AGED around eight years old, the word crudely daubed in white paint and the dripping number that followed it meant nothing — a foreign city and two digits which carried no significance in a personal world that had Liverpool FC battling for attention with comics, toys...
FROM a position of weakness, the first thing a manager usually tries to do is help the side he has inherited become tougher to beat than it was before. Brendan Rodgers attempted to make Liverpool more attractive to watch, so when the criticisms came — that...
THE controversy around the penalty that was probably a penalty rumbles on. In the latest twist to the story, it has been revealed that assistant referee Scott Ledger — who decided Damien Delaney *did* foul Christian Benteke — won’t be given a...
I HAD a soft spot for Crystal Palace when I was eight. I quite liked them. To me they had appeared out of nowhere — a magical, mystical club, named after the Wizard of Oz’s house. I had never heard of them before that season but here they were playing the Reds...
EVENING, everyone. Welcome to the second edition of this column which Gareth has catchily tilted ‘Five from Fitzgerald’. If you don’t know how it works, I’ll quickly explain — I have five thoughts about the game and then list them here....
I HAD written this introduction in my head on about 70 and it was moody as anything. It talked about consistency and how it separates winners from everyone else. It also talked about how the real problem, more than consistency, was quality and that the team looked...
THERE was a line running through my head before the winner. It was this: “The record books don’t record everything.” This while Liverpool are toiling at 1-1 and down to 10. Thinking that will look like Liverpool have failed to back up one good win...
CRYSTAL Palace — the team of the 80s. That become the media’s billing for Terry Venables’ bright young Cockney things who went from promotion to the top flight to being considered the fresh new dynamic face of modern football in a short space of time, at...
WEDNESDAY’S win over Manchester City was a tonic after the disappointment of Wembley, but as we left Anfield some long held concerns came to mind. A grinning Jürgen Klopp — clearly buoyed by the best home performance of the season — was on the pitch...
I DON’T have heroes. I’m 52 — I’m too old for heroes now. I can see the faults in most people — that they’re just people with the same faults as the rest of us and the same ability to be pretty decent or a bit of a knob depending on...
