Breaking On Through

[Originally printed in Well Red magazine in Summer 2013]

You may not have noticed but Ray Manzarek, founder member and keyboard boffin of 60’s legends, The Doors, died recently.  For someone who fully bought into the whole Jim Morrison mythology, and once spent a particularly fraught afternoon trawling through a Paris cemetery to locate the grave of the erstwhile Lizard King, the passing of Manzarek was a sad occasion.  He always came across as an overly eccentric uncle, slightly frazzled by the excesses of an acid-drenched culture, stubbornly clinging to the last vestiges of hippy idealism.  But basically a decent sort, happy to trade on his memories and his musical legacy.

 

It was while thinking of Ray that a quote came to mind, often erroneously attributed to Morrison but more likely to have been conjured by the bespectacled organ lieutenant. It goes like this:

“There are things known and there are things unknown.  And in between are the doors.”

Now if I was some kind of lazy cleric, desperately trying to fabricate a tenuous connection between his faith and what he perceives to be the modern world, perhaps as a futile attempt to disguise his fear of women and gay people, this would be the point at which I’d say something like “…and, in a funny sort of way, that’s a bit like God.”

But I’m not.  I’m a militant atheist.  So all bets are off, really.

However, in an equally spurious manner I’m happy to take Ray Manzarek’s quote and, in an attempt to reawaken your no doubt flagging interest, apply it to an area that will hopefully resonate more strongly than long-gone psychedelic rock bands and hip priests craving appreciation.

Clearly, I’m talking about Liverpool’s defence.  Bear with me.

There are things known.  We know that there is a glaring need to address certain deficiencies in our back-line.  A vulnerability to set-pieces, an inclination to sit slightly deeper than was anticipated when Brendan Rodgers took over, a lack of concentration which has too often resulted in goals conceded.  The retirement of Jamie Carragher, arguably still our most potent defensive force last season, may have exacerbated such troubles, though the signing of Kolo Toure could well turn out to be a shrewd piece of business. 

True, the team had a creditable clean-sheet record, but this was offset by a disturbing tendency to crumble under pressure, encapsulated by the 17 league games in which our opponents scored two or more times.  Despite the growing influence of sports psychology, it seems that resilience and mental fortitude have not yet become fully embedded within the Anfield dressing room.

There are things unknown.  We don’t know which defenders will or won’t be at the club by the time the transfer window closes.  With Carragher gone, speculation has been rife that Skrtel is on his way out, while murmurs persist that any or all of Agger, Johnson and Enrique may follow. 

Simultaneously, we are linked to a host of potential replacements ranging from the effective yet limited (Williams) to the promising yet unproven (Ilori), via the cult figure cum borderline psychopath (Papadopoulos).  Although, as most of these links are circulated by on-line fantasists whose cravings for attention make Jessie J look like Syd Barrett, you might want to hang fire before dangling a Greek flag from your bedroom window.

And in between are the doors.  At the risk of stretching an analogy to a point previously only attempted in the Director’s Cut of ‘Fight Club’, the doors in this scenario could well be our route to defensive salvation.  For our purposes, flinging open the doors may reveal the future.  For, standing patiently, waiting for their cue to stride forward and kick the bloody things down, are Martin Kelly and Andre Wisdom.

There has been much talk of the need to bolster our defence, to cast our eyes far and wide in the search for the next Carragher, the next Hansen, perhaps even, given our desperation, the next Phil Babb.  Now there’s a prospect to chill the blood.

So, what if there are a couple of ready-made solutions already under our collective noses?  In the limited time Kelly and Wisdom have spent on the pitch they have displayed the kind of assurance, commitment and, most importantly in this context, defensive aptitude more commonly seen in considerably more senior players.  Sure, they have a rawness to their games that reflects their inexperience at the top level.  That’s inevitable. 

But if Brendan Rodgers is prepared to take a deep breath and, either separately or as a bold dual statement, offer them the opportunity to prove they are worthy of a regular first-team place, it could be a move to both define and validate his managerial credentials.

Kelly, in particular, has already shown himself capable of excelling on the biggest stages.  He has started games at Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge, the Emirates and the Etihad.  He’s survived the Mersyside derby maelstrom and shone in European competition.  It’s easily forgotten but, thanks to the impeccable judgement of renowned football visionary, Roy Hodgson, he’s also an England international.

Typically deployed in the right back berth, Kelly has demonstrated the composure and solidity to indicate that he can be more than just a back-up player.  With Glen Johnson’s performances falling anywhere between ‘sublime’ and ‘Degen’ on the competence spectrum, it would be no surprise if Kelly, with his consistency, his physical presence and his hair like a less-punchable Vernon Kay, became a fixture on the teamsheet in the coming season.

