Am I Feeling Lucky?

The more I practice, the luckier I get – Gary Player

The waters are beginning to close in over our heads. We’ve had eight glorious weeks where we’ve lorded it over absolutely everyone, and it’s been bloody great. It’s important we make the most of this period, what with the league season galloping into view and our reign as Champions of Europe™ bound to end at some stage this season – some people should hope it does; back-to-back victories might cause their tickers to give out. The club are well aware of this, prostituting the European Cup to flog some tat – for those who haven’t seen the merchandising brochures, there it is, draped with some LFC socks. More than a few consumers are going to be disappointed when their socks arrive sans ol’ Big Ears.

For the fans part, it’s been a smorgasbord of joy. Let’s be honest, we’ve been rubbing the noses of just about everybody in our unbelievable good fortune. Some folk have been terrible spoilsports by being genuinely pleased at the turn of events, whether it be pleasure at seeing an English team / big club back at the top of the tree or gratitude at the match-to-beat-all-matches that we served up to the world. But the majority – an increasing majority as some begin to tire of our barely concealed gloating – have reacted with bitterness to the whole shebang. The mood music is this: just how lucky can one club be?

Suggestions that we were lucky have been met with guffaws, Jose Mourinho-style sshhing, links to various pics of the European Cup or boxes of Kleenex, and a simple but devastating response of * * * * * to show these people just what they’re dealing with. We wouldn’t be human though if we didn’t want to respond to these charges with a more intellectual response. Failing the presence of anyone of sufficient intellect, I’ll try and do it here.

Attempts to place Liverpool’s success in some manner of historical context of luck – or ‘spawn’, to use the vernacular – have been laughable. One wag thought it profound to note that Liverpool once won a European tie on the toss of a coin. The fact that Liverpool also lost a European tie on the toss of a coin, thus giving Liverpool a statistically unremarkable record of 50% success in the science of coin tossing, was dismissed as irrelevant. You won once, therefore you’re lucky. This is a bit like saying that someone who wins the lottery only to be struck and killed by lightning the next day is a really jammy git.

On the broader issue of consistent lucky bounces or dodgy refereeing decisions, each and every piece of good fortune throughout our 113-year history could probably be countered by another example which was equally unlucky. Clive Thomas’ disallowing of That Goal in 1977? Cancelled out by the blunder at Highbury which cost us the 1972 championship – tell Bluenoses that we’ll happily swap a championship we would have won for an FA Cup that we didn’t win in the end. Stephane Henchoz’s notorious cup final handball? Jose Saviola’s blatant piece of chicanery this season almost stopped our European glory run before it even got started. And so on and so forth. Perhaps over the course of our history the luck has broken 50.01% – 49.99% in our favour. If anyone thinks that is somehow significant, then they should check their email – the wife of the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha needs to smuggle money out of the country and could really use some help . . .

It’s a bit trickier to counter the luck charge with logic if you narrow it down to this season. Because there are fewer incidents, the effect of individual events can seem doubly devastating. The disallowing of Del Piero’s goal at Anfield was indeed significant, as was the allowing of Garcia’s effort against Chelsea (let’s not delude ourselves about that one. At the speed his shot was travelling, it couldn’t have gone over the line. We don’t need Andy Gray’s space age technology or his eagerness to belittle us to know that).

There’s two ways of rebutting the appearance of season-wide spawniness. To begin with, we thoroughly deserved to win every round of the Champions League that we played in. Through the group stages, we defeated all three teams on aggregate, something that we absolutely had to do against Olympiakos, and boy, did we do it with style. Leverkusen were swatted aside like a fly. We deserved to beat Juventus at Anfield for producing as good a first-half performance as any in Europe all season. Add in a deserved draw in Turin for a monumental defensive display and, well, one deserved win plus one deserved draw equals deserved aggregate victory. Last time I checked, good defending was a virtue in football. Some might argue that there is a duty to play attacking football at all times. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but this is an argument routinely made by losers. If anyone think those Newcastle fans who blubbed their hearts out when they lost the first of the 4-3 games at Anfield were happier at their team’s kamikaze defeat than had they ground out a 1-0 championship-winning performance, then they should check their email (etc).

Which leads us on to Chelsea. Still part of the first point, we limited the champions of England to one (1) shot on target in 186 minutes of football. Had Gudjohnsen scored with that last minute chance, all the talk of luck would have performed a complete 180° somersault – everyone would have ceased to think of Liverpool’s luck and concentrated on Chelsea’s luck, how their only plan was to shoot straight at Jamie Carragher and hope one of them deflected off him into the net. This is part of the second poin. Luck inherently accrues to winning teams because you can hardly be lucky and lose, can you?

Look at Milan, poor unfortunate Milan. Let’s imagine for a few horrible moments that Shevchenko’s late effort had struck Dudek’s hand and ricocheted into the roof of the net – so unlucky there, Jerzy. Not only would all the luck they got on the night – Nesta handling the ball in the penalty area and having a potential 1-1 become a concrete 2-0, Gattuso not being given his marching orders and condemning them to at least half-an-hour with 10 men – have been highlighted, but all the luck they got throughout the competition would have been dragged to the surface. While Liverpool were doughtily dismissing Chelsea, Milan were putting together two performances of the most astonishing ineptitude, poor in both attack and defence, yet somehow staggered past poor unfortunate PSV. Milan didn’t deserve to win the European Cup after that shambles, so if not them, why not us?

We did not win because we were lucky, we were lucky because we won. To endure the slings and arrows of your outrageous fortune while the slingers studiously ignore the fortune of others – that is the burden of champions since time immemorial. It is a burden we will gladly endure for the sake of victory.

