Liverpool FC Forum

[dundreamin]

Lakes you have,nt got a clue. Am a devout LFC fan not one of these cheerleaders who frequent anfield these days,because I carnt afford to go anymore. I can remember the days when I was in the army in northern Ireland came home some weekends and DID,NT even think about how I would get a ticket just got in line and paid to get in. Also as a reference to cost in estimation if I had a £50 in my pocket now I reckon it would be about £5 to get in and £1 for a pint. All in all YES am proud to be left wing at least we did not hijack football, the RIGHT WING money grabbing t.wats did. Look at the world at present who done this?? Yep the banks= RIGHT WING

[lakes10]

Lakes you have,nt got a clue. Am a devout LFC fan not one of these cheerleaders who frequent anfield these days,because I carnt afford to go anymore. I can remember the days when I was in the army in northern Ireland came home some weekends and DID,NT even think about how I would get a ticket just got in line and paid to get in. Also as a reference to cost in estimation if I had a £50 in my pocket now I reckon it would be about £5 to get in and £1 for a pint. All in all YES am proud to be left wing at least we did not hijack football, the RIGHT WING money grabbing t.wats did. Look at the world at present who done this?? Yep the banks= RIGHT WING

hate to burst your bubble but the club turned its back on left wing stuff when it was sold to G&H. the club is now american right wing lol.

lets face in Liverpool is not the only club that has come our of the working man, just take...lets say west ham...or should i call them Thames Ironworks FC as thats how they started, a club for the working men of the ironworks.

or Millwall Rovers formed by the workers of J.T. Morton's canning and preserve factory.
most club started out as workman clubs and yes left wing if you must.

it seem that you think this club was the only club that started out of a hard life.

like yourself i have been going to liverpool games for years and years and yes i know what its like to see us champs of Div1 (now the prem).

but knowing the history of our club like you do then you will know how over the years we have worked hard with the media to build a good name when the city itself was in a very bad place.

[parchpea]

Liverpool needs the media whether we like it or not and if we decide to isolate ourself we will be destroyed by them no question about that.

We have learned a harsh lesson in recent months and big part of that was the way Dalglish handled the media. People dont like Kenny to be criticised but truth is he is poor with the media and always has been. Its just a part of the job that he does not like simple as that.

He knows he had screwed up at Old Trafford and must improve his manner at press conferences and post match interviews.I think he knows that and has probably been told as much.

If he can become more open and easy to deal with it will improve the clubs image and in turn we will get a more positive spin on things which will help the clubs profile and how the outside world views us.

[lakes10]

its more to do with how kenny deals with live media is the problem, he has a dry wit and it works most of the time with the press and they find it funny, but when he is asked about something like last sundays game the wit turns into anger and he looks bad.

[red till i die!!]

lakes i would hate to see kenny groveling to the media every week,he should be more interested in whats happening on the pitch and not about what to say at the end of the game to the cameras.they have their own agenda and are biased towards certain clubs and people.
some of the questions he has had put to him of late had nothing to do with football but because he's stood there most expect him to answer and slate him if he doesnt.
all the journo's who are at matches are sports orientated but very few have acted like that lately.
the club should review how they deal with these people and while still being professional treat them with some contempt.

[lakes10]

the thing is mate as a club we need to make as much money as we can, the way we are goingwe are not making new fans.

with the new rules coming on how much a club can spend on players its important that we make loads of money out of shirt sales and stuff, its not going to be about how much money your owner has, its going to be how many fans buy stuff and and how many you can get into a game and how many dvds you can sell.

theres even talk of shirt deals and selling the grounds name being taken out of the count when it comes to working out how much a club can spend on players.
so looking good in the media is a very KEY thing.

