I don’t believe in knee-jerk reactions, especially where my beloved Liverpool are concerned, but having had time to reflect and based not just on events at Villa Park but also the Chelsea match, almost ALL of last season and some inept pre-season displays I have to ask the question: what the fuck was going on there? Rhetorical question I know because I’m sure readers of this are no wiser than I am. Speaking to people later on who watched it on the telly sounded as if it wasn’t too bad but I can tell you it was stultefyingly crap watching it in the ground. No ideas, no passion, no pace and very little width seemed to be the order of the day.
Maybe a sign of disillusionment but there was no pre-match singy-songy in the normally bouncing Yew Tree. Interesting. During the game most of the torpor we saw on the field filtered through to our fans. Our normally exuberant away support was, in the main, subdued apart from a decent "Fields" (but why do they insist on singing "oh, oh" when it's "all round" - just sounds fuckin' stupid) to the extent that we were taken the piss out of by the Villa fans, not normally the most vociferous themselves.
More rhetorical questions: what is the point of playing left-footed players on the right and right-footed players on the left? If that means that those players can come inside and use their more favoured foot doesn’t that mean that an already crowded midfield gets more cramped? For fuck sake – we need more width not less!
And what about Jamie – for once blameless for this pathetic team display? His left foot isn’t that brilliant so why does he continue to get a game at right-back when we’ve just bought Finnan who has proved he can actually do something other than defend? Don’t get me wrong, Jamie was one of our “better” players at Villa (not that that was too difficult) but he gives us absolutely fuck all going forward. He’s an okay defender and no more than that. It’s not his fault that he’s not very good but gets a game every week. I know he loves Liverpool and playing for Liverpool as much as we do but I genuinely feel embarrassed for the lad when the ball is at his feet and he has to do something other than tackle or welly the ball up the pitch for the increasingly pissed off Owen to challenge defenders six inches taller than him.
Riise seems to have caught the bug too. Where are the electrifying runs of his first season? Is he being told to just welly it at every given opportunity? More welly too from our centre-halves but then we’re not expecting them to be Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson.
Heskey? My word I’ve defended that lad to the hilt as the Management team and most of us have but I’m now totally pissed off with him. His much improved (from the past two seasons) pre-season form proved to be yet another false dawn and false hope for us. I really thought that having Heskey back to the form we know he’s capable of, as he showed it during his first two seasons with us, then it would be like having a new player. Having said that I hope he scores a hat-trick against Spurs and another at the ground made of wood to prove us all wrong but I somehow can’t see it. How can a man that big and that powerful be such an absolute fuckin’ tart? Don’t give me the confidence line either. If he started putting himself about a bit more maybe he would score more goals and get that confidence. He’s on mega bucks per week for fuck sake so where does confidence come into it anyway? He should just be knocking every fucker out of the way!
Milan’s no Ronaldo (the good one), his touch isn’t brilliant, he doesn’t look up very often and sometimes runs into blind alleys but at least he looks fuckin’ arsed about it all. Either give him a decent run in the team at the expense of Heskey or buy somebody better before the deadline; this one, not the January one! Alan Smith for £8 million? Get on the phone and get him here ASAP! I’m not arsed what his disciplinary track record is – he’s got more passion in his bell end than Heskey has in his whole body!
Danny had probably his worst ever game in a Liverpool shirt and he’s had some bad ones despite a host of superb goals – and that’s coming from probably his biggest fan. Like most of the others (Gerrard, Owen, Kewell and possibly Baros excluded) Danny seemed at least a yard short of pace and that’s worrying at the start of a season. There is a theory that we played too many pre-season games and that the Far East tour wasn’t a good idea; a theory I initially poo-pooed but there does seem some credence in that now. Christ almighty, if the players aren’t fit and are tired now what are they going to be like halfway through the season? It doesn’t bear thinking about what they will be like at the end!
Kewell could be a great player for Liverpool. We’ve all seen what he can do when he was at Leeds and he’s shown it in flashes already for us but if he continues to be played in the wrong position, and it is the wrong position no matter what anybody says – a player with as good a left foot as that should be played on the left, not on the fuckin’ right, then he’s going to be just another of those fucked up players we’ve now seen so often.
The sub’s bench? Matchwinners? I don’t think so! Milan maybe but to bring Biscan on just to secure a 0-0 draw at Villa Park is negativity of the highest (or should that be the lowest?) degree! It might help too if we stop singing Igor’s name as it gives our somewhat deluded Manager the impression that we actually like the big galoot and think he’s a good player! It does show though our incredibly loyal support. We might have a good old moan but we do, in the main, get behind the players.
