If 2013/2014 was a season of scintillating football ultimately ending in disappointment, 1983/1984 was in many ways its counterpoint. While for stretches of that season Liverpool seemed to stutter, frequently unable to find any real fluency, they ended the season with a treble including a European Cup win against Roma on Roma’s own ground.
Tony Evans’ new book ‘I don’t know what it is but I love it‘ is a seminal account of the 83/84 season. The reader is taken through season month by month, the accounts of the games interspersed with some genuinely original insight provided by virtue of candid interviews with the players. As a narrative, it is compellingly told. Evans pulls off the rare feat of making the reader want to read on in the manner of the best fiction even though what happens next and the ultimate ending is already known. In this regard it is arguably the best example of narrative sports writing since Richard Moore’s brilliant Slaying the Badger.
But the book is much more than an excellent narrative of the team’s progression throughout the season. Evans seamlessly interweaves the cultural and political background into the narrative – the impact of Thatcherism, Boys from the Blackstuff, The Teardrop Explodes are all referenced. As a then 15-year old who travelled home and away, I can say that Evans perfectly encapsulates what it felt like to support Liverpool at the time, the defiant fellowship of the travelling support in particular magnified by the sense that Liverpool as a city was being assailed and that our club was a bulwark and a riposte. As Evans says:
“As the economic decline worsened in the 1970s, the iconography of the Liverpool shirt became increasingly a symbol of defiance for many on the terraces…When the Thatcher government set itself on a collision course with the city the youngsters who flocked to Liverpool’s matches became increasingly politicised. The travelling support was particularly vehement in expressing left-wing views”
Evans conveys a sense of the time well in other ways. For example, it may surprise younger readers used to full houses that in such a successful era there were very low attendances and torpid vocal support for many run of the mill home games (to the extent that the Kemlyn Road stand was shut altogether for one game). This was a reflection both of the economic conditions and a complacent apathy bred by years of success.
In contrast the atmospheres in some of the key games, especially against Manchester United, were breathtaking. The account of the game against United at Anfield is the best in the book, evoking the Stygian gloom of the day, the atmosphere inside and around Anfield and the confrontation on the pitch which left Dalglish injured courtesy of a Kevin Moran hand. The interpretation of the incident in the book by Dalglish as not being malicious was considerably more generous than that of most on the Kop that day and, in particular, Graeme Souness both on the day and on a Radio City phone-in programme in the days that followed the game when he implied that after being outplayed in the first half there was good reason for United to be instructed at half time to adopt a more overtly physical approach. It should also be said that in relation to Souness the book offers an important reminder of what a magnificent player and leader he was, whatever Liverpool supporters may legitimately feel in relation to other issues surrounding him.
The book contains some valuable reminders for contemporary times. A core of leaders and team spirit which created a pragmatic, bloody minded will to prevail even when the football was less than stellar was a key to success. On a lighter note, Evans refers to the never ending missives of the legendary Len Griffiths to the Liverpool Echo who was a compulsive non-believer in the management and the players of the time despite their success, mirroring the resident Cassandra who appears to be a statutory requirement of every contemporary supporters’ forum.
Liverpool as a city and as a football club has a rich history, here is a book which does credit to a momentous year in that story and should be essential reading for any supporter.
