Shankly's Last Stand

[Originally published in Well Red magazine, November 2013]

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Of course, none of us realised at the time.  To the massed ranks of Liverpool fans crammed into Wembley that May afternoon in 1974, we were simply witnessing further confirmation of Bill Shankly’s Midas touch.  Another trophy for the collection, following swiftly on the heels of the previous season’s League and UEFA Cup double. There were plenty of reasons to be optimistic that the Shankly Empire would continue its inexorable journey towards football supremacy.

It would be another couple of months before reality intervened, bringing the events at Wembley into stark focus. Because the emphatic Cup Final defeat of an impotent Newcastle side would herald not just an addition to Anfield’s burgeoning trophy cabinet, but, unthinkably, the end of the Shankly era.

Many theories have been put forward to explain Bill Shankly’s decision to resign that summer.  And while it’s no doubt true that there were multiple contributing factors, the football idealist in me leans towards the romantic explanation – that he saw the Cup Final performance as the culmination of 15 years work, the point where all his hopes and dreams for Liverpool Football Club coalesced magnificently in one devastatingly ruthless performance that provided a template for the club’s future success. And, as a boxing devotee, Shankly knew that the best time to go out is when you’re at your absolute peak.

                                                          

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In many ways, the 1973/74 season would be a defining one in terms of shaping the ethos that would eventually allow Liverpool to dominate both home and abroad.   Although Shankly was always ready to refine his approach and had long prioritised players with game awareness who were comfortable in possession, one particular opponent caused a rethink in the famous Bootroom as the campaign progressed.

In the autumn, Yugoslav champions, Red Star Belgrade defeated Liverpool in the second round of the European Cup. While Shankly was never one to accept a loss with good cheer, this felt somehow different.  Not since the defeat to Ajax seven years earlier had he seen his team so comprehensively out-thought, let alone outplayed.  It emphasised that, if Liverpool were to reach the next level, they would need to adopt the basic tenets of the continental game and blend them with their own tried and trusted methods.

With a nod to both Red Star and the wildly effective Dutch team spearheaded by Johan Cruyff, the structure of the new Liverpool would be firmly rooted on principles of retaining possession, building from the back and positional fluidity.  Traditional stopper, the previously ever-present Larry Lloyd, was sacrificed.  Players with greater technical qualities, Hughes, Smith and the fledgling Thompson, all with experience of operating in midfield, were asked to redefine themselves as ball-playing defenders.  Heighway and Keegan interchanged across the front line, Cormack, Hall and Callaghan were intelligent enough to switch roles in line with the development of play.  Students of Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool can trace the origins of his much vaunted philosophy back to Shankly’s realisation, in the wake of the Red Star tie, that the need to adapt was fundamental to prolonged success.

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In the domestic league, Liverpool had been unable to overhaul a Leeds team finally fulfilling its immense potential.  A second place finish was respectable enough.  But it wasn’t first; it wasn’t a trophy. 

The FA Cup, now derided, undermined and staged more as a corporate sponsorship convention than an historic sporting event, was still, in 1974, the most glamorous football tournament in the calendar.  It also held significant sentimental value for Bill Shankly; the 1965 triumph, the club’s first in the competition, would always be his most treasured memory.

Having dispatched perennial bogey-team, Leicester City, in a semi-final replay, with the Toshack – Keegan partnership in perfect synchronicity, Liverpool prepared for the challenge of an unpredictable Newcastle United at Wembley.

The build-up was dominated by talk of how Newcastle centre forward, bow-legged braggart Malcolm Macdonald, was going to destroy the Liverpool back-line.  That such talk emanated, in the main, from Macdonald’s own mouth couldn’t disguise the fact that Newcastle, at their best, would provide a stern test.  In fairness, Macdonald had notched a hat-trick against Shankly’s team on his Newcastle debut a couple of years earlier and had grabbed a brace in the semi-final with Burnley to secure the Magpies’ place at Wembley.

But if Macdonald’s bravado was a clumsy attempt to wrestle the psychological initiative away from Liverpool, he overlooked the fact that, in Bill Shankly, he was dealing with the master.   Without so much as a word, Shankly pinned Macdonald’s threats up in the team hotel prior to the game.  Effectively, his team-talk had been done for him. 

