Editorial
By Steve Kelly
From Issue 55, Winter 2001
Fanzines are like football matches: some you
win, some you lose. Take issue 53 for example.
"Hey, you know that Houllier fella? Well,
despite his Treble he's not everything he's cracked
up to be you know". Then, on the weekend
you're selling this literary masterpiece, the
man almost dies. Made us look right berks - I
don't know, some people have no consideration
for others. Issue 54 came out when we were top
with a game in hand, but it was full of "oooo,
I don't know about this lot y'know, things aren't
as great as everyone thinks"-type reservations.
Got that one right, eh?
So welcome to 55, and where the hell are we? A
lot of the articles, and virtually all of the
diary, are full of "Christ, I can't believe
how bad we are" moaning and groaning - which
would have been a fairly accurate summary of December
and January except I'm writing this ten days into
February and to say that the landscape has changed
is putting it mildly. I can sort of see how O'Leary
would get a bit sniffy about the 4-0. We got the
goal, held onto the lead, one great pass and it's
2-0. Game over, with two more goals the sweetest
icing there could be. But try, just dare try and
be cynical about Ipswich 0 Liverpool 6. You can't.
They were a form side, expected to be a handful,
and we just wiped the floor with them. They were
taken apart by a Liverpool team full of purpose,
ingenuity, pace, power. Clinical perhaps, but
it was breathtaking and exactly what eternal whingers
like myself have been begging for over what seems
like years - a team that plays The Liverpool Way.
And yes, I do know what a 'false dawn' is, thank
you very much. For months now, the team's presence
at or near the top of the table has become almost
incidental, as though we expected it anyway. No,
something else is at stake here, something just
as important. At least once in our lives, we've
all quoted the great LFC mythology of "first
is first and second is nowhere" "winning
is the only thing" "we exist to win
trophies", but not one of us has ever carried
that creed through to its logical limit: "oh,
so you're NOT first? You haven't won? There's
no trophies??!? Fuck this for a lark, I'm off………glory
glory Man United, glory glory" etc etc. No,
it's also about how you win, how you conduct yourself,
how you don't go chasing after the next big thing
because that's what everybody else seems to do.
You were born a Liverpool fan, or you made a decision
to be a Liverpool fan. Either way, there's no
going back now, sunshine - you're here for the
duration. And that means that if every home game
is like watching paint dry, you'll develop a taste
for it. When someone leaves, you say "good
riddance, you were shit anyway" - and if
he should suddenly start knocking in goals every
week for his new club there's bound to be an excuse
for that too, but it won't be OUR fault. Hell
no.
Or so it would seem. TTW&R may well be the
Kings of Complaint and the Dukes of Despair (and
no prizes for guessing who the biggest moaner
of the lot is!) but it's hard to stifle a laugh
when 9 league games (a quarter of the season)
with one win is described as a "blip"
while two somewhat freakish away wins is The Way
Things Really Are! It's going to take a bit more
than two wins in admittedly difficult circumstances
and a few goals from Emile to put a smile on my
face and banish the games from Fulham to Southampton
out of our memories forever.
There are still questions being asked about this
team. Why, for instance, do they nearly always
give a great account of themselves if some of
the following criteria are satisfied: we have
to be away, we have to be playing a good side
committed to attack, we have to get the opening
goal and if we've been written off as having no
chance so much the better. And when you reverse
all that (at home, lowly opponents, concede the
opening goal, everyone expects us to win and the
onus is on us to attack), why is it that we nearly
always stink the ground (usually Anfield) out?
We've got twice as many away goals as home goals,
we got 10 points away to United Arsenal Leeds
and Newcastle but only 6 at home to Fulham Bolton,
Southampton and Leicester. This is quite clearly
a preposterous state of affairs.
We still have a team that needs everything to
go its way before it achieves the required performance.
Ipswich away may actually work to our disadvantage,
as one writer in the Express implied: "the
players were reluctant to talk as they passed
through a tunnel of screaming autograph hunters.
It seemed odd after such a performance. It was
as if they were suddenly serious with the weight
of a new responsibility, worried that they have
revealed a hand which doesn't so much give the
potential for a title as demand it". And,
as the Beatles once sang, you're going to carry
that weight a long time, boys. Ill manager or
no, we're almost there, same as we were in 1996
and 1997. The time for excuses, the time for ifs
and buts has all but run out. We know what they
can do now. And when you develop a taste for caviar,
you can never go back to beans on toast!
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