Back to the future for Kenny and Fergie

AS we all know, there’s nothing Liverpool fans like doing more than blaming others for their misfortunes — something that Howard Webb will have been chuckling about this week, no doubt.

Now that they have finally got what they have apparently wanted for the past few years — King Kenny back on the throne — one does wonder who they’ll finger for the scapegoat treatment when he royally cocks up. United-supporting refs? Chelsea fans? The South Yorkshire Police?

Oops. If you are offended by the sly allusions to Heysel and Hillsborough there, I do apologise. That was still Sunday talking, a day when all of us at both ends of the Canal had a propensity to lose our sense of decorum, as is our wont on such occasions. In fact, the aggro count was somewhat diminished this year, with Scousers happier to take their rage out on the innocent toilet fittings in the Scoreboard End. (We’ll be mounting a full enquiry, and then banning standing in the urinals.)

Actually, I’m quite happy to admit United were absurdly fortunate all day long, and that the Liverpool players’ sense of purpose and — gasp! — pride were something about which Kenny was right to be laudatory. Even so, surely this extraordinary re-coronation can only end in tears? Many Reds watching the TV highlights later noted how ancient and befuddled Kenny looked as the cameras cut to him. In the ‘80s days when LFC and United were at loggerheads, and ‘Red Issue’ fanzine had just launched, we often featured a caricatured Kenny in our cartoons, and he now bears a startling resemblance to the pop-eyed growling beast we used to portray him as.

So now we chatter excitedly to each other about the delightful prospect of watching his “head explode” all over again, as he put it in 1991, whilst reminiscing about the grand set-to matches of 1986-91, and then 1993-5 when he moved to Ewood Park. This was one of the great all-time rivalries, even more fascinating than the current Fergie-Wenger soap opera, not least as we were dealing with two such similar figures who appeared to have become infected by the “narcissism of small differences“. This was a pair of dour Glaswegians of divisive demeanour, who mixed genius with an insatiable desire to win, and who have come to be celebrated more in their cities of exile than their hometowns.

In any event, I am looking forward to the nostalgic flashbacks to come. For example, after full-time at Old Trafford, who could have failed to be reminded of Fergie’s “choke back the vomit” line from Anfailed 1988 as Kenny ranted to the cameras about the supposed serial injustices he had just suffered? Karma’s truly a bitch.

Sunday’s another good example; we go to Spurs to face a team that is occasionally thrilling, studded with desirable talents we’d like to sign (Modric and Bale above all) and that may actually play a genuine part in the 2011 honours shakedown. That was the Spurs I remember from the early 80s, briefly reprised in the Lineker/Gazza era a decade later, and it’s to be welcomed (in spite of the manager).

Ditto the prospective 2011 returns of some of those other powers from my own golden ‘76-’92 period, such as potential promotees Leeds and Forest, QPR (swish runners-up in ‘76) Swansea (who I recall topping the old First Division and being a tough fight off the pitch too) and Watford (runners-up in both Cup and League in the 80s).

And towering above them all, of course, is City, ready to reclaim their toe-to-toe position of the 76-81 era. Back to the future? Just show me the way to the Delorean.