Liverpool FC Forum

[adamnbarrett]

Everton fans on bluekipper are claiming that Liverpool fans surrounded Alan Smith's ambulance after the match, trying to stop it from leaving Anfield and shouted "Let the cu.nt die". They are passing this off as fact.     

No Liverpool fans weren't blocking it at all. It was parked outside the main stand. If they wanted to get him to hospital the ambulance should have been and gone during the game. And the only shouting I heard was 'amblulance for smith'.

[112-1077774096]

im just going to play devils advocate here for a second and im just wondering what the opinion will be.

i know alan smith is a great pro and is an honest player. he goes in hard but he also never rolls round trying to get another player in trouble. i respect players for that as there are not too many left like that. my question is whether that cheating little c*nt robben would be getting the same sympathy if it had happened to him. of course people will say they dont want it to happy to any player and i agree with that but would there be less sympathy.

i know i would be less sympathetic although i must stress i dont like to see it happen to any player, this is just a question about sympathy levels

[JBG]

im just going to play devils advocate here for a second and im just wondering what the opinion will be.

i know alan smith is a great pro and is an honest player. he goes in hard but he also never rolls round trying to get another player in trouble. i respect players for that as there are not too many left like that. my question is whether that cheating little c*nt robben would be getting the same sympathy if it had happened to him. of course people will say they dont want it to happy to any player and i agree with that but would there be less sympathy.

i know i would be less sympathetic although i must stress i dont like to see it happen to any player, this is just a question about sympathy levels

As I said in a recent thread about Michael Essien (i.e. the one where he got injured in a tackle with Nigel Reo Coker) my own honest feeling peewee is that I would be sympathetic for pretty much every player in a similar situation.

I wouldn't cry crocodile tears for the likes of Gary Neville or El Hadji Diouff, but I wouldn't taunt them about it either.

When a player gets a bad injury his livelihood is in a danger and nobody should be deprived of their livelihoond.

[drummerphil]

Hey JBG  only just realised....i take it Mr T is yesterdays news now and its long live Mick Foley.....

[Rafa D]

Alan Smith is a professional football player, he is on £40,000 a week, he has a model girlfriend,  he knows the risks of playing the game. Harsh but true.

[Igor Zidane]

I wouldn't want any player to go through what Alan smith has gone through. I feel sick at the thought of it. Not even Gary neville.

[mighty mo]

the pictures in todays paper of alan smiths ankle are ghastly,van nistleroy and rooney nearly puked at that sight of it

[7_Kewell]

I don't know how anybody could wish that kind of injury on a player, regardless of who he plays for.

A friend of mine who is a doctor said that its a savage injury. She said his broken bone will heal ok, but the dislocated ankle is most serious and if he ripped liagements (and there is a chance that he did) he may never play again.

i don't think any true fan would want to see ANY footballer get seriously hurt.  Ok, Essien made us all mad...but if he suffered the injury Smith did, i can't honestly say i'd be 'happy' about it.  Smith was brave enough to close that shot down and i hope he gets back to full fitness.

[columbia]

Any fan that sang the chant yesterday is a moron but I also find a lot of the complaining manc fans slightly hypocritical. I fail to see how singing the riise song is worse than singing "96, wasn't enough" and also the fact that haaland received similar taunting when keane broke him in half a few years back, proves some of them have short memories. I realise our fans arent perfect and nothing excuses anybody from taunting smith but some of them want to look at themselves before they start complaining about us.

[Dundalk]

I wouldn't want any player to go through what Alan smith has gone through. I feel sick at the thought of it. Not even Gary neville.

I couldnt agree more, I feel really sorry for Smith he is a good pro and I have liked him since his leeds days.

I dont think that anyone should get any pleasure out of anyone getting injured like this (even Gary Neville!)

[Dalglish]

Any fan that sang the chant yesterday is a moron but I also find a lot of the complaining manc fans slightly hypocritical. I fail to see how singing the riise song is worse than singing "96, wasn't enough" and also the fact that haaland received similar taunting when keane broke him in half a few years back, proves some of them have short memories. I realise our fans arent perfect and nothing excuses anybody from taunting smith but some of them want to look at themselves before they start complaining about us.

Spot on lad.....

I was on the KOP yesterday and the song was definitely sung by enough fans for it to be heard ...........

