“Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.” – Eugene J McCarthy
As a country, we are famous for it. The weather, food, politicians – everything. We pull as much we can into that small caveat that makes us happy. Oddly, we don’t look happy externally when we experience this phenomenon. Of course we don’t. Us Brits don’t feel happy emitting happiness. That’s the perplexing paradox – we feel happy when we aren’t happy. In fact, we feel at our happiest when we are pissing other people off. Not in a vicious way, but in the peculiar way of one-upmanship.
‘The Moan’ is our liberation. It drives the momentum of everything. It breaks us from the shackles of insanity and showcases our individuality.
But how is this linked to football? Well, I’d argue that if you’re asking that question, you’re more than likely one of those who does it. However, I’m not going to sit here typing; thinking I’m the almighty – taking the moral high ground. I do it. Of course I do. I’m British – and this is football.
Before, as a species, it was our duty to head to our local and moan over a pint with our pals. Performances would be scrutinised to the finest detail and managerial errors would be picked apart with more care than when you dive into a luxury lobster that has cost you £40, making sure you have left none of the prized meat in the shell. You don’t want to miss a drop of that moan – that would be careless oversight. You put enough emphasis on one part of the game to such an extent that it cracks open, and more delicious moaning content can be found.
The sad state of affairs is that the bar propping, pint-in-hand gang are a dying breed. Instead, people take to their keyboards (sometimes with a canned pint of Stella, lets not do them an injustice) and bash away their troubles through algorithms. This is the new age of ‘The Moan’.
Liverpool, in particular, has fallen victim to the virus of moaning more than most clubs. This is made up of a few specific channels, targeting a few specific things.
Transfer Moans
The transfer window used to be a frolicking period of curiosity and excitement. Passion was spewed, as improvement grew imminent. Players would be brought in, some removed – but it was a mystery; a mystery that made announcements exciting.
Now it is nothing more than expectation and prediction.
Once a player’s name is linked to a club, expectancy dawns on its supporters. But this anticipation can kill the season ahead. We continually question why we didn’t sign certain linked players when the club falls to a defeat away from home in cold, windy surroundings.
“This was a game for [enter linked player here]!”
Was it? How do we know? We don’t. But we moan. It makes us happy to moan.
Tabloid talk becomes fact faster than a signature can be scribbled. Liverpool are possibly one of the worst culprits. The fans fall victim time and time again.
On the other hand, there is a flip-side. in recent years, was the signing of Oussama Assaidi. The Moroccan winger went totally under the radar before he penned his deal at Anfield. This forced the fans into the bygone of curiosity.
YouTube hits grow astronomically on the ‘season highlight reels’. But that’s all they are, highlights. An intelligent video maker doesn’t go out to make a transfer target look bad; quite the opposite. But we continually get sucked in. “Oh, hasn’t he got an eye for a pass” or, “Look at his intricate footwork!” It’s only on a rare occasion that these highlights are representative. But then you breed the ‘high-horse moan’, people who know that these videos are just highlights, so moan about them being wrong. These people moan and people watching videos. We like to moan.
Example moan: “If we had signed [Enter Player Name], we would have challenged for top four. I’m sure of it.”
Team Performance Moans
Moaning about the team’s overall Saturday performance is a football fan’s favourite type of moan. As a fan you expect to win every game – but not just win it, perfect it.
It’s just expectation – we assume too much. When Liverpool ran out 3-0 winners away at Wigan (through a Suárez hat-trick), people still insisted on moaning about Suárez still being better with a strike partner.
Why? Because convincing wins are boring. We need things to argue about.
We kid ourselves into thinking 6-0 away wins are the pinnacle – and of course it is for the team and ultimately the league position of the club you love – but in the aftermath, what’s there to talk about, other than praising the players?
We don’t want to praise the players. That goes completely against our morals. Praise people that are earning more in a week than most are in year? I don’t think so.
We want to praise a plucky performance that takes us by surprise; not a run out victory that was always going to happen. How is that fun? It’s not, so we rewind to our evolutionary roots and moan about it – that cheers us up.
Without shortcomings, success is incomplete for the everyday fan.
I think one of the best examples of this is Pepe Reina. Reina’s job is to keep the ball out of the goal – thus the name ‘goalkeeper’. I’m sure this is fairly clearly laid out in his contract, as Ian Ayre is pretty good at that sort of stuff. However, anytime the ball does bury itself into the taught netting behind the Spanish ‘keeper, it has something to do with a mistake. It probably wasn’t his mistake: but it’s easy for us to moan about it, because he was the last one near it.
