I wish we’d fail so you’ll see I’m right
A winning team is boring. Yeah right, boo hoo — good football and a superior league position. Life is hellish.
But recent games have followed a familiar pattern: early luck, goal from Torres, goal from Gerrard, frustrating period of opposition keep-ball, final flurry, three points.
It’s becoming awkward for those who doubted the manager’s ability to prevent the thread his job hangs by from finally snapping.
The Rafapologista are getting cockier. It’s not worth wasting the energy needed to remind them how appalling the opposition has been of late because no one is listening.
And fair enough I say. It’s been a long, occasionally excruciating season and if you can’t revel in a few wins after what we’ve had to put up with then you shouldn’t be a Red full stop.
Even if hammering the Hammers and slapping the car-Toon Army silly does feel like stepping on an ant with rickets.
A win and some priceless comedy from our ex-treble-chasing chums above — you don’t often get days like those! Last Wednesday wasn’t bad either. Given the night off Euro-duty because of a double booking at the San Siro, it was the cockneys’ turn to submit to the genius of Torres.
Who cares if he rarely displays his inestimable gifts ‘on the road’? Anfield is as good a place of worship as any and he’s been nigh on unstoppable there.
When you list the names of those Liverpool legends that never scored three in successive home games, it makes you wonder if Torres can take his place in the pantheon.
Has there been a louder ovation than the one that greeted his substitution? Maybe when Kenny returned days before the Kop was bulldozed in 1994, but you’d struggle to think of another.
Benitez has finally managed to unearth sufficient evidence that his favoured Valencia tactic of one up will work here. It raises other problems, like what happens when Fernando is injured or (more likely) Rafa wants to rotate.
Crouch isn’t anything like the same player, so the season-long conundrum of being forced to change style as well as personnel will (forgive me Peter) rear its ugly head again.
In fact one tabloid said Crouch would only sign a new contract once Benitez left. Understandable perhaps, but in the current climate and the tide turning he’d have done himself a huge favour keeping that little chestnut secret.
Sympathy for Newcastle was scarce. Anyone excited by the return to management of Kevin Keegan frankly deserves all they get. It displays a unique gift to be out of your depth in the shallow end of the table.
As for Owen it was initially sad to see him so unfit and disinterested, surrounded by players clearly beneath him.
Then you think back to his yearlong contract negotiations and his cheap departure that weakened Benitez right out of the blocks. You think of the £10 million deficit between what he’s worth and what we received.
You think of that being the difference between buying the still-infuriating Pennant or Sevilla’s Alves, and then you just want him to rot — preferably in the Championship.
We spared them the humiliation that was surely coming their way and you will know already whether conserving that energy worked in our favour last night.
You may even know who runs the damn club now, but I doubt it. The weekend shed no new light whilst Hicks rather laughably gave someone else lectures in business etiquette and speaking out of turn.
So we’re to be run by those long-standing symbols of harmony, the Americans and the Arabs? Why not sell a third share to the Israelis while you’re at it, since we’re aiming for peace and tranquillity? Expect more damaging leaks and internal strife if this appalling compromise goes ahead. How is any of this supposed to work? My immediate guess would be “badly”, but then I think Rafa’s rubbish so you can studiously ignore anything I have to say.
Until we lose again.
