If proof were needed…
That Liverpool fans were passionate about the club and didn’t want to lie down and accept the contempt being shown for the club by the owners then let me show you a few posts and thoughts from some members of RAWK:
Garstonite:
“I’m talking about full stop. The option to fuck football - the sport that has taken up so much of my time and money that I often don’t even have - to fuck it off completely. It would be easy to quote the famous of all the Shankly quotes at a time like this. So easy, it’s not worth me typing it out. But these American owners have come here pretending to know the values of this club. But it’s not something you can see from abroad. It’s not something you can get into. It’s a way of life. You earn a living, you eat food, you drink drink and you support Liverpool Football Club.
We knew we had to move on amd the irony is we knew we had to move on to something that is so anti-everything most of us grew to love about the sport. Artsy-fartsy and prancy bullshit or not, it was the working-classes haven from reality. A glimmer of hope, a bit of joy. A fucking great way to end a shit week, to spend a couple of hours with the lads and support players that represented your area. You had a loyalty to your city. To your area. When Liverpool beat Manchester United or City, Newcastle or Birmingham, we were getting one over on that city. Now what have we become? Billionaires playthings, following overpaid primadonnas who show no loyalty so why the fuck should you?
Gillett and Hicks appear to be the extreme of what is wrong with modern-day footballing owners. Clearly only in it for the money, looking at every avenue in order to bleed everybody in sight dry. All week, the argument against putting our foot down and making a stand is “you don’t want to piss them off”. Fuck it. Are we gonna let these cunts ruin the finest fucking football club in the land while we sit on our hands?
The shit has hit the fan. Time to show these Yank twats that they’ve picked the wrong fight.”
or Terry De Niro:
“Every year of my Life of supporting my beloved Liverpool FC, I’ve been excited from the first kick of the season to the last, and from the time I was a kid in the 60’s growing into a man in the 70’s and 80’s, I had every right to. Watching my team steam roll their way to trophy after trophy. Further more, trophies that really mattered. The League championship being showed to us most seasons with various heroes from over the years walking up to the Kop and waving said trophy in front of us. European cups soon found their way to us and I’m lucky enough to have been to 3 finals when we were victorious. I’m not knocking the League Cup, FA Cup, UEFA Cup, and I loved it when we won them, but nothing compares with the League, and I really feel for our younger supporters who have never seen us lift it.
So back to the reason for this thread. I’m constantly looking at various threads on here involving the Mancs, Arse and Chelsea, where they are constantly clawing points and breaking away from us, and seeing comments like “Lucky Mancs, Arse, Chelsea. Dubious decisions going their way, diving cheats etc etc…”
The simple fact is…Liverpool at the moment are not as good as the other three, and that is a FACT! and haven’t been in the league consistently for a while now.
2005 was magic and nobody can ever take that roller coaster final ride away from us, but we can’t keep looking back to that. We need to sort our domestic position out ASAP or we will fall further behind than we already are.
As it stands now if somebody offered me a 4th finish now for this season, I’d snap their hands off and that’s coming from one the Shank’s old school of “first is first and second is nothing.” As we’ve got a fight to achieve that when you look at the teams and their points tally that are breathing down our necks.
I’d be delighted if we won either the FA Cup or Champions league again, but almost 18 years without the League title is really starting to get to me now.
I thought about posting this in the LFC forum, but it would only get the “knee-jerk” treatment, and after all my years of supporting this great club, I think I know what I’m on about…”
or -HH-’s poem:
“The way our club was run was always unique,
We knew when to be silent and when’s right to speak.
And while I’m sure that such an approach had its flaws,
I wish we’d never let these two cunts through our doors.
They promised us money, and a flashy new ground,
But that turned to shit when no loans could be found.
And speaking of loans, they said ‘none’ when they came,
But like so many promises it turned out to be lame.
‘We’ll sign Snoogy Doogy, if one can be found’,
But then you’ll um over a defender for 4 million pounds?
Tell Rafa he can’t sign who he wants on a free,
And can’t even decide who stays and who leaves?
They told Rafa to focus on coaching his team,
Took the control away from him cause they had the means.
Stories of them selling were quickly denied,
But the silence was deafening on the Rafa divide.
Whenever the stories began to die down,
The flames were fanned by these PR loving clowns.
Smiling thinking back to the way Rafa ‘pouted’,
We’ll wipe away your smiles now your agenda’s been outed.
Approaching a man not fit to wipe Rafa’s arse,
That you’d mention it in public shows a complete lack of class.
Consulting him on football also has me intrigued,
Where’s his La Liga’s? His Champions League’s?
I long for the days when the money didn’t matter,
Money men behind the scenes so we can listen to the Rafas.
When knowledge of football was required to comment,
Not PR games from the cunts with big wallets.
But they’ve picked the wrong battle with the wrong folk this time,
We won’t just lie down when our club’s on the line.
Shanks understood the people were the heart of this club,
As did Rafa when he came for a drink down the pub.
It’s not just for our manager now that we’re fighting,
But for the wrongs of these two fools that we just want righting.
We know now we should have never sold out to these Yanks,
And we’ll fight till it’s them who are walking the plank.
We are the supporters, we’ve seen the joy and the pain,
We’ve followed our team through the wind and the rain.
Without us there’s nothing, these clowns soon will see,
We are the club. We are Liverpool FC.
and finally a classic from Garstonite again:
“I just think that there are times when, as football fans, we have to realise when to give up our unconditional support to a cause. There’s a long process towards that decision, of course. But who wants to talk about that? The ’cause’ can be an entire team, an individual player or the leader of the gang, the manager.
