Many things in football are blindingly obvious, as demonstrated by the football ‘news’ so far this week.
Mourinho surprised no one by continuing to bleat on, saying that Manchester “City play later after the other teams fighting for the title so it’s easier” for them to win the Premier League. Normal human beings know this as getting your excuses in; fawning journalists see this as genius mind games. Nothing new here. Move along.
Everton’s Seamus Coleman has been showing off his A* in GCSE ‘stating the bloody obvious’, proclaiming, “We want to go as far as we can in the [FA] cup.” Really mate? You don’t want to get knocked out as soon as possible? Thanks for the insight you bad bellend?
Then Javier Mascherano dramatically ‘broke his silence’ about how he left Liverpool. Just to remind you this is the same Mascherano that along with the rest of the Barcelona didn’t play us this week in a game that didn’t take place in a competition we are not part of. The timing of this story feels about as irrelevant to me as making the right refereeing decision is to Howard Webb.
Clearly asked a question to push a square story into a Champions League shaped hole, Mascherano, rather than spectacularly breaking his silence gave a 21st century stock footballer answer about broken promises without actually telling us what these promises were.
Bizarrely his revelation was simply that he wanted to go to Barcelona but it took him a while to get his own way. He said:
“The people who were there at the time – the manager and Christian Purslow – have now gone but they know the truth. I went back to Liverpool for pre-season and had a lot of meetings with them and they were promising a lot of thing to me but never kept their word.”
“We had been talking about completing the transfer for 20 days because the club also wanted to make it happen, but then they started to make things difficult for me.”
Right? Isn’t that what we all thought had happened anyway? There may have been a question mark about whether he refused to play against Manchester City or not (he says he didn’t) but to be honest it’s not something that’s kept me awake for the last 3 years.
This is far from anti-Mascherano article. Who amongst us wasn’t completely jaded in the summer of 2010 and wouldn’t have liked to have jumped of a sinking ship if only we weren’t bound by a lifetime of loyalty and addiction?
As fans we thought we had an inkling what was going on but imagine the dressing room. On one hand you’ve got Christian Purslow frequently turning up all starry eyed like he’s won a competition, blowing in your ear trying to be your mate by offering contracts the club couldn’t afford. Then on the other, you’ve got Roy Hodgson rubbing his face, alienating you as he works out how to explain his medieval football with a new story he’d learnt about space monkeys. This is they type of torture designed to fuck with your head and break you down.
So Mascherano thinks to himself, wait, I can get away from these amateurs and go and play for the best football team in generations? Football is his job. He could see that Liverpool was on the decline and in the wrong hands so he forced the issue and took advantage of the opportunity that presented itself. Shit for us. Great for him.
Football is always ruthless.
Who is this? An argumentative South American lad who has big teeth, who won the hearts of Liverpool with his tireless commitment and tried to force move away from Liverpool. Luis Suarez is an echo of Mascherano, a mere tourist.
Keegan, Souness, Rush, Macmanaman, Owen and Torres all moved on because for a variety of reasons it suited them. As a donkey from a book about the Russian Revolution once said, it seems the more things change the more they stay the same.
There is a history of ruthless opportunism at Liverpool Football Club that has upset the fans. It’s now time to for the team to demonstrate this ruthless opportunism in a way that will bring unbounded joy.
We know the saying about not being able to see the wood for the trees. In the context of Liverpool the trees are 24 years without a league title and a failure that we’ve become so accustomed to that it’s hard to believe we’ll ever see the end.
The ‘wood’ is not a celebrating John Flanagan as you may expect. It’s a mere 4 point gap between us and the top of the league. It’s competitors who will all continue to drop points.
It’s a team that as a collective has already shown ruthlessness in 4-0, 5-0 and 5-1 wins (amongst many others) against Everton, Spurs and Arsenal respectively. It’s already having an impact; teams are scared. You only have to see how Arsenal lined up against us in the FA Cup and how they celebrated their win to see what caliber of opposition we now are.
It’s the individual players too. In games that have already been easily won you’ve seen Liverpool players late on berating each other for not making the pass that could have led to yet another goal. These are players that brutally want to pile on the misery and continue kicking teams when they’re already down because the opportunity is there.
We hadn’t gone into this season thinking there was a chance of the league. But don’t ignore what is now going on in front of your eyes because this wasn’t supposed to be the year. There it is right in front of us; a golden opportunity that may not come round again anytime soon.
We need to get Javier Mascherano on this league title. Realise the obvious opportunity, be ruthless and grab it.
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