The demise of Liverpool

[Pavilionaire]

I don't think going public was the problem, it's WHO they allowed to buy the club.

There are 3 keys numbers:

1. £250 million = the debt
2. £350 million = valuation of the club
3. £400 million = cost of stadium.

So the new owners will need to find £1 billion if they want to sit at the table with the Prem big boys.

 

[Billy the Fish]

Didn't they have a 3 minutes silence in Liverpool when stevie gerrards cat died

 

[The Modfather]

Imagine the scope for self pity if the bin dippers finish 12th or 13th this season.

Every national phone-in will be plagued by these twats banging on about what nasty owners they've had, what appalling management in Roy Hodgson (probably installed to deliberately sabotage the club), and how all football fans across the nation should unite to show the yanks the door because suddenly this will be the biggest crisis English football has ever seen.

Yeah, and they will still protest that Jamie Carragher is the best defender in the country,because he is one of our own.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Going to have to disagree with Gwylan when he says Liverpool never attracted the glory seeker fans. I got into football from about ten years old, so mid eighties onwards, and I can tell you now, even growing up in a small village like Hurstpierpoint, I was one of the only ones who asked for an Albion kit for their birthday. A couple of others professed a mild interested in the Albion, as a "second team" if you like, but almost without exception, they wore Liverpool shirts and carried Liverpool bags, and took the piss out of my support for a real team (as opposed to one who existed, to them, only on TV).

Never mind all this stuff about referees favouring Man United now, people have conveniently forgotten just how notorious Anfield was in the 1980s for exactly the same reason. Visiting teams getting soft penalties at the Kop end? I don't bloody think so.

These things have been going on forever, and while I'm certainly no United fan, far from it in fact, I'm not going to sit back and listen to Liverpool claim some kind of moral high ground, when for a very long period of time they had more than their fair share of suspiciously favourable decisions and thought it was THEIR divine right to win the league.

I think the only reason we tend to forget this is that the media presence was never anywhere near as strong when Liverpool were any good, and thus we don't get to see all their shocking penalty awards in glorious, high definition technicolor from 23 different angles like we do with the top teams now.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

And my other reason for enjoying their current situation is that, as far as I'm concerned, it is BRILLIANT for football to have big clubs falling from glory. It's what the game thrives on.

How many people love it when Blackpool tonk one of the more established sides? The most entertaining stories in recent years haven't been Chelsea or United winning the league again, but when certain teams who people see as having no right to be there getting to the top division- Barnsley, Hull (at least at first), Burnley and now Blackpool. And other clubs who think they're somehow entitled to high status within the game getting their comeuppance- how much has everyone enjoyed Newcastle falling out of the Premier League, or Leeds, Forest, Sheffield Wednesday, Man City and Southampton ending up in the third tier?

So in all honesty, I actually think it would be one of the greatest days in my footballing life if Liverpool ever got relegated from the PL. Will never happen, not in the next few decades, but it would be TREMENDOUS if it did. For now I will just settle cheerfully for them festering in the bottom reaches of the top tier and losing to fourth division teams in the cups

Besides, we're always hearing that Scousers have the greatest sense of humour in the world, so I'm sure they're all still smiling, right?

 

[Cheshire Cat]

They haven't won the premiershit/first division whatever-you-want-to-call-it for over twenty years and are in no position to win it in the foreseeable future.



Pity....







Not.




The Huddersfield Town of the 21st century.

 

[Buzzer]

Liverpool not have glory fans? What a load of absolute bollocks.

Mind you, there is something about Man U that just takes them into another stratosphere of hate.

I don't care about Arsenal, I don't care for Liverpool. Man U I despise like nothing I've ever hated before or will in the future. I genuinely wish them nothing but malice.

 

[Captain Haddock]

Looks like I'm a minority on here.

I remember the nights on TV when Liverpool were the kings of Europe, where they nurtured a lot from within (especially on the coaching side), and played, what seemed to me then, good football. For these reasons, I've always had good feelings towards them, and would much rather see them at the top than Man U, Chelsea or Man C.

I think they've been shafted by the Yanks, and this needs to be resolved. However, I fear that it's going to get worse before this happens.

As someone else pointed out; the brand is big and established. They will bounce back and challenge again, but I think they'll lose some of their big stars at the end of this season.

Agree with this.

I am a million miles away from enjoying their demise. They've spent VERY badly and sold badly too. This is partly down to the owners green-lighting purchases but a great deal can be placed directly at Benitez's door.

Owners will tell him if he's permitted to spend but what on is the manager's look-out and Rafa Benitez has been truly woeful in his choices, equally so in his man-management.