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The match started cautiously, both sides probing without genuine intent, each wary of the danger posed by the other.  Gradually, Liverpool established a degree of control, though scoring opportunities were few.  There was, however, a sense that Newcastle were becoming increasingly stretched, that they were exerting maximum effort to merely keep Liverpool at bay.  Liverpool, you felt, had higher gears to ascend to.

In the second half, to tumultuous effect, all gears were engaged.  It was as if Bill Shankly had entered the dressing room at half time and said to his players, “Show them what you can do,” giving the green light for a performance of confidence, incisiveness, mobility and crushing superiority.

The nominal 4-3-3 system Shankly now employed, with defenders encouraged to carry the ball forward to start attacks and positional flexibility paramount, provided full license for Liverpool’s array of talents to be displayed.  Keegan buzzed like a hyper-active bluebottle; Heighway’s intelligent probing opened crevices in the Newcastle back-line; Callaghan offered tireless running and unerring accuracy; Thompson deposited Macdonald, mouth and all, in his back pocket and left him there for the rest of the afternoon.

It was just a matter of time.  Lindsay rampaged from his own half deep into Newcastle territory, collected a rebound and exploded a missile of a shot from an oblique angle into the roof of the net.  One of the great cup final goals.   Disallowed.  An over-zealous linesman flagged for offside, wrongly assuming the return pass had come from Keegan; replays confirmed the injustice.  As an aside, the look of utter dejection on Lindsay’s face when realisation dawns is enough to crack the steeliest heart.

But this was justice delayed not denied.  Shortly afterwards, the deluge began.  Keegan controlled on the edge of the Newcastle penalty area before lashing a fierce volley into the top corner.  1-0.

Heighway latched on to a Toshack flick, cutting in from the left wing, Keegan’s run drew two defenders away from the middle, Heighway arrowed a low diagonal drive of control and precision back in the direction he’d just come from.  2-0.

Further chances were spurned, as Liverpool put on an exhibition that was as close to the fabled ‘total football’ of Rinus Michels’ Holland as anything yet seen from a British team.  The final goal only served to emphasise it.  In a sequence of play resembling a ‘pass and move’ masterclass, during which Keegan started on the left wing, Tommy Smith toyed with the ailing Newcastle defence down the right wing and Cormack finished up as centre forward, the coup de grâce was applied from close range by Liverpool’s number 7.  3-0. Game over.

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In the immediate aftermath of Liverpool’s second FA Cup triumph, all seemed well.  The club basked in the praise that came its way, as the most complete Cup Final performance in recent memory was widely acknowledged.  With a team ready to prove itself the best in the land and a manager who inspired unparalleled devotion from players and supporters, the prospects were brighter than they had been for nearly a decade.

Shankly knew the club’s future was assured.  He also suspected that the structure he had established, and the knowledge base honed over the previous fifteen years, would ensure a line of continuity long after his departure. 

And, unbeknown to most, he was tired.  Traditional Messiahs granted themselves a day on which to rest; Bill Shankly had no time for such luxuries.  For him Liverpool was an all-consuming passion – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. 

So, he felt it was the right time to step aside, safe in the belief that a secure, long-lasting framework for sustained success was in place.  And, regardless of his later regrets and the fractured relationship with the club he built (but not the supporters – never the supporters), in that he was absolutely spot on.

Shankly had the satisfaction of seeing all his work come to fruition.  The performance at Wembley in 1974, where Liverpool reached heights few even aspire to, stands as a fitting testament to everything he created.

Brookside Closed

First published in the The Anfield Wrap magazine, issue 5 - December 2013

It didn’t take long, really.

I mean, we’d heard all the talk that this was going to be a different kind of soap, that this was a bold departure from the comfortable insularity of Coronation Street or the creaking melodrama of Crossroads.  And we hoped it’d be a showcase for a Liverpool that was not usually shown in the media; a Liverpool that consisted of more than the dole and the riots and the crumbling, derelict buildings that told of a city left to rot.  In short, we wanted it to capture just a hint of our real essence, not just pander to time-worn caricatures.

Halfway through the first episode it was already obvious that, whatever we were getting, it wasn’t going be pretty.  As Barry Grant defends his errant younger brother from accusations of graffiti, on the grounds that “It couldn’t be our Damon – he spells ‘Bollocks’ with only one ‘L’”, you can almost hear the sound of tea-cups crashing to the floor across middle England.  Throw in a shamelessly glorious altercation between Damon and his endearingly gormless sidekicks which crowbars two ‘pissings’, one ‘piss off’ and a ‘dickhead’ into a 20 second exchange, and it was clear that Brookside was setting out its manifesto right from the start.

