defeat to Atletico Madrid in the Europa League semis just three days previous (after extra time).

Factor in also that Liverpool had already lost FIVE at Anfield that season, to Aston Villa, Fiorentina, Lyon, Arsenal and Reading.

Chelsea were huge favourites for that game no matter what. And anyone calling themselves a football pundit should know that.

Which brings me seamlessly on to his job at Sky. What’s the score there? What did he ever do to merit that being handed to him on a plate?

He’s wooden, boring and it’s got to be some kind of miracle that he was given a pass-out of Ferguson’s arse to make it into the studio.

He’s capable of delivering clicheridden, over-obvious analysis that any ex-footballer with half a brain could deliver. But he sounds like he’s only recently learnt to talk, he looks like he bought his clobber from Matalan, and as for his ‘banter’...

Well let’s just say the Sky Sports studio must be overrun with tumbleweed right now.

So what do the Yernarted fans make of Neville’s embarrassing book bollocks?

Purely in the interests of research, I clicked on Red Café (a popular Manchester United forum for the uninitiated).

Discussing Neville’s comments, Gerrard’s back pass was inevitably raised, and then came this from ‘Onetoanother’: “Seeing that miserable scouse bastard retire without a league winners medal will be one of the highlights of my life.”

That sums up so many of their fans, it really does.

The Scouser-baiting has of course, memorably, meant Neville has been on the end of various forms of ‘revenge’ from Liverpool fans.

So when United lost to Liverpool in the Worthington Cup final in 2003 he returned home to find dozens of bottles of Worthington blocking his drive.

Liverpool fans working on his swimming pool planted a ‘time capsule’ – containing The Kop Magazine and a Liverpool scarf underneath the pool before going public so bumfluff features was all too aware of the prank.

A gang of Liverpool fans also once tried to overturn his car after spotting him, stuck in match traffic in Salford Quays, a mile or so from Old Trafford.

And it’s said that no-one would sit next to Neville on trips to Anfield for fear of his coach window being targetted – evidence that maybe even his own team-mates thought he pushed it too far.

It’s unlikely that he’ll provoke such anger again, but give it time.

In the meantime we can only hope more people follow Javier Mascherano’s lead.

After dedicating Barcelona’s stroll through the Champions League final past United in May to Liverpool fans, Neville’s grid back in the studio really was a picture.

He can claim to be an objective media professional just doing his job whenever he likes.

But Gary Neville will always be a biased Bury bullshitter in my book.

GR

THE BIG DEBATE

AQUILANI After impressive form pre-season, we ask two Reds whether the Italian, on loan at AC Milan, will be missed at Anfield and if he deserved another crack at making it at Liverpool

NO

U

SAYS PAUL GRECH

NTIL Raul Meireles decided it was the right time to push through a move to Chelsea, it was the most debated outgoing transfer of Liverpool’s summer.

Everyone agreed that Milan Jovanovic, Paul Konchesky and Christian Poulsen had to go. But Alberto Aquilani? That wasn’t so clear cut. A year ago, having struggled with injuries and with the responsibility of being the man that had to fill Xabi Alonso’s boots, the decision to send him on loan to Juventus had been a somewhat welcome one.

There were those who defended him claiming that, free from injury, he could fill the role for which he had been bought. But they were in a minority. Better getting him off the wage bill, seemed to be the prevailing view, and maybe get back a good portion of the amount spent on him 12 months down the line. A decent year at Juventus and some impressive play in pre-season friendlies changed

YES

SAYS LIAM BLAKE

I

T seems the perpetually on-loan Aquilani has played his last game in a red shirt – or at least one with a Liverpool crest on it.

You can only hope that Milan take up the option to buy and offer a permanent haven to a player who deserves to settle and flourish rather than be shuffled endlessly from club to club, even if the clubs in question are giants of Serie A. The hapless Alberto’s crime was this: to arrive injured at an unhappy club entering a time of crisis.

He could hardly have been expected to step into the departed Alonso’s boots, never mind fill them, when all around him was at best intrigue and at worst sheer chaos.

Even in ideal circumstances some of the best Premier League imports still require time to settle – look at Dzeko at Manchester City – and yet time was a luxury never granted to Aquilani who, on top of everything

that perception once more. Perhaps he was worth a second chance?

Especially as no-one looked willing to pay anything but a fraction of what Liverpool had paid Roma.

Strangely, that included Juventus.

Despite a dismal year for the club, Aquilani did well enough in Turin to be one of the few players to emerge with any credit. Even so, Juventus dithered over a permanent deal.

At first this looked like a negotiating tactic. Having wrung £4.5million out of Liverpool for Christian Poulsen, a player most Juventus fans would have gladly driven out of Turin, they would have been justified to try their luck at getting another good deal.

But when they opted to sign the veteran Andrea Pirlo on a free from AC Milan the penny dropped – they actually didn’t want him.

Which makes you wonder. There is no doubting that Aquilani is an extremely skillful player who is capable of splitting defences with his play. Doubts over his fitness have been allayed as well, having played over 30 games last season. So why not take the option? What was it that made a 32-year-old look like a better option then someone who they could, potentially, build a team around? The

reality is that it is probably the same reason for which Roma didn’t seem to be too bothered to see him go to Liverpool. And also why Liverpool, for all of Kenny Dalglish’s diplomacy in saying that the player wanted to return to Italy, were reluctant to depend on him.

Aquilani can look like a world beater when there’s no pressure on. Give him space and he’ll rip you apart.

But in the Premier League that only happens on a handful of occasions Most of the time midfields are pretty congested places where you have to fight for the ball much more than anywhere else in Europe. And fighting for the ball is not one of Aquilani’s talents.

Indeed, he tends to fade away when on the receiving end of a couple of rough challenges.

This might seem like a typical antiquated British view of a foreign player, that the fight should matter more than talent – but character does matter. You want players who revel in tough matches, not go missing.

And that was the fear with Aquilani.

Experience might change him and give him that edge to go along with his talent. But for now, he just wasn’t a player that Liverpool could use.

else, shouldered the additional burden of quite ludicrous expectation from the press.

In hindsight, it’s all too easy to see him as a victim of an increasingly hostile feeling towards Benitez.

Nevertheless, he showed more than enough at the end of what must have been an arduous season on a personal level to suggest his future was bright and his future was red.

Quick feet aided a quick mind and he seemed able nearly always to make the right choices, moving the ball swiftly and accurately.

A brace of goals hinted at more to come, but the arrival of a new man at the helm made sure we’d never know.

It seemed perhaps Alberto’s moment had arrived, and perhaps a spell working the lines between midfield and Torres might have been the making of him.

However, the team found themselves under the leadership, if it could be described as such, of a man who belonged to that brand of English managers who refuse to place their trust in footballers who can play.

Hodgson soldiered on, head in sand, like some impossibly misguided and deluded General repeatedly and pointlessly ordering his troops over

the top while Aquilani enjoyed a fruitful season with (another) club.

Surely the return of the King might bring with it a fresh start?

We knew Kenny liked a player, right? But although Alberto managed more than enough to convince his John W Henry (according to his Twitter) it was becoming ever clearer his manager wasn’t going to buy it.

And so it proved, despite occasional hints to the contrary. Alberto was destined once more to wander the continent in search of a place to call home. In the meantime AC Milan will generously assist in the further reduction of FSG’s now less-bloated wage bill, and fans will be left to turn back to ESPN’s coverage of Serie A and ponder…

It needs to be Kenny’s project now, and it’s clear that, tactically, he sees no place for Aquilani in his plan A for a four-man midfield.

But.. when the time for plan B comes a-calling, as it inevitably will, such players provide fantastic flexibility for the squad as a whole.

You can’t help but wonder if Aquilani may have provided a useful alternative to Suarez if or when needed. Let’s hope that’s a question that will never need to be answered…

13

THE MYTH OF MEIRELES

DAVID LYNCH is happy with the summer’s business

Y

OU can’t help but feel smug at the results of this summer’s transfer window.

Finally, glaring flaws present in Liverpool squads for the last 20 years, like the whole left hand side for example, have been addressed with a swiftness rarely seen in an Anfield boardroom in the Premier League era.

Not only that but playing staff who acted as little less than wage-collectors have been moved on in a remarkably efficient fashion and those included formed much of the legacy left by one Roy Hodgson (don’t worry, I won’t be mentioning that name again).

It truly has begun to feel like a Red revolution, the beginning of a new Liverpool under the triumvirate of Damien Comolli, Kenny Dalglish and Fenway Sports Group. There was one small dampener on all the positivity right at the death however, an inconvenience that had been rumoured but still managed to shock; the departure of Raul Meireles to Chelsea.

If there was one expendable player in the squad that perhaps fans didn’t want to see walking through the exit door, it was the popular Portuguese midfielder.

His goals and positive attitude in playing for the Reds made him one of the few immune from criticism in the first half of last season and saw him flourish upon the return of the King.

I saw a rival fan argue that Liverpool had made a serious error of judgement here, selling their “best midfielder”, but surely we all know Kenny a bit better than that.

Dalglish has earned the implicit trust of fans and there was no vehement dissent over the matter.

However, lingering doubts still surfaced about how such a crucial member of last season’s squad could be sold to a team considered close rivals.

As always with the King though, it is the fine details that matter and, when you look a little deeper into it, the reasons for the sale become increasingly obvious.

For starters, the most glaring flaw 14

inherent in Meireles that we all knew of yet didn’t wish to discuss much was the regularity with which he shirked challenges.

The one against Manchester United sticks in the throat particularly as it led to the (incorrect) dismissal of Steven Gerrard during the first game of Kenny Dalglish’s return.

The captain, feeling he had to make a demonstration in commitment following Meireles’ withdrawal from a 50/50, clattered Michael Carrick and, with Howard Webb in charge that day, was inevitably shown red.

There were several other examples of this weakness throughout Raul’s time here and yet they were often countered with the argument that such tasks were not within his remit.

Liverpool have a water carrier in the much-improved Lucas and, with Gerrard obviously not afraid to put a foot in, maybe Meireles was intended as a creative outlet?

Well if that was the case, then he

Adam’s stats last season were more impressive than Meireles’

wasn’t a particularly good version of that midfielder either.

A quick look at his basic statistics shows that in 35 league appearances last season Raul scored five goals and bagged seven assists.

All five of those goals came within a purple patch of six games and the assists figures aren’t those you would normally attribute to a top-class creative midfielder.

So, this leaves Meireles floating that middle ground, an alleged all rounder filling several roles in the side when called upon.

However, when you consider that Steven Gerrard in an incredibly injuryhit campaign managed four goals and five assists then it’s quite clear who is superior in fulfilling that flexible role in the squad.

Meireles’ position in the squad was weakened further when two midfielders that Dalglish and Comolli had identified as Liverpool’s long-term future were signed by the club in the shape of Jordan

MEIRELES? Henderson and Charlie Adam. A quick look at their statistics shows exactly why they were sought.

Henderson played 37 times in the Premier League for Sunderland last season scoring three goals and creating five as Adam weighed in with 12 goals and provided nine assists for a Blackpool side which ended up relegated.

You’ll often hear a criticism of Adam’s goals tally last year as seven were penalties which he may or may not take at Liverpool.

However, if on top of that only two were from open play that means five came from direct free-kicks and I’m not sure about you but I won’t be turning my nose up at that stat.

We haven’t exactly had anyone banging in free kicks at will for Liverpool in recent memory, so what exactly is the source of this snobbery over set-piece goals?

With this in mind it appears that our new signings Henderson and Adam (minus the penalties) still don’t add up to Meireles statistically, but there are other factors to consider.

Raul Meireles is 28 years old; an age at which we are told a player is at their absolute playing peak.

Henderson is tender in years at just 21 and Adam hits the middle ground at 25 meaning that the two players we have recently purchased have many years of improvement yet ahead of them (or at least one would hope).

They also now have the opportunity to provide assists and score goals in a side that contains Luis Suarez, Stewart Downing and Steven Gerrard.

