Derailing United isn’t enough
Oh me of little faith. And so penury continues. Even so you sensed something good could happen since the Saturday had been so rotten. Mutiny at Goodison was silenced by a decent win, their proximity in the table reminding us how close we’d been to relegation ourselves.
ABU proxies Arsenal once again flaunted their yellow streak when push came to shove — and of course there was the Reina interview which read more like a first-draft Dear Juan letter.
Like Torres, he seemingly has nowhere else to go. Both Spanish giants are sorted in that department. City seem happy with Hart and Wenger’s continued refusal to correct his team’s flaws borders on the evangelistic. Why spend £20m on a keeper when you can buy more tippy-tappy ballerinas?
So only one destination possible, right? He refused to deny it’s a possibility. The unthinkable becomes thinkable, and Pepe’s considerable reputation amongst Reds begins to buckle.
Rafa brought a lot of Med/South American players to Anfield, only a few remain. Revolving door policies never help with longevity, but after Alonso departed and more importantly Benitez, you half expected an exodus.
I thought it might be comparable to Houllier’s time, both seeking solace and foundation in their homeland, but on closer examination they were more a League of Nations back then, which actually helped with l’esprit de corps.
Reina’s interview, more a prepared script really, hinted at despondency that his friends were all gone.
Which won’t sound convincing if he ends up at Old Trafford. He was certainly clutching at straws claiming “little has changed” at Anfield. He can fool himself, but not Liverpudlians.
He’s made similar outbursts before, in the service of Rafa and his often futile plea for funds. It’s to be hoped this was a similar warning but there is something about it that screams “bye, please don’t hate me”. Fat chance.
Kopites pride themselves in their mastery of body language; maybe they were too busy singing YNWA to afford Reina his usual ovation before the game. There was certainly an air of wait-and-see.
For the goals there was nothing to compare to his 80-yard dash to N’gog last season. In his defence there was plenty of the game remaining so concentration was fundamental. You never know with that shower, even at 3-0.
It was a fabulous day, the brawling embellishing rather than diminishing it. It seems cruel to mock Nani, but is there a secret factory where United create these loathsome players? Carragher was late and high but the United man chasing the referee then collapsing in a heap, bawling his eyes out, produced nothing but derision.
No one sought to ‘sort’ Carragher in the second-half. It’s okay whacking some kid from Wigan, quite another to come to the cauldron and mix it.
We haven’t had a three-goal hero in this fixture since Kenny’s last term of office but the Beardsley analogies were for Suarez who was superb. Peter bobbled and bundled his way through defences so often you stopped thinking of it as luck and simply admired the skill. Same for Luis.
You felt sorry for Kuyt, five years and still no song yet few deserves one more. Kenny receives the melodic accolades for everything good we do nowadays.
The club announcer had his little joke by playing a song by Elbow. What wags we are. Once the celebrations subsided that lyric lingered in the mind: “One day like this a year would see me right.”
It won’t of course; after all, we’re not Evertonians. It will eventually rankle that this marvellous performance was in the forlorn service of an increasingly brittle Arsenal’s ambitions and not our own.
United will weep a while, Nani especially, dust themselves down and go on with their league and cup-winning commitments.
When such a great result is for our cause and not the derailing of United’s bandwagon, that’s when we can savour the sweetest tang of victory.
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