Three and in – not just another football blog

Every so often Lawrence Gray-Hodson, a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a former Scotland and England international, writes a column exclusively for Three and in.

This week he looks at Liverpool and their manager Kenny Dalglish

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There’s an old saying: Romans werent built in a day. Never has it been more appropriate in football terms than it is right now at Liverpool. Kenny Dalglish, the embittered, experienced emperor, is trying to fashion his colosseum, his Appian Way to success, an aqueduct of achievement and a Leaning Tower of Trophies.

Yet short-sighted fans complain and fail to see the bigger picture. Just a few short weeks ago Liverpool triumphed at Wembley, seeing off the valiant but ultimately toothless Visigoths of Cardiff, lifting the Carling Cup – unquestionably the most prestigious lager sponsored trophy in the world behind the FA Cup now that it’s sold its soul to Budweiser.

Sure, the league form is a real worry and the dream of seeing the club back at Europe’s top table, instead of having to feast from the all you can eat Chinese buffet of the Europa League, is gone, but critics are far too quick to get on Dalglish’s back. When he took over this was a club in turmoil and anguish, its fans broken hearted at what Roy Hodgson had done. His crime of being unpopular from the start and not realising it was a dagger to the heart of all real Liverpool fans.

When they made it clear they didn’t much like him, he had the temerity to hang around and try and make things better when an honourable man would have committed peri-peri. Already floundering in quicksand, Hodgson tried to pull his feet out using his own teeth and ended up drowning in a sea of underachievement, smothered by the feathered pillow of fiasco after fiasco.

Dalglish was brought in and told to fight the fire, given just a £100m blanket to do so. Many have been critical of his signings but I feel they need to be more patient. I remember when I made a high profile move to Halifax Town, for three weeks I was the club’s record signing. I can tell you, the pressure these guys feel is incredible. At first I struggled to find my form, the weight of the price tag weighing me down, but after 18 months or so I settled in and had an incredible season scoring seven goals in all competitions. Not bad for a striker those days!

Luis Suarez has been nothing but trouble for Liverpool

Poor Andy Carroll must be feeling much the same way. It’s not his fault that Liverpool’s foreign director of football created a millstone around his neck by choosing to make him the most expensive English player of all time. Similarly, Stewart Downton, Jordan Henderson and Charlie Adam are good, honest British players with too much expectation on their shoulders. It’s like people are expecting miracles, as if spending large amounts of money is some measure of quality when it comes to the transfer market.

I wonder would Robin van Persie be the same player he is today if Arsene Wenger had paid £60m for him eight seasons ago. I suspect it would have taken him some time to mature into the player he wasn’t instantly. And maybe Liverpool need to do more for these players, make them more comfortable. Surely any good Liverpool fan would challenge Carroll to a fight in a nightclub if they saw him out. Not because they wanted to fight him, but because they wanted to remind him of his home town of Sunderland.

Clearly the lack of goals is a problem but the blame for that must fall on Luis Suarez. When you spend £29m on a player you expect instant results and much more quality than he has shown. Everyone knows the bigger the fee, the better the player. Perhaps if Suarez concentrated more on scoring rather than trying to make himself Carlos Controversy all the time Liverpool would be in a much better position. Kenny is absolutely right to feel let down by him and Suarez’s malign influence is spreading, witness the normally placid Pepe Reina filled with Uruguayan fueled rage as he stitched one on that Newcastle player yesterday.

A manager can only send his players out to win games, if they don’t then they’re obviously not carrying out his instructions. Perhaps in his time away from football Kenny might have taken on an eloctution teacher. I’m his biggest fan but his diction does leave something to be desired at times. If he’s guilty of anything it’s just mumbling his team talks in that impenetrable but lilting Scotch brogue of his, but for all the rest Dalglish is untouchable in my opinion.

The bottom line is that managers need time. Andre Vilas Boas didn’t get it at trigger happy Chelsea but Sir Alex Ferguson did at United, and look how they have reaped the rewards. Do people forget how long it took Wenger to win a trophy at Arsenal? What on earth do they expect Kenny Dalglish to do in such a short period of time? The fickle nature and short-termism of the modern football fan makes me sick to the very core of my being.

If winning a trophy and being in the FA Cup semi-final is considered a failure these days, then I’m afraid football has lost its soul, and the usually knowledgable scousers have fallen prey to the beast that lurks in the heart of the game. It is like that film where the Alien bursts out of the man’s stomach but instead of an Alien it will be the rotted corpse of Kenny Dalglish and I will say ‘I told you so’ as he is stillborn into a world which no longer understands him.