[red till i die!!]

we already do well from sponsorships,fsg have secured standard chartered on a mega deal and since added warrior as new kit sponsors for more mega bucks,you can bet if we get a new stadium or a refit then naming rights will be sold for that also.
neither of these deals will create new fans.
city have secured naming and sponsorship rights rumoured to be around 300mil for 5 years from companies associated with mansour so there is already a loophole in the new laws and city are exploiting this to compensate for their lack of a worldwide fan base.money talks and i doubt the rules will change to stop that.
i would say f all people in argentina have even heard of city before 3 years ago and since they signed tevez,aguero and zabaleta id say they are establishing a fanbase their.signing good players combined with exciting football and challenging for trophys both at home and abroad is what attracts new fans as all kids want is to support the best out there and they will buy the kits and get hooked for life.they wont support your team because you are sponsored by some bank or airline.
i would also say our shirt sales have probably increased 95% in uruguay since we signed suarez and coates and gained many fans in the process.
i have several nephews who are liverpool fans and none of them would even have a clue what a racist is and they would never read a paper,all they do is run around kicking a ball and screaming gerrard or suarez when they shoot.
we need to get things right on the pitch and start challenging for major trophys and thats where we will gain new supporters.
i still dont think that we should brown nose every journo in sight and hope they portray us in a good light as its the very same people who have unfairly done us more damage in the last 4 months than our lack of standing within the game over the last 20 years.

[yckatbjywtbiastkamb]

i think moving to a new stadium would be a bad move for the club, i dont know what anyone else thinks in here about a proposed move but i think the stadium and the history and mythology surrounding it is a big part of why fans choose to support this club.
i think the council are trying to get the yanks to build a new stadium but i think the yanks understand the importance of the stadium to the `brand`.
re development would be far better.
it`ll be cultural vandalism to knock anfield down imo, just like when they knocked down the original cavern and just like when they nearly flattened the biggest collection of grade I listed buildings in the country - the albert dock.

[metalhead]

Liverpool needs the media whether we like it or not and if we decide to isolate ourself we will be destroyed by them no question about that.

We have learned a harsh lesson in recent months and big part of that was the way Dalglish handled the media. People dont like Kenny to be criticised but truth is he is poor with the media and always has been. Its just a part of the job that he does not like simple as that.

He knows he had screwed up at Old Trafford and must improve his manner at press conferences and post match interviews.I think he knows that and has probably been told as much.

If he can become more open and easy to deal with it will improve the clubs image and in turn we will get a more positive spin on things which will help the clubs profile and how the outside world views us.

No he isn't, if the media doesn't like him then it doesn't mean he is poor, he says the right stuff most of the time pre-match and post-match, he answers all the questions and he doesn't get carried away. He might have screwed up in the post match at OT because he clearly looked p!ssed off because of the constant vilification the club and Suarez was getting.

yckatbjywtbiastkamb, I don't think it is necessarly a bad move to move to a new stadium, I totally agree that the mythology and history of the stadium is very important to fans, especially to the ones who have been going to anfield for the last 40-15 years or so, but the problem we won't compete with the likes of Mancs and Arsenal on generating revenue without the bigger stadium. If the new stadium would bring us better financial results in the future, which leads to more money for the team to invest in the market and academy, then I support it.

[Kenny Kan]

DRAWBRIDGE

by Rob Gutmann // 14 February 2012 // 153 Comments

THE last time I felt anything remotely like this as a Liverpool supporter was 27 years ago.

39 people had died at the 1985 European Cup final in Brussels, and Liverpool fans were blamed for their deaths.

To this day I am none the wiser as to where precisely the true weight of culpability lay for the Heysel disaster, but I know that my club ultimately took responsibility for it, and that we as supporters remain haunted by the spectre of those events to this day.

Heysel was about life and death. It was more important than an argument between two millionaire athletes, and the loyalties of two warring tribes.

The Suarez and Evra mess, though, has come to echo 1985, for me at least, because there are parallels in terms of the sheer momentum of shame being foisted upon what felt then, and still feels now, like our family.

Modern day LFC talisman, Luis Suarez, is a racist in their eyes. Their report may say different, but their words in print and on screens show us what they think of him, show what they think of Kenny Dalglish, show what they think of us.

After Heysel we were all deemed beasts. They said there was a cancer at our core. It felt so very unfair, but not as unfair as it felt for those who had lost loved ones.