Without wishing to be disrespectful, it’s a far cry from loading the bullets for Jason Puncheon, Frazier Campbell and Asamoah Gyan and is surely enough to inspire confidence that they’ll easily bridge the already negligible statistical gap this season.

As for Gerrard, well let’s just hope the captain can amass more than the meagre 21 league appearances he managed last year as the statistics to back his inclusion will inevitably follow.

Meireles’ departure also allows for better use of a squad which was previously bloated in the middle of midfield. The supremely talented Jonjo

“So Nando, what is with the plastic flags?”

Shelvey is surely in more need of the minutes in the role that Raul was set to fill this season, that as a fourth choice central midfielder, and is certainly capable of doing so.

Henderson will also be afforded more time in the position that many believe he will eventually occupy for Liverpool as opposed to being always forced on to the right (though he will be rightly used there often this year) and this should benefit his development.

Liverpool also now have options of encouragingly incremental ages: Shelvey (19), Henderson (21), Spearing (22),

Lucas (24), Adam (25) and Gerrard (31).

Each player can now gain regular playing time and all bring vastly different skill sets to the team resulting in a truly balanced squad.

So perhaps it is the most laudable aspect of our transfer work this summer that a player we’d have had nightmares over losing last season is now seen as so dispensable.

I mean, £12 million for a jack of all trades 28-year-old midfielder? The more you say it like that the more impressive it sounds. @david_lynch88 15

LIVERPOOL - THE COMPLETE RECORD CHAMPIONS: Liverpool celebrate their second successive League title in 1923 (Walter Wadsworth is pictured sitting in the centre) Pic: Bill Wadsworth

A treasure trove of facts, figures and untold tales

I

T WASN’T the most glorious moment of their careers when Liverpool half-backs Walter Wadsworth and Jock McNab were sent off against Newcastle in 1925 – McNab for kicking an opponent and Wadsworth for hitting a player who threw mud at him.

However, there was an amusing postscript.

As the pair sat pulling their boots off in the Anfield dressing room, no doubt cursing their opponents and berating the ref, there was a knock

REVIEW: JACQUELINE WADSWORTH on the door – a member of the board had come down. ‘Bloody hell!’ cried NcNab. ‘Has the ref started to send the directors off now?’

Walter Wadsworth was my grandfather, Jock McNab was his partner in defence, and the anecdote is one of numerous lively tales which make the newly-published Liverpool – The Complete Record a real pleasure to read. I hadn’t heard the dressing room story before, but it

certainly rang true. Walter and Jock were tough allies on the pitch (‘ball may pass me but man, never’ was Walter’s motto) and great friends off it. They kept in touch even when their playing days were over, when Walter ran his own haulage business in Wallasey and Jock was landlord of the Jawbone Inn, Bootle.

Both played in Liverpool’s so-called ‘Untouchables’ team which won consecutive League Championships in 1922 and 1923 and they are just two of many colourful characters who bring the book’s pages alive.

It’s written by Arnie Baldursson

and Gudmundur Magnusson, the Icelandic duo who are behind the much-acclaimed LFChistory.net, and it tells the story of Liverpool Football Club from its formation in 1892 right up to the ‘second coming’ of King Kenny.

As those who use LFChistory would expect, many pages are taken up with the meticulously researched statistics that have made the website so valuable to people like me researching the careers of relatives Presented in easy-to-read tables are not only details of every Liverpool match, but also every Liverpool hat-trick, owngoal, sending-off, birthday scorer, debut scorer, clean sheets, highest and lowest attendances, biggest wins and defeats... the sort of information that can absorb you for hours before you realise what’s happened.

Statistical records are THE KING AND I: Walter Wadsworth shakes hands with King George V Gudmundur’s domain, while the words are written by Arnie, who – 30,000 people – support the success, Arnie Baldursson and focuses on the club’s characters and Reds,” said Arnie “In 1964 Liverpool the times they lived in, with plenty of Gudmundur Magnusson have always played their first-ever European kept a low profile, but the book has contemporary reports and stories. match in Iceland’s capital against KR lured them out of the shadows to One of the most memorable Reykjavik. Icelanders had never seen reveal that both are family men who quotes, which stands out in today’s such a skilful team and have followed live in Reykjavik. world of scowling, hand-wringing Gudmundur, 37, is a web developer their fortunes ever since, with the managers, is from the Liverpool Echo interest passing from one generation at Zeus web works. Arnie, who’s in 1919, about the club’s new boss to the next.” just turned 40, works for the David Ashworth: As Liverpool prepares to celebrate Icelandic Channel 2 TV network, “Owing to his tact and good its 120th anniversary, the club’s story translating English Premier League humour he has always had the so far is in a safe pair of fans. broadcasts into Icelandic subtitles players on excellent terms with one and sportcasters’ voice-overs.

Liverpool – The Complete Record another – one secret of his success The pair started work together is published by deCoubertin – he knows how to manage men. in 1999 on a website for Iceland’s Books Ltd www.decoubertin.

Without any show of authority he official Liverpool Supporters’ Club. co.uk. We’ve got four copies gets on their right side and makes to give away. To be in with a Eight years ago they decided them feel that he is a friend as well chance of winning a copy, worth to develop a new website that as a manager. When he goes into £25, answer this question: would appeal to a wider audience, the dressing room before a match What years did Liverpool’s LFChistory.net. he says: “Now then, boys, do your ‘Untouchables’ win consecutive best!” And they do.’ Simple.”

“We have a successful partnership titles? Send your answers The book uses several photographs as Gudmundur’s strengths are my to Well Red Publishing Ltd., weaknesses and vice versa,” said that haven’t been published before, Arnie. “I am in charge of content so I Office 113, including some from the Wadsworth wrote most of the text for LFChistory. Imperial Court, family album.

Exchange net and the Complete Record but My favourite is a shot of Walter Street East, Gudmundur is the brains behind the shaking King George V’s hand before Liverpool, database we use, which is his own a match against Manchester City L3 2AB, UK. creation.”

So what is the connection one chilly day in March 1920 (above Include your between Iceland and LFC? “The right). ‘You wouldn’t happen to have name and a bottle in your pocket Your Majesty?’ intense nature of football in Britain address. has always appealed to Icelanders asked Walter. According to family Closing date and in particular Liverpool have a legend, the king sent a crate of is October 31, huge following in the country.

An whisky round to the changing room 2011. estimated 10 per cent of Icelanders afterwards. Despite their website’s

THE ROARING TWENTIES

The Untouchables How good were they?

O

NE OF the most successful teams featured in Liverpool – The Complete Record, were the so-called ‘Untouchables’ who won successive First Division Championships in 1922 and 1923. Skilful and determined they undoubtedly were, but how would they fare in today’s Premier League? Here, four pundits who all keep an eye on Liverpool past and present tell JACQUELINE WADSWORTH. ARNIE BALDURSSON co-author of Liverpool: The Complete Record.

DAVID ASHWORTH: Manager in 1922 “I’m convinced the 20s’ double used to handling the modern ball, champions would have been a but a great keeper will always be a great side in today’s game. In 1955, great keeper, and a good outfield Donald Mackinlay, the skipper of the player will still be good whatever era 20s team, claimed his team would he is playing in. have been unstoppable in any era.”

“In fact, I have a suspicion that STEPHEN DONE, Liverpool FC they would excel, loving the modern museum curator. playing surfaces and perfectly-fitting “There is a lot written about how boots, and more than able to take on much the game has changed and anyone in the Premier League.” certainly the lads from the midJOHN WILLIAMS, author of 1920s would have some adjusting to Liverpool FC biography Red Men. do – no back-passing to Elisha Scott in goal (in 1992 goalkeepers were “The dual-title team of the 1920s banned from handling deliberate had at least five top class talents back-passes); trying to understand running through the unit – Scott (in if they were ‘active’ in an offside goal), two international full backs position; and the touch and feel (McKinlay and Longworth), a great of modern lightweight and fast creative midfield player in Tommy footballs, on boots now lacking steel Bromilow, and a reliable proven toe-caps and hard leather soles. striker in Harry ‘Smiler’ Chambers.

“However, after a week at the “Having strength all over is a modern Melwood and a few stern characteristic of a great title team – talkings-to by Dr Bruckner about along with few serious injuries. not smoking and drinking beer, they “Add to this the sheer will-to-win would soon adjust when they saw and determination in the engine that they now earned enough to buy room from Wadsworth and McNab, all of Southport at 1925 prices! along with the experience and guile “Yes, the hard men would need of Lacey out wide, and it is clear this to curb their tempers and learn was an exceptional combination. that almost any physical contact “However, the 2-3-5 formation of is no longer allowed, but their the 1920s was far too attacking to determination, team spirit and survive today – the tacticians would winning attitude would get them focus on catching any team trying a very long way. Elisha Scott, for this formation on the break, and example, might take a while to get would probably do it with telling

effect. Of course the offside rule was about to change (in 1925) so all teams would have to adopt more defensive postures. Liverpool didn’t handle this transition well and lost out to other teams as a result.

“In truth, ‘the Untouchables’ probably would not have challenged the late-1970s Liverpool teams – the pinnacle - but there is little doubt that they represent a very worthy Liverpool era.”

ADRIAN KILLEN, former Liverpool FC tour guide.

“It’s hard to compare sports from different eras as each generation improves their fitness, diet, training, tactical awareness and sports science. Today’s players are trained like athletes and could not sustain the rigours that footballers of yesteryear had to endure, like mudheap pitches, snow and ice.

“If you were to play the 20s side, as they were then, against the Liverpool team of today, I’m afraid there would be no contest.

“However, I have no doubt that any of those players from the 20s could hold their own should they be transported to today and placed in the environment of the modern professional, and many would become outstanding players.

“One area in which they would certainly shine would be in the physical aspect of the game. Many came from harsh backgrounds, where you had to be tough and physically strong to survive. Today’s officials are trying to turn the game into a namby-pamby, no-contact sport for family entertainment – something I’m sure our forefathers never envisaged.

“With regard to modern footballers’ lifestyle, dress sense and conduct off the field, I’m sure that there were plenty of characters in that 20s team who would be seduced by all these trappings of success and would end up on the front rather than back pages of our newspapers!”

BOOK COMPETITION

WIN: New Joe Fagan book ON MAY 30, 1984, Joe Fagan made football history – he became the first English manager to win the Treble. It was an unprecedented triumph, the culmination of a 27year career at the very heart of the Liverpool machine.

A Scouser born and bred, he joined the Anfield coaching staff in 1958, after a playing career at Manchester City and years learning his craft in the lower leagues.

Drawing for the first time on Joe Fagan’s own diaries, as well as new interviews with players and colleagues, Joe Fagan- Reluctant Champion celebrates one of football’s least celebrated greats.

It’s written by his grandson Andrew Fagan, a journalist,

and Mark Platt, a writer and TV producer who works for LFC TV. We’ve got three copies to give away.

To be in with a chance of winning answer this simple question: What trophies made up Joe’s 1984 treble?

Send your answers to Fagan Comp, Well Red Publishing Ltd., Office 113, Imperial Court, Exchange Street East, Liverpool, L3 2AB, UK. Include your name and address. Closing date is October 31, 2011.

www.DesignerBoutique-Online.com

Stopgate Lane, Aintree, L9 6AN off East Lancs, next to Martial Arts Studio

Free UK Next Day Delivery on all orders over £50 All major credit/debit cards accepted. Secure online checkout

LUIS GARCIA – GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

LIAM MILNER remembers one of the heroes of Istanbul who’s surfaced across the world M

OST footballers almost certainly do not aim to play in the Mexican Primera División. But one former Red – a Champions League and FA Cup winner, no less – has signed for Puebla FC. Luis García’s career is winding down at the age of 33, but in an environment less strenuous than a top European league, the former Liverpool number 10 may be able to show glimpses of why he is so fondly remembered by the red half of Merseyside.

As one Luis lights up Anfield to the delight of the Kop, let us not forget the exploits of another who did likewise just a few years ago.

