"Liverpool and me - A tortured Love Affair" by Mark Townsend

[tlw content]

Bless me father for I have sinned. It's been a long time since my last confession. I plead forgiveness for something that is not egregiously wrong but is something that I'm desperate to get off my chest. You see, I've been struggling with an addiction for most of my life and I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to kick it. The thing is...I'm a Liverpool fan.

 

It all started, a long, long time ago in Ireland. Up until the summer of 1990, I wasn't interested in football. I wasn't interested in anything much at all really, apart from Lego. I don't know what it was in particular that made me attracted to it, but I know I could spend endless hours of fun assembling those bright yellow blocks. I remember having a hissy fit once when my godmother had the temerity to buy me a shirt, a shirt(!) rather than some Lego as a Christmas present. What sort of ridiculous logic was that? Sure what would I want a shirt for?

 

But during the summer of 1990 there seemed to be a lot of upheaval in our country. People began mysteriously leaving their workplaces during the afternoon to nip home or to the pub, to watch some football tournament on the television. And the longer the tournament went on, the more I felt myself being drawn into it, so that, although when it started, I was firmly a non-believer, by the end of it, I was undoubtedly, an evangelical, born again, football fan.

 

Times were more innocent then. Nowadays you might look at the Sam Allardyce-esque style that Jack Charlton's side employed in 1990 and say it was a victory for anti-football. Now, you might think that, not being the most romantic side, it was strange to fall in love with them. I remember reading a Shoot magazine pull-out after the tournament. They had to rank all the team's performances throughout it and they gave Ireland a measly 3. I couldn't understand it. Could they not see, as the song said, that "Ireland are the greatest football team"? Did they not appreciate that? But horrible football or not, it changed me and my life completely. I transformed overnight from a lego based fanatic, to a sports obsessed nut.

 

After that summer, there was a void in my life. I had a struggle adapting to normality. So what you say, Ireland don't play every week? Then what am I going to do in my free time? Who am I going to support?  Fortunately I was advised that there was such a thing as a football league season in which various English clubs would play against each other on a weekly basis. The only question was as to which side I would pick. It didn't take long to choose. My brother supported Liverpool. I usually followed him in what he did. Therefore I would support Liverpool.

 

And it seemed a good choice. If you were going to align your fortunes to any football team circa 1990 then Liverpool were gold, Liverpool were pure, blue chip, stock. In the previous 20 years they had won the title eleven times. They had won the title 3 times in the preceding 5 years, they had won the league only a couple of months prior. It was an open and shut case. Liverpool were winners, everyone else was a loser.

 

Now with the benefit of hindsight....again, like the way my 7 year old self overlooked the aesthetic deficiencies of the Ireland Italia 90' team, I may have neglected the effect that the Hillsborough Disaster had on the psyche of Kenny Dalglish and the morale of the club. I may have overlooked how much the side had begun to age in the preceding few years. I might not have fully appreciated the promising under age scene that was developing 30 miles up the M62.

 

You know, sometimes, in my lowest ebb, I start to think that everything I have done in my life has all been worthless. I was born a loser, and maybe I will always be a loser. Occasionally I have thought that maybe external factors have given me the impression. Like this. I have supported Liverpool for 26 years. Three months before I started supporting them they won the League title. They haven't won one since. Do I feel in any way responsible for their failure in the intervening period. No, but I guess it couldn't have helped. 

 

The way I see the fan's relationship with the club is like the relationship I see between a parent and a child. The minute your child is born they become a part of you. You love them unconditionally. You may not always like them, you may sometimes hate them, but somewhere, underneath that, the love for them is always there. You can't help it. And it's the same with football. No matter how bad things go for your football team, there's still that underlying sense that they are, at heart, your team, and you will always feel a deep loyalty to them. You can curse them, abuse them but crucially, you can't stop caring about them. No matter how bad things get, there's still a part of you on a Saturday desperate to hear the result.

 

So from that point around August/September 1990 I had decided Liverpool would be my team and that my fortunes would therefore coincide with theirs. And little did I know how much that was going to affect my childhood or, ominously, that of the people around me.

