Jekyll & A Hiding: A Season In Two Matches

I have this idea for a movie. It's your classic sports story, beginning with a football club being successfully liberated at the hands of their callous former owners. We bring in a well respected veteran to try and restore the club to it's former glory, somebody that everyone can rally behind. Following that we put together a team of characters; some likeable, others are Craig Bellamy. Things don't go according to plan. Despite their underaccheivement, they manage to get to the final of the cup however. That's when one of our characters - the one whose character arc has seen him become a figure of ridicule, despite his talent - will in their great hour of need come to the rescue and find salvation for himself and the team. It all comes down to one play. Our heroes look to have done the impossible and... the linesman doesn't give it. It's not very Hollywood, is it? Neither is life.

Sunday May 6th. I don't resurface until late into the afternoon and even then there are many things that still need to be resolved from the night before. For starters, I have no idea what happened to my trousers and how or why I decided it would be a good idea to sleep on the floor at the top of the stairs. Much like Rangers, I can't account for a lot of what I spent and my self respect issued a transfer request somewhere around midnight. There is however, one inescapable truth. We didn't win.

Given that prior to kick off I'd worked myself up into a state - that I'd seemingly put my entire being on the line in one match - there doesn't appear to be any lasting damage. I don't have any memories of euphoric blue shirts celebrating wildly on the Wembley pitch, although that is mostly due to the fact that I had my eyes fused shut well before Phil Dowd called an end to proceedings. Moments earlier, I had let out a guttural shout that came right from the depths of my desperation as we tried in vain to force extra time. When the final whistle did ring out, frustration gave way to acceptance surprisingly quickly. I'll have to be careful in not trying to take away from what they did or sound in any way bitter. Having said that - unlike the club I dearly love on Saturday - I'm not going to give anyone anything they haven't earned. Cheslea did indeed beat Liverpool, but for sixty minutes that was not the case. There's being late, fashionably late or not even bothering to turn up at all. Had we been absent for the full ninety, I would have been inconsolable. As it was, they took everything we could throw at them in the time we had and they withstood it. At least Torres didn't score.

The days come and go, hangovers subside and you face the next challenge. As it was, we were to find ourselves given a chance at immediate redemption. The whole build up to the game felt rather unusual but if nothing else I was looking forward to seeing the continual resurgence of Andy Carroll as he continued to gorge himself on a Chelsea team needing to win. If they needed it for footballing reasons, we needed it as a matter of principle.  I didn't want to put the final nail in the coffin of their chances of finishing in the top four, I wanted to drive a stake through their heart. Given both our home form this season and the fact that everyone around them seemed desperate to allow them into the top four - in addition to how highly I rate Bayern Munich this season - I actually rated this as their best chance for Champions League football. Thankfully it wasn't to be. What happened down Wembley way on Saturday was always going to garner a reaction but I didn't quite think it was going to be quite like that. Peace of mind, if not a piece of silverware. They're going to get my hopes up again, I can feel it.

It was the centenary of the Kop. West Ham arrived for an early kick off on Saturday morning and due to the rail network being amazing as it is in this country I arrived to Anfield having just missed the mosaic and "You'll Never Walk Alone". On that day Danny Agger showed the world just how hard he hits the ball and Rafa got his Dirk out for the very first time. I always had a soft spot for him, not least of all because he's very much in my own mould as a player. Technically limited but incredibly hard working. He was the best to come out of Athens in that the goal he scored sparked a run where no big game would pass without Dirk making his mark. Because I'm gullible and like to get carried away with these kind of things, I can't help but wonder if the goal he scored on Saturday could do the same for Andy Carroll. He's already scored against Everton twice - one winner and a decisive first goal at Goodison - so maybe, just maybe we will start to see the colossus we all hoped we were getting all next season. At the moment he certainly looks like it.
In the modern world of football, the phrase "long term planning" is often met with derision. To introduce it into the conversation implies that everything which led up to that point were either deeply flawed or in some extreme cases non existent. The idea that you start a process as long and arduous as winning the Premier League title all over again is a test to the patience of any fan, most likely because it's easy to get lost along the way. Sitting here now, I think a lot of the frustration of this season has been brought about because there's no doubt we're at that point again. With the side that finished second in 2009 having been completely dismantled, I saw last summer as something of a last chance. It wasn't that we were to emulate the style of football and results we saw back then - although it would have been nice - but to get us back to that kind of platform from which we could build. Going from a Champions League finish to simply challenging for the league takes a lot of effort, let alone winning it. The best way I can liken it is to suggest that while well intentioned, the summer of 2011 was something of a twelfth round situation. With everything that had gone on in the last eighteen months, the judges scorecard had us losing and so we had to come out swinging. As an experiment it appears to have failed - for a variety of reasons - and we're back to square one. Where do we go from here then? Forward, hopefully.