And if all else fails, just remember this: * * * * *

The Never Ending Story

How much longer must we endure the soap opera that is Steven Gerrard’s Liverpool career?

A recap of the shenanigans of the last year to eighteen months is superfluous in the sense that you’re all totally aware of the facts of the case. But the spin I’m going to put on those facts has the advantage of leaving you in no doubt where I stand on the matter. So we’ll recap.

Roman Abramovich arrived in English football two years ago, saving Chelsea from Ken Bates’ hotel and conference centre money pit and simultaneously transforming the landscape of English football. When Jose Mourinho arrived, as he never failed to remind people, as one of only two European Cup winning managers in the Premiership – let us pause now to chuckle at the colossal irony of that observation in the post 26 May 2005 world; it’ll probably be the only chuckle to be had in this rant – the scales tipped even further in the direction of Stamford Bridge. It was only natural that they would try to hoover up the best players, and probably the supreme midfield talent of 2003/4 was one Steven Gerrard.

So Chelsea tapped up Gerrard, in much the manner that Liverpool tapped up Rafael Benitez. Not unreasonably, his head was turned. The richest club with the best manager in one of the sexiest cities in the world – whose head would not have been turned? He wanted to make the move, and considering the uncertain (to put it charitably) future of Liverpool FC, it made sense. He let Chelsea know that he was ready to take the plunge, and that should have been that.

Except it wasn’t. Influenced by the fury of those closest to him – not, as the rancid London press would have it, the influence of fantasy death threats from complete strangers – the consideration that maybe the new manager, with his just-as-impressive-as-Mourinho CV, could turn things around at Anfield, and the bizarre top-heavy nature of the Chelsea squad – it was hardly a gimme that Mourinho would make such a set-up work – he changed his mind. He decided to stay, and that should have been that.

Except it wasn’t. Liverpool were absolutely terrible for most of the season, incredibly slipping two points and one place back from the dire performance of the previous campaign. His comical own goal in the Carling Cup final denied us what seemed to be our best chance of a trophy and resurrected all the old resentments about his flirtation with the Lahndahners the previous summer. He was going to have to go elsewhere to satisfy his oft-stated desire to win trophies. Time to dust off the Chelsea contacts, and that should have been that.

Except it wasn’t. In a turn of the events that scarcely seems credible six weeks and multiple viewings on the video/DVD later, Liverpool won the biggest prize of them all, the European Cup. The European Cup, for chrissake! The subsistence diet of the Premiership was augmented by some of the most sumptuous feasts imaginable in Europe, veritable orgies of euphoria sweeping through Anfield with regularity. The scales of management swung away from Jose Mourinho in favour of Rafael Benitez, tactician extraordinaire, and Liverpool found themselves being lauded by such disparate legends as Diego Maradona and Johann Cryuff as the club to beat all clubs. At the end of it all, the man who had done most to destabilise the club got to put his mitts on the most glorious trophy in sport. Steven Gerrard and Liverpool, the most blessed combination imaginable. “How can I leave after a night like this?”, and that should have been the end of that.

Except it wasn’t. Perhaps stung by memories of the humiliation experienced last year, Benitez and Rick Parry were in no hurry to get Gerrard’s signature, lest he change his mind again. The noises stayed relentlessly positive, so they’d get around to it eventually. Unfortunately they miscalculated the extent to which Steven Gerrard’s ego needed massaging. All the gentle Scouse bonhomie conceals a towering belief in his own importance. That Benitez guy hasn’t a clue what he’s up to, the players he’s bringing in aren’t up to scratch in my not-so-humble opinion, they’re not sufficiently love-bombing a player of my stature – does the banner not say that “there is no man in this world as big as Ste Gerrard”? – I’m out of here. Shocked at the abruptness of it all, but comforted by the notion that their patent desire to keep him should keep his transfer fee stratospheric, Benitez and Parry shrugged their shoulders and let the world know that it was time to move on, and that should have been that.

And it still should be. I’m sick of it all. Certain people routinely bemoan the lack of an English core at Anfield, yet it is the one player who is Scouse and has been a Red for all of his days who has jerked us around the most, constantly looking at pastures which he seems to think are big enough to contain his manifest greatness. Compare and contrast his behaviour with that of Dietmar Hamann, who effectively took a pay cut and a less certain future to stay at Anfield. Even if Steven Gerrard has genuinely made up his mind to lash his future to the good ship Liverpool – a dubious assumption on the basis of his wretched procrastination up until now – does he really think he can put a lid on the speculation that will stick to him like manure to a blanket? Does he really think that, if after a dozen or so games Liverpool are not keeping pace with Chelsea, there won’t be a welter of tabloid stories telling us that “informed sources close to Steven Gerrard have told us EXCLUSIVELY that he is unhappy with the direction the club is taking” and so on and so forth? His exasperating inability to make up his mind and live with the consequences has turned Anfield life into a freak show, whether it be public shirt-burnings – note that only ‘Gerrard 17′ shirts were burned; penny for the guy? – or shame-faced press conferences from Captain Elephant Man.

When will it end? There are two outcomes which will stop the maelstrom of speculation in its tracks. Either a) Gerrard follows his instincts and goes, or b) we win the Championship. Seeing as a) is an option he isn’t brave enough to take, it’ll have to be b). You’re going to have to be amazing this season, Stevie, Maradona-in-Naples amazing. Anything less and you’ll be the butt of every bit of disgruntlement that the Kop can muster. And that’s a lot of disgruntlement. If that does happen, and an orchestra full of small violins strikes up, I hope someone will have the balls to remind him that he has no one to blame for his situation but himself.