The Modern Day Liverpool Fan

Supporting Liverpool Football Club is becoming harder by the season. Not because of the results, not because of the style of play and not because we haven’t seen Champions League football since 2009. The reason why is because of the modern day Liverpool FC fan. Nowadays you can’t turn anywhere without seeing them. You have Twitter, Facebook, Talk Sport & BBC Five Live phone ins; you have websites and blogs; you have the fans that go to the game and your mate down the pub so depressed with the West Brom & Aston Villa results that it makes you want to end your trust in football all together. It is hard to keep your own sanity because of it.

Liverpool is one of the biggest football clubs in the world; only a select few clubs can rival our history. The result of this, obviously, is that Liverpool Football Club is one of the most supported. Millions of fans that have access to the Internet, millions who have their opinion to share at an instant. In the written press you have journalists who support Liverpool and are willing to share exactly how they feel with their personal opinions. These journalists have almost become celebrity figures, with so many people hanging on their every word waiting to press the RT button and spread what they think of the latest result in 140 characters. And, to make it worse, there are plenty of ex-pros in the media waiting to give their penny’s worth as well.

It is so easy to get sucked in with it all. We have all been there, after a Liverpool win the first thing you do is go on to Twitter, scroll up to get the latest feeds and sit back and bask in the glory tweets about how well Liverpool have played; stats coming in from Opta accounts and the Four Four two app, you pour over how many passes Liverpool have completed, how many players Suarez has nutmegged and finding out that Liverpool have broke the record for the most amount of touches in the 6 yard box in the space of 10 minutes. Every small detail is analysed and published within 10 minutes of the final whistle.

Then there are the games when the red men have drawn or, God forbid, lost. You reluctantly take your phone out and hit the refresh button to get tweet-upon-tweet about how the club should not have got rid of Dalglish, about what Rafa would have done, the need for a complete change in style of play and questions on whether Rodgers should go. You keep hitting that refresh button, waiting for some good news, or a stat, which you can grasp on to.

When you want to bask in glory, Liverpool football club is splashed everywhere for you to take it in, share it and gloat to rival fans. When you want to hide from it, when you want to get away and turn your laptop off and forget about it until the next game, you get constant reminders on your phone; notifications of people mentioning you on Twitter, commenting on your Facebook wall or, worse, the text message from your mates who support that rival side.

The modern Liverpool fan is a strange specimen, going to Anfield now is like going to a party where you’re not allowed to have any fun. Everyone talks about that fantastic special Anfield atmosphere. I have witnessed it myself on those European nights under Rafa, but recently I have never known it to be this quiet. With the prolonged periods of silence you can hear the moaning more. The old fellas who have been there since the 70’s and 80’s who keep going because they don’t want to lose their season tickets. Then you get the day-trippers, the fan that takes more photos on their smart phone then actually properly watching the game.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t everyone, but the ratio from day-trippers and moaning arseholes is fast catching up with the normal football fan that is walking into Anfield wanting to watch their team play football and enjoy it. Going to football, watching your team play, is meant to be 90 minutes of escape from your reality. It is your release from mundane 9-5 working life. When you start to not enjoy it, it is when you should not be watching football at all.

It is so easy to get sucked into a modern day football fan’s lifestyle.

Take this season for example, from the start of Rodgers reign every Liverpool fan I saw on Twitter was asking for him to be given time – for Liverpool fans to get behind the manager and the team. They understood that this was going to be a season of transition and they accepted this. I wish I had saved those tweets at the time because those same people are now the ones who are saying that Rodgers needs to be sacked and that the team are worse now than they were last season, after every poor result.

Yes, we all love to see Liverpool win football games and every fan would love to see their team go a whole season unbeaten, but unfortunately the chance of this happening are very slim.

This season has been about transition and I have alluded to this in a comment I made on the excellent piece in the Musker Colum (http://www.readliverpoolfc.com/category/columns/the-musker-column/)

As it so rightly points out, it is all about patience. I know that we can’t wait forever, but Rodgers has only been in charge of the club for less than 10 months, we can wait a bit longer! Football is football and getting too caught up in it can drive you insane.

So, this is my message to the modern day Liverpool fan: follow these 3 simple steps and you will live a happier life.

1. Don’t take Twitter too seriously, don’t take every thing in, and don’t rise to rival teams who are waiting for you to take their bait. In fact, do what I do and don’t even switch on Twitter after a game. You feel much better for it. Also, think before you type, because once you have laid out your 140 characters and pressed send there is no getting it back.

2. Follow respected journalists who know what is going on at Liverpool football club. Stay clear of the self proclaimed ITK people on Twitter and Facebook. Stay clear of the likes of ‘The Moose’ from TalkSport and Adrian Durham. They are just there to wind you up. Read articles online from Liverpool fans such as the Anfield Wrap and, of course, Read Liverpool.

3. When you go to a game, enter the stadium knowing you are going to enjoy watching your team play. Don’t be ashamed to join in on the songs, belt out You’ll Never Walk Alone louder then you have ever sung it before; you want to be leaving the stadium at full time with a hoarse voice, drained after mentally kicking every ball and making every off-the-ball run.

And finally, perhaps the most important thing to do, is remember this saying.

 “If you can’t support your team when they lose or draw, then you shouldn’t support them when they win”