‘My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.’ – Eric Cantona

‘Now we have to wait to see this issue decided and then the Manchester player and I will have to clear things up. Depending on who ends up in the wrong, one of us will have to apologise.’ – Luis Suarez

This Saturday lunchtime, Manchester United will travel to Liverpool for the fourth round of the FA Cup. United’s left back, Patrice Evra, is likely to receive the worst abuse seen on these shores since Sol Campbell crossed the North London divide. I write these words seventeen years to the day since I sat, an impressionable 10 year old, a few feet from my idol as he attempted to quite literally kick racism out of football. Pros and ex pros from every club supported Cantona, the general consensus being not shock that it had happened but merely surprise that it didn’t happen more frequently. A divisive Frenchman taking exception to racist language? Plus ça change. Thousands of words have been written about the Luis Suarez incident but nobody seems willing to accuse the Uruguayan of one significant offence. Being a racist.

Tony Evans, Times writer and Liverpool fan, wrote an excellent piece about his disappointment at the majority of LFC fans supporting the striker but still insisted Suarez had been guilty only of ‘using racist language.’ Indeed, this is the nature of the FA charge. Racist language. Even amongst the United blogs, highly critical of Liverpool and their talisman, most pieces contained a caveat insisting they were not accusing the striker of racism, simply of employing racist language. This seems to have been the case across the board. It’s the footballing equivalent of the argument we’ve all had in which the semantics of whether someone is/is being an arsehole are debated at length. Well, enough is enough.

Let’s try putting it another way; if a man rapes someone, we tend to brand him a rapist. Nobody says things like, ‘Oh yes, he did rape someone on that occasion but really he’s not that kind of bloke.’ But with the race issue it’s totally different. What a difference a letter makes. It’s much like the ‘not that kind of player’ defence used after a player has committed a dreadful foul ending the season of a fellow professional. Just once I’d like someone to come out and say, ‘He is that kind of player, this was an accident waiting to happen.’ Who is that kind of player? And, more importantly, who are these mythical racists? Where do they live? Nick Griffin has consistently stated the BNP is not a racist party so clearly it’s acceptable to say what you like so long as you simply deny the allegations.

For what its worth, I do think Suarez is a racist. Does this mean I think he rues the abolition of slavery? No. But, as the late Patrice O’Neill so memorable stated, not all racist walk around wearing pointy hats. Or, as another comedian, Bill Burr, pointed out, ‘real racism is subtle’:

Suarez admits using the offensive term word at least once. I have played in hundreds of football games in my life and never uttered a racial slur. In return, nobody has ever referred to me as a ‘yid’ during such a match and if they had I wouldn’t waste time analysing the precise nuances of their tone. The cultural argument holds no water since Suarez has played in Europe for years. The idea that it was jocular is a nonsense given the comments were made during a heated exchange with a Manchester United player during a spiky encounter at Anfield. A racist word was used in a bid to rile Evra, ergo the offender was guilty of racism. Michael Richards from Seinfeld is branded racist for his ill-advised rant at the Laugh Factory but at least he was attempting (utterly without success) to be humorous. Suarez was seeking simply to provoke. And he should not be let off lightly. Some have claimed an eight game ban is Draconian but most people would be sacked for a similar comment in the workplace.

Almost as bad as the incident itself was the response of Liverpool Football Club as they lurched from one PR disaster to another seemingly only able to dig a larger hole for themselves. First the preposterous sight of Suarez donning a T-shirt in support of himself greeted us. Dalglish besmirched his reputation as the finest player in Liverpool’s history not only by shifting the blame entirely onto Evra but also, perhaps the worst of his offences, wearing the shirt himself. Not a good look on a 60-year-old man. As Paul McGrath suggested, how much classier might it have seemed to warm up wearing Kick It Out tops? Clearly nobody had a word with the Liverpool PR department as Alan Hansen spent the evening using the word ‘coloured’ on Match of the Day before ‘God’ himself (Robbie Fowler) blacked up for a night out dressed as Lionel Richie and rather foolishly tweeted a photograph. Stay classy, Merseyside.

Liverpool seem concerned people think of the club as inherently racist. I do not. Football clubs aren’t sentient beings. It calls to mind Stewart Lee mocking the ‘values of the Carphone Warehouse’ as they attempted to extricate themselves from another race row, on Big Brother. The Carphone Warehouse values involve only selling phones and Liverpool’s are only football related surely. This persecution complex and martyrdom of the Uruguayan aids nobody. Ferguson didn’t instruct the United players to wear T-shirts all those years ago, he calmly weighed up the situation before making any public pronouncements. Dalgligh needs to realise, like Walter White in Breaking Bad, actions have consequences. Oldham’s Tom Adeyemi must have thought the trip to Anfield would be the highlight of his career to date yet it was marred by racial abuse from the Kop that reduced the young midfielder to tears. There can be little doubt that this would not have happened without all that came before. This is a simple case of cause and effect and the Liverpool manager has to shoulder some responsibility.