In principle, he's a good manager and when all's said and done he did win the ultimate domestic prize with The Reds, in much less time than 'Sir' Phallus Ferguson...it is on achievements such as this that managers are ultimately remembered...but from that moment on he only achieves respect for a close-run 2nd place in 2008-9.

Take out the current owners and Benitez's wastefulness (and disasterous media persona) and you are left with a proud club of fantastic history, a reputation for loyalty to and patience with its managers and a set of fans who are both highly knowledgable and oozing class.

Forget the knuckleheads who attention seek with their over-dramatised drivel and unintelligent rants on the airwaves (if you judge their fanbase by phone-ins then you can also surmise that the lower leagues don't have a single fan between them, West Ham fans are all taxi-driving amateur comedians and that ManUre fans are ALL from outside Manc (ridiculous misconception / urban myth...although they do have an unsavoury number of those tourist fans and those that are from the city tend to be utter twats).

Yes Liverpool dominated football in the 80s (even more than ManUre did in the 90s) and it was boring for the neutral, but aside from their standard allocation of hoolies and muppets (every club has them), there wasn't really anything to despise about them as a club.

Any notion that they were dirty - Souness, McMahon, Tommy Smith etc - simply fits the description of any number of others from that era.

My memories of their fans are of them applauding quality play from the opposition, gracefulness in victory or defeat vs smaller clubs and friendly whenever I've come across them...and yes I do think a lot of them do have a warming, if not great, sense of humour.

 

[Captain Haddock]

Mc lovin it !

Leeds, Sotton, Wednesday, Newcastle year before last - so good when a "big club" has a bad patch.

Whenever I hear someone say my club is "man/pool" etc I always ask which stand they sit in for home games - amazing how often they have only ever watched them on the tellybox.

In which case they ARE NOT fans.

We'll have those plastics one day (if we ever rise to the top). Would you take criticism from outsiders for supporting a club who has these?

Real Liverpool fans can't do anything about 'plasticism'!



Don't get me wrong, Liverpool did (and DO) have loads of glory hunters who either go to games or claim to support them, but for anyone to say they wish them ill-fortune because of a bunch of chancers and muppets who attach themselves loosely to their club is a bit non-sensical to me...those plastics will simply melt away...the REAL fans are those that will have to endure.

 

[Captain Haddock]

Says it all.

I was an armchair red for nearly 30 years, not getting close enough to football to really see what being a true suppoter was until about 5 years ago when I started attending Withdean matches (bar the odd Goldstone match in the 80's) and wanting my kids not to make the same mistake as me and being local supporters.

Liverpool will always be a class above the other big clubs and they'll always be the team I'll root for in the Pantomime League . . . until we get there of course.

They'll need new owners to get back up there but I think this season part of the blame lies with the overrated Hodgson too. With the team he's got should get to the top 7. There are no signs of that yet. He's no Benitez, that's for sure. I would have liked to have seen Dalglish at the helm but the board wouldn't have it. Idiots.

Agree with this, except it's a little too early to judge Hodgson bearing in mind the tough early fixtures they've had (Arsenal, Man City (a), ManUre (a)) and the fact the team is on an obviously serious downer - legacy of Benitez, the manager who was a dead man walking for too long. Also Torres has been off form for longer than Hodgson has had the job including during an otherwise successful Spain World Cup campaign.

You're right to say he is unlikely to bring back their glory days to them but he will provide stability for the time being.

 

[Beach Hut]

When I was a younger lad to watch Liverpool was watching the pioneers of Europe.

Quality was an understatement as they cemented all the success others aspired to in the now finished European Cup. Liverpool owned it for England for a country mile in the 80s in Europe.

The Champions League is greed and represents a feeble 2nd to what the European Cup was which was the competition for every club that won their league however I think when Liverpool won the Champions League they were 4th that year.

The point is Liverpool commanded and got a galvanised UK supporting them when they conquered Europe and I was part of that and it was fantastic.

This then begs the question from some do you support BHAFC and the answer is yes in my blood but in the old days we also supported any team going for European Glory and believe me Liverpool lead the way.

 

[Captain Haddock]

Liverpool not have glory fans? What a load of absolute bollocks.

Mind you, there is something about Man U that just takes them into another stratosphere of hate....

.... Man U I despise like nothing I've ever hated before or will in the future. I genuinely wish them nothing but malice.

