Often, only with the benefit of time can we judge how things truly are. In the present, we may have to settle for changing expectations…
NOW WHAT? Where are we now?
There are times when frustration gives way to anger and onto an acceptance. Liverpool just aren’t good enough.
And that seems unfair because there are times when Liverpool are absolutely good enough, good enough to the point of optimism. It’s just not today and, sadly, today colours everything.
Last week I recorded a TAW Rewind show with Dan Morgan and Mike Bankole. This is a show where we’re charged with watching two old games against upcoming opposition – Forest on this occasion.
Obviously, my role was to provide analysis on the grainier footage from the mid-1990s while Mike looked at the more contemporary game, bless his young heart. I got 1995. A 1-1 draw away at the City Ground.
What really struck me on this show is that, back then, I would have sat in front of that game and wondered how it affected our title challenge. Title challenge! As if that was in play! Liverpool were awful in this game and would go on to be so for quite some time. John Barnes in particular should charge his legal team with the task of removing all existing footage of it.
And there were whole seasons like that. Seasons where I and many like me felt that this was the year to take over from Ferguson’s nascent United and put us back where we belong. What were we thinking? We were never close.
Completed seasons mark years for me. While my family can speak of 2015 in terms of weddings and holidays my first thought is of Brendan Rodgers terrible last season and the 6-1 at Stoke.
What will 2025-26 show? Well, we don’t know yet because it’s not over but it’s taking shape nastily. A battle for top four (God, we’re doing this again) and a potential Cup and Champions League.
It’s Arne Slot’s transition season a year too late. It’s The Beatles recording the White Album before Beatles for Sale (I don’t mind BFS because it’s The Beatles, but it was recently voted as their worst album – pretty harsh given the high bar set by the others, but here we are).
What it will show is that this incarnation of Liverpool isn’t good enough. Yet. That’s unfortunate and I wish it were otherwise, but I can also live with it as I’d like to think it’s going somewhere. That Forest game from 1995 had a mixture of young players like Fowler, Redknapp and McManaman and the old guard of Rush and Barnes. We got steadily better when we added pace and you can see the start of it.
Maybe this is a similar side albeit one with more attuned minds than fresher legs. No one is saying this is Slot’s final product given the issues, particularly not when 2/3rds of the forward line are miles off. Yeah, I went there. Him too. Maybe even the keeper while we’re at it.
Incidentally, coming out of your goal at 1-2 at home in a league match, not a cup game, and staying up when the two centre-halves are already pushed on? I’ll never understand that, but, then again, not much made sense from the 75th minute onwards.
It’s just a horrible season. We spent like drunken sailors in the summer but are still light in so many places. We are without our three rightbacks at the club and now even their midfield replacement is out of the Sunderland match. The centre-back wants to leave, the World Cup winning midfielder looks like he’s borrowed my legs and the wide-forwards carry such little threat.
And yet?
I thought we’d challenge the league in 1995-96. Would have sworn blind that we were in with a shout because that’s what you do. You forget about the failings and think that romance gives hope. It’s only when you’re looking back that you realise how dim-witted that was.
Where are we now? Well, clearly on the brink of our seventh European Cup. No runners.
I know. Leave me be.
Give me this hope. Life is pretty grim at the moment, but I’ve seen Dom score from four miles out and I’ve seen Liverpool grow into games of late. What’s more, I’ve seen Liverpool play better against the better teams and there are nothing but them in the Champions League.
If Burnley were in the Champions League I’d leave you all alone till August, but they’re not so I’m pinning all hopes there. It’s 2005 again, folks.
Of course, the bad outweighs the good. Of course, there’s a tonne of work and dozens of errors to make before we turn this around but I’m tired of hearing about short-term solutions – sack the manager, sack the staff. It isn’t going to happen or at least not because many would wish it so.
More than anything I’d like to rid the support of its almost gleeful misery. It happens, let’s not pretend otherwise. I just want to be happy around my club and if these are the hard yards then so be it? That’s not accepting mediocrity or anything so banal. That’s just experience.
But it’s horrible all the same. I hate recalibrating expectations, but I do like another climb from the doldrums.
There were 1,099 days between Stoke and Kyiv. We may have to walk them again.