Arriving from Barcelona in 2004 as part of the ‘Rafalution’, García’s style of play soon became evident.

He was attacking, could score from distance and enjoyed attempting flicks and tricks.

He also appeared to be fairly lightweight, and misplaced trickery could easily frustrate if employed at the wrong time in the wrong match. Nevertheless, he was an exciting player who seemed to have a knack for making things happen.

He quickly made his mark on the scoresheet, netting in his second game for the Reds in a 3-0 victory over West Bromwich Albion.

It was his goalscoring – and general performances – in Europe which garnered him most praise. He scored in every knockout round of the Champions League in 2005 up until the final, and can be considered crucial in helping Liverpool win the competition, even if his performance in the final itself did not stand out. His goals against Bayer Leverkusen displayed his quick movement and deft touch; his strike against Juventus showed his accuracy and power from long range; and his disputed goal against Chelsea was perhaps the most crucial of them all. His performances also led to him winning his first cap for Spain in March 2005.

García’s second season at Liverpool was a little more inconsistent, but still contained moments to remember. Quick reactions allowed him to score in the derby at Anfield, while a dipping volley – not unlike the one against Juventus the previous year – dumped Chelsea out of the FA Cup at the semi-final stage (although a red card against West Ham in the following league game meant he was suspended for the final). García’s Anfield exploits allowed him to hold down a place in the Spanish squad, and he travelled to the 2006 World Cup. The third and final season García spent at Anfield was blighted 20

by injury, and he was sold to Atlético Madrid at the end of the campaign.

It is unfortunate that his Liverpool career ended with such a whimper, but he had succeeded in leaving his mark on the club and the supporters.

An appearance at Jamie Carragher’s testimonial in 2010 – where he scored a typical curling shot from the edge of the penalty area – allowed the Kop to say a final goodbye to a man who had been such a central character in the story of 2005.

Since leaving Liverpool, García has struggled to reach the heights of 2005 and 2006.

Returning to Spain, he struggled to hold down a position in the first team at Atlético, with only 12 of his 30 league appearances in the 2007/08 season coming as starts.

The following season he started only five La Liga matches. Successive seasons at Racing Santander and Panathinaikos failed to provide García with regular football, and this disappointment appears to have led him to Mexico.

The Mexican football season is – at the time of writing – a couple of months old, and Puebla have played seven matches.

If the team’s performances have not been fantastic – 13th position (out of 18) and two victories would suggest they are unlikely to win the league – García does not appear to be letting that bother him. He is the club’s current top scorer with three goals.

As with any cult hero, one remembers the good and turns a blind eye to the bad. There were certainly matches where García drew the ire of the crowd, and his growing role as a substitute reflected this.

But in spite of his faults, there is no doubt that García deserves to be remembered fondly for those moments when his efforts paid off. He will not be seen as a player who left a significant impression on the Premier League.

Indeed, outside Liverpool’s fanbase it is doubtful whether memories of his performances in European competition – his “ghost goal” against Chelsea aside – are particularly strong. Still, it does not matter what fans of other teams think. It seems a shame that he is not seeing out his career in Spain, but the early signs are that the move to Mexico is allowing García the chance to play regularly and excite another set of supporters.

Has Henderson taken Lucas’ place with the boo-boys?

T

HE 2010-2011 Player of the Year. Man of the Match performer. Integral part of the team, making important tackle after important tackle and very rarely giving the ball away.

That is Lucas Leiva now; but it wasn’t that long ago that he was thought of by many as a liability, not good enough to wear the Liverpool shirt.

Everything he did was scrutinised.

Every misplaced pass greeted with a shout of ‘f**kssake Lucas!’ Every bad touch treated with disgust – as though he’d taken down his shorts and crapped in the centre circle.

If Boris Johnson had taken to the field wearing an ‘I Love Maggie’ t-shirt,

It look a long time for Lucas to come in out of the cold

BY PETER SIMPSON @weasel_delight

or perhaps they were just not willing to grant him anything like the time to settle in properly.

Thankfully, now, due to his consistent I personally know of a group of season displays and contributions, the majority ticket holders who would have given do recognise how valuable he is and him a better reception than the one they appreciate his support of team-mates off the ball, awareness, and willingness would grant Lucas. to always receive the ball and continue Of course, that is an extreme case and momentum. the majority of fans were neither that After a traumatic few years, things are blind, stupid, nor crazy. But it is certainly true that Lucas struggled to win over most going well at Anfield; but you can’t please everybody.

Liverpool fans.

Fans have every right to question every Whether it was because they were aspect of the club — blindly toeing the unable to get their heads around the party line does not make you a better fact that not every Brazilian midfielder supporter — however, it seems that some dribbles past seven players before harbour a huge amount of dissatisfaction gracefully placing the ball into the goal, that things are not the way they would or they actually thought he was useless, have them in a perfect world, and need a figure to which they can direct their displeasure.

Since Lucas has proved himself an excellent player, it now, unfortunately, seems that in some quarters the anger and scepticism that was once levelled at Lucas is targeting Jordan Henderson.

Is Jordan Henderson in danger of becoming the new Lucas Leiva?

When he arrived from Sunderland this summer his price tag — £16m, £18m, or £20m depending on who you ask (£16m if you ask us - Ed) — certainly raised a lot of eyebrows among supporters and the media, and perhaps people were just waiting for the slightest opportunity to jump in and shout ‘A-ha! I told you Liverpool wasted their money! Should’ve bought Mata.’

But Henderson has done nothing to merit being branded a waste of money.

His poor performances for the England Under-21s at the 2011 European Championships were highlighted and used as proof that Liverpool had bought an expensive dud.

Of course, it had nothing to do with manager Stuart Pearce’s midfieldunfriendly style of play – Henderson was just an average footballer and Dalglish was conned. (It had to be the player’s fault, Stuart Pearce doesn’t deserve

22

JORDAN HENDERSON All smiles when signing but some Liverpool ‘supporters’ think it’s a good idea to give players like Henderson stick on the pitch, like that will help him play better

criticism – Psycho’s got passion, don’t you see.)

Among some fans frothing-at-themouth-with-rage and falling over their own grammar to scream ‘twat’ at strangers (i.e. those on Twitter), Henderson is attacked for being rubbish, keeping better players out of the team, and stopping Liverpool from buying world-class superstars — similar accusations which were thrown at Lucas.

If Raul Meireles performs well for Chelsea this season expect those criticisms to be ramped up.

What do these people expect from Henderson?

What type of player do they think he is?

He’s not been spectacular, but he’s not a glitzy player — most aren’t. It seems unfair to judge Henderson so early into his Liverpool career.

Sky Sports football ‘expert’ and resident chief moron, Jamie Redknapp, said after only Henderson’s third appearance that of the new signings he was the one who had taken longest to settle. His third

appearance... Expecting a player to have an instant breathtaking impact is a very sad and baffling aspect of modern football.

Very few players are instant sensations, as they need time to settle into new surroundings and into a new team with new players.

Jordan Henderson is still a very young man trying to settle into a newly assembled team. He’s not done anything spectacular, but he’s not done anything wrong either.

So far he has been solid in possession and showed flashes of a superb ability for defence-splitting passes and delivery into the box.

People are too quick to judge. Maybe it’s his price, or maybe — as mentioned on the excellent The Anfield Wrap podcast — it’s because his name is Jordan and he has a haircut that some have taken against him.

I fear that he may have to live for some time with the pressure of those fans sceptical of his value — just as Lucas once had to.

Thankfully, though, despite vocal

criticism there is evidence that he has support from the stands. The home game against Bolton provided hope that Henderson may not have to endure abuse to the same degree as Lucas, as he scored his first goal for the club and, buoyed by the confidence the goal provided, put on an excellent display which was appreciated by fans inside the ground — receiving a nice response upon his substitution.

There was also a moment in that match which highlighted the change in perception of Lucas: during the game, commentators Alan Parry and Ray Wilkins joked about Lucas giving the ball away for once, because he so rarely does (and they weren’t being sarcastic) — that shows how far he’s come; he’s no longer a laughing stock used to ridicule Liverpool as a whole.

It was heartening to see the ovation Henderson got as he was substituted during the Bolton game; but hopefully he won’t have to score in every match to keep people off his back.

23

IN MY L

There are places I’ll remember All my life, though some have changed Some forever, not for better Some have gone and some remain All these places had their moments With lovers and friends, I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life, I’ve loved them all Lennon/McCartney, 1965

A

NFIELD. Liverpool’s home since 1892. A place that holds special memories for every Red; the fortress, The Kop, the twelfth man (and I don’t mean The Solly, although that holds special memories for some, too).

Yet it seems that, after 119 years, Liverpool may have to leave home to move forward.

Owner John W Henry has made it clear that the preferred option is to stay put but almost a year after he snatched the reigns from the chubby fingers of Tom Hicks, the elephant in the room is still refusing to budge.

The ground is holding the club back at its current capacity – Liverpool just cannot compete in terms of revenue with the clubs it is trying to rival. The Mancs, for example, will be raking in almost £2million more than Liverpool EVERY HOME GAME. It’s a scary thought even if the Glazers remain in residence.

But the Reds are seemingly, to the frustration of the owners, the board and everyone else, standing still, tangled in red tape and hindered by the financial climate.

Anfield is still Anfield. There’s been no Fenway Park style transformation.

And meanwhile, the Stanley Park option remains little more than a drawing on Hicks’ office wall and a dream in Rick Parry’s head.

The groundshare option continues to rear its ugly head, politicians happy to back a scheme that the majority of fans on both sides of the divide don’t want.

Henry has bemoaned the “many obstacles” that stand in the way of transforming and improving the current Anfield ground.

And so, the most likely outcome at the time of writing is a farewell to Anfield and a hello to a newlyconstructed ground.

If it happened, how would that

“

JOHN W HENRY

We’d love to expand Anfield, but there are enough local and regulatory issues to keep that avenue stalled for years with no assurances that once begun it would bear any fruit. If Anfield cannot be expanded a new stadium is a wonderful choice. But the fact is we already have 45,000 seats. If a new stadium is constructed with 60,000 seats you’ve spent an incredible sum of money to add just 15,000 seats. If the cost is £300m for an extra 15,000 seats, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Liverpool isn’t London, you can’t charge £1m for a long-term club seat. And concession revenues per seat aren’t that much different at Emirates from Anfield. That’s why the search is on currently for a namingrights partner. And that could very well happen. feel? How would it affect age-old routines?

Stanley Park is near enough that we could still visit our favourite boozers and it would hardly impact on other routines – travel arrangements, meeting points and so on.

But imagine glancing around a stadium, Liverpool’s ground, and not setting eyes on the usual matchgoers that have surrounded your spec for a lifetime. Imagine looking at the pitch.

It would be Liverpool’s pitch. But not the pitch where Shankly saluted the

”

Anfield is looking RY BU H IG

H

crowd, not the pitch on which John Barnes made defenders look like fools on, not the pitch where Luis Garcia scored that goal on that night.

How else would it impact?

Would the players benefit as much from being at home? Would the atmosphere suffer? And these new match-going fans that would fill the new seats, what would they be like?

In the absence of a time machine, we’ve plumped for the next best thng. We’ve asked fans what it felt like when it happened to them,

Y LIVERPOOL HOME?

king ever more likely to go the way of Highbury and Maine Road MAINE ROAD was Man City’s home from 1923 until 2003.

It was demolished to make way for housing, while City moved to the City of Manchester Stadium.

Maine Road’s capacity at closure was 35,150. HIGHBURY was built in 1913 and Arsenal moved to The Emirates in 2006.

It had a capacity of 38,419 at closure and has since been made into luxury flats.

namely supporters of Arsenal, who swapped Highbury for The Emirates, and Manchester City, who bulldozed Maine Road after moving to the City of Manchester Stadium.

THE CITY VIEW DANNY PUGSLEY, EDITOR OF CITY BLOG, BITTER AND BLUE. So, Danny, how hard was it to leave Maine Road?