So we silently bowed our heads and accepted the penance.

Again, albeit in clearly less serious circumstances (so don’t shoot me for the analogy), they want to shame us all again.

They want us to withdraw to our fortress of self-righteousness – to man our barricades and dig in for the long siege. They want it, and they are going to get it. Well, at least I hope they are. The time for magnanimity in this affair is over. The barbarians are at our gates and the bridge has to come up. If no one likes us, then how can we care ?

Who are our royal we ? Right now it feels like it might just be a royal me, as the PR men step in and apologising and falling on swords is all the rage. I hope I’m not alone in my anger. I hope and sense that there are more than a few Liverpool reds out there who feel what I’m feeling. In fact I know there must be.

Liverpool Football Club is truly special. There, I’ve said it. I came to know it as a 10 year old living in London in the 1970s who jumped on the bandwagon and never looked back.

I wasn’t brain washed into being a red the way my lad has been, and thousands of other Scouse boys and girls have correctly been by indigenous parents. I co-opted myself into the family as a young and then still objective outsider.

When I first started going to matches I noticed how our people seemed different from their people.

We, seemed to have a different value system. When our team conceded a goal, we raised our song for our team, whilst they went mute for theirs. When our goalkeeper took up position at their end of the ground they booed and brayed at him. We applauded and saluted their man. Whilst they skulked away like wounded beasts in defeat, we stayed behind to clap their heroes if they left our home victorious. We stayed to hail them despite the hurt inside.

We were no angels, but the National Front never set up their tents outside our ground. We didn’t think that we were just marking time supporting our team until Engerlund came calling in the summer either. They were all English. We were Irish, welsh, Scots, Norwegains, Asians and everything else that they weren’t.

We didn’t have cuddly reptilian-oid mascots and giant video scoreboards. We didn’t wear replica club shirts en-masse, or sing other teams songs. We tended to keep it funny rather than cruel, but whatever the chosen war cries, ours were the loudest, the proudest, the very best. We always had our famous atmosphere. We were, we are, legend.

They think we are deluded, self pitying, bolshy, arrogant, provincial and parochial, unwashed mass of chip-on-the-shoulder has-been sentiment. They think we’ve got red sh*t in our eyes and have no chance of seeing their objectivity for what it is. We’re so partisan, so Kenny, so Shankly, so Scouse, that we can’t tell race from wrong.

They are wrong though. They have been since October last year, when their man, Patrice Evra decided to try and take us down.

Evra was cheating when he disputed a coin toss before a ball was kicked between Liverpool and United that month. He was cheating when he rolled around feigning injury after the lightest of touches from Suarez on 50 odd minutes of that game. He was cheating when he tried to provoke a fight with Suarez in the Kop goal mouth shortly afterwards, and he was cheating when he reported the same man for multiple racist abuse at the match’s conclusion.

They won’t see Evra this way.

They see him as a noble victim. They see him as the man who dared say ‘No ! Enough is enough’. They see him as a cause celebre, as an opportunity, as chance to fly a flag, to adopt a position and to don a cloak of virtue. They are also see Evra as the latest stick with which to beat us with. It feels like that anyway.

We’re paranoid of course. All football fans are. All clubs fans think they get a raw deal from the media and the wider public. As the adage goes though, just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean that they aren’t all out to get you.

What are we meant to think? Our boy genuinely feels he’s been done a mischief by their boy. Who knows the truth of that scene that Suarez and Evra played out in that six-yard-box last Autumn. Not me, not you, not us, not the FA, not them. I’m not even sure Suarez and Evra will know where the truth actually lies anymore.

We do know that Suarez feels innocent, and in the absence of sensible evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, we feel the family should back him. Kenny Dalglish understands that more than anyone. He knows what our family stands for more than most, perhaps more than anyone. He showed us that in 1989.

At 60 he is now our venerated patriarch and we rightly take his moral lead.