 

Now on the whole I'd say if you asked my parents about my youth, I don't think they'd have much cause for complaint. I did my homework, I behaved well. In general I was a good kid. But there is one thing that they could have a justifiable complaint about and Liverpool football club was at the very heart of it. Because when it came to Liverpool football club, all sense of perspective was lost. When it came to Liverpool football club, I was a demon. I remember the joy, I remember the fears and I remember the tears. My god, do I remember the tears.

 

It's strange, because since I've transitioned to adulthood. I can probably remember three instances of myself crying in the last 15 years. Two of which were related to girls, one which was a random, desperate, outpouring of emotion. But aside from that, the tears have pretty much disappeared. And there have been times over the past 15 years or so where I've actually felt guilty about that. There's been times were I wanted to greet the loss of a family member or old friend with a blubbering show of sympathy. But whether I wanted to or not, I couldn't let myself do it. I couldn't allow myself cry. When I was younger, however, there were no such worries. I would cry, pretty much on demand, every time Liverpool lost. And given the club's fortunes, that was about once a fortnight.

 

There's pictures of me at my brother's confirmation. I can remember the date clearly in my mind: April 30th 1994. Maybe that seems nice, quaint. That I would remember the day of my brother's confirmation. But there's another more obvious reason, the fact that it was the last Liverpool game to be played in front of a standing Kop. And of course, knowing Liverpool, they would do whatever they could to spoil the party. So while everyone else got to enjoy the day, my mood was determined by the fortunes of this perma-underachieving team. And we lost. 1-0. To Norwich. To a volley by Jeremy Goss. Jeremy f***ing Goss.

 

You could say that such a day would be happy no matter what the Liverpool result. That seeing as it was basically an end of season dead rubber between two mid-table teams, I wouldn't need to get too upset about the result. But no, there I am, in the pictures post confirmation, not beaming like the rest of my other rational family members, but pouting, red eyed, all because we had lost. All because of f***ing Jeremy Goss.

 

Around August 1992 football changed. Up until that time any fan of a club who didn't live within reasonable distance of a cub's ground would have to make do with following their team on the radio, the newspaper, plus Match of the Day and maybe, if you're lucky, a couple of live games a year. But then there was the introduction of Sky Sports, and suddenly the game was revolutionized.

 

From whenever I heard about Sky Sports, and the ramifications of what it meant ("You mean I could watch Liverpool almost every week?") I began an insatiable quest to obtain it. But unfortunately my father wasn't convinced enough by my pleas. It wasn't unreasonable thinking you may add, that a family who were struggling to pay a mortgage and put their kids through school, would stump up all that extra cash to afford a few superfluous TV stations. But that seemed like a feeble excuse to me at the time.

 

Now that I'm older, and though I still remain a huge sports fan, I can see that, given money and time restrictions, I don't really need to purchase Sky Sports. But back then, it seemed like that was the only thing in the world that mattered to me. Sky Sports. Liverpool. So I started to think of alternative arrangements, namely, find anyone I knew who had Sky Sports and nag them until they would let me watch the game. Therefore began a process whereby I would drag my family up to our cousin's house in Kilkenny, 30 miles away, take over their front room for 2 whole hours- thereby ruining two families evenings- and we would watch Liverpool get beaten 4-2 by some no mark Southampton team, then I'd cry cry on the way home at my own side's ineptitude. So when I think sometimes about why I don't want to have children....well, maybe I just don't want to have a child like me.

 

Things improved later on though when we realized one of our near neighbours had SKY. The Tobins were two elderly bachelor farmers who I didn't know much about but I knew that they had Sky Sports and that was all that mattered. So it was them who I would harangue next about watching the games.

 

There were two brothers in the family, Johnny and Tom. Tom was obstinate and dour. Johnny was gregarious, funny. He used to call me Matt. Not because he didn't know my name, but because he knew I would react if he called me incorrectly and he would get a kick out of it. On March 5th 1995 Johnny died. I cried about his death. It may have been the last death I cried about. But three days later I still went down to his old house to see Tom and watch the game between Crystal Palace and Liverpool in the League Cup Semi-final. And while I'm sure our victory didn't adequately compensate for his loss, in some strange way I think it may have helped with the grieving process. Because, let's face it, I don't think I could really have handled two major losses in four days.