AD RO E N I MA

If I’m being honest, in the end not very hard. Obviously there is a great deal of attachment to Maine Road and it is the place where I grew up watching football from when I was young through to my mid-twenties when they left. But it felt like the right time to move.

The capacity of the ground was limited to around 35,000 (with a few thousand on the season ticket waiting list), which included two temporary stands that filled out gaps in the corners of the stadium.

The stadium had great character and fond memories for so many but while there were plenty of reflections about Maine Road and days gone by as the final game approached it didn’t feel like there was an air of sadness around.

In some ways the club had been re-invigorated under Kevin Keegan (with the last season at Maine Road the first back in the Premier League following promotion in Keegan’s debut season) and was perhaps ready to kick on and make the move.

IN MY LIVERPOOL HOME? You must have a lot of happy memories of the place?

Definitely. It isn’t just particular moments or games or players or seasons but certain parts of your life. I think people often look back with fondness at the times they first started going to games ‘properly’ and for me it covered days at school, coming back when I was away at University and then also when you start going at away games as well – this at a time when City were tumbling towards their lowest ebb.

I appreciate it is only a decade into the new stadium – and there is the promise of so much ahead for City of course – but I do think it will difficult to see a time where, personally speaking, the memories from the new stadium supersede those from Maine Road.

How has it affected everyone: fans, players...?

I know there has been a lot written about clubs’ struggles at home following moves to new stadiums (Arsenal cited as a prime example of course) but there isn’t any evidence of the move affecting City on the pitch – probably given how barren the previous decade had been prior to the move – but undoubtedly it affects the fans.

Although the club did well in trying to move everyone on as much a ‘like for like’ basis as possible there was always a bedding in period as fans adjusted to new surroundings and where they were positioned in the stadium.

What didn’t help the club was that they were struggling on the pitch over the first few seasons (the end of the Keegan-era and then the stewardship of Stuart Pearce when money was scarce) but now, with a combination of time and success on the pitch, the atmosphere feels far better than it has ever been.

What was it like when you first started going to the new ground, and you had to change your matchday routine?

I used to live around five miles or so from Maine Road and it was easy to get to whether driving or by public transport. Invariably you could leave

END OF THE ROAD: City’s old ground bites the dust

it until around half an hour or so before the game before setting off and still make kick-off.

That did change following the move as it took longer to get there (particularly using public transport) and it took some time to establish a new routine.

A benefit of the new stadium is being so close to the City Centre (20 minute or so walk) it is ideal to head into town as a meeting point before going onto the ground, something that is far preferable than with some of the new out of town stadiums I have been to.

Does the City of Manchester Stadium feel like home now?

Very much so. There are new routines and routes but fans are comfortable now. The stadium doesn’t have that ‘newness’ to it now and the club have put in place initiatives in the past couple of seasons (things like the ‘My first match’ features around the stadium) around the ground that really focuses on the identity of the club.

How has it impacted on the atmosphere? Is it better or worse at the City of Manchester?

As I mentioned earlier, I think now the atmosphere is finally getting back to what it was at Maine Road.

Because Maine Road was more compact and more enclosed it did tend to generate a fairly good atmosphere, something harder to achieve in the newer stadiums that

aren’t particularly designed with that in mind. Generally speaking though I would say that the atmosphere across stadiums as a whole is not what it was so perhaps it is difficult to make too much of a comparison.

Does a part of you still wish you played at Maine Road?

Not really. It’s nice to think back on the times there and watching footage of games from Maine Road stirs the memories, but I’ve never had a strong feeling of wishing City still played there.

The new stadium (I’m not sure at what point I’ll stop referring to it as that!) does definitely feel like ‘home’ and it will be interesting to see how the surrounding area develops the next few years with the work planned.

Do you ever go back there?

Not for some time but I did drive past two or three times in passing once it had been pulled down. Apart from the stadium not being there, the surrounding area was pretty much as it was. I haven’t been around there for about five years or so now so I don’t know what (if anything) has changed.

How did you feel to see the old ground demolished?

It was inevitable it was going to be but I don’t recall there being much fuss or ceremony around it – there certainly wasn’t any poignancy

NEW BEGINNING: The City of Manchester Stadium

the place aren’t particularly happy!

However, it was the culture of the place that I have the fondest memories of. The scathing wit, the sound of the Kippax in full voice, the thick smog of marijuana smoke, the raucous celebrations...

How has it affected everyone: fans, players...?

attached to mark its passing. If anything, to have seen it perhaps continued to have been used as a stadium (I know at one point there had been talk of Sale Sharks occupying it) would have been very strange and made the attachment far more had it still been standing.

Was it ever a viable option for City to stay put?

I don’t think it was ever really viable to do that. Maine Road was such a disjointed stadium with different stands that I think it would have been impossible to really develop it any further than it had been (certainly you couldn’t build upwards).

I don’t really know how they could have increased the capacity beyond 35,000 or so – and that was with two uncovered temporary stands. With Maine Road being positioned in such a built-up residential area that may too have caused problems.

Knocking it down and building a new stadium on the site could have been an option I suppose but with the Commonwealth Games on the horizon the club had a ready-made option to move straight into without burdening themselves with the level of debt we have seen with other clubs.

Given the choice, if the capacity could have matched the City of Manchester, would you have preferred City to have stayed put or was it better to go for the new ground?

While there would always be a

degree of sadness attached to any move, I think the vast majority of City fans were in agreement the move was right and the timing was at exactly when the club needed it.

There may be an element of bias in this answer but when I think to some of the new stadiums I have been to they haven’t felt on par to the old stadiums the clubs had, but I don’t get that sense with City and there is no doubting that it is one of the better stadiums in the country.

RIC TURNER, EDITOR, BLUEMOON Hard to leave Maine Road?

It was difficult to leave Maine Road, as it was the place where I’d grown up watching football. Every City fan had their own particular memories of the ground, so in some respects it was difficult to leave that behind.

However, most fans were fairly pragmatic about the move; Maine Road was in desperate need of renovation, and we simply didn’t have the resources to carry out the necessary work. The Commonwealth Games of 2002 provided a fairly unique opportunity for the club to get a brand new, modern stadium effectively free of charge.

You must have a lot of happy memories of the place?

I started going to Maine Road in the mid-eighties, which coincided with a low point in our history, so a lot of my football memories of

When we moved, in 2003, Kevin Keegan was in the process of building a new side, so many of the players had no great affinity to Maine Road. Moving to Eastlands didn’t seem to affect them in the slightest.

The fans, while sad to leave Maine Road, weren’t maudlin about it and saw the move as a great opportunity.

In many respects it dragged the club into the 21st century.

What was it like when you first started going to the new ground, and you had to change your matchday routine?

One the great things about Maine Road was the sheer volume of quality pubs within walking distance of the ground. The Osbourne, The Gardeners Arms, The Clarence, The Sherwood were all great boozers.

Sadly they relied heavily on matchday trade and closed down soon after City left the area. The new ground is in a fairly run-down area of the city, and there is a distinct shortage of good pubs in the vicinity (although much of East Manchester is now being regenerated, thanks largely to our new owner). You still see the same old faces though.

Does the City of Manchester Stadium feel like home now?

The club, to their credit, have worked hard to make Eastlands feel like “home”, particularly in the concourses of the ground. It’s hard, however, to escape the slightly sterile, anodyne identikit feel of new stadia in this country.

How has it impacted on the atmosphere? Is it better or worse at the City of Manchester?

The atmosphere is undeniably worse at The City of Manchester stadium, but I don’t think it’s solely

IN MY LIVERPOOL HOME? down to us moving grounds, and certainly isn’t specific to City. The same problem exists at the likes of Old Trafford, Anfield and Stamford Bridge, all old grounds.

Football has changed since Hillsborough and the inception of the Premier League, with a different clientèle, has had an adverse reaction on the atmosphere.

FLAT’S YOUR LOT: The cranes move in to make flats out of Highbury

Does a part of you still wish you played at Maine Road?

No. Maine Road is a proud part of our history, and I have many fond memories but it’s important to progress and not dwell on the past.

Do you ever go back there?

I regularly go past Maine Road when driving into town, and it was fairly depressing seeing a barren landscape where the great old stadium once stood. It’s being converted into housing now, which doesn’t fill me with any great joy, but at least the site is being used for something.

ARSENAL VIEW David Oudot, onlinegooner.com

How did you feel to see the old ground demolished?

How hard was it to leave Highbury?

It saddened me to see it razed to the ground, but there was little point in keeping the old stadium as there were no viable prospective tenants.

In short, it was a heartbreaker. I used to sit in the North Bank Lower behind the goal.

It was a great watching experience, you were right on top of the pitch, and it was a very traditional football stadium that you felt was your second ‘home’.

You hoped for similar factors to be provided by the new ground but within a short time it became apparent that it was nowhere near similar and you were miles away from the pitch.

Was it ever a viable option for City to stay put?

The chaotic design of Maine Road, with four completely separate designed stands, meant renovation was never a viable option.

Given the choice, if the capacity could have matched the City of Manchester, would you have preferred City to have stayed put?

It was better to go to the new ground. In many ways it gave us a new beginning, a fresh impetus that culminated in Sheikh Mansour’s takeover in 2008. A key factor why the Sheikh chose City, and not, say Everton or Liverpool, was that we were already in a new stadium.

But for the move from Maine Road, we wouldn’t find ourselves in the position we are in today.

You must have a lot of happy memories of the place?

Highbury was home and had 70-plus years to build up a reputation. We won so many trophies there including the Uefa Cup, the League, and in 2004 we managed to go unbeaten for the season – it developed a reputation among all fans.

Despite a lot of us moaning about our seats, the price, or anything else about Highbury, we’d happily go back.

How has it affected everyone: fans, players, manager?

For fans it has been a bit dodgy, not helped by the fact that we are trophy-less since moving there in 2006. As there are more of us now – 60,000 rather than 38,000 – it feels like we are treated like tourists.

Also, we are a lot further away from the pitch.

Since Thierry Henry left we’ve ran out of players who actually care about Arsenal, so I don’t think that the new ground has had any effect on them.

Does it feel like home now?

It is technically a ‘new home’, but its not the same, it doesn’t have the same memories.

It might feel different if we manage to win a trophy or a truly important game at the new ground, but at the moment it is difficult to like it.

How has it impacted on the atmosphere? Is it better or worse at the Emirates compared to Highbury?

The atmosphere has changed. The tickets are vastly expensive now (£100 for standard seats in the ‘Class A Games’, and a lowest fee of £35 in any game at all) and as a result Arsenal fans cannot afford to go and

BOWLED OVER: But the Emirates is a hotspot for football tourists

are replaced by whatever overseas sports fans happen to be in London for a weekend.

You can tell this when they arrive into the game – they have no idea where they’re sitting, and sit in silence for the entire game.

It’s sad. Highbury used to generally house people who wanted to be there, it was affordable, and a better experience.

Does a part of you still wish you played at Highbury?

The traditionalist in me desperately wants to go back to Highbury to experience everything we did at the time. However, we now play in the game where Chelsea and Manchester City have too much money to spend, and we need to be at the Emirates stadium, milking the people willing to come across to any games at all, and make as much money as possible so that we have a chance. Highbury wouldn’t help us to do that.

How did you feel to see most of the old ground demolished and turned into flats?

Worthwhile, as you can walk past the old ground at whatever time before or after the game.

It helps, and allows you to look back at the East or West stands of the ground to revisit your memories again. It’d be nice if the flats were

affordable by the likes of me, but ho hum!

Do you think it helped Arsenal fans’ acceptance of the move that the Emirates was seemingly the only viable option - i.e. unlike Anfield, it was never really an option to stay?

In theory, it was the only reason and everyone started nodding to themselves agreeing with the reasons why we were moving.

However, as the years went on and the opportunity for the club to make even more money arose and advantage was taken on the very-long season ticket list, it made Arsenal fans very, very frustrated.