For the next two decades, it continually managed to defy expectations while too often failing to grasp just what those expectations were.  It moved from holding a mirror up on society’s injustices to feeding the same society’s craving for cheap, vicarious thrills and in the process it misplaced the very qualities that had marked it out as special.  When its end came, few cared.  And for a programme which set out to prove that soaps could, indeed should, be relevant, that was the biggest failure of all.

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It had all been so different in 1982 when Brookside first elbowed its way onto the nation’s television screens, the unpolished jewel in the infant Channel 4’s ambitious new schedule.  Different in all kinds of ways. 

It looked different.  These were real houses in a real West Derby estate.  There were no studio sets with their trembling walls and restricted camera angles.  When characters went upstairs we were able to follow them; when they went round to a neighbour’s house for a chat or a barney, we went with them.  There was no convenient central meeting point where the inhabitants could congregate and interact, no Rovers Return or Queen Vic.  This meant that storylines were largely self-contained, and wherever possible, the focus was on day-to-day living and what went on within families behind their own front doors.  A bit like real life.

It sounded different.  Of course, by the early 1980s there was nothing new about regional accents on television, even Scouse ones.  Since the heady days of The Beatles, a certain cachet, a kind of rough glamour even, had been attached to the Liverpool dialect, though, ‘Boys From The Black Stuff’ aside, this was very much within the context of what the establishment was prepared to endorse.  It’s fair to say that Cilla, Tarby and Tom O’Connor were perhaps not wholly representative of a city still trying to put out the fires of Toxteth.   But Brookie changed all that.  This was the sort of language we could recognise.  Lads called each other ‘dickhead’ and ‘divvy’ every day – why shouldn’t that be reflected in a programme apparently designed to show us as we were, warts, wedges and all?

Of course, a media outcry ensured that the rougher edges were soon smoothed down and dialogue more acceptable to an early evening audience was introduced.  Though it’s interesting to note that by the time of its demise Brookside had come full circle, then pushed on a bit further just for kicks, with widespread effing and jeffing and a return to the uncompromising verbals of its early days.  It wasn’t big and it wasn’t clever, but it was the last flicker of a flame many thought had long been extinguished.  And, it reminded you that, at its best, Brookie was never afraid to kick against the pricks.

This was most evident in the issues and themes that ran through the programme’s early years.  And in this, the difference between Brookside and its contemporaries was clearly defined. While Coronation Street could command viewing figures in the tens of millions, it had become for many an escape from everyday existence, not an echo of it.  Though solidly written and acted, it had moved away from its kitchen-sink origins to embrace a more absurdist, cartoon depiction of working class northern life.  Brookside creator, Phil Redmond, wanted his new soap to be the antithesis of that.  And to achieve this, he placed the emphasis on social realism and the inevitable fall-out when families have to deal with the weight of everyday living.

So we got politics.  Not just the odd murmur about the cost of a pint of milk. Real politics. Discussions, arguments about the issues that were genuinely affecting the people tuning in.  The despair of unemployment, the impact of redundancy, the emasculation of trade unions, the conflicts and consequences of industrial action, the alienation of the young, the black economy, the NHS, the impact of religion on personal relationships.   All played out against a backdrop of Thatcher’s ideological war on the north, its industries and its social values.  It may not sound like a recipe for prime-time success but for a while it made for compelling television.  And it showed that a soap could be gritty and serious and issues-led whilst maintaining the personal interactions and lighter touches that viewers had come to expect.  Over at the BBC someone was clearly taking notes, as within 3 years Eastenders was launched, eager to poke its head through the door Brookie had kicked open.

Of course, it would have been easy to dismiss Brookside’s approach as patronising and opportunistic, had it not been for the quality of its contributors and the artfulness and conviction with which they brought the storylines to life.  It became a breeding ground for a generation of writers and actors who went on to achieve great things and who are rightly acknowledged among the best in their field.  People like Jimmy McGovern, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Shaun Duggan and John Godber, all of whom cut their writing teeth on the Close.  People like Sue Johnston, Ricky Tomlinson, Amanda Burton and Anna Friel, whose skills were honed and whose careers were launched via Brookie’s suburban dramas.

