Respecting the past, Reds look to the future
On such dates, it almost feels wrong to be discussing the relative irrelevance of football alongside the deep solemnity of the Hillsborough anniversary. At the same time, there can be no escaping the emotional swell around the town, the stadium and the team.
Sunday displayed the conspicuous dichotomy, but also one of the healthiest ways for such a football club to deal with it all.
First came the dignity of the memorial. Then came yet another match to remember. Anfield was electric.
Few tributes can ever be truly fitting given the scale of the loss 25 years ago but there should also be no forgetting what the 96 lived for, what was such an intrinsic part of their lives. Right now, the Liverpool players are doing all they can on the pitch.
They are within touching distance of a first league title in 24 years and, quite simply, it is difficult not to get caught up in the emotion of all.
Manuel Pellegrini said on Friday it would be all about “the team that has the cold mind” but, for reasons even beyond Manchester City’s 3-2 defeat, he was wrong.
Liverpool’s surge to the top of the table has been all about raw feeling, if raw feeling properly focused. The whirlwind openings to their games, as well as the apparently off-the-cuff instinctive nature of their sensational attacking play, only emphasise that. Brendan Rodgers has used that emotion to the team’s advantage, swirling it up into something that has simply overpowered so many different sides.
Allied to the work with psychiatrist Steve Peters, Rodgers’s pure positivity genuinely marks him apart from so many recent managerial greats. It is all about looking forward, in every sense.
It is also one reason why, far from proving a solemn separate occasion, today’s anniversary has genuinely fed the feeling of historic anticipation around Liverpool; the sense of symbolic symmetry.
In that regard, Steven Gerrard personifies the emotional depth of this campaign. It should be even less of a surprise that he has become such a central figure to it all, let alone for his literal positioning in the middle of the pitch.
A local Huyton lad who grew up supporting Liverpool and lost his cousin Jon-Paul Gilhooley to the tragedy of Hillsborough, he was understandably emotional after Sunday’s win. It was also so understandable that he was then using that emotion as part of the huddle that has already become one of the images of the season. It will appropriate even greater resonance if, as Gerrard himself implored, they go and finish the job.
The likes of Jon Flanagan are fully aware of what it means for their captain, and why he means so much in this campaign.
“It is phenomenal,” Flanagan said. “He has carried this club for years and he deserves this. I think all the lads are doing it for themselves but also for Stevie as well.
“We can believe now. All the fans are believing we can do it now and we said it in the huddle, we’ll go again next week, as we’ve done nothing yet and that result has gone now.
“We have to stay focused and go again at Norwich away. We have to keep going right until the end.”
That is the other angle to all this emotion, that it may be a proper factor in this title race. Unlike their two title rivals, after all, Liverpool know exactly what will secure the title: to win the remaining four games
The only issue is that itself will involve something no one else has ever done. No other English has side was won 14 successive games in a single top flight season. That is the task.
There are multiple reasons for that, from absences to fortune, to fixtures to inevitable isolated off-days. Liverpool may already be facing some of those issues, with the suspension of Jordan Henderson and the possible injury to Daniel Sturridge, not to mention the next showdown with Chelsea in two weeks. In normal situations, those would be huge negatives. This, however, has not been a normal season. Liverpool, meanwhile, are evidently not a team with a normal mentality.
The emotion can propel them past this. After today, and this solemn silence, it is likely to get even louder.
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