 

Though, like many others, I am convinced that Kelly’s long-term future lies in the heart of defence.  He presents all the attributes required to excel in a central position, his pace and comfort in possession seemingly fundamental qualities for a defender in a Rodgers team.  If he can overcome his susceptibility to injury, something which has badly impeded his progress in the last couple of years, Kelly could establish himself as a latter-day Lawrenson, which, I must emphasise to those familiar only with his joyless mission to rescue the art of football analysis from the high-brow musings of Alan Shearer and Robbie Savage, is a very good thing.

Now 23, Kelly seems ideally placed to exert his claim. 

Wisdom, though less advanced in the pecking order, is just as intriguing a prospect.  Still a rookie in the wider scheme of things, it’s rare to find a young defender with such confidence, aggression and positional understanding.  Thrown into the first team in the early part of last season, he never looked out of place.  Like Kelly, he’s mainly been deployed as a right back; also like Kelly, he seems naturally suited to a more central role, where his decision making and leadership qualities can be given free rein.

Whereas other newcomers to the backline have struggled to adapt to the demands placed on them, consequently appearing easy prey to forwards quick to sniff out their vulnerability (*cough* - Coates - *cough*), Wisdom stood out as someone who thrived on the responsibility of the position.  That’s a rare quality and one which, if nurtured correctly, should see him become an integral part of tomorrow’s Liverpool.

In fact, I’ll go further and suggest that if, in 5 years’ time, Wisdom isn’t captaining both club and country, working on his second autobiography and progressing to the latter stages of Strictly Come Dancing, something will have gone very, very wrong.   That’s the kind of career development I think all of our most promising youngsters should aspire to. 

It seems that the club finally understands the benefits of building up and promoting our emerging home-grown talent.  It is the way of the football hipster to bemoan British players as essentially dog-muck; to opine that the only way to ensure real quality is to recruit from more exotic climes, be it Spain, South America or, er, Armenia.  Our recent experiences do little to contradict this.

But, as ever, the truth lies in the margins.  Why don’t we look at the standard of players we already possess, whatever their passport says, and give them the confidence to attain the levels we all want them to reach?   If that means cultivating lads who have grown up as part of the club, who are more likely to be fully in tune with its history, demands and culture, and who may be less inclined to jump ship a few years down the line, then that surely is a strategy we can all get behind?  We acknowledge the need to replace Carragher and Gerrard, players who have become part of the fabric of the club, but struggle to accept that their (eventual) loss will be felt as much for what they represent as anything they have achieved.

So let’s look to Martin Kelly.  Let’s look to Andre Wisdom.  Let’s smash the doors down and watch the new breed storm through.

It’s what Ray Manzarek would have wanted.

And, as his oppo, Jim Morrison, once said, “No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.”

I’m not sure precisely what that means but I’m sure you’d agree, in a funny sort of way, it’s a bit like God….

Losing My Perspective

[This piece was first published in the final printed edition of Well Red magazine, in December 2013.  Our title-winning form since the start of 2014 has, in my head at least, given it even greater relevance.]

Perspective. 

Something we’re always being told we must maintain a sense of, yet no-one can definitively state what it does or doesn’t entail.  An unflinching optimist’s perspective will differ wildly from that of a committed misery-guts and it seems pointless trying to establish any common ground between the outlooks and values they each hold.  Usually, they’ll just end up getting cross and calling each other bad names on the internet.

To confuse matters further, perspectives change as the years pass.  An example: in 1990, it would have been inconceivable to consider a time when Liverpool were not winning league titles.  Granted, we’d just secured our tenth championship trophy in fifteen seasons and had established a dominance not previously seen in the domestic game.  Perspective was a shiny silver trophy with red ribbons tied to it. 

By contrast, for your average Manchester United fan perspective was a series of continual disappointments.  It had been 23 years since the Best, Law, Charlton vintage had delivered their last title triumph, in 1967.  Busby had long gone, Atkinson had flopped and Ferguson had only escaped the chop due to a redemptive FA Cup win.  It would have taken a brave man, or a delusional one, to predict a reversal of the existing order anytime soon.

PANTS

23 years.   It’s now been more than that since the sunny April afternoon in 1990 when Liverpool were last crowned champions.  In the same period United have won thirteen titles, employing a subtle mix of subterfuge, hubris, voodoo and possibly human sacrifice.  And, to a much lesser extent, because they’ve been quite good at winning football matches.  Sticks in the craw, doesn’t it?

I remember what it was like in the ‘80s.  Year after year we knew that we’d be challenging for the league and, if we played to our potential, chances were we’d finish on top.  Villa, Ipswich, Everton, Arsenal – they’d all had their moments, all threatened to gate-crash our perennial end-of -season party.  But we’d always come back even stronger.  Meanwhile, Old Trafford’s drought was extended by another season, and another.  How we laughed at their misfortune, derided their underachievement and gloried in their disarray. 