If Suarez feels the time for smoking the peace pipe with their chap is not yet, that it’s too soon, then surely that’s his prerogative. Being ‘the victim’ is, we are often reminded, a state of mind. As he steeled himself for a bout of unwanted hand shaking on Saturday last, Suarez clearly still saw himself as the abused. Ironic, they’ll say, as he was the one ‘found guilty’ of abusing.

They haven’t been listening to us, or Suarez, that much is evident. We’ve said he’s an innocent man. That we are convinced Evra has lied, that the FA delivered false justice. We told them clearly when we chose not to appeal, that we did so because we were tired of fighting, not because we thought our champion guilty. There was no tacit acceptance of their accusations in that stance.

They wanted him to apologise. He wouldn’t and we told them why. So, why? Why, when Patrice Evra half heartedly puts his hand forward but looks disdainfully away and to the side, is Luis Suarez expected to seek out his oppressor’s palm and humbly and submissively seek absolution?

To many of us, it looks in that moment as if Suarez has thought ‘f**k you and the lying horse you rode in on. F**k your faux victimhood, and your shameless highjacking and abusing of the ‘kick-it out’ campaign. F**k your attempt to ruin my career just because you were having a bad hair day. F**k your manipulating of the weak and opportunistic men. F**k you for labelling me as all that I despise.’

Or maybe he just didn’t fancy shaking his hand.

On Sunday 12th Feb, Suarez and our MD Ian Ayre issued statements. Suarez was unreservedly contrite and Ayre was unreservedly critical of our man.

Even Kenny said sorry for being mean to that fool from Sky. Good PR by the club, some will surely say. Maybe the men from Boston have spoken, and this is the result. Maybe they see a brand in jeopardy and have stepped in to restore order.

Maybe their course of action will prove a PR success and the fire that is burning media wide against us will now begin to burn itself out. I hope that does happen. I hope too though that behind closed doors the men in LFC suits and ties realise that for many of us the rage induced by recent events will not wane softly in the face of the blinkered sh*te.

Many of us don’t care about the PR implications for the brand and were ready for the siege. The supplies were in, we were tooled up and ready for all their and more.

We know we’re different and special and their scorn only reinforces that conviction. Those that join our bandwagon from all corners of the planet instinctively know why LFC matters and why, through wind and rain, it prevails, and why regardless of sporting success or failure it will remain relevant.

John Henry and his team behind our team need to decide which side of our fortress walls they wish to stand. Are they with us or them?

LFC is the greatest of brands and needs protecting Mr Henry precisely because it will never truly be branded.

LFC is an anti-brand and that’s why we like it.

In fact, that’s why, as the song goes, we f**king love it.

[Ciggy]

the way we are goingwe are not making new fans.

That can only be a good thing, if the last few weeks are anything to go by, I dont want them types anywhere near the club, they are an embarressment !!

And Kenny only got p!ssed off with Shreeves for the constant barrage of questions he had already answered, and the media making a mountain out of a mole hill.  He didnt shake his hand get over it !!!

[tubby]

TBH If I were Kenny I probably would have done a Joe Kineer and given them all hell. I think enough has been said about this now. It's time to get back to talking about why we are all here - football! Today couldn't have come soon enough.

[lakes10]

the way we are goingwe are not making new fans.

That can only be a good thing, if the last few weeks are anything to go by, I dont want them types anywhere near the club, they are an embarressment !!

And Kenny only got p!ssed off with Shreeves for the constant barrage of questions he had already answered, and the media making a mountain out of a mole hill.  He didnt shake his hand get over it !!!

you make a good point.
as i am not from Liverpool it took a bit of time to feel like i fitted in when i came up for games but soon i made friends in the ground and they started to call me their "Cockney Scouser" this made me feel liked i had been let in, i did try to point out that i was not a Cockney and they said i sounded like one and it was a done deal.
I loved coming up to the games on the trian, i mean i started coming up on my own at the age of 15.

Over the last few years i have seen a new type of fan, the fan that thinks its ok to go that step too far with the players. The Kop in my view has lost its wit and voice and this gives more time for the nasty fans to be heard and get they say in.

its a shame that a few let us down.

as for Kenny i bet he feels like he could kick himself for showing his anger, very few times he has ever done this.

