The vagaries of the game of football
Oh for a couple of inches …
Not said by the vicar to the actress but certainly by Martin Jol to Jenas.
Had he clipped his stumbling slide into the ball a few inches to the left, Spurs would’ve been one up, Gerrard wouldn’t have legged it down and crossed it for Bellamy to hit the post and Mark pop it in (Hi I’m a Latin, dark haired good looking lover called Gonzalez. My first name? Oh, er, Mark.)
Liverpool wouldn’t have relaxed, they would’ve tried harder to get an equalizer, and Riise certainly wouldn’t have tried his usual blast, but perhaps tried to pass it forward.
Or a few inches back and Kuyt’s offside, or a few inches forward and King’s head is on the end of Murphy’s free kick and so on. Of course the reverse is also true, Bellamy could’ve scored with two shots, one saved, one off the post and so it goes.
What’s interesting is that Spurs have the wherewithal to be a good passing side, they were certainly crisp in passing, looked sharp on the break and interested; but when we scored and upped the tempo, we relaxed and started to enjoy the football. Gerrard looked like he was waking up, Riise was up for having a wee shot, flicks and tricks from Little Luis were acceptable and appropriate and so on.
It’s a funny old game goes the cliche, but I can reel off the games where the result would’ve been different, in fact where history would’ve been different (Garcia’s goal v Chelsea in the CL Semi-Final to name but one) if the inches had been a few and the other way. And so it goes for many other games with many other teams. Every fan has their favourite “what if” story, every team their hard luck tale.
We all know that the distance between winning and losing is not miles, nor measured by your success, but mere inches.