No-one saw the end coming.  Not really.  True, we might have had some concerns about the manner of our victory in ‘89-90.  We had laboured uncharacteristically on occasion; for the first time Kenny’s judgement was being questioned in some quarters; an increasingly unsettled Anfield crowd had begun to vocalise its disquiet.  But, with the only real challenge coming from an over-performing Aston Villa team, Liverpool did what was needed without ever reaching the devastating heights of two seasons previous, when Barnes, Beardsley and Aldridge shredded defences throughout the division, in much the same way that Paul Merson shreds the English language every time he opens his pie-hole.

If, at that precise point, someone from the future had emerged from an electrical storm like Arnie in The Terminator, to warn us that we were about to be plunged into a bleak 23 year long wilderness, and that the forces of evil, which had lain dormant while we feasted, would soon establish a reign of terror that would blight the land, we’d have locked him in a secure unit and hidden the key under a vase or something.  I don’t know.  I haven’t really thought this through.  We’d definitely have told him to put some pants on though.  Of that I have no doubt.

Effectively, that’s what happened.  Not the stuff with the pants.  That would be hideous.  But the wilderness thing and the reign of terror propagated by Ferguson’s grunting orcs.  They became ugly reality.  And our sense of perspective has never recovered.

JELLY

Most people blame Graeme Souness.  And in truth, they’d have a strong case.   Though the obvious candidate to replace Dalglish when the pressures of Hillsborough finally took their toll, Souness oversaw a seismic overhaul of both the club’s culture and its personnel.  To a degree it may have been needed, as an ageing squad and new restrictions on numbers of non-English players, combined with a spreading complacency, meant that action was required.  But the decisions taken, the players brought in and the abrasive methods used to bend people to his will, meant that within two seasons Souness’s Liverpool had lost the air of invincibility that had sustained the club for so long.

When the dust settled, we were left with a Liverpool that found itself back amongst the mortals.  That this co-incided with a United finally getting its act together and quick to capitalise on the newly-created Premier League’s status as a Murdoch-funded cash-cow, was an accident of timing that could not have worked out much worse.

What was perhaps most painful was the knowledge that our expectations would have to be adjusted.  As much as we all still clung to notions of red supremacy, stark reality had a painful habit of intervening.  However much we fought against the need to keep a level of perspective that reflected our position, we knew that things had changed.  There was no turning back the clock; this was our future and it sucked, big time.

As the years went on, we grew accustomed to our role.  For a while, Roy Evans gave us hope that we could close the gap.  He instigated a style of bright, progressive football that appealed to our aesthetic sense, but which lacked the steely pragmatism of genuine contenders.  The winning mentality that had underscored our dominance had been replaced by a fragility of mind that, isolated instances aside, we have struggled to overcome.

Houllier, too, made us dream of resurrection.  He reminded us what winning trophies felt like, built a solid foundation and took us back to second in the table.  But we were unable to make the final leap, ultimately reverting to the now familiar story of squandered opportunity and entrenched disappointment.

With Benitez, it seemed different.  In bringing us European success, he showed that he was prepared to challenge the biggest and the best head on.  He convinced us that we had nothing to fear and, just to prove it, he took on Mourinho and Ferguson at their own game and left them shaken.  For probably the only time since 1990, we saw a genuine title push and, as Benayoun crashed home a last-gasp winner at Craven Cottage to take us top with seven games to play, we believed it was on.  This time it was really on.

We all know what happened.  Despite the cliché, it’s hard to see a failure as glorious.  But Christ, we came close.  Just four points separated us from the title.  For once we were entitled to let our sense of perspective run away with us.  We were back and our coronation as champions was merely postponed, not cancelled. 

But as we’ve discovered over the years, perspective can be a slippery bugger.  And, almost inevitably, ours was soon brought back into line, like a disobedient pooch that’s soiled a carpet.

What came next was a master-class in expectation management.  Hicks and Gillett, stetson-wearing Horsemen of the Apocalypse, brought the club to its knees. Hodgson, trumpeted as a safe pair of hands, instead resembled a man with grease smeared on his palms attempting to catch jelly as it was fired at him from a cannon made entirely of lard.  Kenny returned to steady the ship and restore our pride, but was then undone by a combination of poor results, badly-perceived transfer deals and executive haste.  Given the vitriol that some of our own supporters aimed at our greatest living legend, it was easy to conclude that he was better off out of it.

TROUSERS

It is now Brendan Rodgers’ turn to see if he can end the wait.  We all knew it was a huge ask.  As the season kicked off, we weren’t just up against the traditional powerhouses, the Uniteds and Arsenals, or the bankrolled behemoths of Chelsea and City.  There was also a newly vibrant Tottenham to contend with, not to mention our increasingly competitive neighbours.  Amid that sort of opposition, not many people seriously saw us as genuine title challengers.  Not really.