I've been the first to criticise Arsene Wenger and the team he now finds himself with. I think he's a great manager but is reaping the reward of sink or swim football at the youth level. The league cup in years past has been the proving ground for many of the players who now frequent the first team and I think Wenger's insistence in not calling upon his more experienced players at the time has bred the a losing mentality when it comes to the big games. I'd argue the reason that they're so mentally fragile now is because when they had a chance at a trophy over the last few seasons, nobody was there of the old Arsenal team that had the experience of getting over the line to show them how it's done. I think in a sense, that same kind of fragility now exists among the current crop of Liverpool players, although it's nowhere near as epidemic.

Mental conditioning tells us to believe that if the same set of circumstances arises, the result will be the same. You can see it on the pitch in the games recently, it was frighteningly apparent against West Brom. Dominate the play, hit the bar a few times and we almost expected to be caught on the break. This season isn't exactly isolated either, in terms of results. Things have been a lot worse but we've had a problem with teams that come to Anfield and sit back for a while now. The one thing I would hope moving into the future is that we don't become cautious ourselves as a result. If the last couple of games has taught us anything it's that with the players we have now, shape means far less than tempo. Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez haven't clicked as much as we'd like but they're not Robbie Keane and Fernando Torres either. The games they have been together and it's worked well however are those in which we play very high up the pitch and look to get things going very quickly. The times when Carroll looks the worst are when we are ponderous in midfield, it also makes it far more likely we'll end up punting it up to him aimlessly rather than playing it on the floor. Also, Luis Suarez thrives in a side that's playing one touch football. If we found the right player for the right price, I might like to see Suarez out wide (of a front three, not a traditional winger). Both Man United and Chelsea have been dealt damage at the hands of his quick feet when he runs down the wing and cuts inside, it's something I think we may try to exploit more often next year.

One thing we do need next year is to be far more efficient in front of goal. That goes for everybody. Being a clinical finisher is very elusive in terms of defining. Ian Rush said that it was something you either had or didn't and that's about as well as I can put it. At the risk of sounding condescending, scoring goals makes everything easier. Who knows how well someone like Stewart Downing could have done over the course of a season if someone of his crosses were actually put in for a change?

A few years ago you wouldn't have believed it but everybody is waiting with baited breath for the return of Lucas Leiva. I'm very much a "stat guy" and the fact that if you extrapolate the points per game we had with him in the team (1.83) over the course of the season, we'd be comfortably third tells me that we need him back as soon as possible. I don't want to get too carried away however for a multitude of reasons. Primarily, the type of injury he sustained means there is no guarantee he'll be the same player. The bigger worry is that so much importance is put on his return, forgetting the fact that even with him in the side we struggled for goals this season but his exit seemed to dovetail with Steven Gerrard's return. With them both in the side next year I am hopeful a balance can be struck, though I would like a "Lucas type" player alongside him allowing Gerrard the freedom further up the pitch we know he can exploit. It was something of a criminal oversight given what has happened this season not to have a ready made back up for Lucas. Jay Spearing - try hard as he might - will never be that player. If it's a mistake we rectify in the summer, that's a huge gap plugged.

Rightly or wrongly, assumptions are a big part of football. They become the basis of expectation because for the most part, football is so simple that it's only natural. Problem is, short of presuming Arsene Wenger didn't see it, things aren't often that clear cut. The only thing that links expectations, opinions and even informed opinions is that all three can still be wrong. If you'd never seen Charlie Adam (purely as an example) before he signed for Liverpool I imagine your opinion of him now would be different to someone who saw him often when he was still at Blackpool. My opinion of him was tempered with the fact that he was incredibly good in the games against us when he was still playing for Ian Holloway so maybe I expected more when I should have simply realized the dictating circumstances.

It's not only players who are unwillingly tagged with unwarranted labels. I may be way off the mark here but there's perhaps a conception that anybody who thinks winning the league cup constitutes a good season means that they're happy with every other aspect. I'm very old fashioned in that I believe first and foremost football is about winning things. This season we have one trophy in the cabinet and were a flag (potentially) away from another. Does that mean I'll accept finishing below Everton? A million times no. This arguement becomes most apparent when you expand it over the management. If you weren't happy with Rafa Benitez at the end, that doesn't mean you were in favour of Roy Hodsgon. Likewise if you have doubts about Kenny Dalglish, that doesn't mean that you want to go back to a Hodgson. I have no idea what will happen over the next twelve months at Liverpool Football Club. Players, managers, seasons all come and go. The only thing for sure is that I'll be there. Probably hungover again.

