NEIL ATKINSON was joined by Gareth Roberts, Mike Girling and Steve Graves in the Radio City Tower as they look towards Cardiff away and the gathering momentum of the Champions Elect.
The City Walls – Spanish Bride
The City Walls are a band from Liverpool much loved by other musicians in the city, which is why they are able to pull together brilliant line ups like the one next Friday at Kazamier.
They headline on the 29th, with Springtime Anchorage, The Levons and She Drew The Gun in support.
Tickets are £6.50 in advance and available from bandtrail.com or Bier on Newington in Liverpool.
We have two tickets to give away to the person who can tell us the name of the lead singer of the band
Twitter @the_city_walls
Day With Mary – The Pleasure Principle
Another show next weekend is a reunion gig by Liverpool band Day With Mary.
Day With Mary were together from 2002 to 2007 and toured across Europe with bands such as Coheed and Cambria, Fightstar, Million Dead and Hundred Reasons.
Bass player Greg McDonnell, who worked at The Royal Hospital, died suddenly last weekend at the age of 31. The rest of the band are playing a show at McGuires Pizza Bar on Renshaw Street on Saturday 29th to raise money towards funeral costs and an epilepsy charity.
If you can’t make to the show you can donate via www.paypal.com to the email address [email protected]
Download Issue 8 of #TAW Monthly via iTunes or at app.theanfieldwrap.com for other devices.
Day With Mary show now at EVAC
Great podcast again lads. Love the 5000m runner analogy. Reminded me of one of Irish sports greatest moments, with Eamon Coughlan winning the gold at the world championships in 1983 (on youtube).
Coughlan’s in second and slowly reeling in the Russian ahead of him coming into the last bend. As he rounds the bend he comes up on his shoulder and as he goes past him he looks at him as if to say “c’mon lad, how are ya gonna stop me? what have you got? nothing? ok, see ya after” and bombs off down the last straight.
That’s us now.
I’m feeling it lads, I’m fucking feeling it.
One thing that’s always fascinated me with football is how teams can have an important game and ‘just not turn up’. I sometimes join in with my kids team at training and i’ve had them in tears from tackles because i want to win so badly. Imagine playing in the Prem or for Liverpool and ‘not turning up’ for a big game. It’s bizarre. It happens though and it’s one of the reasons scores don’t always go to plan. So, earlier when a mate asked if i thought we’d win tomorrow i confidently told him we’d slaughter them. The reason i’m so confident (admittedly, i give a different answer every time i’m asked it) is because i know that whatever happens tomorrow we’re not going to ‘not turn up’. We don’t do that anymore. We’re gonna turn up all guns blazing. What’s more, we’re not gonna ‘not turn up’ for any game during the rest of the season. Call it momentum, belief, team spirit or whatever but we’ve got it.
One of my pet hates of the past few decades has been when we’ve come away from Stoke and thought ‘oh well, 0-0 not’s that bad – it could have been worse and then the following week Utd have gone there and won 4-0 in a game they controlled from start to finish. Utd would regularly go 10 games unbeaten against bottom half clubs. It seems we can now. To me, it seems it’s our mentality that will keep us in the race till the end. No one else comes close to us in that respect. Although it’s harsh on the players my gut feeling is Suarez is the drive for that belief. I’m sure Rodgers and Gerrard would have something to say about that but I just sense he’s a catalyst. His will to win is infectious. My favourite moment of this season (i’ve got a fair few of them too depending on the context of the conversation) was Coutinho’s equaliser away at Fulham when Suarez sprints to the goal, gets the ball, and almost chastises them for celebrating an equaliser when there’s a winner to be had. Forget Everton and Arsenal at Anfield. I believe that Fulham game was the launch pad for the run in we’re having. It felt like a huge win.
P.s For someone like me to be so genuinely optimistic about a game like Cardiff away certainly shows me how far we’ve come. I honestly think they’ll be lucky to get away with 4-0. Probably go and get beat now i’ve said all that. Thing is, we won’t though.
Great show lads, keep up the good work. It’s great to have a bit of Liverpool here in Finland to remind me of home.
I’d quibble with one point though. I don’t think we’ve come full circle, its a little more nuanced than that. Whilst Brendan appeared to have given up on ‘death by football’, he hasn’t given up on the principles behind it: he’s been busily equipping the squad with the technical ability to play in a variety of styles as the game and opposition dictate We are now able to.impose any number of games upon any opposition. It just so happened that United were so poor that we saw a lot of the ball and thus reverted to a possession based game. I’d be surprised to see us take the same approach against Chelsea. And that’s quite something; it’s no wonder Stevie’s so impressed, I can’t remember the last Liverpool side that was so adaptable, we’ve played at least three different types of football this season, and the way we play isn’t solely dependent on our shape, it just seems we have a lot of gears and approaches to choose from. It’s all about equipping all the players with the technical skills to feel comfortable with a variety of different approaches and the confidence to make decisions on the pitch as the game evolves.
Having said all that, I do think we’ve finally found the right shape to get the best out of our best players. The diamond, and variants of it, allow us to play Suarez and Sturridge without sacrificing too much solidity in midfield and playing Stevie so deep strengthens our squad depth and allows us greater adaptability within games: the bench looks a lot better with Lucas and Coutinho on it. It seems that diamond, or no diamond, we’re more balanced when playing 3 attacking players than 4 particularly when we have such a creative player in a deep-lying role. Last week’s performance was the final piece in the jigsaw, it showed we could manage a game from the first minute to the last: we were completely comfortable throughout, dominating possession and territory. We won’t do that every week, but its great to have it in our locker, and its great to see our defenders looking composed because teams aren’t cutting right through our midfield.
Cardiff’s made for us to win. We should be playing them at Millennium Stadium as if it’s a home game.
Bayern Munich…all the best!! The utd lads at my work are convinced that they’re going to win the Champions League and we’ll finish 4th, thereby eliminating us from next year’s competition? They thought I was taking the piss when I told them that they are delusional and they were like no seriously, we think we can win it….what I then clarified was that they were delusional for thinking we will ‘only’ finish 4th when in fact we will win the fucking league outright!! I then mocked them for the ridiculous comments about winning the Champions League…as Neil said, all the best..
As for Cardiff, 3 points is vital but if we can give our goal difference another boost even better but a win first and foremost please lads.
Keep it tricky reds…
Great show, Back to its best lads. More of Gareth Roberts please hes very good.