Search the Community

Martin Samuel: Why David Beckham should run English football at the FA | Mail Online Anfield hit by a great divide There will be 7,000 Liverpool fans making the trip to Blackburn Rovers tonight. The club still commands fantastic away support, but increasingly its various factions are walking alone. A further legacy of the era of Rafael Benitez, Tom Hicks and George Gillett is divided loyalty. One club executive, a Liverpool man through and through, told me this week that his greatest fear is of the civil war once played out in the boardroom shifting its location to the Kop, with outspoken groups increasingly divided on the way forward. One theory is that the mocking 'Hodgson for England' chants which could be heard during the defeat against Wolves originated in the part of the ground occupied by the Spirit of Shankly pressure group, and the commotion that followed was in part dissenting voices offering support for the manager. This may be wishful thinking as Hodgson is running out of allies fast. It would be logical, however, that even on a night of great disappointment, Anfield would not be unanimous in its views. Support for Benitez was far from universal, no matter how history is being rewritten. The legacy of that tumultuous time is a fan base that has been encouraged to think the hated previous owners were removed by a grass roots uprising, not the hard-nosed practicality of the Royal Bank of Scotland. This makes for a lot of noise, but not all of it helpful and certainly not of one voice.