The return of the King doesn’t ease my fears

WILL you turn off those damned alarm bells? Some of our lads are trying to sleep.

Shall I tell you how I spent Saturday? Hoping Wolves wouldn’t equalise against City and wondering whether Wigan or Fulham presented the greater threat to our survival hopes.

I’m serious. I’ve always erred on the side of chronic caution, even in good times. I once continued a goal superstition until the 80th minute against York. We’d already scored seven.

Beckham can take his OCD and swivel, he’s the Magic Roundabout rabbit in comparison.

Fear grips the soul. Those arrogant lackadaisicals who casually pronounce “we won’t go down” terrify me.

“Hicks & Gillett Equals Debt”, ran one pithy couplet back in the day, but if within two years you buy Keane, Dossena, Riera, Aquilani, Johnson, Poulsen and Konchesky, then where else do you expect to move but downwards? Open your eyes and watch some of the football we’re playing. See how Wolves fought City tooth and nail; how Albion tore holes in a Blackpool defence that casually swatted our ‘threat’ aside. West Ham are the deadest of dead certs, but what if they get O’Neill? Appointing Kenny doesn’t sweep everything under the carpet.

I’m still thrilled of course. My old fanzine used to call him The Supreme Being. There were whispers about his “unfinished business” even before Rafa started to crash and burn, never mind Hodgson.

Media wind-up merchants, still sore about Roy’s departure, are having a field day. Another Keegan, another Kendall — and we know no good can come from three Ks… Yet it’s always Keegan and Ashley they cite. The first time he went back was after eight years on a beach when Newcastle were plummeting.

They survived, just, and four years later they should have been champions. If people claim Kenny can’t do that, they are severely underestimating him.

Of course he’ll need what every manager wants; good coaches, new players and a trouble-free pre-season. Clarke’s the curiosity; will we get Mourinho’s mate or Zola’s? Very little can be done so late in the season anyway, though it did not escape anyone’s attention that recent photos from Melwood saw more actual football being played. Under Hodgson it always looked like organised goofing off.

Despite playing 10 v 12 for 60 minutes there was discernible heart and soul against United, but at Blackpool they reverted back to arrogant type.

What you saw from Holloway’s lads sprang from months, years of preparation and the sheer joy of competing at this level at all. It’s very difficult to reproduce that at Anfield, especially when we seem to be in the middle of a Souness era reenactment; so many here with so little commitment or elation.

Our neighbours have had to put up with this sort of dross for 20 years. How do they manage it? I’ve had it for 16 months and I’ve already booked the padded cell.

There’s a clue in Moyes. He’s seen off three Liverpool managers and will almost certainly survive Dalglish — having done what? And that’s our nightmare; without knowing it, without ever recognising the moment at which you change, you settle. Nothing but the best is good enough? Say those words without laughing up a lung.

School of Science? Why bother, when you can just launch it and rattle Liverpool that way instead. Get a draw, have a party. Look at the difference in the response to our clubs, both on 26 points; how awful we are, how humiliated we must feel and how does Moyes keep on doing it (again, what?) I’m not complaining, that’s exactly how we like it but there were times with Rafa and will be under Dalglish that excuses and rationalisation will smother what we are meant to be, and camouflage what we aspire to.

People wanted Hodgson out so badly that they never tired of telling you how pitiful we were; humming a different tune now, of course… After 10 crazy minutes on Sunday wiped out all of the good work in the first half, a point came as a relief. A shocking lack of organisation and increasing fragility is proving lethal.

Dalglish and Clarke do not possess the blueprint for instant alchemy and it would be grossly unfair if they are judged by what happens between now and May. But fairness and football? Bedfellows they ain’t.