Given the choice, if the capacity could have matched the Emirates, would you have preferred Arsenal to have stayed put or was it better to go for a new build?

If we could have stayed at Highbury in a taller and better 60,000 stadium then we would feel a lot better about things right now.

HOW do you feel about leaving Anfield? Let us know your views - email: editor@ wellredmag.co.uk or tweet us @ wellredmagazine We may use your views in a future edition.

The new stadium: a decade of delay

LIVERPOOL announced plans to build a new 55,000-seater stadium in Stanley Park in 2002. Coming on for 10 years later, there’s still no sign of the infamous ‘spade in the ground’.

Arsenal, meanwhile, announced plans for a new ground in 2000. Six years later it was open.

Plans were submitted for the ‘Parry bowl’ in 2003 and fans were wowed by a ‘virtual tour’ on the LFC website.

A year later the plans were approved by the Deputy Prime Minister. Into 2006, and after some (more) denials of a groundshare with Everton, the City Council gave the goahead for the ground.

In the same year, £9million from the European Regional Development Fund was awarded. In 2007, the club said work would begin in May but Hicks and Gillett pulled the plug and ordered a redesign.

New drawings emerged and, again, the City Council approved the new design.

The club then announced the building of the stadium was subject to a delay.

Whispers of a push for a groundshare from politicians have again emerged while a 999-year lease option on Stanley Park was due to expire last month (September).

Chairman Tom Werner said: “There have been rumours that we’re interested in the possibility of a share with Everton I won’t ever say it completely, but our fans don’t want it so I think it’s a non-starter.”

Even Mancs loved Emlyn

FROM BEHIND ENEMY LINES

PATRICK JOHN speaks sense from the wrong end of the Lancs

30

T

HIS is likely to get me battered in Bowdon, clattered in Collyhurst and walloped in Whalley Range.

But here goes anyway – I’m a Manchester United fan and (no, don’t throw the magazine away just yet) I really haven’t got a problem with Liverpool.

There, I’ve said it. Huge club, some fine players, and a fantastic history. Not a problem at all.

The thing is, you see, I’m a grown-up now. And, apart from being able to eat childish breakfast cereals to my heart’s content, the best thing about being a grown-up is being able to enjoy football without getting all twisted up with hate.

So, yes, of course I want United to win when we play Liverpool. But I want them to win when we play anybody. It doesn’t mean I have to hate them. I can want my team to win and still respect the opposition — Christ, I have to put up with Barcelona, don’t I? (I should add a caveat here that I don’t always feel the same about Arsenal, but that is more to do with their manager than any in-built animosity for the idea of Arsenal per se.

Their double-winning team of 197071 was only the second really good club team to enter my consciousness.

I just have a problem with their sanctimonious, disingenuous arse of a manager. Nothing to do with Arsenal.

Same thing goes for Crawley Town and Rotherham United as it happens.)

So I love Manchester United, but I love football too. It seems a reasonable approach to me, and if you don’t like it, well, you can stick it where Roy Keane told Mick McCarthy to stick it. (Another digression if I may: how do you do that anyway? Great player, Keano, but quite, quite mad, you know.)

But I’m here not to talk about Arsenal or Barcelona, or even Crawley Town or Rotherham United, I’m here to talk about Liverpool.

You lot will know all of this already – depending on your date of birth anyway – but I thought you should know that I know it too. And, as I’ve said, I’m a United fan.

It actually started with the 1966 World Cup, some 18 months before my Unitedmad uncle first took me to Old Trafford (January 20, 1968, United 4 Sheffield Wednesday 2; Best (2), Charlton, Kidd – that’ll do me, I thought, after a couple of years watching CPD Porthmadog in the Welsh league).

For some reason, known only to my six-year-old self, I was taken with the fact that Roger Hunt wore 21 on his back. Further investigation – not sure

A UNARTED FAN SPEAKS how, as Shoot! magazine didn’t start until 1969 – led me to discover that, as well as being England’s No.21, he was also a fantastic striker for Liverpool.

And that led to Ian St John, Ian Callaghan and his bonkers international career, and the mountainous Ron Yeats.

Tommy Lawrence also sticks lumpenly in the recesses of my memory.

As a teenager in the 1970s – which, whatever you might hear, was completely brilliant by the way – we moved on first to Emlyn Hughes and Kevin Keegan.

Who could not love Emlyn? Son of a Welsh rugby league international, but as fist-pumpingly, sinew-stretchingly committed whether in the red of Liverpool, the white of England or even the old gold of Wolves.

Judgment of Keegan should not be coloured by his gaffe-strewn managerial career but, anyway, he went off to SV Hamburg and then came Kenny.

It shouldn’t matter who you support – even United – it is impossible not to include Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish somewhere fairly high up on the list of the best British players of all time.

I’ve no idea how you are supposed to rate one player as better than another at that level but suffice to say that in my lifetime he would be on a very short shortlist with Best, Law, Baxter, Gascoigne and Neville (yes, yes, I’m joking about that last one).

Dalglish, of course, was the heart of the finest vintage.

You’ll know it far better than me, but a couple of morsels stand out.

Ian Rush goes without saying, and was there a more complete midfield player than Graeme Souness?

With sublime passing allied to ferocious tackling, you could hardly ask for more and, again, his dodgy managerial record should not tarnish the memory.

I’m not sure he could act, though, and there’s a parallel here – I may be a shameless Shameless fan, but there has never been a better television drama than Boys From The Blackstuff.

Nor should I overlook the defence.

Alan Hansen, when not wearing a Scotland shirt, is arguably the best British defender I have seen, and his partnership with Mark Lawrenson was at least as good as my favourite pair, Roy McFarland (born Liverpool) and Colin Todd in Derby County’s heyday.

(A final tangent: how much better would England have been in the 1980s had the Lancastrian Lawrenson and Stoke Newington-born David O’Leary played for the land of their birth? Mind you, I wouldn’t have wanted O’Leary to

Sir Roger Hunt

go on and manage them...) Of course, it’s all gone a bit pear-shaped since – made worse, I’m sure, by my lot’s success – and the whole Spice Boys debacle was hardly befitting of the club.

Stan Collymore was a terrific player, though, for all his difficulties, and I should hastily add, before his dad starts spinning in his grave, that I would never call Nigel Clough a Spice Boy. I can hardly mock the American ownership debacle either, can I? It was possible to have some sympathy as you languished under Hicks and Gillett, but you’ve probably got a case now for arguing that your American owners are better than ours.

So there we have it. I’m still a United fan to the core, but I have some respect.

Funny thing is, I’ll probably still get leathered in Litherland, hammered in Huyton and twatted in Toxteth. As someone (sorry, Sir someone) once said: Football eh? Bloody hell!

31

STEWART DOWNING

MIDFIELDER MICHAEL OWEN thinks it was £20million well spent for Downing

T

WENTY million? There were deep intakes of breath when it was revealed Stewart Downing had signed for Liverpool this summer, with many believing Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli had fell into the trap of paying over the odds for English talent.

But in Downing Liverpool have bought one of the most complete midfielders in the Premier League, capable of playing on the left, right and in the middle, and with the ability to make any of the said positions look natural to him.

It hasn’t always been the case that he midfielder has had such a vast array of positions, however, with his early days at Middlesbrough spent predominantly on the left wing, with then boss Steve McClaren only choosing to move Downing to the right later on in his Boro career, while also giving him brief spells in the middle and even at left-back.

It was at Aston Villa where Downing really began to show his full potential, playing all across the park, creating chances and scoring a handful along the way.

His performances last season, under former Liverpool boss Gerard Houllier, saw him earn the title of Aston Villa player of the season.

Many would consider the natural rationale behind the signing of the winger is to provide much-needed supply to Andy Carroll, who was often left feeding off scraps last season, with few quality crosses not allowing the Reds to make full use of his aerial abilities.

Downing seems perfectly suited to fill the role — he created 84 chances last season, with seven of those being assists, with his total accurate crosses for the season coming in at 79, indicating there will be plenty for Carroll, Luis Suarez and others to try and connect with.

But it’s not just Downing’s crossing that attracted admiring glances from Anfield.

32

While he has already demonstrated that he can go outside, hit the line and pull back a decent ball, he can cut inside too, showing great bursts of pace and the ability to beat a man, something Liverpool have lacked in recent seasons.

A prime example of this was his break down the right against Sunderland, when Downing worked his way around a number of opposition players before rattling a thunderous shot from distance off the bar.

If that had gone in, it was the goal of the season competition done and dusted. On the opening day.

Off the pitch Downing is also a perfect

Downing and Enrique have formed a good left-side partnership

professional. Perhaps one of the reasons he often slips under the radar when it comes to naming the best in the league is because he keeps his head down, works hard and ensues he gives his all for the team — a breath of fresh air compared to the former occupant of the number 19 shirt — Ryan Babel.

Downing is also an intelligent footballer, a far cry from a large percentage of Premier League wingers who offer lots of pace but an inability to use it wisely, ultimately ending up in little end product.

With Steven Gerrard out injured at the start of the season, and with

Hard to know which one is least popular

Downing can play anywhere Liverpool having had their fair share of injury-prone players over recent years, Downing also offers some much needed dependability in the middle of the park.

In the past five Premier League seasons the midfielder has played no less than 25 games in a league campaign, with a near immaculate injury record.

Last season Downing featured in 38 league games, a clear sign of just how durable the England international is.

But it’s not Downing’s ability as an individual which makes his signing so clever.

It’s his ability to work with so well with Liverpool’s other midfielders (and defenders in the case of Jose Enrique).

In just a short space of time he has quickly built an understanding with those around him, resulting in some sublime play — see the link-up with Suarez against Bolton which ultimately led to Jordan Henderson grabbing his first

Liverpool goal. In Downing, Dalglish has someone who is reliable and adaptable.

With Steven Gerrard boasting a similarly large range of potential positions and Henderson equally adept at playing as both a right and central midfielder, it gives Liverpool the option to switch and change at any point in the game — sending Downing to the right while Gerrard pushes out left, only for it to be changed back again in an instant.

The three players offer Liverpool enough versatility and unpredictability to dismantle even the most rigid of Premier League defences.

He may not come with the excitement of an untested foreign hot-prospect, but in Stewart Downing Liverpool have bought a player who can work brilliantly with everyone around him and whose versatility makes him worth every penny of his £20million price tag.

Read more from Michael at www.theanfieldopinion.com/

Downing’s a big improvement on this fella 33

CLUB PHILOSOPHY

WE’RE NOT SPANISH...

WE ARE SCOUSE

by ROY HENDERSON, LEVEL3FOOTBALL.COM

B

ARCA. These days we’re reading more on the subject of Barca.

It’s Guardiola this, and La Masia that - every trophy they add to the cabinet comes with fresh proclamations of their righteousness – it’s not only fashionable to do so, it’s reached the stage where every fresh steaming dollop of ‘praise’ heaped upon them induces a little wave of nausea.

Barca’s way is the way. Barca’s way is the Truth.

Now. When something becomes so fashionable that it’s taken as a universal truth, alarm bells should start ringing in wiser ears.

I’ve been guilty of their deification to some extent myself; after all, we all want success for our club, and we like to think that by emulating what the management and coaching staff have put in place at Barca, we’ll guarantee our ongoing success for a generation or more.

Take their mould and spit out a new version of La Masia at LFC, and we’re set – job done.

But that’s lazy thinking – the kind that might get you into trouble a few years down the line if you’re not careful. So let’s be careful.

In the coming years you can bet we’ll see broadsheet articles aplenty

34

telling us that’s just what’s happened – that we’ve straight up plagiarised that Barcelona-branded ‘Truth’.

Under the stewardship of a Spanish manager, after all, Liverpool headhunted two luminaries of the Barca coaching establishment while purging the youth set-up of its existing staff in a putsch akin to a ‘night of the long knives’.

Suddenly the club were following some kind of uniform tactical blueprint. The rhetoric started sounding a little like the stuff coming out of Catalunya.