All football fans tend to be tarred with the same brush but it’s a broad spectrum. The fact that Emmanuel Adebayor is the Spurs player who has had monkey noises directed at him when his team-mate is Gareth Bale illustrates just how stupid supporters can be. That said, I can recall a time when racial abuse was commonplace in the stands, not least that remarkable night in 1995, and I found it genuinely heart-warming to see Suarez booed away at Wigan. Broadly speaking, as a society, we have moved from booing black players to booing racists.

This is a bigger issue than just Liverpool and Manchester United. John Terry meets Anton Ferdinand again this weekend standing by his assertion that he was simply incredulously repeating the racist abuse the QPR defender was accusing him of. Gus Poyet then needlessly weighed in to do little more than sully my generation’s memory of him as wonderful player. The Terry defence is as ludicrous as Matthew Simmons (Eric’s detractor in the vile leather jacket) claiming he was simply shouting ‘Off you go for an early bath.’ André Villas-Boas, like Dalglish, responded to the allegation by immediately stating he would support his captain ‘no matter what’. I don’t understand this. Surely if it’s proven that Terry hurled racial abuse at an opposing player then he should lose the support of his manager. Particularly given England’s Brave’s status as the pantomime villain of British football. And I write as somebody who takes the ball to the corner flag to wind down the clock when playing computer games.

Despite the quotation at the top of the page, Suarez has singularly refused to issue an apology to Evra, opting instead for a Jeremy Clarkson style ‘I’m sorry if anyone was offended by my comments’ cop-out. Or should that be Kop-out? And so the fires continue to rage. If I can be permitted recourse to one final bit of stand-up comedy, there is an old Eddie Murphy routine in which he talks about walking along the street behind an elderly white couple. Feeling nervous, they stop to let Eddie pass. The anecdote concludes with the comic asserting, ‘Well I was so offended I just went ahead and mugged them.’ When the Liverpool fans abuse Evra on Saturday as a direct result of him reporting a racist incident that damaged their club’s reputation, they will be making just as much sense. And we all know where such taunting can lead.

Player idolised by the fans ups and leaves. It hurts. I get it. We all get it. But burning your club’s shirt? No. Just no.

Burn Fernando, burn

It might have Torres on the back but on the front is the Liverpool crest. Kenny Dalglish said:

Players leave the club and players come in, though more have come into this club than gone. It’s no different now. People move on. The most important thing is the club.

It might be a symbolic gesture but anyone who thinks they’re doing anything other than disrespecting the club is entirely wrong. Protesting citizens setting fire to the flag of a warring neighbour or an oppressive regime, fine. Torres was a Spanish footballer (not genocidal despot) who scored lots of goals for Liverpool FC and on whom they have just made a profit of £30m. I fully understand fans feeling a bit betrayed by him  but to go as far as to set fire to the shirt is frankly pathetic.

Beyond that I think Liverpool have taken two big gambles in Carroll and Suarez. South American strikers who make a Premier League impact are few and far between. Those who have failed more than outnumber those who have not. He has a lot to do to prove he’s not the next Alfonso Alves or Matej Kezman, players who score a bucketload in Holland but flopped miserably in England.

Yes, he looked exciting in the World Cup but then Liverpool fans won’t need reminding that so did El Hadj Diouf before he joined.

As for Carroll, I’m just flabbergasted that anyone can think £35m on him is anything other than massively overpriced. Sure, there’s potential and Liverpool are making an investment in that, but when you spend that kind of money you expect the finished article. He has half a season of decent performances under his belt, a suspect temperament and a history of off-field issues.

It will require Steven Gerrard to supply him with the kind of service he got from Joey Barton at Newcastle. Whatever you think of the cigar-man his dead ball delivery is up there with the best. Dalglish can teach him a lot too but Carroll at £35m+ is the ultimate example of the ‘English tax’. Transfers of English players between two English clubs rarely represent anything like their real value.

In a world where David Villa is sold for £33m, Edin Dzeko for £27m, there’s just no justifcation, other than desperation, for the Andy Carroll fee. I’m not saying he can’t do a job at Anfield, but with that kind of a price kind comes expectation and responsibility and I don’t think Carroll can fulfill either of them well enough.