THis sums it up for me. I'm happy for Arsenal to thrive as they try to play football the right way but it's no great shakes either way if they somehow slip down the table. Chelsea, for all their money, leave me unfussed either way but everything about the way ManUre and Phallus Ferguson have conducted themselves over a very long time far exceeds anything hate-inspiring from the rest (with or without retrospective TV coverage to compare with now)!

 

[Captain Haddock]

When I was a younger lad to watch Liverpool was watching the pioneers of Europe.

Quality was an understatement as they cemented all the success others aspired to in the now finished European Cup. Liverpool owned it for England for a country mile in the 80s in Europe.

The Champions League is greed and represents a feeble 2nd to what the European Cup was which was the competition for every club that won their league however I think when Liverpool won the Champions League they were 4th that year.

The point is Liverpool commanded and got a galvanised UK supporting them when they conquered Europe and I was part of that and it was fantastic.

This then begs the question from some do you support BHAFC and the answer is yes in my blood but in the old days we also supported any team going for European Glory and believe me Liverpool lead the way.

That's it for me too, in a nutshell!

 

[Billy the Fish]

Agree with this.

I am a million miles away from enjoying their demise. They've spent VERY badly and sold badly too. This is partly down to the owners green-lighting purchases but a great deal can be placed directly at Benitez's door.

Owners will tell him if he's permitted to spend but what on is the manager's look-out and Rafa Benitez has been truly woeful in his choices, equally so in his man-management.

In principle, he's a good manager and when all's said and done he did win the ultimate domestic prize with The Reds, in much less time than 'Sir' Phallus Ferguson...it is on achievements such as this that managers are ultimately remembered...but from that moment on he only achieves respect for a close-run 2nd place in 2008-9.

Take out the current owners and Benitez's wastefulness (and disasterous media persona) and you are left with a proud club of fantastic history, a reputation for loyalty to and patience with its managers and a set of fans who are both highly knowledgable and oozing class.

Forget the knuckleheads who attention seek with their over-dramatised drivel and unintelligent rants on the airwaves (if you judge their fanbase by phone-ins then you can also surmise that the lower leagues don't have a single fan between them, West Ham fans are all taxi-driving amateur comedians and that ManUre fans are ALL from outside Manc (ridiculous misconception / urban myth...although they do have an unsavoury number of those tourist fans and those that are from the city tend to be utter twats).

Yes Liverpool dominated football in the 80s (even more than ManUre did in the 90s) and it was boring for the neutral, but aside from their standard allocation of hoolies and muppets (every club has them), there wasn't really anything to despise about them as a club.

Any notion that they were dirty - Souness, McMahon, Tommy Smith etc - simply fits the description of any number of others from that era.

My memories of their fans are of them applauding quality play from the opposition, gracefulness in victory or defeat vs smaller clubs and friendly whenever I've come across them...and yes I do think a lot of them do have a warming, if not great, sense of humour.

You forgot to mention benitez sacking all the backroom staff who had been there for donkeys years.

With regards to a dislike of liverpool, part of the reason I dislike them is the myth that there's nothing to despise about them. All the fawning over their fans and the myth of the special atmosphere bores me to death because most of it is bollocks. Everyone I know who's sat in the away end at anfield said the atmosphere is average to crap.

It's a similar story for arsenal, everyones second team because they played good football 5 years ago. With arsenal it's their sad fans that I hate, for me they represent everything that is wrong with 'new football'. It's the team that people who don't really like football choose to support, they're more like a rugby crowd than a football one with their poxy little family day out at the emirates and back to boarding school or the city on monday.

 

[Working class pride]

The demise of the cowardly scousers is fantastic on many fronts. But for me the best reason is because they are Giles and Arabella's team that work in the press. I cant stand them... and of course they failed to beat the palace in the cup semi final allowing the palace to follow us to wembley...all be it years after we were there.. The silly scousers, are a bunch of muppets, I cannot stand them or the rfs that give pens in front of the Kop - on the wa to Wembley we had to beat them despie the usual Liverpool penalty. Cant stand United also but so want United to beat their European record to put them back their place as a poxy northern town that thinks that Ken Dodd is funny

 

[RexCathedra]

In the days before the internet, when all you could get over here re BHA was a line score on BBC World Service, and a para in a UK paper round about Wednesday or Thursday, Liverpool was a.) a damned sight easier to follow, and b) in the 80's at least, the era of the first satellite dishes (the six-footers), Liverpool were the Irish national side, near as. In Boston, at the time up to its armpits in come-overs,* Liverpool were English football, near as. So they have a piece of my heart, anyways.

