Suffering in purgatory for sins of others

There have been lower ebbs; I’m just struggling to think of one in my lifetime.

And that’s taken up a fair stretch of road I can tell you. Unless death was involved, I can’t remember a worse time to be a red.

Even when United won those trophies in 1999 and we powerlessly seethed from afar, we still had Owen, Fowler, Carragher and Gerrard to give us some small chink of light. Unlike 2012, starless and bible black.

Dalglish is special. It’s not as if the most blinkered of his acolytes couldn’t see where Fenway were coming from, but there are ways of doing things.

Cups, we were told, are of little significance. National vilification for racism, we were told, ought not to derail a team so profoundly.

Well okay then. Just remember that when you start making the almost inevitable excuses for 2012/13.

I’m still finding it hard to separate the hype for Brendan, his majestic style of play and unique vision etc, from the nagging doubt that it’s all an underhanded swipe at Kenny.

This one season wonder — in a world where wonderment apparently springs from someone keeping their head above water — won’t erase the club’s greatest living servant from our hearts and minds.

Even as I type this, the lachrymose unfairness of such statements is glaringly obvious but it’s not like we have to travel back to ye olden days for examples of Liverpudlian truculence. Hodgson’s treatment at the hands of Rafa’s flying monkeys springs all too easily to mind, when England’s Pride received the shortest shrift imaginable.

Patience is being called for. You’ve got to laugh really, haven’t you? It catches in the throat once you realise they’re the ones who are probably right and you’re the one out of step with what constitutes “real support”.

A casual glance at Liverpool’s transfer business since 2008 tells you all you need to know about how we ended up in this purgatory. Blame Hicks and Gillett all you want, but even with the money that was released we have bought some almighty clunkers.

One thing the owners have approached with the required zeal is the chopping of deadwood. Most of the high earners too coincidentally, though Cole still clings like a leech wearing suction cups.

The Carroll and Agger sagas make you wonder if the Americans, the most business-savvy nation on the planet lest we forget, have discovered some ingenious formula that makes large profits from sporting dreck.

Our calamitous collapse in the table ‘coincided’ with atrocious judgement in the transfer market allied to a fiscal recklessness which would make a chav lotto winner gasp.

This isn’t new. It probably started way back in the Souness era. Evans was lucky that a silken stream of Academy excellence flowed through at the same time. We were rescued by two foreign managers who knew the continent contained greater quality for smaller expenditure.

It’s gone belly up since then of course, and there is still a hangover from the Yankee mistrust of the Noughties.

It hasn’t escaped the notice of conspiracy theorists that the combined fee for Borini and Allen almost exactly matches what we are allegedly willing to take for Agger.

I suppose I’m saying in my blowhard fashion that optimism is in short supply. I’m half tempted to text Noah and ask if he fancies building another boat to save us from drowning in our own mediocrity.

But then the usual summer hypnosis kicks in; we have got some good players, we might still buy a couple more, we were incredibly unfortunate last season and even if none of that were true the annual “hey ho you never know” mantra smothers all logic.

We wriggle unremittingly on the poisoned hook of our own greatness. We live in the same city as a club that long ago clasped its also-ran status to their bulbous bosom, then despises us even more for not following suit.

It helps to remind you why you’re different, despite the brickbats and mockery rising so high it might actually damage the ozone layer irreparably.

Everton drift languidly on their wooden raft in their very own sea of tranquillity. Thankfully, storms still rage around Anfield even if we do capsize from time to time. “Why don’t you just admit you’re merely part of the past?”

Oh, you’d just love that wouldn’t you…