Wembley Cup Final #2: This Time It's Personal.

"Do I want to beat you, on a personal level? Oh hell yeah I do. But on a professional level, which bleeds over into my personal existence, I need to beat you... I need it more than anything you can ever imagine." - Stone Cold Steve Austin.

There's a list of reasons about as long as the list of Jordan Henderson's haircare products as to why I would never make it as a top level footballer. Chief among those is because I get carried away far to easy. Even Sky's habit of attaching hyperbolic significance to those games that barely deserve it pales in comparison to the kind of platform I can put them on. You can only imagine how I'm feeling about Saturday. Hopefully this will explain somewhat.

It was a rather mundane afternoon when I got my hands on the FA Cup. We were the current holders at the time it was taken but Dennis Bergkamp had made sure that this would be as close as anyone in a Liverpool shirt would get to lifting the famous old trophy. A happy coincidence on a routine shopping trip - this was back in the heady days before Newcastle found it fit to name their stadium after a certain magnificent sports retailer - saw me find myself in a queue to lift the cup.

Having ransacked my house in order to try and exhume it, looking at it now it feels like a lifetime ago. I was fifteen at the time but you'd be forgiven for thinking I was half that age - still taller than Jay Spearing mind. My only real contact with the Liverpool Football Club I adored were the games on TV and the sadly now defunct Mexican stand-off I'd have with the teletext on a Saturday afternoon. Message-boards and forums were about as foreign to me as the concept that in less than four years time we'd be European Champions.

Unlike any other form of entertainment - and I'm loathed to refer to it as such - football has no end point. Darth Vader dies, somebody else lives and Liverpool FC goes on. There are however points of reference. Every match has implications but the FA Cup final tomorrow is one of those points that could help to springboard the winner onto greater things. Case and point in the Premier League being when we played Chelsea for fourth place in 2003. They won and got an Abramovic to take home with them. Perhaps the biggest one I can think of is 2005 at Anfield in the Champions League semi final. There's a certain theme developing here regarding our opponents.

Ideals are dangerous. People have gone to war over ideals. Put them together in a footballing context and you get people as diametrically opposed as Pep Guardiola and Sam Allardyce. It's far from perfect and I know full well that my love the game is not one that is reciprocated however I continue to immerse myself in it. Whereas some people see rigidity, restriction and organisation - mostly those at Villa Park these days - I see freedom and artistry. The word mentality became a Rafa buzzword, almost to the point of cliché but that's what counts. is almost impossible to fake. Even if you can aesthetically simulate it, only the utmost application of desire and heart can get you where you want. Talent makes you a player but what's inside will define you as a footballer. It's the reason why I have such a man crush on Lucas Leiva. He never hid when things were going wrong all around him. 's a certain purity in honest effort. To try and accept the possibility that things may not go your way is almost the very definition of what it is to be human. We may not have seen the flair and skill of years past but that never say die attitude that surrounds Liverpool Football Club no matter what the circumstances still remains.

Life is loud. In those few moments where I can actually sit down and take a breath, I hear a voice. Sleep brings no respite. I had a dream this morning where Glen Johnson scored the winner. It isn't the first time this week I've woken up and had the cup ripped from my grasp. It's not so much a whisper as it is shouting out to the footballing gods.  I don't think I've ever felt like this before, Istanbul included. When it comes to trophies I'm like anyone else, of course I yearn for success. This time it's more than that. I ache for it. I don't just want it, I need it.

The game itself will be horrible. I won't be able to sit nor think straight until after the game is over, it'll just be ninety minutes of me by sheer will alone trying to manifest it into the universe. They're missing a couple of players but I know Drogba will be there, regardless of whatever is said about his injury. Ivanovic at centre back will mean that Bosingwa will have to play at right back and that will hopefully be something we'll be able to exploit. As always with a game like this however, it'll be the midfield battle which we have to get right. If Lucas were playing I'd be very comfortable about dealing with Ramires and Mikel, having done so already twice magnificently this season. Having already been to Wembley twice this season I'm pretty confident that all those who seemed to be in awe of the occasion in the league cup final have now got that out of their system. Of course, it helps that we're once again in the role of underdog. Against Cardiff we were supposed to put down a hammering and obviously that was never going to happen. Now we're back in a place which we're both familiar and comfortable with. How can we - playing the way we have been - beat the team that's just knocked out Barcelona? Watch and learn.