So hey – if it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck... right?

Well, wrong. If you think Liverpool Football Club is operating ‘La Masia Lite’, you’re wrong.

And if you’re worried that might be a bad thing – you shouldn’t. The people in charge have been thinking this stuff through.

The seeds of Liverpool’s current youth setup were sown in the minds of Rafael Benitez and Pako Ayesteran. Neither man works for the club any more, granted; but the way the club’s footballing operations are now structured under the stewardship of Messrs Dalglish and Comolli are a result of the thinking of our erstwhile Spanish strategists. In the Autumn of 2010, Pako Ayesteran

was kind enough to give us a glimpse of his thinking in this area.

When asked in the context of Spanish football’s recent success what English football has to do to catch up, his reply was both subtle and enlightened: “When we talk about having united a group of players who share similar characteristics, being nurtured in the same philosophy, then clearly there has to be an institutional reference point. That’s obvious.

“Every success story leaves clues behind, but as well as identifying them, you also have to be able to adapt them to your own philosophy and culture.

“So right now, English football needs to be faithful to its own culture, while recognising there are different ways of playing football.”

POLICY OF TRUTH Was Pako’s comment some empty throwaway remark aimed at placating the English journalists he was talking to?

After all, what on earth could be considered ‘good’ about English football? What’s it won recently?

Well, a fair bit if you take a longterm view. There’s a danger that you restrict your timeline and forget just

THE ACADEMY: Key to Liverpool’s future success

how dominant English sides, and specifically Liverpool, were during the 70s and 80s.

The game might have changed a lot since then, but lest we forget, Barca’s formula was founded on a blueprint developed in the 60s and early 70s. Michels managed them, Cruyff and Neeskens, and when Cruyff rocked into the Nou Camp in the late 80s, they decided to buy it wholesale, Victor Kiam style.

So what did they buy? They bought what was, at that time, a 20-yearold approach to the game that had won its club three European Cups in quick succession, and had arguably taken the Dutch national team to two World Cup finals.

Old. But not so bad.

Fast forward 25 years and Barcelona are winning European Cups at much the same rate as their Dutch forebearers, only this time they’ve systematised things, and considered the very risks that jeapordised the Ajax setup, while

all the while tailoring it to suit their club’s own needs and context.

So what’s Pako getting at?

Well, it might be possible to pick up “La Masia Lite” off the shelf, and commit to an approach hydroponically germinated in the ‘Dam 45 years ago.

But why would you bother? The staff at Liverpool only needed to dust off the keys and have a look in their own vault to find a blueprint of their very own – a “Truth” a decade or two fresher than the one Barca picked up in 1988, and with an even earlier vintage; Shanks took the reins at Liverpool six years before Rinus Michels started at Ajax.

Having been convinced as a player that keeping the ball was the key to it all, it’s hardly surprising that as a manager, he set about baking in a style founded on possession.

And he refined and refined it without reference to the accepted footballing ‘truths’ of his time.

He took the FA coaching manual

and threw it in the bin. And he refined and refined it and each time a significant challenge to his methods arrived, Shankly would respond, and tweak, and improve the system.

A nice, natural, intuitive system based on simple principles that were reinforced repeatedly in his day-today coaching.

A good example of this came, oddly enough, when the two blueprints overlapped in 1967.

Shankly’s side faced the young Ajax side in the European Cup quarter finals, and “Cruft” (as Shanks called him) and co delivered what could only be described as a wake-up call.

But Shanks being Shanks, he refined it and refined it, and borrowed what he felt he needed to from that Ajax approach.

And so his Liverpool side would begin to feature the sweeper keeper, and centre halves who could carry the ball into the midfield, disrupting the opposing side’s organisation, and outmanning the opposing side. Marry

CLUB PHILOSPHY that with the simplicity of pass and move, and you arrive at something not far removed from the system in place at Ajax, albeit stripped of its intellectual airs and graces, and founded on all that was good about the British game.

Of course, we know what happened next. His approach was taken on by successive managers and became second nature to the club from root to fruit, and refined and refined until, at its height in the late 80s, we saw the game expressed at its pinnacle in front of our very eyes.

A pinnacle arguably only matched, in the words of Pep Guardiola himself, by the current Barcelona side. And if you believe Arrigo Sacchi, it was Liverpool’s version of the ‘Truth’ that he tried to copy and systematise at AC Milan.

You might say we were on to something, and our brand of the ‘Truth’ was just as tasty and effective as anyone’s.

So when Pako Ayesteran talks of the importance of an “institutional reference point”, he’s not talking about some nebulous invention – he’s talking about the essence of what made Liverpool what it is: refining and refining and refining what works within the club’s community and competitive context.

PAKO ‘N’ PEP’S PREOCCUPATION Ayesteran’s words are echoed and expanded upon by Pep Segura, and it’s here that you realise we’re not simply seeing the wholesale reproduction of the methods that he and Borrell helped put in place at Barca: “I have seen in my short time here in this country working at Liverpool, that there is just as much talent, just as many players with the same hunger, will, and desire to learn as in every other country.

“All that is missing are the means to enable the players and coaches to develop. That’s not down to the players. It’s down to the Academy heads, and those with a vested interest in youth football.

“The great thing about La Masia – the concept that I’d like to try and bring to Liverpool – is this.

“Barcelona’s La Masia represents

36

LEADER: Shanks put Liverpool on the path to glory

the club’s policy. It’s a symbol of the club’s philosophy. When your policies keep changing – when one day you say black, the next day white – then there will always be a problem in trying to establish a clearly defined concept of player development.”

And there’s the key point. What does Segura single out as the most important thing from Barca’s approach? A simple, abstract point – the same point underlined by Ayesteran. The institutional reference point. The club embodies its own philosophy – that commitment sets it aside, and everything it achieves flows from that foundation.

So why are these Spanish experts insisting on an English and Liverpudlian core to the club’s youth development?

WE’RE NOT SPANISH, WE ARE SCOUSE Pako Ayesteran and Rafa Benitez were outspoken during their time at Liverpool’s helm about the nature of the English game.

As well as the physical demands, however, one quote from Pako always really stuck in my mind: “I remember a coach in Spain once said that Spanish girls in the 1970s and 1980s were brought up not to be on their own, but to always have someone with them.

“They were educated to be part of a family, not on their own. They were educated to be married and be with the children of her husband. I think something similar has happened

with our team. Liverpool is the team that more than any other feels the difference when they play away.

“The support they feel when they play at home is so huge and important that when they play away, the difference is massive. When Chelsea play in Stamford Bridge, the Chelsea players don’t really feel the support of the crowd, so the difference is not massive for them. One thing the players have to learn is to compete and have the self-confidence independent of the supporters.

“You need the right mental attitude when the conditions are not comfortable. It’s a psychological attitude that’s so important.”

Yet he went on to qualify that later in the same interview. A Liverpool player, it seems, needs to learn not to rely on the home support to perform; but at the same time, they need to understand why that support is a privilege, and perform to a level that honours it: “...something I hate is when the players don’t realise they lead a privileged life.

“They have a big responsibility to the supporters. They have to work hard not just for themselves, but for the club and the supporters who follow them everywhere.

“Sometimes when people say they are doing everything they can, it is not true. You can always push yourself a little bit more.”

To put it another way, a Liverpool player needs to understand and embody what it means to be a

Liverpool player. So in light of that, we should take a look at what’s being put in place at the Academy.

Segura addressed the Catalunyan INEF Football Congress on the subject of Liverpool’s approach to youth development, and Spanish blogger Marti Perarnau described its content in detail. To say the talk was interesting is an understatement.

Perarnau began as follows: “The ‘target’ of the Liverpool Academy is two-fold: to implement a common style of play in teams through all age groups, and to provide players for the first team.”

Segura then went on to explain that while the younger age groups focused on skills and playing games, from the age of 16 on, Liverpool’s kids now start both tactical and psychological training, alongside the physical and skills-related work you’d expect.

Why? “We want to work with our players, but do so with our style of play.” So (paraphrasing Segura) as a result, the club’s analyses four key factors when considering any new player coming into its youth ranks.

1. The technical aspect: do they appreciate the passing game?

2. The tactical aspect: do they know how to play when we don’t have the ball?

3. The psychological aspect: are they interested in what it takes to be a professional?

4. The physical aspect: do they have speed, strength and size?

Those four key building blocks differ from those used at Barca.

Player assessment at Barca, we’re led to believe, is driven by clear technical and tactical criteria, but the third and fourth listed above, while intuitively important at any club, are secondary concerns.

Carles Folguera, Segura’s counterpart at Barca, neatly sums this up: “We’re always looking for a type of player who’s not physical but a very good thinker, who’s ready to take decisions, who has talent, technique and agility. Physical strength is not important.”

Back to Segura. He next underlined the importance of the institutional reference point we discussed earlier.

Perarnau quotes him as saying: “It’s the idea and style that make an organisation strong.” – the same point made in his interview with

Revista. The kids at the Academy are, it seems, being inculcated with Liverpool’s principles of play and style. The club’s strategy is central to everything – in Perarnau’s words, it all has to “work efficiently and consistent with the philosophy of the club”.

And next comes the really interesting bit. They learn their craft within the framework of a 4-2-3-1.

Maybe not something laid down

by Shankly, but certainly something the club had become accustomed to under Rafa Benitez.

Segura’s comments here are particularly interesting: “I would have preferred a 4-3-3, but England has historically used the 4-4-2, and we had to adapt.”

Another departure from the methods ingrained at Ajax and Barca, with a tip of the hat to the club’s context and recent tradition. And it’s here that Perarnau’s description starts to really chime with our own version of the “Truth”: every session focuses on moving the ball from the defence, with passing (or ball circulation as it’s referred to nowadays) at high speed.

The guiding principles for their work? Perarnau listed them as follows. * Everyone must put in the same amount of work * The work must emulate the freedom of street football * They must learn to use the full depth and breadth of the playing surface * They must play with a constant attacking spirit * They must understand how to work within the 4-2-3-1 * Our game develops from the defensive line * We play as a collective * We are creative On this last point, Perarnau expanded a on Segura’s message a little further: “The English player is disciplined and is used to learning automation and order, but Spanish players are traditionally more creative – we must move in this direction”.

So it’s intriguing. We have a mix of what’s natural to our Academy intake as predominately English players, and we have an appropriate emphasis on strength, physique, and mental toughness from a peculiarly

early age. But beyond that, we take the elements of the Spanish model that mirror our own historical blueprint, and bake the approach into each and every kid we teach.

WHY ISN’T EVERYONE DOING THIS? Well, who knows? Maybe they are.

What sets Liverpool Football Club aside right now is the fact we’re aligned from Chairman and board to tea lady.

That’s no mean feat, and as anyone with an insight behind the scenes at Real Madrid might tell you, resources alone aren’t always enough to engender operational harmony.

The true barriers to achieving an aligned footballing setup are the emotional and psychological ones.

It takes genuine buy-in from the decision makers at every level, as a result of either fear of the man at the helm, or a more collegiate buy-in to the ‘vision’ – the kind of institutional reference point Ayesteran talks about. To get to that stage, Liverpool had to literally hit rock bottom.

The club were hours from the financial brink a year ago, but from the ashes, Henry and Co realised that they had something powerful in place, and decided to make it central to the club’s future strategy.

THE LIVERPOOL WAY But that in itself wouldn’t be enough if it simply lifted a solution from elsewhere without a little thought. They need to keep their guiding principles in mind in whatever they do – a methodology that really isn’t too different from the one set out by Shanks.

If they’re clever, they’ll refine it and refine it, and retain a healthy disregard for what everyone else tells them they ought to do. Surely that’s the bedrock of the Liverpool Way. THIS article first appeared on The Anfield Wrap – www. theanfieldwrap. com – a new website and weekly podcast.

The podcast is also available on iTunes.

THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION

JOE KILTY on the amazing transformation of Lucas Leiva

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LUCAS LEIVA “And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.” Ayrton Senna ENTAL toughness is a key attribute for any young player to possess, as Rafael Benitez alluded to when unveiling the 20-year-old Lucas Leiva in 2007: “We believe he has the mentality and the character you need to do well in England,” said Benitez.

Looking at his competition for a starting place, Lucas was going to need it.

His first challenge as a Liverpool player was to break into a team blessed with the finest central midfielders in England, Spain and Argentina. His youthful mistakes were benchmarked against the often superlative performances of those around him, and so it was inevitable that the critics would start to hone in on him.

In the seventh minute of his first big test, replacing Mascherano in the starting line-up against Arsenal, Lucas made a terrible blunder that set Adebayor racing towards goal. Luckily, Liverpool got away with it, but first impressions last.

Following his performance in a dire 0-0 draw against Fulham, one journalist wrote, “The scouts who found him need to be seriously quizzed — it must be hard to find a Brazilian footballer with such limited ability”.

Things went from bad to worse from here. He gave away a penalty and was sent off against Everton as Liverpool were knocked out of the FA Cup. The following week he gave away another penalty, against Wigan, which cost Liverpool two vital points in the race for the title. At this point in time, most Reds would have been happy if he had never pulled on a Liverpool shirt again.

On a sunny Saturday lunchtime in March 2009, Lucas started his fight back against the critics. Liverpool were at Old Trafford to play their title rivals in the biggest game of the season. With star midfield playmaker Xabi Alonso injured, Benitez called on Lucas, offering the 22 year old an opportunity to come of age.

Lucas rose to the occasion. He partnered Javier Mascherano in a midfield that completely outplayed Carrick and Anderson in the 4-1 win. He doubled up with the full-backs superbly well, rendering Ronaldo ineffective from the wing for the entire game and snuffing out Rooney’s infiltration of the midfield. Lucas was at the centre of

M

everything Liverpool did well. He had an 83% pass completion rate (against a Liverpool average of 75%) with an impressive 54% of these passes in the attacking half of the field. He won 77% of the tackles he went in for and won 54% of his 50-50 midfield duals. On top of this, he made no defensive errors in the entire match. All this against a Manchester United team who, up until this game, had been running away with the title.

Interestingly, Lucas received mixed reactions after the game. The Guardian described his performance as “lacklustre” while The Telegraph reported that he played “superbly well”.

Like many players of his ilk, the subtle brilliance of Lucas can often be missed by the untrained eye.

The 2010 season started with Rafael Benitez coming out in the media to defend Lucas against the harsh treatment he had been on the receiving end of: “He is so good but still he was criticised. I do not understand why they do not criticise other players, more senior players, when they do not play well. But he will have a big season.”

Lucas said of the criticism: “I have confidence in myself — you need that in life, not just football. So no matter what, I believe in myself and the manager does too.”

The prediction from Benitez that Lucas would have a ‘big season’ was correct.

He started it by playing six games consecutively for the first time since joining the club and went on to play in 35 out of the 38 league games. His pass completion rate for the season of 84% was amongst the highest at the club, with a very impressive 72% of his passing inside the opponent’s half of the field.

At the end of the season, he was voted Young Player of the Year by the fans, an accolade that would have been unthinkable back in 2008.

By the 2010/11 season, with the departure of Javier Mascherano, Lucas had made the holding midfield role his own. He made 33 appearances in the league, a total only bettered by the ever present players Reina and Skrtel.

It was the best season Lucas had enjoyed in a Liverpool shirt. He had a pass completion rate for the season of 83%, with 66% of his passes going forwards and just 6% going backwards.

In comparison, Liverpool’s total stats for the season show that they had a 77% pass completion rate, with 57% forward passes and 16% backward.

Lucas, therefore, was significantly above average in terms of his passing accuracy and his ability to play penetrating

passes forward. His performance in the away win against Chelsea is the perfect example of why he was voted the fans’ Player of the Year. He ran the game from start to finish in a man of the match display.

Lucas has started the 2011/12 season in the same manner that he ended last year. After a solid display against Sunderland he was pivotal in the win against Arsenal.

The improvement Lucas has shown over the past two years has been phenomenal. The critical voices are almost mute, with just a few misguided murmurings from those sections of the crowd with untrained eyes. Benitez was right about his mental toughness, and he has become a certain starter under Dalglish.

It is easy to forget that Lucas is still only 24 years old. His best years are ahead of him and the great news for LFC fans is that they will be enjoyed at Anfield. @joescouse_lfc

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For sale: transfer window 2003-11 W

E have all seen it. The elbow hanging out of the window. The microphone thrust into the face of a certain Premier League manager. “Triffic player Gary. I would love to have him here. But I won’t talk about other clubs’ players.” Of course not, Arry.

Over the years the transfer window has played its part in some of the more dramatic scenes football has had. But this summer its purpose has really come up for debate. Is it monopolising the best young talent? Is it over pressurising managers and inflating transfer fees? Probably so, but does it serve a worthwhile purpose?

Brought in by FIFA during the 2002-03 season, the window was seen as a way of helping protect the competitive nature of the game by enforcing pre-planning and disallowing an all year free for all.

Sky Sports News’ hysteria is one of the low points of ‘deadline day’ 40

BY JOSEPH SHEERIN However, it has started to gather its detractors quite rapidly.

With last ditch switches and ridiculous amounts of pressure straddling managers, players and clubs, transfers are now more than ever under the gazing eye of the media, in what now seems a relentless attempt at destabilising the progress of some of the top professionals in our game.

You only have to look at Andy Carroll’s continued scrutiny for his off the field endeavours, not the progress he is making week in, week out.

As a club we have had our fair share of transfer window participation in recent times. ‘Saga’ is a word so often used in the back pages of the press, it has all but lost its meaning.

If we flick back our minds to the heady days of the 2008/09 season, we found ourselves maintaining a very worthy title challenge that saw Rafa’s Redmen come second, though arguably not second best,

to those old foes down the East Lancs Road.

In the summer that ensued, we found ourselves entrenched in back page warfare with the future of one Xabi Alonso questioned.

A supremely gifted manipulator who played such a pivotal role in the aforementioned season, he found himself in the clutches of a huge dilemma. The summer window in 2008 witnessed Benitez’s quite public marketing of Alonso in the hope of pulling in some money to instead replace him with Gareth Barry, then of Aston Villa.

As the summer went on, it seemed likely neither deals were to happen. So instead, Villa were left with a player who had publicly spoke of his desire to leave and Liverpool were left with a player feeling unwanted by those who picked the all-important starting eleven.

Fast forward 12 months, Barry jumps north west, but this time to the buccaneering Manchester City and Alonso is left in limbo until the last stretches of July when Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid poach him for a mere £30 million — for a player of such quality, a pittance.

Here lies, the true disservice the window does to the English leagues.

Had there been no window, the proposed sales of Alonso and Barry may have eventually gone through and all parties satisfied.

Yet, clubs were left with players unsettled for another year with no certainty of what the future had ahead.

We were embroiled in it all once again just 12 months ago. Javier Mascherano dazzled the watching eyes from Catalonia and Roy Hodgson’s apparent steady ship was rocked considerably.

Despite a man of the match performance against Arsenal on the opening day of the 2010/11 season, Mascherano then decided he wasn’t ‘mentally fit’ to play in the following fixture against Manchester City. The great man would be turning in his grave.

Again, with the all-important deadline approaching, a club is backed into the corner with the prospect of an insubordinate player for another 12 months.

August 28th saw the Argentinian depart for sunnier climes and Liverpool now minus one of the first names on the

TRANSFER WINDOW

“Yeah, triffic player, would love to have him at the club” teamsheet for the best part of two and a half years.

January this year was no less nailbiting.

Fernando Torres, once of the famed number nine shirt and the golden boy of The Kop, made it clear that the grass was seemingly greener along the foggy reaches of the King’s Road.

In a typical deadline day dash, the club forked out millions for Newcastle’s Andy Carroll. At that late stage, the club had little chance to negotiate a better price because they had only hours to get the transfer through – no time to haggle if they wanted the deal done.

Thankfully, this deal has turned out to be a dream for the Reds, particularly with the magician that is Luis Suarez arriving alongside Big Andy.

But this doesn’t take away from the perils of a club being so mercilessly rocked by a player and rival half way through a season.

As it turned out, the player didn’t even help himself in all this. Apart from maybe, his bank balance. Sob. There are solutions to these issues.

A return to how it was a decade ago,

perhaps? It would help those down the leagues as bigger clubs would be less inclined to pay ridiculous money for prodigious talent such as an Alex OxladeChamberlain, a Connor Wickham or even a Theo Walcott.

But is that the money that they depend on to continue as a going concern? Since the collapse of ITV Digital, Football League clubs have been mired in administration issues and wind up orders.

The window is often bait for these teams to attract big money sums from the powerhouses to maintain a future.

It would see more measured summer transfer strategies and decisions would become less pressurised.

But on the flipside, the dangers that were there before are still present. A player in form suddenly becomes the target and the club becomes the prey for bigger sides. The all-year window does not take away the uncertainty of transfer upheaval mid-season.

Another approach could be to finish the window before the season starts. There is some weight behind this idea. It allows for managers to know by the vital periods

of pre-season who is there for the long haul and who isn’t. To compliment this, an all-season loan system for all tiers of the game, much like the one the Football League has implemented, could be the perfect antidote to a transfer window.

It allows for unhappy, unfit or out of form players to enrich their careers elsewhere but it also allows for the element of deadline day panic to be severely reduced.

Who knows what is in store for the transfer window. It has lost its purpose in the spirit of the game and traded it in for a purpose in the media — to sell newspapers.

One of the most active managers in the summer market, Leicester City’s Sven Goran Eriksson, has lambasted the system: “I am sure much of the business being done on the last day is a little bit desperate and that is not right.” And when even famed wheeler dealer (sorry Arry), Harry Redknapp has backed Sven’s call for change, surely it’s won’t be too long before we see that come to fruition.

For now, we play the waiting game. Not long before we see that merry-go-round oiled up and back in action…

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Gary Sprake - number one in every sense

IN A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

42

OWN GOALS

NEIL SCOTT on the fine art of scoring at the wrong end

Avi Cohen – scorer at both ends for the Reds

L

ET’S face it, everyone loves an own goal.Be it a lumbering centre-half wildly slashing a loose ball past his team’s immobile keeper, an over-compensating beanpole striker forcefully nodding a lastminute corner into his own net or Gary Neville aiming a lazy punt at a particularly uncooperative divot in the England six-yard box, there’s something inherently and unashamedly comical about the whole shabby business.

If I were to analyse it on a psychological level, I’m sure I’d blow out some old guff about ‘schadenfreude’, the extraction of pleasure from the misfortune of others or, in the sage words of Lisa Simpson, ‘shameful joy’.

But in reality it’s even more basic than that. It’s pure slapstick. If lab-coated boffins were to magically teleport Laurel and Hardy into the 21st century they wouldn’t waste their time pointedly trying to avoid discarded banana skins.

No, they’d be lining up alongside Titus Bramble in Sunderland’s back four, firing a steady stream of over-hit back-passes at Craig Gordon’s helpless nut.

Take Jonathan Woodgate’s Real Madrid debut, back in September 2005, for example. After being ruled out for the best part of a decade with a succession of ruptured hair-slides, how did the mop-topped student stomper mark his inaugural appearance at the Bernabeu?

By carefully boncing a friendly longrange effort past a frankly miffedlooking Iker Casillas, of course. That he followed this up by getting himself sent off only confirmed Woody’s status as the clown prince of continental defending.

Rumours persist that a desire to swap his gleaming Mercedes for a collapsing tricycle, and the urge to wear an oversized, suspicious-looking flower in his lapel, only served to hasten his Madrid exit.

And who could ever forget Bury’s Chris Brass? (Alright, put your hands down, I was being rhetorical. Pedants!)

He’s the poor sap who attempted an intricate overhead back-post clearance but succeeded only in volleying the ball squarely into his own mush, for it to

rebound like a bunny in a catapult into the goal he was theoretically defending.