While we’re at it, it also threw up some of the most intriguing, well-developed, perhaps morally ambiguous, characters yet to be seen on British television.  Of course there were the staples, the Grants (the anchor and heart of the programme for its initial years), the Jacksons, the Collins’s and the Corkhills.  But even on the periphery Brookside was a treasure-trove of charismatic wannabe gangsters and loveable oddballs, encapsulated by the formidable Tommy McArdle and personal favourite, Gizzmo Hawkins, a greasy teenage mix of Roy Cropper and Bobby Gillespie.  We will never see their like again.

Inevitably, it had its faults.  At times, it was guilty of portraying a questionable attitude towards female characters.  Perhaps reflecting the struggles of a society in transition, the Close’s women were frequently defined solely in terms of their relationships with men and, as such, largely excluded from any position of economic power.  Attempts to advance beyond the traditional confines of the kitchen resulted in their on-screen ‘punishment’, through any combination of rape (Sheila Grant), guilt-tripping (Patricia Farnham), domestic violence (Mandy Jordache), accusations of infidelity (Doreen Corkhill), murder (Sue Sullivan) or the eventual side-lining and departure of the character (Chrissy Rogers).  Though this also served to highlight the insecurities of the male protagonists, its main function was only to reinforce established gender stereotypes.  It represented a chance missed.

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For a programme that had blazed a trail in the 1980s, its decline and eventual demise were a symptom of both a changing political climate and a shift in the media landscape.  The introduction of the Brookside Parade, a development of shops, restaurants and bars, marked a geographical shift away from the Close and mirrored the growing national obsession with entrepreneurship.  It also marked the point at which Brookside abandoned its political and social roots and began the evolution towards increasingly outlandish, melodramatic plots.  As quickly became apparent, there’s a fine line between cutting-edge drama and gratuitous sensationalism.

Perhaps the battles of the 80s had all been fought and there was no more call for a programme documenting what were largely working class concerns, particularly when the working class was, to all intents and purposes, in retreat.  Thatcher had gone, to be replaced by John Major’s neutered, cardboard cut-out approximation of a Prime Minister.  The viciousness of Tory ideology had ostensibly softened (or rather, had gone into hibernation before brutal rebirth 20 years later), leaving in its wake a watered-down facsimile that inspired apathy rather than outright hostility.  In the eyes of the media, we were all middle class now.   And, so the premise ran, we wanted to be entertained, not preached at.

And, as the battle for viewers intensified, we got ever more ludicrous storylines.  Incest, the body under the patio, sieges, the lesbian kiss, Lindsey Corkhill the drug smuggler, religious cults, a killer virus, Lindsey Corkhill the gun-toting gangster, bombs, explosions, more sieges.  When Lindsey Corkhill (of course Lindsey Corkhill) got embroiled in a lesbian love triangle with her own mum, it was clear that Brookside hadn’t so much jumped the shark as parascended over Sea World and pissed in Flipper’s eye.  And when a police helicopter fell from the sky onto the Parade, it seemed as much an act of mercy as a desperate grab for ratings. 

So, after 21 years, it was yanked off our screens.  Oddly, in its death throes it managed to recapture at least some of the spirit that had once made it essential viewing.  In the final minutes of the final episode, with the darkness, and the credits, closing in for the last time, uber-scally Jimmy Corkhill held court in an armchair on the lawn like a Scouse Canute, raging, raging against the dying of the light.  In a scattergun polemic that could have been titled ‘Phil Redmond’s Last Stand’, Jimmy rails against all manner of power structures and cultural elites – television, newspapers, the ruling establishment, food distribution, drugs policy, religion.  Yes, it was self-pitying, self-serving and frankly all over the place ideologically, but it was also kind of thrilling.  It harked back to a time when Brookside wasn’t afraid to confront the political consensus head on and offered one of the few dissenting voices in the mainstream media. And it serves as a reminder that Russell Brand wasn’t the first drug-addled scruff to shine a torch on the failures and hypocrisies of the governing class.   Jimmy Corkhill was there ten years before him.  Face it, you never got that with Ian Beale.

But then Brookside always was a different kind of soap.  It might have moved away from its roots; it might have turned into the kind of programme it initially offered an alternative to; it might have ended up pulling its punches. 

But for a while, at least it knew who to punch.  And that’s no bad thing.

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.