William Morris

Was there a few years ago when we beat Man U at Anfield 2-1. Tevez scored very early for them and we came back to win, think it was Robbie Keane and Ryan Babel with the goals. Watched it in this outdoor bar with a load of other Scousers and a load of Mancs, about equal numbers, with us all segregating ourselves on opposite sides of the area in front of the big screen. Everyone got behind their team, slaughtered the opposition players but nobody said a word to the other set of fans, with everyone apparently desperate not to start anything on holiday while our wives were presumably sunning themselves either back at the pool or on the beach. In other words, it was fucking surreal and quite bizarre. Anyway........ I thought the place was quite good, a long promenade with a succession of nice beaches and loads of nice places to eat, from the harbour at one end where you can get the boat to Fuerteventura from, to the Marina at the other which was called The Rubicon if I'm remembering correctly. We usually go to Greece and it was more expensive than there but not massively so, though I thought the Irish bars that have been mentioned were a bit too pricey. I suppose I'd be happy to go back.

Love the way this one confirms on the back of the bench that it's winter. I was thinking it might have been July for a minute. Some great stuff here.

Being of a certain age and having lived through at least part of the time he managed us, it goes without saying I absolutely idolised the man. I had the pleasure of meeting him on one occasion too and he easily lived up to expectations. So I don't say the following lightly. Basically, although I agree the club should have found a way to accommodate him after he quit, I'm not sure what a role that would have satisfied him could possibly have been. He made 2 mistakes imo. 1. He quit when he shouldn't have. It was too soon and he still had loads to offer and I'm sure he realised this pretty quickly. 2. Turning up at Melwood from day one the following season after he quit. How someone with his experience and all round football knowledge could have thought that this wouldn't have been a problem, especially for Bob Paisley, is hard to understand. He was also big on psychology, so probably should have realised how his presence could have fucked with the heads of the players, players who still called him boss while the real boss was standing a few yards away. Imagine how long he would have put up with it himself if they were calling someone else boss when he was in charge. A nano-second perhaps? Of course he didn't mean it that way but Bob must have felt undermined by this situation. As for any potential future role, well by turning up at Melwood the way he did, plus by his bits and bobs of involvement with other clubs later on (I think Wrexham and Tranmere spring to mind if I'm remembering it correctly) he would have seen any such suitable role as being hands on, with plenty of involvement with the players. For the reasons already stated, this would have been very difficult. I'm pretty sure he would seen anything else as him accepting charity, with them inventing some non existent job just to keep him at the club and there's no way he would have done that. So as I said, I'm sure there could/should have been a role for him, I'm not sure what a suitable one would have been and it was a difficult situation for the club. It was just so sad the way it ended really and, that he felt a degree of resentment to a club that he loved and that he probably took that resentment/regret to the grave.

To be fair to Peter Hooton, I'm pretty sure he was involved in making this doc.

Yeah, that Coventry game was the one I was thinking of and I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned more often. A poor performance where we struggled to break them down but after about an hour Fowler smacked a brilliant RIGHT footed volley in to give us the lead at The Kop end. For the 1st time that season, I genuinely thought we'd win the league and it's destiny was in our own hands. Half an hour later, mainly thanks to David James I knew we had no chance. Everyone looked devastated at the final whistle, sitting there with heads in hands etc. We'll never know for sure but I also believe if we'd won it that year, we'd have won it more often in the following years and certainly wouldn't still be waiting for another title win all these years later. For the out and out worst level of performance, I agree with those who said that semi final the other year against Villa takes some beating. We were lucky it wasn't far worse than 2-1 against an absolutely dreadful side with a joke of a manager. Felt like fucking killing the lot of them that day.

I know. That was part of my little argument with me saying the game in question was against West Brom rather than Birmingham. Ha, deep down I still think the rest of the world is wrong tbh.

Thanks for identifying him for me, even though I'll have to admit to being wrong now. Could have sworn it was John Osborne who was a great character form a time when there were more of such people.

Don't suppose you can remember who the Birmingham keeper was on that day can you? I was arguing with someone about this very incident recently and I had it in my head it was the West Brom keeper John Osborne, therefore we must have been playing them. The feller I was arguing with said it was against Birmingham. Looks like I was wrong and he was right then. A photo of it appeared in one or more of the Sunday papers the next day. I was desperately trying to find this photo online somewhere so I could win the argument. Don't think I'll mention it again if I was wrong.

Nah. A few seasons later, probably late 70s, they beat us 3-2 at Anfield but they did go 3-0 up in that game before we launched a late fight back. Maybe this is the one you're thinking of? Funnily enough, having already mentioned Gordon Taylor producing the only good performance of his career in the 4-3 game, in this one Trevor Francis did exactly the same. He was brilliant in this game but imo was massively overrated the rest of the time. Couldn't stand him and still can't when he's co-commentating on the telly.

Believe it or not, flying winger Gordon Taylor (yes, THAT Gordon Taylor) terrorised our defence that day producing the only good performance in his entire career.

Isn't it a bit odd that Liverpool FC, which unsurprisingly is in Liverpool, should spew the Liverpool Senior Cup only to take part in the Lancashire Senior Cup instead? No, I'm not losing much sleep over it either but, unless someone knows of some irrefutable logic behind the decision, odd seems a fair description to me.

The Kingdom of the sea, I think that was the other one I didn't get.