Why don’t we rewind the tape and blame the striker for not closing the player down who played the pass that initiated the move? Why don’t we blame the midfielder for not covering the run of the defender or tracking back sufficiently? In some cases we do, but in the majority of instances fans go straight to the goalkeeper’s fault. This is then enhanced by the shoddy punditry that is transmitted across the airways. Goalkeeper’s will perpetually be to blame for a goal, but in some ways that’s a good thing – it makes moaning easy.
As much as it is fun and games to point the finger at trivial happenings that are ultimately inevitable (goal conceding), when it comes down to real idiocy (ie. Adebayor’s penalty in the Europa League), we go to town as moaners. The traditional gripe is about player wages. This fact hardly get raised when a player screams a beauty into the top corner in the dying embers of a game to secure victory, but when he is seen to be lazy or arrogant on the pitch, every fan becomes an accountant.
Perhaps this should be put into the pigeon-hole of ‘fickle moaning’. Where something is ignored in one case, but then contradicted in differing circumstances. I defy anyone to tell me they have watched a match in a pub or stadium and not heard someone spout ludicrous numbers at the players.
Example moan: “He’s paid two-hundred grand a week and he can’t shoot to save his life! Sell him.”
Managerial Moans
Hindsight is brilliant, isn’t it? Brendan Rodgers was wrong to make that substitution. He was also at fault for us conceding another goal from a corner kick. Forget our strapping six-foot centre halves – we need Brendan to step onto the pitch, leap like a salmon and knock the ball to safety.
The manager becomes an easy target – a scapegoat for blame. A moan icon. The manager takes the stick the players should sometimes.
This, however, doesn’t mean his is exempt from criticism. Rodgers makes mistakes and will continue to – he’s young. Sir Alex Ferguson made one of the biggest mistakes of his career last year – he threw the title away after being eight points clear. Guardiola made mistakes – he bought Ukrainian centre back Dmytro Chygrynskiy for nearly £20m. He played twelve times before returning to his former club for £10m less.
Managers aren’t fortune tellers. They can’t tell if a substitution or a system will work on a given day. They can’t tell if a transfer will be a deep-rooted success. It’s a job of educated guessing but ultimately they put trust in a multi-millionaire to go out an do their job.
Example moan: “Brendan made that substitution 5 minutes too early, and I think he took off the wrong player – because the replacement didn’t make an impact. Sack him.”
Miscellaneous Moans
Football Boots
The colours of the rainbow are presented before us every weekend. Coutinho dribbles with the trailing swish of a fuchsia shoe, Lucas has embraced scarlet to cleverly camouflage his boots with the team socks. Even traditionalist Steven Gerrard has orphaned the black and white in search of pastures new, adopting a patriotic mix of red, white and blue.
But football boots must be black, right? Yes.
Jamie Carragher leads by example and still holds aloft the flag for the plain black boot. No, more than that. He holds the flag up of professionalism and loyalty – because that can all be told through the colour spectrum. Of course it can.
Example moan: “He better be good if he is wearing those boots!” [say if the player is wearing brightly coloured boots]
Referee Decisions
The man in black. The controller. The most gruelling job in the game. Thus, we are permitted to moan at him!
This season Liverpool have seen their fair share of [enter chosen expletive] referee decisions. They have had people punched in the face, recklessly mauled down and clearly chopped apart – mostly without punishment. We, as fans, moan in the short term but realise that all supporters face this. But the same moan always pops up. The ‘consistency moan’.
Referee’s are humans. They are for no second precise. They are not all-knowing. Consistency can only be judged on TV screens after countless replays and tracking through the season. But we all know the rules, right? We all could be a referee in the Premier League? Then reality hits…
Example moan: “If he has given a penalty for that, why hasn’t he given that one?!”
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It irks of jealousy sometimes, we want to be the manager. No, scrap that. We’re better than the manager. We are sometimes even better than the players. If we can’t be picking flaws in someone else, then how else are we going to get our kicks?
It’s a cure for boredom. It’s the ailment of the people. Football breeds moaners.
Moaning, ultimately, makes us happy – it’s an evolutionary thing. But most importantly, I’m no better than you.