As we know, all that’s changed.  United have been Moyesed into oblivion; Tottenham have proved that cashing in on your biggest asset can unexpectedly backfire; Everton have struggled to maintain their early-season form and suffered from a quality shortfall.

We’ve forced our way into genuine contention, playing a brand of football both incisive and effective, and which chimes with the traditions of the club.  We’ve shown the consistency and creativity that has often been lacking in our recent past.  We look capable of winning any game by a landslide, no matter the opposition, and it doesn’t take a top pundit, or Andy Townsend, to point out that that’s a solid base for any team to have.  And we’ve got a manager of conviction and imagination, who has fully bought into the Liverpool ethos and who has the rare gift of coaxing the very best out of his players. 

Put all that together, stand back, and enjoy where this ridiculous ride takes us.

Yes, we’ve had false dawns before.  We’ve become experts at envisaging the oak tree while the acorn is barely in the soil.  But isn’t that what football should be about?  Hope?  Expectation?  Daring to dream? 

I’m done with lying in the gutter.  You just end up with a bad back and mucky trousers.  Let’s aim for the stars.  Let’s decide that this is the year and go all out to make it happen. Let’s win the sodding league.  What’s the worst that could happen?  Don’t answer that.

Me, I’m taking my sense of perspective for a long walk and pushing it in a lake.  After all these years, I’ve realised I don’t need it anymore.  This Liverpool team have given us a new set of ‘what ifs’ and there’s no point holding back now.  We’ve got big fish to fry.

Doesn’t it feel good?

 

 

After The Gold Rush

[Originally published in Well Red magazine, September 2010]

I remember the first time I saw Ian Rush in a Liverpool shirt.  1981.  The League Cup Final Replay.  West Ham in the role of plucky yet ultimately doomed opponents.  Kenny Dalglish provided a moment of sublime invention, latching on to a probing McDermott through ball to hook a subtly executed volley over a bemused, immaculately coiffed Phil Parkes.  Alan Hansen headed the winner, via the outstretched thigh of luckless Hammers skipper, Billy Bonds.  And a scrawny 19 year old from North Wales gave a tantalising glimpse of the future, a future that was to be defined by an almost supernatural capacity for scoring goals and a largely unprecedented accumulation of silverware.

 

Unusually, Rush didn’t score in that game. Indeed, it wouldn’t be until his ninth outing that he managed to open his account for the club, a typically instinctive strike against Finnish minnows, Oulun Palloseura.  Given that the match took place the day after Bill Shankly’s untimely death, the significance of Rush’s goal was not immediately apparent.  But for those who believe that football, on occasion, has the capacity to transcend its populist, media-fuelled status and attain a sense of the mythic, it seemed to represent the passing of the Anfield torch from one glorious generation to the next.  Shankly, more than anyone, would have appreciated the symbolism.

 

From that moment on, there was no stopping Ian Rush.  With a game based on an explosive turn of pace, unmatched anticipation and a calmness in front of goal not seen since the days of Jimmy Greaves, he quickly established himself as the most clinical striker in the country.  For the next six seasons it was a genuine privilege to witness Rush consistently terrorise opposition defences in tandem with the peerless Dalglish, a partnership which came to redefine the concept of a ‘telepathic relationship.’  Where Kenny crafted and probed, all guile and artistry, the consummate sorcerer, his apprentice applied the rapier thrust.  Time and again Rush was on hand to pierce even the most stubborn of rearguards, with a predictability that would have bordered on the monotonous if it hadn’t been so uniquely thrilling.

 

 

Five times in this spell he exceeded the elusive ‘30 goals in a season’ target; twice he reached the 40 mark.  Last minute winners, hat-tricks, crucial cup final strikes, all were included in his repertoire. You didn’t just hope that Ian Rush would score - you expected him to score, you knew that he would score.  More often than not, he didn’t disappoint.

 

Examples of Rush’s goalscoring proficiency spring readily to mind.  There was the historic four-goal haul against habitual victims Everton at Goodison in 1982, a performance later to be immortalised in enduring Kop anthem, ‘Poor Scouser Tommy’; a devastating triple strike on a frozen pitch at Villa Park, including a fiercely lashed volley and a delicate lob bordering on the facetious; a decisive pair in a bitterly fought European Cup semi-final in Bucharest; and, of course, the goals that twice denied Everton the FA Cup, each a masterpiece of composure, execution and timing.  