 

So thanks to Tom Tobin and his magical satellite dish I was able to watch Liverpool more often, but I wasn't necessarily able to watch them win more often. The reason was another team. Another team who I knew well - as many of my friends and relatives supported them - and hated with every ounce of my being.

 

Manchester United. Manchester United would define my relationship with Liverpool, simply by being the opposite of everything I wanted Liverpool to be. We were brittle, they were resilient. We were unreliable, they were consistent. We were losers, they were winners. There's no simpler or succinct way of putting it than that.

 

I can crystallize my relationship with Liverpool football club into two games in the 1990's, both played in the FA Cup, both against Manchester United. The first is the 1996 FA cup final. Now 1995-96 is probably one of the most memorable of all Premier League season's. It's memorable because of Newcastle's infamous late capitulation and that 4-3 thriller against Liverpool that is still seen as one of the all time great games. What people forget is Liverpool playing themselves into contention to win the title themselves with that victory, but then blowing it, as was their wont, by losing to Coventry City, of all teams, the next weekend.

 

So in the end Manchester United, as usual, won the title, and Liverpool had to make do with third place. That was ok though because we still had the FA cup final to win the week after, against, who else, but the old enemy.

 

And that would have been fine except for the fact that we didn't win it. We lost 1-0. I blame Phil Babb. F***ing Phil Babb. No player has ever lived off the success of one tournament like Phil Babb did from USA 94. Well, maybe Schillaci in 1990. He got a Smithwicks ad out of that. And a hair transplant. But Phil Babb got a whole career out of one, "pretty good", football tournament in one glorious summer.

 

Now looking back you can see the extenuating circumstances as to why Phil Babb did well in that tournament. Like this: Paul McGrath. Yes, Paul McGrath. You put Ireland's greatest ever centre half in the form of his life beside literally anyone, maybe even Paul McShane, then they're bound to seem competent. Remove that layer of security though, and things are quite different.

 

So the minute Phil Babb joined Liverpool, there was no safety net. Phil Babb played for Liverpool for 6 years. He may have had a few good games  in that period but I'm struggling to think of them. What I'm not struggling to think of is him crushing his nuts off the goalpost after losing Pierluigi Casiraghi for a goal in a match against Chelsea in 1998 and hilariously missing the next game because of a "back" injury. That one moment of comic ingenuity would almost allow you to forgive him his entire Liverpool career. It still doesn't excuse the FA Cup final in 1996 though.

 

Now the 1996 FA Cup final has, for better or worse, come to define Liverpool football in the 1990's. Not, I may add, for anything that happened in the 90 minutes really, but what happened pre-game. Yes, you know what I'm talking about, those infamous white suits.

 

Until then, I wasn't really familiar with the pre-game routine for an FA cup final, but it seemed that the players were due to walk out on the Wembley pitch in their specially designed clothes a few hours before kick-off, survey the scene and then give some bland TV interviews. So the Manchester United players arrived out, dressed soberly, as you would expect, like they were attending a relative's funeral. And then Liverpool came out, dressed like the white magnum Ice-creams. Now maybe Alex Ferguson did or didn't mention the attire in his pre-match speech, and frankly, to me, it just seems like a good line you think of afterwards, but what can't be denied is it seemed to underpin a fatal flaw in that team's psyche. Simply, you just can't imagine a winning team wearing something similar.

 

But really, if that did motivate United, it didn't necessarily show. It's not as if they came out of the traps  like a lion from a cage, far from it. It was an awful game, with almost nothing to report of incident until five minutes to go when Nicky Butt played a nothing pass towards goal, bound to be taken by David James. But Phil Babb, in his infinite wisdom, decided, instead of letting it roll harmlessly through, to boot the ball as far away from his own goal as he could. Which resulted in Manchester United getting a corner, which David James made a meal of, and Eric Cantona scored.