It’s safe to say, football has made a fool out of even the most erudite and level-headed… And me. I thought Souness would be able to turn it around. I had a belief Roy Evans would guide a new-age Liverpool side to success. I was convinced Houllier was the best thing to happen to this club since Kenny Dalglish and I had unreserved faith he would land us major honours.
So why should I now – older, fatter and probably just a little bit wiser – continue my loyalty towards the next man on the conveyor belt? Well, I shall tell you. And if you don’t wish to here my ramblings, the exits are here, here, here and here. Thank-you.
OK, I take a distinct disliking to the Championship Manager culture. We should sign so-and-so and all our problems will dissolve like a teardrop in the rising sun. It’s stupid, idiotic, foolish and if I had a thesaurus I’m sure I could find a thousand more words to describe how illogical and overly-simplistic it is. But am I a wannabe-manager? Of course. When I realised I wasn’t good enough to make it as a player, it was the obvious path to pursue. I blame my Mum for not getting me the appropriate footwear, just for the record. But, anyway, on the fear of digressing, I’ll get back to the point.
With Souness, with Evans, with Houllier - as pretentious as it may sound - I always felt I had ideas they should have used; that I knew the problems that they weren’t addressing. But then Rafael Benitez arrived. Yeah yeah, he spends days thinking about tactics, formations and his general footballing philosophy. Yeah yeah, he kicks his wife out of bed dreaming about football. Yeah yeah, he thinks about football so much he forgets his kids’ names (source citation required). And yes, he did also come with an impressive track record. But for the first time in a long while, my optimism had been compressed and I needed something to reignite that pride and that confidence I always possessed, even in face of a crisis. It is certainly true that I felt a large degree of frustration like many at that time, that we had become as further away as ever at being crowned Champions. But maybe the fact I was becoming a cantankerous old prick had something to do with it. I always there’s something about a man entering his thirties that makes the sun no longer brighten up his day, but merely get in his eyes. Ah well.
But then something remarkable happened. Something got hold of my hyper-inflated ego, dragged it into an alley way and severely pummelled it. Liverpool – a team that was half-filled with players who consistently failed to reach their potential, and half-filled with players I can only imagine got a football career by entering a raffle – won the Champions League. The most prestigious prize in club football. Now, dress it up all you like – say if Rivaldo had been on the field to take that free-kick in the exact position he scored past Chris Kirkland in that crucial group match, say if Del Piero’s shot hadn’t been stopped by a miraculous save from Carson in the quarter-final, say if William Gallas did indeed prevent that ball from crossing the line or Gudjohnsen’s effort in the dying moments actually killed me rather than just threatening to – the simple fact of the matter is, all of that is irrelevant. We won it. And we wouldn’t have without Benitez’s influence.
This could have only been achieved by a man that meticulously planned every eventuality, a man that tactically drilled the side to the brink of mental-exhaustion and, maybe, a man that offered Roman Slysko a generous pay-package, who knows? Who knows?
Now, I know that a Liverpool manager should never live off his past successes. I have people remind me this continuously, after all. Usually, by the by, people who are so pent up with anger and frustration, I can only assume are impotent. But there you go, that’s just an educated guess. BUT, does a managers past successes warrant support and patience from his fans and (I’m legally obliged to add) the owners? Fucking right it does.
Does the fact that Benitez has been working under immense pressure deflect from how he has built a strong squad, with a world-class spine? No! Is Rafael Benitez a world-class manager who shouldn’t allow no-nothings opinions’ stand in his way? Yes! Would getting rid of Rafael Benitez put our progression back five years, even if it were for short-term success? Yes! Am I in danger of using up my exclamation marks quota? Unfortunately, yes.
If you use a stream as a metaphor for football, then you’re most probably mad. But I will nevertheless pursue it, having not thought this through properly, so bear with me. The stream represents the division, and on the stream are twenty ships that represent the teams. Now, at one end of the stream we have largely calm waters where either side of the stream are greenlands where rabbits burrow and butterflies frolic gaily. At the other end, we have a waterfall where the ships nearest to will eventually plummet. Naturally.
Now, there is sufficient room here to venture how the bottom of the boat is where the background scene is worked: from the Chairman to the cleaner, the mechanisms behind the team are polished and checked once an hour, every hour. I could even say Gillett and Hicks are making their way through the ship’s wood with an axe, but anyway.
I am more interested in where the fans’ role plays in this. To me, we are the crew. We are behind the captain who is intensely trying to steer the ship in the right direction. Now, on one side of the ship, are the calm members of the crew. They laugh at the ship with the barcode flag. They are careering towards the waterfall and many members of their crew have decided to jump overboard. The other side are plotting against the captain. They hear there is a better man suited for the job from a stream a long way away. They are constantly criticising the captain and they question why he persists in fuelling the ship with coal, when the ships in front have invested in nuclear power. What the captain needs is unity and full support. Have we really reached the end of our tether with a manager that has promised and already brought so much? Consider this period a storm.
Now, you can take from this half-drunken rambling what you wish. You could conclude that Rafa is a pirate. You could also conclude I’m stark raving mad. What I hope you do conclude is that even though things haven’t been going well, it must be said that this is all part of what you signed up for when you decided to become a football fan and in such an unpredictable game, one thing will always ring true: a strong ship is a far greater force than one in a state of disrepair.
At the end of the storm, is a golden lark. Or something.
Post-script:
The silent ones with flasks come to life as we fire a canon at one of the ships behind us. They mimic the otters in the water, as they chant ‘Easeh? Easeh@ Easeh/”
If anything I hope makes one realise that Hicks and Gilette cannot just expect us to be armchair fans nodding with senility as we shove a greasy paw into the popcorn like some fans of other sports may do.
Take note, we are angry, aware and sad. Not a good combination.