YOU don’t know you’ve been in love until someone breaks your heart.
You don’t know just how much you support your team until they really piss you off.
My 23-year-old son was in the away end at West Ham. His allegiance is one reason that I take enough of an interest in Liverpool to want to write these blogs… Him and a lasting affection for a club that’s always been good to me.
My boy’s lasting affection was sorely stretched on Monday night. Love and hurt are a married couple. You can’t have one without the other.
He works in London so he didn’t have far to go to slam his front door shut on all the “wobble” talk. Most of the travelling support were still crawling towards the bottom of a motorway that was suffering a major roadwork infestation.
The Anfield Wrap’s Andy Heaton didn’t get home till 5am. The animal hospital says his cat is in a stable condition but won’t be able to lick itself again for three months.
If Liverpool win the title this season, those long and miserable hours spent counting cones and cursing your own loyalty will be worn like a badge of honour. The low points are the first thing you fondly recall if you reach the summit.
There are a few “ifs” knocking about after Monday’s pale showing, but nobody’s about to tear their season ticket up just yet.
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Despite the loss of the lead, the league table still offers plenty of consolation, but real football fans don’t look for consolation in the hours immediately after a rubbish night. You’ve got to get angry first… Then go quiet… And only after one last aggrieved lash out at the world can your blood start to flow back to your optimism.
It’s the hope that refills you.
One or two things have been said and written about the tumbleweed atmosphere at some recent games at Anfield, but true fans are allowed to go quiet when their team goes quiet. It’s natural. It’s part of the emotional connection you feel with your club.
Fans are not on the payroll. Nobody – not even Jürgen Klopp – has the right to tell supporters how to support their club. You respond when someone three rows behind you starts a song because you feel moved to, because you want to join in and be heard, because being a part of the unique communion of this common cause is as close to your heart as anything bar family.
Liverpool is not a club that needs to put flags on seats and tell its fans when to wave them. If he wanted cheerleaders, I’m sure John Henry could fly some in from Boston. Klopp may wave his arms in search of a volume surge from time to time but that is as much a release of his own nervous energy as anything.
Strangely, I didn’t think Monday’s display was particularly nervy or edgy. It actually could have done with a bit more edge if anything. It was almost as if the players were trying too hard not to appear anxious with their array of ill-judged flicks and backheels. Gifted individuals lapsed into bouts of careless passing and loose first touches. They never really got started.
Klopp started on the referee at the end but he was just letting off a bit more steam. There were no injustices. For the first time this season, Liverpool may just have been a little lucky to take what they took from a game.
In the Sky studio, Jamie Carragher was almost as restless as the manager. The now practised, polished pundit in him was carefully trying to pick words that criticised without condemning; the Liverpool supporter in him was silently screaming at David Jones to stop asking searching questions and let him go for a beer.
You don’t want to talk to anyone after an off-colour, off-key performance like that. You’d rather be on the M6 car park with the fans, rather be among your own.
It felt like a defeat. Not because a point at West Ham is a bad result even in this breakneck title race, but because players as utterly brilliant as Bobby Firmino and Mo Salah couldn’t keep the damn ball. Because the “given” that James Milner can play anywhere didn’t look a “given” anymore. Because 4-3-3 has stopped working. Because the new boys still look like new boys. Because the missing players were so sorely missed. Because City have a few years’ headstart in squad building.
It will have been a long week to be a Liverpool fan. At work, at school, at all four corners of the globe. And there are more of them to come. The “blessings” of the cup exits have left the team and the fans alike with gaps to fill… Maybe too many.
Somehow, fans have got to try to enjoy the journey with all its twists and turns. The only legally binding condition of supporting a club as unconditionally as you do is for it to add something to your life that nothing else can. Or you might as well take up golf.
It’s for Klopp and his players to say all the politic, professional things, to take each game as it comes, to ignore the league table and the other results. It’s for the supporters to do the complete opposite. You have paid for the ride. Scream and wave your hands in the air as much as you like.
If you want to get to your seat early on Saturday in order to cheer the team out for their warmup, then do it. Liverpool supporters were told 60 years ago that they had a part to play in the team’s success. The spirit of Shankly lives on. Everyone can do their bit between now and May 12.
But if you were one of the 3,000 that found a way to the London Stadium on Monday night and came away – like my son – wondering whether your £30 plus Xs had been well spent, that’s OK too.
It’s not treachery, not a crime against the state to call your team out from time to time. It’s love. And love is the drug.
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Another cracking piece by Clive. We’re allowed to be angry, because this is so close. Closer than it’s ever been, I can almost taste it. Lets be angry on Saturday but in different type of way. Lets blow the roof off Anfield and scare the bejaysus out of Bournemouth and give City something to think about on Sunday.
Lot of games left, so I wouldn’t say it closer than it has ever been. I feel it may be a case of people believing more in this current crop. However they are up against a City Team the likes of which the PL has never seen before.
We are doing what we can, with what we have. Personally I never felt we’d win the PL this season and still don’t and as a result I am enjoying where we are in the League race.
