Liverpool no longer walking alone
Liverpool were the first thing in life I can remember hating. The first time I can remember crying is when they ended my beloved Nottingham Forest’s 42-league game unbeaten run one November Saturday in 1978.
Even though that 2-0 defeat happened way across the water in Anfield, it felt like it happened just next door. Because it was next door.
The neighbours had a kid called Keelin who was a Liverpool fanatic. When I covered every wall in my bedroom with Forest posters and pennants, he trumped it by putting some Liverpool ones on his ceiling.
He had a collection of teddy bears each named after a Liverpool player. He even had a reserve team, one teddy having the distinction of being named Oggie after Ray Clemence’s reliable back-up Steve Ogrizovic. But it was Clemence who was the real bane of my life.
Keelin was a pretty good goalkeeper himself and an even better John Motson impersonator and every day he’d kick that ball off the wall and then dive like the safest hands in football, Gordon Stewart or Clemence himself, to tip it away. ‘Oh, I say, what a save from Clemence!’ The worst thing about it was Keelin’s wire/net was only metres from our bathroom. Almost any time a family member of ours paid a daylight visit to those quarters it would be accompanied by an orgasmic, screaming running commentary on how Clemence and Liverpool had saved and won the day again.
Nothing stays the same though. A couple of years later our family packed our bags and moved to Cork. Keelin would eventually have packed away the teddies. Forest stopped winning leagues and European Cups and about a decade later even Liverpool stopped doing the same.
None of us back in 1990 when Ronnie Rosenthal was banging them in that spring could have known they were on the verge of going almost a quarter of a century without winning a title. But then their legendary manager stepped down, a fellow Scottish manager replaced him and a once-dominant team suddenly barely scraped sixth spot, well behind Arsenal in fourth (something you’d never see again anywhere, right?).
Liverpool have since had some decent teams that we quite liked, though not outright admired or respected. This time back in 1996 Fowler and Collymore and company were playing with the kind of irresistible swagger that Suarez and Sturridge and are right now. We had a particular fondness for the 2001 squad with their four-man striker rotation, even if Owen, Fowler, Heskey and Litmanen with their alternative treble wasn’t quite of the vintage of United’s 1999 quartet of Cole, Yorke, Sheringham and Solskjaer. And being Irish, we’ve sometimes pondered could they have won the title in 2009 if Robbie Keane had been kept for the entirety of the season; he wasn’t maybe of the calibre of back-up to Torres like Fowler was to Owen in 2001 but when you consider the unlikely game-changer and match-winner of that run-in, there was surely an evening or two that spring where Robbie could have done a Federico Macheda, or Ronnie Rosenthal even.
This season is different. They may still be a bit threadbare in reserve but with no European campaign to distract or fatigue them, for this season they may well get away with it. They’ll hardly falter like the team of ’96 did, Brendan Rogers having instilled hardiness into them that gentleman Roy Evans could not quite do with the infamous Spice Boys. Rogers talks about having both steel and style and his side have plenty of both, which along with their nearest rivals having plenty of money and won titles in recent years is another reason why so many of us once-Liverpool-haters-now-neutrals would like to see them get over the line.
Above all there’s the fact it’s a further five years on since Steven Gerrard last went so close but so far from finally winning a title.
It’s a funny thing about soccer that for all the talk there is in it about showing us your medals, we don’t talk as much about specific medals. In a recent poll Robbie Keane was listed as one of Ireland’s greatest sportsmen when Damien Duff didn’t even make the list, even though Duff is the one with two Premiership medals. In Gaelic games you’d always give the edge to the man who has won more All-Ireland medals. You talk about best players yet to or never to win an All-Ireland. You rarely get that in soccer but we have it now. Neutrals like me would love to see Stevie Gerrard finally win his All-Ireland.
For years we were more than glad to let Liverpool fans walk alone but this time we’ll clap them some of the way. They’ve suffered enough while we couldn’t be enjoying them more.
You’re forgiven, Keelin. Scream away, lad.