I love the place and feel the need to get another IOM fix if I haven't been for 2 or 3 years. First went there with me mum and dad when aged about 8 then again with the school when 9 or 10. Went with mates when in my early 20s and we promptly got thrown off the island for a combination of fighting with a load of Scottish people who worked there, this just after the England Scotland match which was on the telly at the time during those long gone Home International days. Even then we didn't really give a fuck about England but we weren't taking any shit from those mouthy fuckers. Oh and we got the blame for smashing a shop window and robbing cameras or something which was actually done by some other Scousers who were there at the same time. The bizzies drove us from the police station to the ferry terminal and escorted us on to the ferry for all the world as if we were the Great Train Robbers. They told us not to come back but they must have forgotten about it because they've let me back in quite a few times with me missus and again when the kids were young and again about 3 years ago for a long weekend. It's not that expensive to get to because EasyJet fly there from Liverpool now, or they did last time I checked. And I wouldn't say there's nothing to do when you get there either because there are an almost unlimited number of places to visit when travelling north on the electric railway when some of the scenery is stunning or, south on the steam train. There's the bus too to get to the places the 2 trains don't go to with 3, 5 or 7 day passes for unlimited travel on all 3 plus the horse drawn tram along Douglas prom. This makes said travel much cheaper than if you paid for each individual journey. I don't hire cars myself because alcohol will invariably be taken at some point on these outings. Can't remember if those passes are valid for the mountain railway too but it's something worth doing, especially if you are there on one of the rare days when it's not cloudy and you can see all 7 kingdoms. These kingdoms being (I'll probably get this wrong as I can never quite remember it) England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Man, Heaven and sure enough I can't remember the other one which should prove that after writing all this, I actually don't work for the IOM Tourist Board.

It's "goalie when ness," surely? Though I'm not sure all the kids playing it knew "ness" was short for necessary.

There is a Peruvian Rum (yes, Peruvian, I ignorantly thought it was a Caribbean only tipple) called Ron Millanaro. It's not just the best rum I've ever tasted, but the best spirit of any kind. Absolutely lovely! Frighteningly expensive though so I'll probably never taste it again. I'll always have my memories though.

Got an arse like Chris Kamara in that stupid advert that's been on telly lately.

As well as the points already made about Man U, I fully expect Mourinho to have them in game destroying mode when they play at Anfield. Liverpool like to get straight on to the front foot and make a fast start. Don't let them, time waste from the first minute, feign injury, break the game up constantly, make it stop start, don't let Liverpool gain any kind of momentum. Does this remind anyone of a certain Liverpool v Chelsea game?

They were a tremendous band though very much of their time. You don't see them mentioned much now even though they deserve to be, almost as if they've been forgotten. Sheet Music was a genuinely great album which everyone seemed to have at the time. Don't know if it stands the test of time because I haven't played it for years. Think I might you-tube or Spotify the tracks from it it to find out. As for cleverest band since The Beatles, well that's a matter of opinion but, they were one of quite a few bands over the years who were given the "New Beatles" moniker, along with the likes of ELO and Squeeze. Not quite The Beatles but very good.

"Waiting In the Sky". Sorry.

Suppose I'd be interested to know what constitutes a "chance" according to Sky Because I don't think we make that many. We have lots of shots on goal and lots of good situations, especially at home, that a good team would convert a decent percentage of in to chances. But genuine chances? I'm not seeing that many myself in most of the games we play. It's deffo true that other teams don't need many chances to score against us though.

As long as the team is doing well we'll sell out 54,000 and 59,000 comfortably and more besides. The only thing that could get in the way of that is THEIR ticket pricing policy. Not so long ago we had articles appearing on the official site about us having 800 million world wide fans or whatever ridiculous figure it was they quoted. Then they brag about extending to 54 fucking thousand? In their own words they've used the term "sweet spot", referring to a figure of approx 60,000 tickets that can be sold at premium prices, acknowledging that we could sell more but only at cheaper prices, again, always assuming that the team is doing well. But they're not interested in going above that because the equation they use involving the cost of further expansion itself and, what would come in in the form of income, doesn't balance to their satisfaction when they go past that 60,000 figure. I don't think the current lot are bad owners by any means, in fact they are quite sensible in many ways. But I just don't think their vision for the future of the club is in keeping with our status as one of the biggest teams in the world. Even if the 2nd phase goes ahead, we'll still have a ground which holds about 3,000 below our all time record attendance, achieved at a time when virtually everyone was local. Now we've got a zillion fans but are only going up to 54,000 and possibly (though as I said, I personally doubt it) 59,000 on the 12th of never? If the ground held 70,000 and there were lots of empty seats when we are playing Southampton on a Tuesday night, so what? I don't know why so many fixate on that. At least we'd know everyone who wanted to get in did so rather than missing out and gradually losing interest. It wasn't that long ago we had the ludicrous situation where huge numbers of fans were giving the team a succession of magnificent flag waving welcomes along Anfield Rd - before many of them either having to go home or retreat to the pub to watch the game that they should have been watching from the stadium. I don't think it's good enough but, I do realise short termism from owners is inevitable when the day when they sell on to someone else is possibly just round the corner. Sadly, that's the reality of it.

There has never been a firm commitment for phase 2, ie the Anny Rd extension. Mike Gordon has just done an interview and this commitment was still lacking, just more waffle about how getting the cash cow main stand done was the most important thing and, how various circumstances had to be right before there MIGHT be this further extension. I suspect 54,000 might be as big as the capacity gets unless the next owners have different ideas.

Whatever he said, tell him I disagree.

While you've been slagging him off, William Morris has been to Greece to see for himself how the people are suffering under the yoke of capitalism at it's most brutal. Top socialist me of course, as some of you will know. Anyway, I'm off to design some more top quality wallpaper. A smiley design running throughout I think.

Fucking hell. Apologies for being unaware of the non smiley forum etiquette. I'm not a cunt, I'm a very nice man and I'm slightly old now too. So you've upset an old man, hope you're feeling pleased with yourselves. And I can't use a smiley so you'll never know if I'm being serious or not.