[supersub]

DRAWBRIDGE

by Rob Gutmann // 14 February 2012 // 153 Comments

THE last time I felt anything remotely like this as a Liverpool supporter was 27 years ago.

39 people had died at the 1985 European Cup final in Brussels, and Liverpool fans were blamed for their deaths.

To this day I am none the wiser as to where precisely the true weight of culpability lay for the Heysel disaster, but I know that my club ultimately took responsibility for it, and that we as supporters remain haunted by the spectre of those events to this day.

Heysel was about life and death. It was more important than an argument between two millionaire athletes, and the loyalties of two warring tribes.

The Suarez and Evra mess, though, has come to echo 1985, for me at least, because there are parallels in terms of the sheer momentum of shame being foisted upon what felt then, and still feels now, like our family.

Modern day LFC talisman, Luis Suarez, is a racist in their eyes. Their report may say different, but their words in print and on screens show us what they think of him, show what they think of Kenny Dalglish, show what they think of us.

After Heysel we were all deemed beasts. They said there was a cancer at our core. It felt so very unfair, but not as unfair as it felt for those who had lost loved ones.

So we silently bowed our heads and accepted the penance.

Again, albeit in clearly less serious circumstances (so don’t shoot me for the analogy), they want to shame us all again.

They want us to withdraw to our fortress of self-righteousness – to man our barricades and dig in for the long siege. They want it, and they are going to get it. Well, at least I hope they are. The time for magnanimity in this affair is over. The barbarians are at our gates and the bridge has to come up. If no one likes us, then how can we care ?

Who are our royal we ? Right now it feels like it might just be a royal me, as the PR men step in and apologising and falling on swords is all the rage. I hope I’m not alone in my anger. I hope and sense that there are more than a few Liverpool reds out there who feel what I’m feeling. In fact I know there must be.

Liverpool Football Club is truly special. There, I’ve said it. I came to know it as a 10 year old living in London in the 1970s who jumped on the bandwagon and never looked back.

I wasn’t brain washed into being a red the way my lad has been, and thousands of other Scouse boys and girls have correctly been by indigenous parents. I co-opted myself into the family as a young and then still objective outsider.

When I first started going to matches I noticed how our people seemed different from their people.

We, seemed to have a different value system. When our team conceded a goal, we raised our song for our team, whilst they went mute for theirs. When our goalkeeper took up position at their end of the ground they booed and brayed at him. We applauded and saluted their man. Whilst they skulked away like wounded beasts in defeat, we stayed behind to clap their heroes if they left our home victorious. We stayed to hail them despite the hurt inside.

We were no angels, but the National Front never set up their tents outside our ground. We didn’t think that we were just marking time supporting our team until Engerlund came calling in the summer either. They were all English. We were Irish, welsh, Scots, Norwegains, Asians and everything else that they weren’t.

We didn’t have cuddly reptilian-oid mascots and giant video scoreboards. We didn’t wear replica club shirts en-masse, or sing other teams songs. We tended to keep it funny rather than cruel, but whatever the chosen war cries, ours were the loudest, the proudest, the very best. We always had our famous atmosphere. We were, we are, legend.

They think we are deluded, self pitying, bolshy, arrogant, provincial and parochial, unwashed mass of chip-on-the-shoulder has-been sentiment. They think we’ve got red sh*t in our eyes and have no chance of seeing their objectivity for what it is. We’re so partisan, so Kenny, so Shankly, so Scouse, that we can’t tell race from wrong.

They are wrong though. They have been since October last year, when their man, Patrice Evra decided to try and take us down.

Evra was cheating when he disputed a coin toss before a ball was kicked between Liverpool and United that month. He was cheating when he rolled around feigning injury after the lightest of touches from Suarez on 50 odd minutes of that game. He was cheating when he tried to provoke a fight with Suarez in the Kop goal mouth shortly afterwards, and he was cheating when he reported the same man for multiple racist abuse at the match’s conclusion.

They won’t see Evra this way.