Our own line up hinges on the speculation surrounding Carragher's inclusion. I've gotten myself used to the idea of Agger at left back already just so that I'm not taken by surprise should it happen tomorrow afternoon. I'm not about to debate tactics or personnel, when that team sheet is released - regardless of whether or not it is the one I want - then that's the team I will place my faith and more importantly my support with. The first eleven might not even be what tips the scale. Tight as I believe it will be, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody came off the bench to win it. That could mean Dirk Kuyt (you wouldn't bet against it), Andy Carroll or even Fernando Torres - though I believe Daniel Agger will have something to say about that. Personally speaking, I would love to not to have to come from behind in a cup final for a change, but the last time we took the lead against anyone in a final was Chelsea in 05 and that didn't turn out to well. I don't care who, how or when. I'm giving them the licence to do what they've done to me so many times. Take me on that emotional roller-coaster. Just make sure that when it's all said and done there's a trophy there waiting.

Kenny Dalglish deserves this trophy. Whatever happens, my opinion of the man won't change. Football is littered with the worst kinds of people. Kenny is the opposite of that. For so long I was naive enough to think that it was important everybody see just how good he is. Too many people around the country - too many agendas - have made that impossible. Now I'm past caring. What I care about is Liverpool Football Club and nobody does a better job of that than The King. I'm just about too young to remember Kenny Dalglish the first time around. There's something about watching a man who is so clearly as devoted to a football club as the rest of us are, it fills me with immense joy and pride to watch him celebrate on the touchline - Everton especially. I'm talking now about the man himself. His name has been dragged right through the mud and some people need to take a hard look at themselves. I'm not trying to say he's perfect, nobody is. I just want people to realise what he's done for the club, this season. 29th April 2010. That night we played Atletico Madrid in the Europa League semi final. It was to be Rafa's last European hurrah and we couldn't quite get ourselves over the line. I thought that may be our last game in Europe for ten years. Forget the Champions League, we were turning into the Aston Villa we now see before us.

People often point to the six months with Hodgson, Hicks and Gillette as a way of measuring just how different things are now. Have results been bad this year? Certainly. Everything was bad back then. Now our main issues are Coates and Sterling, Bellamy's knees or how to utilise Andy Carroll. Two years ago, we were losing a quarter of a million a day. If you think these are dark times right now, clearly you did not have your eyes open last year. Whatever happens at Wembley, whatever happens in the summer, I'm looking forward. It's may not be anywhere near as glamorous or rewarding as the Champions League but it's Liverpool in Europe, thanks to Kenny. If you asked me to think of Rafa's first season in 2005, do I immediately think of Djimi's break dancing in Burnley or battering Birmingham City only for Darren Anderton of all people to win it? When you ask me to think of this season I'll remember Cardiff, Everton and hopefully tomorrow.

Those that know me closely know that football is my everything. It is my introduction to people, I've lost count of the amount of strangers I've talked to for hours over the complexities of this simple game. More importantly than that it is my escape. For so long I'd been lucky enough that the worst thing that could possibly happen to me was that Liverpool lose, that's changed dramatically over the last couple of years. My mother, who had been disabled all her life - I say disabled, she was deaf, it never struck me as anything other than normal - has seen her health rapidly deteriorate over the last couple of years. She only ever watched football because it was the only time I'd ever sit in front of the television and became somewhat of a Liverpool fan, loving Steven Gerrard as the rest of us do. After Istanbul I had promised her a long time ago that I would take her to Anfield one day. Because of her health, it's a promise that I will never be able keep. I hate breaking promises. I'm going to see her on Monday in the care home she lives in. There are days now where she barely even recognises me. I can still see that glimmer in her eye when she looks at Steven Gerrard however and I hope to be able to show her a picture of him with our latest piece of silverware. Even if we're lucky enough to make it to yet another final in the next twelve months, I don't know if I'll have that same privilege next year.

There is, one more reason – as if I didn't have enough – that this game matters to me. I fell in love with one of theirs. April 16th 2011. I was watching the Man Utd-Man City game in a pub, talking to a complete stranger – as you do. She was a small, intelligent, incredibly attractive and knew her football - a rarity in any Chelsea fan. Paul Scholes hasn't done a lot for me in his life, but our revelling in his sending off in the FA Cup Semi final of last year sparked off something that burned brightly and fizzled out just as fast. I happen to know she'll be there at Wembley. The eight months we were together were the happiest of my life. As the months went on I really fell for her, to the point where I didn't even rub it in when we beat them twice in the space of eleven days. It was the kind of self restraint I never thought I had, all because I didn't ever want to make her upset. Having said that, you won't be entirely surprised to hear that I managed to screw it up. When she ended it I felt hollow inside. I took that pain - along with a stomach full of beer - to Anfield with me a few days later, against Oldham in the FA Cup. It was the first time I felt anything other than empty. Our paths and the FA Cup are so intertwined I guess it's almost inevitable that it would come down to this. I might not yet be fully over her but that doesn't change things. She already has my heart, they can't have this as well.