If Le Tallec and Pongolle are so good why aren’t they being given a game? Le Tallec certainly from what he’s shown so far is far better than some of the players currently filling the positions he could play. Not absolutely sure about Pongolle; he might just need that few months of settling in but get Le Tallec in and quick!
Houllier MUST change the style of play straight away or we’re going to be consigned to another season of boredom (same shit – different day) and non-success. It pains me to say all this because I’ll be eternally grateful to Gerard for binning the prima donna arseholes (no matter how good a player they all were) Fowler, Macmanaman, Ince etc and giving us great joy in the 2000-2001 season. Our style of play was criticised that season as being boring and counter-attacking but we scored 125 goals and was okay by me. The next season we actually improved, despite winning no major trophies. Finishing second to Arsenal, who were admittedly light years ahead of us, and above the darling Man U was definite progress in the right direction. What the fuck has happened since though? We’ve gone fuckin’ backwards! Even though we were unbeaten and top of the League for a long spell last season I think we all knew it just wasn’t there. Playing shit and winning was only going to end in one of two ways – either we were going to start playing well and winning or, as happened, continue to play shit and lose. Middlesbrough was the start of it all when Le Boss, because they were wearing red shirts, mistook them for Man U or Arsenal and played eleven men behind the ball (a la Sunderland at Anfield last season) including Heskey on the left wing. Surely the only two people in the country to think Heskey is a left-winger are Gerard and Sven! Great quote after that game from Dave Daley, steward on Barnes’: “What the fuck are we gonna do when we play Man U or Arsenal – play eleven fuckin’ goalkeepers?”
Why the fuck do we pay teams, some of whom shouldn’t even be on the same fuckin’ park as us, so much fuckin’ respect? We should be twatting teams like Aston Villa (remember we had beaten them on our four previous visits to Villa Park and a team that only narrowly escaped relegation last season so we knew we could do it) not treating them like they were fuckin’ Brazil! We should be going at the likes of them gung ho and fuck the consequences – there probably wouldn’t be any. We have the players to do it if they are played in their correct positions and with the addition of a couple of others (the right ones) we could still be a force to be reckoned with this season. If we carry on the way we are though, and Owen and Gerrard have hinted that they might be off if we don’t qualify for the Champions League, then we’ll be lucky to qualify for the UEFA Cup as all we looked at Villa was a very ordinary mid-table team.
I still have faith in Houllier and believe that he should stay at least for the end of this season by which time his stated five-year plan when he took over should have come to fruition. If not, and at the moment it does look like Gerard has run out of ideas, then I’m afraid if things don’t change quickly we must look for another top class Manager, preferably from outside the club again. I say this because it is my feeling that Phil Thompson will be the next Liverpool Manager. That will NOT be a good move as Thommo, for all his passion and love for Liverpool, is even more negative than Houllier. Yes, Phil did a good job when Gerard was ill but towards the end of his temporary tenure mass negativity kicked in and there were more than one or two murmurs of discontent, especially during the 1-1 draw at Arsenal. It really hurts me to say all that about Gerard but IF he has taken us as far as we can go (or as far as he can) and IF it is time for a new man then so be it.
I suppose to get the “performance” at Villa into perspective we did come close to scoring on a few occasions through Diouf (followed by Kewell’s terrible miss), Murphy and Riise, a lot more than we have done in some games we’ve won, but overall it was shite and most people knew it. I was more pissed off than after some games we’ve lost. It did actually feel like a defeat because without being churlish to Villa, as they played some decent football at times, if we had been playing even a slightly better team we would have been thrashed out of sight. The fact we came at least fairly close to scoring four times and Villa did only once as far as I can remember (the free-kick from Angel) tells a lie about our piss poor performance.
Those of you who know me will realise how much it grieves me to write all this in the manner I have but enough’s enough.
Come on Gerard, I know we’re only two games into the season but let’s get it right before it’s too late. Thing is, this was NOT a knee-jerk reaction of mine. I have put up with stuff for a long time (NEARLY ALL OF LAST SEASON) as all of us have and have never moaned about it neither privately nor publicly but, as I say, enough is enough. I didn't write this piece on the night of the Villa game when there were some right OTT rants, but not all wrong, on all the message boards. I spent a total of six hours writing the piece, editing it and getting it to read just right so it definitely wouldn't be seen as knee-jerk. Four points out of the games against Spurs and at the ground made of wood and yes, things in the garden will seem all rosy again but I don't think it will happen unless Mr. Houllier changes the way we play - he is the only person who can dictate that. Even if we were to take four points from those games WITHOUT the change in style then surely it must be done in the long run because we are never going to win a title playing that way. I'm not saying change the Manager, just the style of play. We have the players to do it. Let them express themselves. Mr. Parry said we would be on the edge of our seats - I'm still waiting.
LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB ARE THE WAY FORWARD.
Peter Evo