 

For many Liverpool followers though, even these towering achievements were eclipsed one murky afternoon in October, 1983.  With Luton Town playing to perfection the part of sacrificial lambs, Rush gave arguably the most complete exhibition of the striker’s art ever seen at Anfield.  It wasn’t just the fact that he found the net five times that day.  Nor was it simply the quality and diversity of the strikes, which encompassed instinctive close-range finishes, a flying header and a thunderous volley taken at full pace to despatch a 60 yard Rubble through-ball (one of the great ’forgotten’ Liverpool goals).  No, what was most profoundly memorable for me was that this was the first time I saw an entire defence consumed by fear.  Rush’s mere presence provoked the kind of outright panic seldom displayed on a football pitch, his every touch causing visible consternation and dispute in the Luton ranks.  It was like watching a skilled matador toying with a confused bull, patiently circling his forlorn prey before administering the fatal attack.  It was a brutally efficient, coldly clinical demonstration, showcasing a master craftsman at the peak of his powers.

 

It’s probably fair to say that Ian Rush’s second spell at Anfield, after a troubled though not entirely fruitless season with Juventus, never quite reached the same predatory heights. In fairness, he’d set a standard that was impossible to live up to.  Liverpool’s style of play had evolved in his absence, with the attacking emphasis now largely focused on the power and delivery of John Barnes from the left wing.  Rush, who was accustomed to feeding on the kind of defence-splitting, slide-rule passes perfected by the likes of Dalglish, Molby and McMahon, did not initially appear comfortable in this formation.  However, as with all truly great players he was able to adjust and develop his game and was, within two years of his return, once more the goalscoring fulcrum of a Championship winning team.

 

 

So, just how good was Ian Rush?  Was he as fearsome a finisher as his domestic contemporary, gurning crisp whore, Gary Lineker?  Did he match up to Geordie Messiah, Alan Shearer?  Could he really be classed ahead of Red icons like Hunt, Fowler, Owen (in the days when his integrity was still untarnished) and Torres, as our finest ever striker? 

 

For me there is no debate.  I have never seen a forward more incisive in front of goal, more selfless in support of the team aesthetic, or more reliably consistent when called on to prove his worth than Ian Rush.  It is a tribute to his quality that, in a team overflowing with genuinely world-class performers, he was the most sought after and the most feared talent, as highly regarded on the continent as he was on home shores.  He could be kicked, buffeted, barged or elbowed, marked man-to-man or targeted for intense provocation.  But, at his peak, he could not be stopped.  He just carried on doing what he did best. 

 

He scored goals. 

 

The End Of A Dark, Dark Day

[Written on the day Kenny Dalglish was sacked, 16th May 2012; published in Well Red magazine]

It was the headline on Sky Sports News that got me.

 

‘Liverpool sack Kenny Dalglish.’

 

Screaming gleefully into our front rooms, clear as day, garishly presented on a bright yellow background for added impact.

 

Read it back.  Think about what it means, what those four words say about our football club and where it is at this precise moment. 

 

Our greatest living legend.  The man who won us the European Cup at Wembley; who defied history and logic to lead us to the double in his first season as a manager; who created a team that brought fantasy football to life, the ultimate in artistry and consummate style; who carried a city on his shoulders in its darkest days, at the expense of his own health and well-being; and who answered the call to rescue us from the smouldering ashes that engulfed our club in the aftermath of Hicks, Gillett and Hodgson.

 

Yes.  That Kenny Dalglish.  Sacked.  By hedge fund managers and accountants and people who are infinitely more comfortable with a balance sheet than they will ever be with a team-sheet. 

 
Welcome to Liverpool Football Club, 2012.

 

Because apparently one season is all a man like Kenny Dalglish deserves.  I know this is so because I’ve seen people say it on Twitter and across forums, even at the match.  He’s past it, Dalglish. Hasn’t got a clue anymore.  And so what if he did deliver our first trophy in six years, and come tantalisingly close to a second?  That means nothing to the new breed.  Not when we could be battling it out with Newcastle and Tottenham for fourth place.  That’s where the real glamour is.  The kudos.  The cash.

 

Except, that’s not the way I expect my club to behave. 

 

We’re meant to be different from the rest.  We laugh at Chelsea with their plastic flags and their plastic fans and their revolving door policy when it comes to managers.  We assume an air of self-aggrandising superiority and hark back to history, to tradition and to the ‘Liverpool Way.’

Well, there’s nothing to laugh about now.  Because our owners, the hedge fund managers and the accountants, emboldened by the acquiescence of many of our own supporters, have taken that history and pissed all over it.  And we’re happy to accept it, in the name of brand optimisation and maximised income streams and the viability of ‘the project.’  Effectively, we’ve just become the new Chelsea.

 

And if that means telling the club’s most revered servant that one full season is all he gets to build a team to compete at the highest level, even after two years of stagnation and crippling internal conflict, then so be it. 