 

Now maybe it's a little unjust to pin it all on 2 moments of defensive panic, because it was a fantastic strike to be fair. To adjust your body and then hit a ball with such power from 20 yards was an act of supreme technique. It's funny, now that I've removed any sense of partiality from that game, I almost feel a grudging respect for Cantona. Who else would come up with such ingeniously mischievous lines as "On the whole I talk a lot of rubbish" Who else would have broken the fourth wall in such a madcap, lunatic like way to actually kick a fan during a football match? And who now, knowing what kind of vitriol said fan was spewing and what type of character he was, would blame Cantona for doing it? But funnily, back then, I didn't see it like that. Cantona played for Manchester United. He was a good player, probably their best. Ergo, I hated him. 

 

And that was it then. From then on you could never mention Liverpool's fortunes in that decade without using the words "Spice Boys" and mentioning THAT FA Cup final and those bloody white suits. It's become so pervasive that when Simon Hughes wrote a tell-all book about Liverpool in the nineties he used "Men in White Suits" as his title. Now all would have been forgiven and forgotten if they had only won the game, but Phil Babb and David James, two of the foremost purveyors of the "Spice Boy" culture, had messed it up.

 

If the 1996 FA cup final was a punch in the mouth, then the 1999 fourth round tie, was the kick in the groin on the way down. Even though it was only two and a bit years since the previous FA cup experience, it felt like there had been a sea change in Liverpool during that time. Gerard Houllier had came in as manager and, whatever he was, he was not the kind of man to tolerate a spice boy culture. Liverpool were no longer competing against United and were instead, to use that god awful parlance, a "team in transition".

 

United, meanwhile, were blessed with their greatest ever side. Well, history has written that as one of the all time great teams, and looking back you'd have to say it was. Keane, Giggs, Scholes, Beckham: there was certainly a lot of quality. But really, when you analyze that season, what strikes you most is how close they came to losing it all. They won the league by a point from an exceptionally good Arsenal team. They won the champions league final in Barcelona by, well, I don't need to remind anyone what happened there. And in the FA cup, they had at least two fortuitous victories against Liverpool and Arsenal. 

 

But, to look at the flip side of the coin for a moment, think about how a team like Bayer Leverkusen had a similar season in 2002. They lost the league in the last game of the season, before agonisingly then falling in the champions league and domestic cup finals. So nobody now remembers that Bayer Leverkusen side, except, cruelly, as Bayer Neverkusen. But they came as close to winning all three trophies, as Manchester United came to losing them.

 

So when we were drawn away against Manchester United in the fourth round, we seemed to have little hope. But after four minutes we were given a large shot of it when we went ahead through a Michael Owen header. Ah, Michael Owen. I loved Michael Owen. It seems strange to say it now, now that our memory is tainted by his godawful monotone voice and boring punditry. Now, when you can barely remember him playing for us and only recall he dared to go over to the dark side. But back then he was pretty much my favourite Liverpool player.

 

It was just astonishing, at the time, to look at someone so unbelievably quick on a football field. I mean, the only other people I recalled moving that fast were 100 metre sprinters, not footballers, Remember that goal that he scored for England against Argentina in 1998? I certainly do, because I was supporting England that day, unlike, I dare guess, the rest of the Irish population. That's another story, but during his seven years as a Liverpool player he provided us with some fabulous memories. Although this, unfortunately, was not to be one of them.

 

So there we were, 1-0 up against Manchester United. Being the team we were, and being the manager Houllier was, we clung desperately to that scoreline  for the next 85 minutes, grimly defending for our lives, before a soft free kick conceded by Jamie Redknapp resulted in Andy Cole knocking down and Dwight Yorke tapping in at the back post.

 

I was p***ed off about that. You usually only got one chance against United and we had blown ours. We'll surely never beat them in a replay I thought. Well, I don't know if we would have, because we never got that chance. Just a couple of minutes later that baby faced assassin, Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, whose face, funnily enough, I never found particularly appealing, buried in a left foot shot past David James.

 

You can imagine the orgasmic like ecstacy of the Stretford end faithful at that moment. Beating the Scousers with two goals in the last three minutes? If that's not a Mancunian's wet dream, then I don't know what is. You can also imagine the crippling devastation of the Liverpool fan, not buttressed by 6 or 7 years prior success. We had seen both the past and future during that game, and it was murder. I don't remember any of the aftermath. I just remember abruptly getting up from my seat and announcing "I'm going home". I didn't need to stay to hear the end result, that was already a fait accompli. I just made the short walk back home, sobbing away inconsolably to myself.