And, to add injury to insult, namecalling and a fair bit of pointing and laughing, he managed to break his nose in the process. Genius. Pure genius.

Of course, the mirth is tempered somewhat when the hapless protagonist plays for your team. In fact, it’s usually tempered to the point where sweary abuse and darkly-muttered threats seem the only logical response.

Although even then you have to admit that, just occasionally, all you can do is scratch your head, shrug your shoulders and offer up your grudging thanks to the comedy heavens.

Come on, who amongst us can honestly say they didn’t suppress a wry chuckle when the incomparable Jamie Carragher managed to find his own net twice before half-time in that game against Man. United a while back?

Okay, bad example. But passage of time certainly helps to numb the pain and allows us to place the mighty Carra’s valiant efforts high in the pantheon of outstanding own goal accomplishment.

And Liverpool games have involved more than their share of notable own goals over the years.

From the heartbreaking to the hilarious to the downright bizarre, our matches have thrown up some of the classics of the genre.

So, without further ado, and after much deliberation, I present to you my rundown of the 10 Greatest LiverpoolRelated Own Goals. Think of them kindly.

10 – Steven Gerrard, v Chelsea, Carling Cup Final, 2005 The Liverpool captain does his bit to assure anxious fans that rumours of an imminent move to Chelsea are 43

OWN GOALS A magic moment – but not for Alaves fans

unfounded by heading a late equaliser for Jose Mourinho’s unlovely gang of mercenaries, cheats and wideboys.

Thankfully, he resists the urge to leap into the arms of an adoring John Terry whilst Big-Boned Frank tosses him a pork scratching. Grim rather than funny this one. Oh well.

9 – Delfi Geli, Alaves, UEFA Cup Final, 2001 Clearly aware of Liverpool’s record in penalty shoot-outs, the Alaves defender takes the honourable way out and opts to fall on his sword, ostentatiously deflecting Gary McAllister’s last minute free-kick past a stranded keeper, handing the Reds their third UEFA Cup in the process. Hurray for him!

8 – Brian Laws, Nottingham Forest, FA Cup Semi Final (2nd match), 1989 While this semi-final was rightly overshadowed by the horrific events of the original fixture, it is hard to forget the Forest full-back’s contribution to an ultimately comfortable Liverpool victory.

After planting a perfect header firmly into his own net, Laws’ dejection was compounded as a delighted John Aldridge playfully patted him on the

head, in the same manner that an indulgent dog owner would reward an obedient pooch for fetching a stick.

than Mick Hucknall’s wig. But of course, we forgive him. After all, it’s Carra, for God’s sake!

7 – Avi Cohen, v Aston Villa, Division 1, 1980 The “Beckenbauer of the Middle East” made his name in this game, which ensured that yet another title would be winging its way back to Anfield.

In the first half he sliced a clearance which looped over Ray Clemence’s head in a perfect arc before nestling snugly in the bottom corner. He later made amends by firing home in the right end to seal the victory. Cue wild celebrations. Cheers, Avi. You’re sadly missed.

5 – Phil Neville, Everton, Premier League, 2006 Now this is more like it. Face it, what could be funnier than seeing an Everton player, an ex-Man United player, a Neville, leave his own keeper clutching at thin air in the Anfield derby.

It’s like winning the National Lottery, only as an added reward they’re going to throw in a lifetime’s supply of Scampi Fries, a pair of x-ray goggles and a helmet made out of giant magnets.

Outstanding.

6 – Jamie Carragher, v West Ham, FA Cup Final, 2006 Another of those ‘funny in hindsight, though at the time I could have punched a kitten’ incidents.

If you watch Carra’s feet closely, he is clearly trying to back-heel the ball out of harm’s way.

Unfortunately, he misses, connects instead with his standing foot, topples face first into the Cardiff turf and sets West Ham on the way to a 2-0 lead.

Then he walks away with a face redder

4 – Sandy Brown, Everton, Division 1, 1969 This effort will always hold a special place in the hearts of Reds of a certain age.

Some wing trickery from Peter Thompson down the left, a curling cross delivered to the edge of the six-yard box, a perfectly-executed diving header from the Everton clogger performed with all the grace of a hippo on a skateboard, the sound of 10,000 jaws simultaneously dropping in the Gwladys Street end. Priceless.

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3 – Ronnie Whelan, v Man. United, Division 1, 1990 By this stage in his career the Irish schemer and latter-day sense void had developed a reputation for spectacular, long range curlers which left goalkeepers rooted to the spot.

Usually the goalkeepers in question belonged to the opposition. Usually.

Happily, this was nought but an amusing distraction in what was an otherwise routine stroll to a 2-1 Old Trafford victory. But in terms of quality, style and execution it should have walked away with the Turner Prize.

2 – Djimi Traore, v Burnley, FA Cup, 2005 Like the shooting of JFK, the downfall of Thatcher or Bez winning Big Brother, no-one who witnessed it will ever be able to forget where they were the night Djimi Traore’s mind was possessed by the spirit of Johann Cruyff. Unfortunately nobody bothered to pass the message on to Djimi’s feet. Just to clarify, fancy drag-backs a yard in front of your own goal-line are inadvisable even with the footballing ability of an Alan Hansen, let alone an Alan Titchmarsh.

OWN GOALS 1 – Gary Sprake, Leeds United, Division 1, 1967 Quite simply the greatest thing a Leeds player has ever done on a football pitch.

For the uninitiated, this is what happened.

Wales goalie Sprake, no stranger to the blooper reel as it was, collected the ball in the Kop goalmouth and looked to quickly bowl it out to hatchet-faced leftback, Terry Cooper.

While in the act of throwing he hesitated, attempted to clutch the ball to his chest and, to levels of bemusement that could only be rivalled should Paul Merson ever try to tie his own shoelaces, somehow managed to fling it purposefully over his shoulder and into his own net.

Cue the Kop erupting as one into a chorus of popular anarchist singer Des O’Connor’s latest chart-topper, ‘Careless Hands’.

And so a legend was born, a career was in tatters and the power and mystery of the humble own goal was firmly established as an intrinsic part of football’s ragged tapestry. Just ask Chris Brass.

Djimi’s rubberlegs knock the Reds out of the FA Cup

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MAY 2006: LIVERPOOL 3 WEST HAM UNITED 3 TONY TEASDALE'S

A Life In LiverpoolS MATCHE

blokeandcoke.blogspot.com

Not so sweet FA

F

OOTBALL? “Que?” “FA Cup Final, Liverpool v West Ham?” “No,” says the barman.

“But you’re an Irish bar. You simply have to be showing the match – all Irish bars will be showing the game.”

He looks up at the flatscreen tellies.They’re blank.

“No.” “F**k, what are we going to do?

I ask my mate outside.

“We can’t miss this.”

“Keep looking, keep looking.”

“OK, good idea, let’s not panic,” I say – panicking.

We run off to another one of Cadiz’s many bars, then another… each one filled with carefree locals eating plates of tapas, and supping glasses of beer and ice-cold sherry.

Not one of them is showing the Cup Final. Christ.

Then we get a lead.

“That bloke over there reckons that an ex-Argentina player owns a sports bar by the beach – that’s bound to be showing it.”

“Yes!” I say, and shake my fist.

“They’ll probably have the BBC commentary just to add to the atmosphere.”

Sports bars. Normally full of beauts in thick ties high-fiving each other in front of England rugby matches, but I’ll sell the owner my missus for the avvy if he has the game on.

We run back to our hotel, tired/ irritated girlfriends in tow, and down into the underground car park where the hire car is. We get in. We are not

“You know that weekend we’ve booked.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s FA Cup Final weekend.”

“Is it? Bollocks. I love the FA Cup, I’d rather it watch at home… though I’m sure it’ll be nice to see it in some Irish bar with mad Spanish commentary.

Biggest game in the world, is the FA Cup Final, that’s what Des Lynam used to say.”

“Yeah, everywhere will be showing it.”

I put the phone down. I’m not worried, Y HERE but in the back of my ISH THEY SHOWED THE FOOT mind there’s a niggling thought: what if Liverpool get through? going to miss this match, that simply Before the appearance of master cannot happen. tactician Rafael Benitez there would have been scant chance of a cup *** final appearance.

But last year’s Champions League The seeds of this debacle had been campaign that ended with that sown months earlier. glorious evening in Istanbul has changed everything.

With a job paying me enough to afford a spring bank holiday, me and We’re already in the quarter-finals, my West Ham mate, Justin, decide after beating Man United in round to take our girlfriends for a long five – there’s a distinct possibility weekend in Cadiz, that little-known, we’ll get to the Big One in Cardiff. but ancient city stuck out on a spit of And I won’t be able to go. land in the deep south of Spain.

I pause, and start to entertain A town that, my half-Spanish the possibility of Liverpool getting girlfriend assures me, never gets knocked out. visited by the British. Great.

Would I really sacrifice the glory of “When do you and your bird want my football team and the happiness to go?” I ask Justin. of hundreds of thousands of Reds “May?” fans all over the world, just so I can “Yeah, I’m up for that, be getting enjoy my holiday without wishing I hot then, but not too hot.” was in Cardiff?

“We can maybe go and watch a You’re f**king right I would. It match, too. Cadiz have got a team.” simply doesn’t count if I’m not there.

Two months later, I get a call.

But Liverpool, with Steven Gerrard

W

46

!

CARDIFF 2006: Somehow it just wasn’t the same getting updates via text message... at its heart are not going to miss out on English football’s other great prize. They, inevitably, get to the final following a semi with Chelsea.

But, even more incredibly, West Ham are finalists, too.

Well, at least that Cockney get Justin will be buying me drinks when Liverpool destroy them 5-0. *** The “sports bar” is in fact a bar. A bar like any other in Cadiz, except with no visible televisions around.

It’s also closed.

There’s another bar nearby. It is crammed with Spanish men on a stag do, throwing gallons of ale down their collective necks and hitting each other with giant foam rubber hats.

Ah, that’ll be the sophisticated Spanish cafe society I’ve heard so much about.

“What are we going to do?” I say, losing hope and starting to sulk a like a six-year-old who’s just has his Nintendo confiscated.

Justin looks at his watch.

“It’s ten to three, British time,” he says.

We look at each other. That’s it, over.

“Is it? Shit.” I say, glumly, then look We are broken men – like Scott at up and spot a glam-looking hotel the South Pole or the Captain of nearby. “Hang on a minute, let’s use the Titanic as the waves engulf his the computer in that gaff and listen to the British commentary from Radio indestructable floating folly.

Five online. It’ll be like listening to a Our fate has been decided by match in the 80s.” events outside of our control.

We run over to the hotel. Sure We walk slowly back to the car and enough, there are two drive to our hotel. The four of us go to the bar. big computers in the Justin rings up a mate in lobby. We’ll have them.

London, who agrees to Justin pays the text us every time there’s confused looking fella a goal – and in this at the reception some afternoon, that’s a lot of money and we settle texts. down for Alan Green’s We never see West biased commentary.

Ham taking a 2-0 lead, “I fucking hate Alan RED: Green Liverpool’s fightback or Green,” says Justin.

Steven Gerrard’s last-gasp “Ha! He’s boss,” I say as I wonder strike to make it 3-3. type the URL in.

The texts tell us that Liverpool Here we go. The BBC “player” fi nally win on penalties in what will thingy comes up and we settle back be described as the best FA Cup Final to enjoy the game. since 1979. We see none of it.

“Tony, turn up the volume, I can’t I toast the Reds with a bottle of hear anything.”

Cruzcampo, and think about all my I put the mouse over the loudness mates having the time of their lives graphic. Come on, Reds!

– in the truest sense – a thousand “…the programme you want to miles away in the Welsh capital. listen to is not available in your Bastards. region, come back later…” www.umbrellamagazine.co.uk 47

BAROS’S “DISGUISE” FOOLED NOBODY AT ANFIELD

WELL RED Issue 11: November 30