In fact I had a bit of a spat with a few numpties sitting behind me on a day trip who were singing it


There is something about cup games. You end up sitting with a bunch of strangers and you always get at least one nobhead. We were treated to a verse of 'who's that dying on the runway' at the very start of the game. It wasn't heard again though after he was suitably spoken too.


You have mentioned that we are not perfect and like every club have our fair share of numpties but in the KOP's defence the song had nothing in volume like  the applause he got as he was stretchered off.

Incidents like this are at the more unsavoury end of football rivalry and I won't and don't condone them in any way.

However, yet again the media are choosing to highlight this one incident over and above our victory .........

[laza]

Every club has its idiots and sadly the vultures in the media will always give them the most press.
Though if that had been at Old Traff and a Liverpool player being stretched off, i wonder what percentage of stadium would have clapped him off and how many  would have acting like  pratts

[Dalglish]

Supporters' sick chants reveal new depths of antagonism between two great clubs
By Oliver Kay

An ugly rivalry took another turn for the worse at Anfield


IT IS A TALE OF TWO CITIES, OF SOCIO-economic competition and clashes of culture, but these days, off the pitch at least, the rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United knows no boundaries. No insult is too low, no taboo left unbroken. It is hate, pure and simple, and if anyone thinks it stems from Gary Neville’s fist-pumping, badge-kissing celebrations at Old Trafford last month, they are missing the point entirely.

Where to start in chronicling the latest descent of this rivalry towards the gutter and the kind of hostility that exists in cities such as Glasgow, Istanbul or Rio de Janeiro? Much has been made of the distasteful jibes about Alan Smith’s injury (“John Arne Riise, I wanna know how you broke his leg”) and those directed at Neville, but what of the chants about the Heysel and Hillsborough tragedies, the outstretched arms that make light of the Munich air disaster and the songs about Harold Shipman, George Best, Michael Shields and anyone else whose fate can be used as a means to score points in the ultimate game of onedownmanship?



This was a low and there have been plenty of them in this fixture down the years. In 1986, United’s players stepped off the team bus at Anfield and were greeted with what was thought to be an ammonia spray, with several young Liverpool supporters caught in the line of fire. That prompted discussions at boardroom level and, when United returned to Anfield the next season, this time under the management of Alex Ferguson, their players kicked signed footballs into the Kop beforehand as a goodwill gesture. Within seconds, the balls were back on the pitch, having seemingly been stabbed. These days any self-respecting Scouser would have put them straight onto eBay.

Objects were thrown onto the pitch on Saturday — a couple of coins at Steven Gerrard as he went to take a corner, the same, plus a hamburger, at Neville as he took a throw-in. That means the FA are likely to hear from Merseyside Police in the coming days, but more worrying, in one sense, were some of the atrocious chants coming from the stands. Sticks and stones? Names and insults can hurt more, particularly when designed with the malicious intent of rubbing salt in the wounds left by the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans at Hillsborough in 1989.

Some United fans take a perverse satisfaction in the fact that it took that tragedy to silence Liverpudlian taunts about what happened in Munich 31 years earlier. “Where’s your famous Munich song?” the United supporters would chant, knowing that it too had died on the terraces at Hillsborough, but uneasy occupation of the moral high ground was not enough.

In more recent years they have sung “if it wasn’t for the Scousers, we could stand”, but as Saturday’s game slipped away from them, they plumbed new depths, accusing their Liverpool counterparts of “killing your own fans” on that fateful day. It was a stomach-churning moment, a line that, however horrifying in print, sounded far worse when seized upon by a thousand people in the away end.

How much lower can it go? One dreads to think. These are supporters who can be humorous, warm and gracious — as shown by the ovation afforded to Smith by the majority of the home crowd once the moronic chants had died down — yet they bring out the worst in each other even though the atmosphere on the pitch is largely cordial. The FA may feel otherwise, but Neville’s behaviour four weeks ago is a symptom of that enmity, not a cause.