*There was a joke going at the time that if of a Saturday morning you opened the door of Linda Mae's bakery in Dorchester and shouted "Immigration! Green Cards" in Irish, there wouldn't be an electrician left alive for the job site Monday morning, so many would be killed in the crush.

Good times, good times - and very good bars.

 

[Gwylan]

Going to have to disagree with Gwylan when he says Liverpool never attracted the glory seeker fans.

Liverpool not have glory fans? What a load of absolute bollocks.

I didn't say that Liverpool didn't have glory-hunting fans I said "when I was young, they weren't a glory hunters team". I stand by that: at my secondary school, there were Man U, Arsenal, Leeds, Newcastle and Chelsea fans (despite Macky insisting that Chelsea weren't a big club) but no Liverpool, Everton or Derby fans. And when, at university and post-university I did meet Liverpool fans, they were all, without exception, from Liverpool.

Of course, there are plastic, glory-hunting Liverpool fans but I didn't meet any in my formative years - which is part of the reason I don't quite have the animosity towards them that I have towards the likes of Man U and Chelsea.

And, of course, as Beach Hut says, in the late 70s and 80s there were a truly fantastic team, spanking foreign teams left, right and centre when the England team was complete pony.

I have to agree with Edna though when she says that she enjoys their demise. In fact, I'd love all the big four to be relegated, I know it's not going to happen in a 100 years but a boy can day-dream.

 

[Brovion]

I didn't say that Liverpool didn't have glory-hunting fans I said "when I was young, they weren't a glory hunters team". I stand by that: at my secondary school, there were Man U, Arsenal, Leeds, Newcastle and Chelsea fans (despite Macky insisting that Chelsea weren't a big club) but no Liverpool, Everton or Derby fans. And when, at university and post-university I did meet Liverpool fans, they were all, without exception, from Liverpool.

Of course, there are plastic, glory-hunting Liverpool fans but I didn't meet any in my formative years - which is part of the reason I don't quite have the animosity towards them that I have towards the likes of Man U and Chelsea.

And, of course, as Beach Hut says, in the late 70s and 80s there were a truly fantastic team, spanking foreign teams left, right and centre when the England team was complete pony.

I have to agree with Edna though when she says that she enjoys their demise. In fact, I'd love all the big four to be relegated, I know it's not going to happen in a 100 years but a boy can day-dream.

Agreed. Gwylan and I are the same age and when we were young lads in the mid-1960s the Liverpool bandwaggon hadn't got going, all they'd really won was the FA Cup in 1964 - although the city itself had an element of 'cool' about it as it was the home of the Beatles etc. Out of my friends not one supported Liverpool, it was mainly Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs followed by West Ham with the odd Leeds, Everton (who were considered to be the better Mersey team) and Man City fan thrown in for good measure. People growing up ten years later obviously have a dfferent experience.

Beach Hut's view on how the whole country would unite to support Liverpool (and Forest, and even Man U in 1967) is also accurate. But in those days the make-up of club sides broadly reflected their geographical location and a match between Liverpool and Bayern Munich could be viewed as Britain v Germany. Now it's just International Conglomerate A verses International Conglomerate B and most of us don't give a toss who wins.

PS - Just to add that I hope all the stories of people growing up with glory hunters prior to 1992 will FINALLY kill the myth that 'plastic' fans and gloryhunters are all down to Sky and the Premiership and before that everybody loyally supported their local team.

 

[Northstander]

Liverpools desmise imo begun at the end of the Ian Rush/John Barnes/John Aldridge era.

Rather than gradually introduce the new blood (Owen/Fowler, Mcmanaman etc) to learn the style of football proved to be successful, they simply transformed the squad.

Man utd did something similar but were I feel, very lucky with their golden generationof Beckham/scholes/giggs etc

For Liverpool, they didnt have that luck and it was down hill from there!

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

My formative football years were the late 70's and 80's. I was incredibly lucky to see Brighton rise (and then sadly decline). But all through that time we had Liverpool rammed down out throats by the media (and yes, there was media before Sky, just different media). Contantly on TV when there were very few opportunities to see football on telly; commentators eulogising about their skills; plastics all over the country (yes there bloody were). Tedious, irksome and unlikeable. They were the Man U of the 80's and so hopefully those who have grown up with Man U overshadowing all others can understand the delight those of us in our mid 40's take in seeing Liverpool squirm.

Intersting point about Blackpool poking the big boys in the eye. It wasn't that long ago that Blackpool were one of the biggest. This perennial circulation of big clubs keeps football healthy. The more "big" clubs that hit the rocks the better for me. They'll be back - as hopefully we all will.