 

But be warned.  The benchmark has been set.  And if the next manager, whether it’s Martinez or Benitez or David sodding Moyes fails to get us near a Champions League place next season then don’t start whinging about knee-jerk reactions or short-term thinking when he is thanked for his contribution and sent on his way.

 

We’re now looking for our fourth manager in two years.  That’s the same number we employed in the 32 year period between the arrival of Shankly and the resignation of Dalglish in 1991. Any notion of continuity, of stability, belongs to a Liverpool of the past.  All that matters now is short-term achievement, sponsorship deals and kit marketing.

 

But what price the soul of the club?  What price our reputation as a club that has a unique DNA, an unseen umbilical bond linking all who hold the Liver Bird dear?  For me, part of that died yesterday. 

 

I know all the arguments that are coming my way.  That I’m allowing sentimentality to cloud hard business sense.  That I’m living in the past.  That I’m suggesting that Kenny Dalglish should be judged by a different set of criteria than any other manager.

 

I don’t deny any of that.  And what’s more I’m proud of it.  Because if we can’t apply emotion and bias and the experience of our formative years to discussions of football, then when can we bring them into play?

 

And for me, Kenny Dalglish has done enough for this club to warrant the kind of consideration that no other manager should rightly receive.  Because otherwise, you’re telling me that we should judge him in exactly the same way, and by the same set of values, that we judge Roy Hodgson.  And whether you like it or not, that won’t be happening.

 

Only one man has come out of this debacle with his dignity intact.  It’s the man I stood outside Melwood in August 1977, the week he signed for the club, to get an autograph from.  The man who amazed me week after week with his bravery and craft and commitment.  The man who turned football into art and made that art something we could all enjoy.

 

So farewell, Kenny.  In the end, we didn’t deserve you.

 

It’s been a dark, dark day.

All Apologies

[This article originally appeared in Well Red magazine, September 2012, in the wake of the publication of the Hillsborough Independent Panel report.]

It’s always the same.  You wait 23 years for an apology.  Then loads of them turn up at once.

In other circumstances that might well be a cause for frustration, perhaps even fury.  But this was different. This was unchartered territory. Instead, the overriding feelings were ones of incredulity, righteousness, and immense satisfaction.

The findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel were of such clarity, such magnitude, that the urge to apologise to the families of the victims and, by extension, to the city of Liverpool as a whole, spread like wildfire.  That such an urge had been absent for so long only made it more remarkable.

David Cameron set the ball rolling. A Tory Prime Minister expressing his regret at the actions of an establishment that, to all intents and purposes, he was a product of. And the possible collusion of a government he holds as a shining beacon of modern conservative ‘values.’  And doing so with what appeared to be genuine sincerity and commitment.  All this from a man who, less than a year earlier had compared the campaign for justice to ‘a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn’t there.’ From that moment, we knew that we were witnessing something truly momentous. 

Ed Miliband quickly followed suit, reminding us that his party too had singularly failed to support the Hillsborough families.  Jack Straw, who, when Home Secretary, judged there was insufficient evidence to sanction a fresh inquest, shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

The floodgates opened.  And the authorities who had long been complicit in negligence, incompetence and blame shifting were queuing up to get in on the act, as if desperate to offload vast reservoirs of empathy and compassion, reservoirs which have lain untroubled for 23 years and now, we were expected to believe, were overflowing with earnest and heart-felt remorse.

Sheffield Wednesday FC, whose ground was woefully ill-suited to stage such an event, who failed to ensure a valid safety certificate was in place and whose primary concern, according to the Hillsborough Panel, had been “to limit costs.”  Sorry.

The current Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, David Crompton, who, in fairness, made no attempt to diminish the well-documented failings of those whose actions had now unequivocally been shown to have led to the disaster.  Sorry.

Boris Johnson.  Loveable, bumbling, victim-blaming gobshite Boris. Sorry.

Dominic Mohan, editor of The Sun, bravely seeking to bolt the stable door 23 years after the horse gleefully dropped its muck all over the people of Liverpool.  Sorry.

Kelvin MacKenzie. Vermin. ‘Sorry.’

The FA, whose culpability for the catastrophe has long been underplayed, be it in neglecting prior concerns as to the suitability of Hillsborough, ignoring crowd safety issues at previous semi-finals, or failing to insist that the safety certificate was in place.  And who pressured Liverpool into making a decision on replaying the match or face expulsion from the competition within days of the disaster.  Sorry (“…that the tragedy occurred at a venue the FA selected.”).

Irvine Patnick, whose eagerness to believe the most vicious lies without a shred of evidence (and who made damn sure the media were fully aware of them) went a long way towards establishing the narrative of drunken corpse-robbing, police-beating hooligans that was to run for more than two decades.  Sorry.

