Despite Fergie, young squad may win titles
Yes, as you may have heard, it’s supposedly all “gone too far” between our two sets of fans over the past few years and thus Sunday was club-mandated gestures and hands o’er the water all-round. To the extent, indeed, that bits of the once-hallowed Scoreboard End were festooned with posters celebrating Liverpool’s quintet of European Cups, apparently in the belief that the cave-dwelling segments of the LFC travelling support would, this time, decline to wreck the place.
I think you can guess what my, and every other non-lobotomsed Red’s, reaction was to THAT bit of interior decoration. You’ll have to guess, anyway, as it is unprintable.
I will always be prejudiced against Scousers – I suspect I’m too old to change now – and I will always loathe/fear/secretly respect LFC, but the grim events of this footballing century make me realise that Mammon in general and the Glazers/Abramoviches in particular are far worthier of death-wishing.
None of that, of course, detracts one iota from the joy of Sunday. The rumours flying around Manchester all week about Benitez’s relationship with his dressing room — and those surrounding Gerrard and his missus — seemed to promise an under the weather Liverpool. So it proved.
We weren’t that good; but it was obviously good enough to beat one of the most wretched ‘Pools in years. And I suppose one must ‘give it up’, as they say in da ‘hood, to Rio; his sense of timing is impeccable. Must be that childhood dance training — The Moment is everything.
My teeth may be gritted but the ‘thank you’ is still sincere.
Can we now start to believe, then? I had previewed the match as a Top Four clash in all but name, but as the London Independent brutally pointed out “there is no added kudos for beating a side who sit only two points ahead of Manchester City.” Ouch. And as the paper pointed out, City’s manager is barely clinging onto his job. So apparently we now have to wait for November 26th and the Chelsea clash to be able to say we have proved we are contenders once more, especially given our failure against Arsenal.
It is almost a case in which one can say that IN SPITE, not because of, Fergie and Quieroz’s management, this squad might still pull some silverware out of the horizon.
Thus it is that you will get plenty of Reds, even today, after a weekend like that, who will see United at the top of the table and Euro-qualified yet will still argue ‘Fergoz’ needs to go no later than June. Or put another way: imagine what this squad might achieve under a young, vibrant, imaginative new regime, and with a little bit more money thrown at it?
As if on cue, then, comes another bout of transfer talk for the forthcoming window, expect that in this month’s positive frame of mind, people are now looking at prospective purchases not as desperation stakes saviour-appeals but as the final pieces of a potentially championship-winning jigsaw.
And why not? After all, if Carrick truly started acting like a €25 million player, and Ronaldo ‘n’ Rooney hit simultaneous playing orgasm, whilst Scholes, Solskjaer and Saha continued to avoid injury and form slump, isn’t the sky the limit?
So we have Hargreaves and his agent blatantly begging for a winter bid; Camp Beckham talking up a sensational return and both Torres and Atletico making noises that the summer’s great missed open goal may be re-presented to us.
That is assuming, of course, that we have any directors left to sanction any deals, of which more next week….
lRichard Kurt is author of The Red Army Years.
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