When that last-minute goal flew in off Rio Ferdinand’s head, the reactions of Liverpool fans up and down the country were widely varied. Some will have cried, some will have screamed and hit things which did no wrong but just got in the way and some will have started denouncing the entire United team in an even more waspishly hateful way than usual. I admit that I wanted to do all of the aforementioned, but I actually did what I always do in those dreadful situations and sat perfectly still, forcing myself to carry on watching a supporting the team. I didn’t want to, but I remembered some things which helped me to be positive, perhaps not at that particular moment, but the day after that undeserved loss to our all-time greatest rivals.
I remembered the 4-0 scoreline of a few years previous; I remembered how badly we played every time we did beat Manchester United under Gerard Houllier; I even thought back to Istanbul, which aided me immensely in being able to smile again – I remembered, gladly, that we are still in the Champions League and the FA Cup and still, despite losing to them, have the upper hand on Manchester United in the Premiership. Understandably, I didn’t want to write a match report for the column this week – who’d want to read it? The depression would be too overbearing for me to ever reach the finishing point, and besides, we were by the far superior team on the day and I would alter almost no details about the performance and effort we gave collectively. Of course, two little things stood out as needing a quick tweak: the marking on that last free kick and the finishing of a certain Djibril Cisse are the things which spring to mind. But we all know that.
I’m simply going to be all positive this week, because that’s the way we should be. The match is behind us and let’s not forget what was behind the match: months of not losing, not conceding, always scoring and putting fear into opposition sides week after week. Liverpool enjoyed their best run since the start of the Premiership and that’s all down to a team which, if you’d listened to many fans in the summer, needed urgently a centre-back and a right-winger if it was even to get into the top four. They reckoned clearly without the masterful management of Benitez and the terrific improvement that the team has made in the last year or so. There’s no reason why this one defeat to a flailing team who, let’s face it, got lucky on the day, (and then embarrassed themselves with their celebrations) should affect the rest of our season as we battle on to go second and retain the trophy that is rightfully ours. What else can we smile about this week?
If everybody counts our blessings instead of rubbing our bruises, then the same team that we saw go out and beat Tottenham and 10 other teams beforehand (in a row, of course, apart from Bolton) come out and progress in the FA Cup against Portsmouth this weekend with ease. Believing in the team is the key first of all, but maintaining that belief is even more difficult but indisputably more important after that. The team, manager, squad need it but we do too, so let’s keep up that support that we were showing through December and believe me, we will reap the rewards very, very soon.