They see him as a noble victim. They see him as the man who dared say ‘No ! Enough is enough’. They see him as a cause celebre, as an opportunity, as chance to fly a flag, to adopt a position and to don a cloak of virtue. They are also see Evra as the latest stick with which to beat us with. It feels like that anyway.

We’re paranoid of course. All football fans are. All clubs fans think they get a raw deal from the media and the wider public. As the adage goes though, just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean that they aren’t all out to get you.

What are we meant to think? Our boy genuinely feels he’s been done a mischief by their boy. Who knows the truth of that scene that Suarez and Evra played out in that six-yard-box last Autumn. Not me, not you, not us, not the FA, not them. I’m not even sure Suarez and Evra will know where the truth actually lies anymore.

We do know that Suarez feels innocent, and in the absence of sensible evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, we feel the family should back him. Kenny Dalglish understands that more than anyone. He knows what our family stands for more than most, perhaps more than anyone. He showed us that in 1989.

At 60 he is now our venerated patriarch and we rightly take his moral lead.

If Suarez feels the time for smoking the peace pipe with their chap is not yet, that it’s too soon, then surely that’s his prerogative. Being ‘the victim’ is, we are often reminded, a state of mind. As he steeled himself for a bout of unwanted hand shaking on Saturday last, Suarez clearly still saw himself as the abused. Ironic, they’ll say, as he was the one ‘found guilty’ of abusing.

They haven’t been listening to us, or Suarez, that much is evident. We’ve said he’s an innocent man. That we are convinced Evra has lied, that the FA delivered false justice. We told them clearly when we chose not to appeal, that we did so because we were tired of fighting, not because we thought our champion guilty. There was no tacit acceptance of their accusations in that stance.

They wanted him to apologise. He wouldn’t and we told them why. So, why? Why, when Patrice Evra half heartedly puts his hand forward but looks disdainfully away and to the side, is Luis Suarez expected to seek out his oppressor’s palm and humbly and submissively seek absolution?

To many of us, it looks in that moment as if Suarez has thought ‘f**k you and the lying horse you rode in on. F**k your faux victimhood, and your shameless highjacking and abusing of the ‘kick-it out’ campaign. F**k your attempt to ruin my career just because you were having a bad hair day. F**k your manipulating of the weak and opportunistic men. F**k you for labelling me as all that I despise.’

Or maybe he just didn’t fancy shaking his hand.

On Sunday 12th Feb, Suarez and our MD Ian Ayre issued statements. Suarez was unreservedly contrite and Ayre was unreservedly critical of our man.

Even Kenny said sorry for being mean to that fool from Sky. Good PR by the club, some will surely say. Maybe the men from Boston have spoken, and this is the result. Maybe they see a brand in jeopardy and have stepped in to restore order.

Maybe their course of action will prove a PR success and the fire that is burning media wide against us will now begin to burn itself out. I hope that does happen. I hope too though that behind closed doors the men in LFC suits and ties realise that for many of us the rage induced by recent events will not wane softly in the face of the blinkered sh*te.

Many of us don’t care about the PR implications for the brand and were ready for the siege. The supplies were in, we were tooled up and ready for all their and more.

We know we’re different and special and their scorn only reinforces that conviction. Those that join our bandwagon from all corners of the planet instinctively know why LFC matters and why, through wind and rain, it prevails, and why regardless of sporting success or failure it will remain relevant.

John Henry and his team behind our team need to decide which side of our fortress walls they wish to stand. Are they with us or them?

LFC is the greatest of brands and needs protecting Mr Henry precisely because it will never truly be branded.

LFC is an anti-brand and that’s why we like it.

In fact, that’s why, as the song goes, we f**king love it.

spot on

[Anfield rapper]

Radio 5 live have a clip on they're home page  "LFC fan aged 9 says Suarez is a disgrace". As if to say look this 9 year old could teach many adult lfc fans a thing. Absolutley disgusting a full week after our club made an apology.

Above it they have a photo of spoony with his arm round alex fergurson.

That report is correct just because your paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.