Norman Bettison, who appears hell-bent on instigating a cover-up to hide his involvement in the original cover-up, issued a statement reeking of arrogance and self-preservation, and which refuted his need to apologise. Then he apologised for it.

What is it they say about sorry being the hardest word?  Not anymore. Not when we’ve seen those pricked by a guilty conscience or terrified that their collusion may be exposed practically falling over each other to profoundly, solemnly, sincerely, profusely declare their deepest contrition.

23 years.  What kept you?

After all, it’s not as if this was all a big surprise.  Most of the evidence has been in the public domain since the interim Taylor Report was issued, just four months after that dark April afternoon.  There was no grey area, no obfuscation.  Taylor spelled it out, without caveats or provisos: “The main reason for the Disaster was a failure of police control.”

Where were the apologies then?  When they might have actually counted for something?

Hillsborough Panel member, Phil Scraton, has written a number of books outlining the causes.  He highlighted the systemic police campaign to discredit the Liverpool supporters.  He pointed out that all the victims, children included, had been tested for alcohol consumption.  He revealed that scores of statements which threatened to portray a negative picture of police competence had been doctored.  He spoke passionately of “institutional complacency and gross negligence by those in positions of power ….and deceitful allegations that attempt to shift responsibility onto the victims and their families. “

So why have the families been running into judicial brick walls for 23 long, painful years?  I guess it’s just a lot easier to hide behind collective apologies after the fact.  Saves all that messy ‘liability’ business.  And if the reputation of an entire city is dragged through the gutter in the process, that’s a small price to pay to maintain the Establishment equilibrium.

At this point, what does an apology mean anyway? Beyond an attempt to salve individual guilt?  And possibly try to head off any further repercussions down the line?

Although anything that helps to give the families comfort, and smoothes their path to a form of justice they are able to accept, is to be welcomed, ultimately it’s not apologies that we want.  It’s proper accountability.  It’s a fresh inquest.  It’s explanations. 

We know the police were negligent, that the FA and Sheffield Wednesday were complicit and that the media were happy to spread misinformation.  The Independent Report spells this out – logically, clinically, devastatingly.  Thanks to the Panel everyone now knows what happened.

We need to understand why.  Who gave the orders? Who was at the heart of the cover-up? How high did it go?

Because this matters.  Don’t let people tell you it doesn’t.  Watergate brought down a President yet ultimately it stemmed from little more than a bungled break-in at a Washington hotel.  At Hillsborough, 96 people lost their lives.  No-one in authority lost so much as a day’s pay.  Is that the kind of society you want to be a part of?

The Truth is now out there.  Those who continue to ignore it or actively choose to believe their own self-concocted vitriol have been thoroughly discredited.  They’ll probably always be around, twisted by hatred, compelled by tribal loyalty, nourished by ignorance.  But now they are the ones who are out of step, marginalised, derided.  If the apologies have done anything they have established a new consensus and, for once, it’s on our side.

The reaction within the city brought back memories of a Liverpool I used to know.  Not the self-pity city of media legend.  Not the benefit claiming, militant bogey-man of the right wing press.  Not the Liverpool of brand optimisation, soundbites and PR-enhancing documentaries.  This was a city defiant, proud and, above all, united.  A city that refused to give in when told again and again that this was a fight it couldn’t possibly win.

And those who have been at the forefront of the fight will always have our heart-felt thanks.  To the lengthy roll-call of glorious names in our club’s history, to Shankly, Liddell, Paisley, Dalglish, Hunt, Hughes, Rush, Barnes, Gerrard, we must now add the likes of Aspinall, Williams, Hicks, Coleman, Rotherham and Burnham.  Their tenacity, commitment and unswerving determination to uncover the truth warrant the highest possible recognition.

The bereaved will never get over the pain of their loss.  All we can hope is that the wheels are now firmly set in motion and that they finally receive the answers, the comfort, and the justice for which they have pleaded for so many years.

They deserve so much more than apologies.

The Cup That Time Forgot

[Originally published in Issue 7 of Well Red magazine - April / May 2011]

 

 

 

Rome. Istanbul. Paris. Dortmund. Wembley.  The settings for some of our greatest triumphs. Occasions that are embedded in Liverpool folklore. Matches that live on in our songs and in our memories. Trophies that illuminate and define our history.  For, as was often said, before Ian Ayre and his bean-counting bosses moved the goalposts, Liverpool FC exists only to win trophies.

The longer we went without success, the more intense our yearning for silverware. It is therefore only right that we approach each new season with a burning desire to be victorious in every competition we enter, be it the smugly self-regarding Premier League, the unjustifiably pompous Europa League or the sporting equivalent of Netto’s own-brand cornflakes, the Capital One Cup. 