 

I think that was the day that I had a sort of epiphany when it came to football. I realised then that it was, well essentially, just a game. A beautiful game, no doubt, but a game nonetheless.

 

That's not to say that football hasn't affected my mood at times over the past 17 years. I still cheered like a lunatic when we defeated AC Milan on penalties that magical night in Istanbul. I still felt a deep depression that dark day when we "slipped" against Chelsea in 2014. And could you think of a crueller way to lose than to THAT manager under THOSE circumstances. But I think I realised post 1999, post losing to Manchester United with 2 goals in the last 5 minutes that whatever Liverpool may do will only ever be part of my life, not all of it. It's what I do myself that matters, and whatever happens to Liverpool during those moments are just a happy, or more probably, unhappy coincidence.

 

But still, though there are times you undeniably fall out of love with your team it will invariably tug at your heart strings again. I wasn't one of those people who wanted Brendan Rodgers sacked. I thought he had done fantastically well in 2013-14, and if the following season was undoubtedly a disappointment, it was at least partly due to circumstances out of his control. Yes, I'm looking at you Balotelli.

 

Despite all that though, you would be hard pressed to find someone outside of the Rodgers Household that would insist he is a better manager than Jurgen Klopp. If you're going to re-kindle your love of a football team, it helps when you've got your most charismatic manager since Shankly. To witness him in full flow, gesticulating to the crowd, like a manic conductor of the most rabid orchestra imaginable, is to see the passion and excitement of football that made me fall in love with it 26 years ago. 

 

Of course last season didn't end well. There's a viewpoint that the Europa league final showed up all the glaring deficiencies in the squad and that it was an ominous warning for this one. There may be some merit in that argument but I like to look at it from a different perspective. The last time we had Champions League football it ruined the first half of our league season. The last time we didn't have European football, we almost won the bloody thing. I don't think Leicester were complaining that a lack of European games hindered their league progress last season. Whisper it but, this year could be our year?

 

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a good one but we've heard it before. Typical Liverpool fan delusion. Well, hear me out on this. We still have good players. A fit Sturridge is almost worth a title challenge in itself. Coutinho has exceptional quality if not consistency, Firmino had a very promising first season. We've got a fervent Anfield crowd that is ravenous for success. Think about 2014 and how that support nearly carried us over the line, the energy everyone got from it. And, most of all, we've got Klopp.

 

He's finally brought in some of the players he wanted, he's got a full pre-season with a squad, and remember how much he values that. So here I am, an overgrown child of 33. I've waited 26 years, but I don't think I'll have to wait much more. I was a doubter, but to quote the Monkees, now I'm a believer. I'm walking on, with hope in my heart. Come on Liverpool. YNWA.

 

Mark Townsend

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[Tossed and blown]

We'll have a fervent crowd until the first home draw / defeat.  And ravenous more in the style of a handicapped fella with a busted oven.

[Tony Moanero]

Load of shite.

[Herp McDerp]

TL;DR

[William_Ulsterman]

you lost me at "bless me father" as all i could think of was the archbishop of dublin closing a paedophile priest school in maynooth due to the excessive use of grinder and drugs.

[VladimirIlyich]

Glory hunter. Where were you before 1990?

[Ronnie Whelan]

Glory hunting in 1990? :D  A bit like a nazi youth coming of age around the time that Hitler is in his bunker as the Soviets and Americans advance. If you're a glory hunter, you picked a shite time to join the party lad.

 

Wish I could turn back time myself to that magical summer when the Mancs were shite and City and Chelsea were crap as well. People went to Chelsea to buy flowers back then (not me obviously as I'm a proper hard case :ph34r: ) as opposed to joining one of the "elite" club teams in the world (I hate a footballing world where Chelsea, City or PSG have more pulling power than Liverpool or the two Milans)!!

[SlugTrail]

Fuck off JP, you said you had left.