Now game wise I am pissed off. That’s a different matter, mainly as I want us to give everything in our colours regardless of the result… Didn’t get to watch on Monday as I was in hospital after a major Op, but listening on BBC FIVE LIVE it sounded like we were awful and therefore plenty to get angry about. In fact for the whole of 2019 we have been rubbish. Time to sort that bit out.
Great piece and dare I say it a more reasonable and balanced one than some of the more recent articles that have had a go at the fans on here.
I think the reason everyone is up in arms is that we’ve seen this all before. If there’s one thing I can level at Klopp it’s that he’s great at manoeuvring us into positions to win, but so far has fallen short everytime.
It’s no surprise that our form has plummeted since the Emptyhad. I feel we have lost some belief mainly because the manager and players didn’t believe in themselves or trust themselves to play their own game that night. We were worried about City and by the time we threw those shackles off it was too late.
I’d like to see Klopp go back to the manic high pressing game of last year for the run in now and put some teams to the sword. Our front three play much better on instinct rather than in a controlled fashion. Our midfield play better when they are chasing down the opposition.
Good post
Nicely put. I never thought that, even if we’d beaten City, this race was even close to being over. Hence that result, and more recent ones haven’t deflated me as much as some. I still vividly remember 1986. Perhaps the roar that went up when we learned that City were losing at Leicester was a sign that we’d got ahead of ourselves a little?
I’m hoping that a touch of realism is beginning to sink in and that our match going fans at least will behave more rationally if we’re not 3 up after 10 minutes. Maybe having to chase City will even ease the tension just a bit.
Either way, the most important thing is to strap in and enjoy the ride. We might win it, we might not, and nobody wants it more, believe me. But we can look forward to the future with anticipation rather than gloom. Whatever happens I’m still grateful that my father ensured that I’m a red rather than a blue. Things could be a lot worse!
Great post
Nice read Clive, as always. Hope Andy’s cat is okay.
My first time watching Liverpool and becoming a supporter was when they lost to United in 1981. I didn’t know much about football or the league, but I fell in love with the Reds then and disliked the Manc team and Old Trafford.
It’s not changed since then.
Yes I’m angry at Jurgen for not buying enough water to turn into wine which he has more or less done since Dortmund.
Letting Clyne go shows he cares for his players and understands their needs above his. But in doing so also made me angry that he can be so shortsighted (untimely injuries, fatigue or transfers are not something new at Liverpool).
But as you say Clive, it’s Jurgen’s team and responsibility to do their job well and for us supporters to do ours (whatever it is we think it is) for the rest of the season.
So 13 more to go – let’s hope the tumbleweed atmosphere is replaced with Anfield Cauldron starting this weekend. I’m looking forward to it and the rest of the season come what may.
Come on you Reds!
Feeling much better now. Thanks uncle Clive.
As one of the 3000 in the Liverpool end on Monday it was a frustrating night but this is what is you sign up for in a title race. I don’t blame Klopp or the players who have it everything on the night.
The comparison between our bench after a few injuries and city’s bench last night speaks volumes as to what we are up against.
So easy to criticise decisons like the Clyne loan (who could disagree that looks a terrible decision right now) and yet take for granted all the incredibly good decisions that have got us where we are today- Salah, Mane, Van Dijk, Robertson, Allison, Fabinho, combined with the development of of Firminho, Trent, Gomez, milner.
That’s a supporters right as you say but if the voices of criticism become too loud and widespread despite the obvious progress l, we must be prepared to accept where that might lead.
Some now yearn for the all out gegenpressing of last season. Maybe they have a point but it was probably those very same voices who were loudest a year ago saying “Klopp couldn’t organise a defence” after Seville, Arsenal etc last year.
Monday wasn’t fun to watch but if you want guaranteed fun don’t spend £30 on a ticket to watch a team trying to compete with the most expensively assembled squad in PL history. Go to Strictly Come Dancing at the Echo Arena.
Fair play Clive
keep writing Clive, keep writing its great therapy! i’m disappointed but i’ve calmed down now since Monday night. There is plenty of room for optimism after all we never do things easy it must be in our DNA. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Munich game galvanises us and helps bring back some much needed momentum! There is a lot to play for still!! Either way we have a lot to look forward to this season and beyond ….in Klopp I trust. Don’t be surprised to see a positive reaction on Saturday! Lets get behind them now the lads have made me proud this season and we owe it to them to push them on! The season starts on Saturday…we have great quality so believe! YNWA
Can I just say that we should be prepared to end the season with nothing. It is not a defeatist attitude, just a reality and truism of what we are up against. We are competing against a City Team that is twice as expensive as ours, financially doped as many have put it, who have flouted FFP. This City team have set records that we are expected to match over night after a great run in the CL.
If people start to realise that are performances are keeping City honest in this year’s PL and that’s all we can do, then maybe we can just enjoy that.
I’d love us to win something, however each passing year, especially under FSG, I am resigned to the fact that we are well placed, but they are going to run everything based on financial balance and if that means losing out on silverware then so be it for them…. Don’t give me the can’t compete stuff they said it themselves they can and a look at the whose who of rich involved in FSG tells you everything.
So perhaps temper the expectations and just focus on Liverpool game by game. We’ve been rubbish in 2019, that needs saying and it’s time we set the record straight starting this Weekend against Bournemouth, who will come to give us a game.
*that our performances