But it hasn’t always been like that.  Mention the name “Screen Sport Super Cup” to Merseyside football supporters of a certain vintage and you’re likely to be met with a weary shrug of indifference and the same kind of resigned apathy that enables slack-jawed charisma void, Vernon Kay, to maintain a media career free from the threat of chemical castration. To the uninitiated, victory in the ironically-titled Super Cup represents further confirmation of Liverpool’s 80’s pre-eminence. To those unfortunate enough not to have expunged all traces of it from their memories, it was a tournament that no-one wanted to enter and no-one was bothered about winning.  In hindsight, it was doomed from the outset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the by-products of the expulsion of English teams from European competition in the wake of the Heysel disaster was the loss of lucrative revenue streams for the qualifying clubs.  In an attempt to plug the income gap the Football League, under the adroit governance of human raincloud, Graham Kelly, hit upon the idea of a tournament involving those teams directly affected.  And so, with notions of glory and the pursuit of excellence taking a backseat to cold economic pragmatism, the Super Cup was born. 

Admittedly, the prospect of a midweek trek to Norfolk or Salford was shrouded in slightly less glitter than a trip to Vienna or Bilbao (or Runcorn, if truth be told), but beggars, we were reminded, could not afford to be choosers. However, given the lack of enthusiasm from the competing parties, the diffidence of the television companies and the failure to attract worthwhile sponsorship, an inter-club Top Trumps championship may have held more widespread appeal.  And would certainly have carried greater prestige.

Effectively, the Super Cup brought together some of the biggest names in the football stratosphere – Liverpool, Manchester United, er…Norwich – locked them in a disused warehouse, encouraged them to chuck pieces of mouldy cake at each other for a couple of hours and then forgot about them. It was an exercise in futility, derided, devalued and unloved, and ultimately amounted to little more than a passing curiosity, a scribbled postscript at the bottom of Liverpool’s extensive roll-call of honours.

Which is not to say that it was a competition totally without interest.  As one of the 16,000 people at Anfield for our opening game, against an equally unenthused Southampton team, it was a rare treat to witness a situation where the voices of the players drowned out the noise of the crowd.  If nothing else, it was a valued insight into how life must be as an Everton season ticket holder. 

Similarly, the sight of Ron Atkinson’s Manchester United finishing bottom of their three team group behind both Everton and Norwich, winless after four matches, provided amusement to rank alongside Paul Walsh’s mullet-gone-wild or Howard Kendall’s IMAX forehead.

 

 

 

With the bare minimum of effort, Liverpool progressed to the final, a two-legged affair against our beloved neighbours, although it was by now abundantly clear that this was a tournament to rank somewhere alongside the coveted ‘Tidiest Moustache’ award on the club’s wider list of priorities. 

Like a bloated Dr. Frankenstein acutely aware of the horror of its creation, the Football League belatedly realised it had to destroy the Super Cup.  What better way to achieve this than to shunt the final, the showpiece event, back a season, staging it more than twelve months after the competition’s initial commencement?  And, in bitter acknowledgement of its failure to fire the imagination of the media, to rename it after the unknown cable channel that eventually agreed to sponsor it, at a market rate rumoured to be the equivalent of seven Chomp bars and an old Billy Joel album?

 

In fairness the two-legged final provided much to enjoy, with an Everton team containing players of the calibre of Peter Billing, Kevin Langley and Neil Adams meekly surrendering, both home and away, to an oddly motivated Liverpool. Although the 7-2 aggregate scoreline is remembered now principally for Ian Rush’s five-goal haul, my personal highlight took place in the first leg at Anfield, when Steve McMahon’s long range header exploded into Bobby Mimms’ net, a strike that contravened several commonly accepted laws of physics and geometry.

Passage of time makes it easy to over-romanticise such incidents.  Take Jan Molby’s legendary goal against Manchester United in 1985.  In my mind’s eye I still see Big Jan ploughing through United players like a portly Robocop on a mission to rescue an imperilled kebab, before detonating a shot to leave keeper, Gary Bailey, with a face coated in black ash in the style of  Wile E. Coyote after a cartoon explosion.  Similarly, to me McMahon will always be suspended eight feet off the ground somewhere near the Anfield centre circle, the ball exploding from his forehead with the velocity of a speeding truck, accompanied by the thud of 20,000 jaws simultaneously hitting the floor in awed wonder.  This is my Super Cup memory and no-one can take it away from me.

Legend has it that, during the lap of honour after the Goodison victory, Ian Rush presented the Super Cup trophy to one of the ball-boys and told him to keep it in his bedroom.  Whether he did as instructed or exchanged it for a pack of Panini stickers in the schoolyard the following morning has gone undocumented. Suffice to say, it was never required again.  The competition was abandoned as a failed experiment with as much haste as it was introduced.

It wasn’t missed.

But at least it was a trophy.  Wasn’t it?