[greenred]

Good report from Monday's paper




Liverpool take the high ground to flush out Fergie

Kevin McCarra at Anfield
Monday February 20, 2006
The Guardian


Sir Alex Ferguson has always believed that the first quarry must be the local rivals. By bringing down Liverpool he found his starting point for an era of dominance at Old Trafford but this FA Cup win, achieved through Peter Crouch's goal, demonstrated that the hunter can eventually become the prey. It is Manchester United who are now being tracked.
The very most they will have to show for this season, assuming Wigan can be beaten in the final next Sunday, will be the Carling Cup, a competition that has never before been a priority for Ferguson or his predecessors. It is Liverpool who are relishing the high life, with their Champions League tie against Benfica beginning in Lisbon tomorrow and hopes renewed that they will vault over United to be Premiership runners-up.


The afternoon at Anfield turned ghastly in the 88th minute, when the substitute Alan Smith blocked a John Arne Riise drive with his right leg and then felt his left buckle under him. He had broken it as he dislocated the ankle. It will be a long time before the makeshift midfielder plays again. Unless the pain made him oblivious to the crowd, he carries with him the memory of some Liverpool fans singing gleefully about an injury that was obviously severe even at the time. Other Anfield supporters, however, did applaud sympathetically as the stretcher bore Smith away.
Ferguson's immediate feelings were of compassion but the player's absence will underline the inadequacies of the United squad. They are so ill-equipped in the centre of the pitch that they eventually abandoned that territory completely and, with four strikers in action, settled for launching long balls. José Reina never had to make a save of note.

Given the pitiful display by United, it was effrontery on Ferguson's part to complain that the contemporary Liverpool side only need to play for "five minutes" in order to win. Maybe the Scot was succumbing to a nostalgia for the dandyish Anfield teams that he once quelled with ease. United are in deep trouble if the manager cannot adapt to football as it now is.

Liverpool need make no apologies. Though Xabi Alonso was absent with a slight thigh strain, Rafael Benítez's team had complete command as the excellent Dietmar Hamann drew on all his experience while making a 22nd appearance of this campaign which entitles him to extend his contract for one more season.

"When I was six years old people were talking about the midfield as the key part of the pitch," Benítez said. "It's the same now. If you control the midfield you control the game." The physical supremacy was accentuated because, at the outset, the visitors merely had the natural ball players Kieran Richardson and Ryan Giggs in the centre.

It was on Liverpool's turf that Roy Keane played his last match for United, with a strong showing in September's goalless draw. Even if the breakdown in Ferguson's alliance with the captain truly was beyond repair the manager ought still to have had a better stock of players for that area of the side.

The club is left pining even for Phil Neville, casually off-loaded to Everton in the summer. While it was beyond prediction that Paul Scholes' season would be ended by blurred vision, the midfield is the area in which the dwindling of United has been most marked since the 1999 Champions League success. The sort of rumours that link Ferguson with moves for Mahamadou Diarra, of Lyon, or River Plate's Javier Mascherano come very late indeed.

Benítez has kept a constant grip on the practicalities. He was presumably aiming a barb at Chelsea when he spoke about the pragmatic nature of his squad building but Ferguson might wince as well.

"When we decided to sign Peter [Crouch]," the Liverpool manager said, "we were not talking about signing the best striker in the world. We were thinking about signing the striker we needed. It is the same with Momo Sissoko, Bolo Zenden and Pepe Reina. Sometimes another team with more money will spend big on players that they will not use. We try to use the money that we have on players that we need."

In a scrappy match strewn with bookings Liverpool imposed themselves to greater effect. United were so addled that an ineffective Wayne Rooney was even miscast as a winger after the interval, with Louis Saha brought on in the middle of the attack. It was easy for Benítez's team to retain a lead seized in the 19th minute.

Edwin van der Sar had turned a Harry Kewell header behind and, when Steven Gerrard played the corner short to Steve Finnan, Crouch moved away from his marker Nemanja Vidic, an uncertain deputy for the injured Rio Ferdinand, and converted the full-back's delivery with a header that crossed the line after the goalkeeper had tipped the ball on to the inside of the post.

Finnan was later to miss with a volley and the admittedly meagre supply of chances was the exclusive property of Liverpool. Benítez's side are not particularly sharp inside the penalty area but they could afford minor failings against an abject United.

Man of the match Steve Finnan - The full-back took the game to United even if he did miss a decent chance. His composure was apparent when he ferried the ball out of his own six-yard box.

Best moment The well-aimed cross for Peter Crouch which provided the only goal of the game.
   




Fair enough i reckon.

[laza]

Excellent article Greenred, thanks for that
Of note for me was Rafa comments about practicalities of who he signs