Genuine question for Liverpool fans – why didn’t Fernando Torres take the penalty yesterday?

The club’s best player, star striker and surely the man who could be relied on stood aside allowing Dirk Kuyt to take the penalty? Was it pressure? Is Kuyt ahead of Torres in the penalty taking pecking order?

It just seemed odd to me that he didn’t want it. We hear all the time about big players standing up to be counted and how they can make the difference. with just two goals in his last ten games why didn’t he demand it, why didn’t he want it?

As for the game itself, some thoughts:

- Liverpool’s defensive weaknesses need to be sorted above everything else. Rumours of a move for Luis Suarez are all well and good but until they find at least one centre-half and a left back they’re going to struggle.

- Leighton Baines turning his back on the ball cost Everton the first goal. I know it’s the natural reaction when facing a shot but if it means taking one squarely in the nuts or the face to stop a goal then that’s what you’ve got to do.

- Unfortunately, for both teams, lower mid-table is an accurate reflection of their form this season. Disappointing for both sides but the table doesn’t lie.

- Seamus Coleman and Martin Kelly look genuinely exciting prospects. It’ll be interesting to see if they can hold be held onto if the current form of both sides doesn’t improve.

- Marouane Fellaini’s hair is ridiculous – how can he head the ball properly?

And as for Sky’s risible ‘Return of the King’ montage at half-time, they have surpassed themselves with their cringeworthy mawkishness.

It looks like it’s curtains for Roy Hodgson. A 3-1 defeat to Blackburn compounded by a penalty miss from captain Steven Gerrard which was a clear signal to the board.

“I’ve had enough of Woy”, it said. “My furrowed brow of self-importance demands a new manager”.

And so it will come to pass. I know he’s not popular with Liverpool fans but he came to the club at a difficult time and, in my opinion, has been let down badly by some of the players. Every Premier League manager has a right to expect better defending that he got last night from that clown Johnson or Kyrgiakos. Slam him for picking them, if you like, but what choice did he have?

The players have underperformed, not just the ones Hodgson brought in, and regardless of how fans feel about the manager they can’t ignore the fact these players have let the club down most of all. It’ll be interesting to see what Liverpool do. Dalglish is obviously popular but he hasn’t managed a team since the 90s.

It could get worse before it gets better. Still, we’ll always have this (hat tip James).

Every week Lawrence Gray-Hodson, a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a former Scotland and England international, writes a column exclusively for Three and in.

This week he looks at Roy Hodgson’s Liverpool plight.

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It was with great sympathy that I read the comments of Roy Hodgson after Liverpool’s defeat to Wolves last night. I fully understand that it was a terrible result from a team who are struggling badly this season. I also fully understand how Liverpool fans are upset that a team which finished second just a couple of seasons ago is now struggling to make the UEFA Cup places.

But who could not have been moved by Roy when he said:

Ever since I came here the famous Anfield support hasn’t really been there. I have to hope the fans will become supporters because we need support – we are not deliberately losing.

It’s been obvious since day one that Liverpool fans don’t like Roy Hodgson. To them he’s like a step-parent who has taken the place of their real dad. Yet they ignore the fact that their real dad was a rioja swilling buffoon who spent £20m on Robbie Keane. If Benitez was their real dad and Liverpool was their mum then their dad used to get into bad moods and slap her about the face a bit.

Yet when it’s your real dad you’re willing to overlook his flaws. Forget that he alienated your best midfielder so he could bring in the honest but limited Gareth Barry. Forget that when the title was there to be had his team conceded four goals to a Russian who barely moves from a 20 yard patch the entire game.

Along came Roy and he is kindly. He tried to win the Liverpool fans over by bringing them a present. “Hi”, he said, “I’m not trying to take the place of your real dad but here’s a Joe Cole to play with”. Granted, it’s a bit like getting second hand lego that has been chewed by a dog but at least the thought was there. From the start the famous Liverpool support turned their nose up at him.

That’s not support. That’s the opposite of support. You know the Scousers, so happy to wallow in misery that I bet many of them are enjoying this season much more than title winning ones because it means they always have something to cry about. I fully expect a group of celebrities to make a video about how Hodgson is killing their club. First it was Hicks and Gillett, then Hodgson, whoever comes next will be to blame I imagine.

The Brazilian Robbie Savage is the driving force of the Liverpool midfield

Is it Roy Hodgson’s fault that Liverpool only have two good players? Fernando Torres stayed loyal this summer, while the midfield brilliance of Lucas will certainly see him move to a Champions League qualifying club. The rest of the squad is average but Hodgson didn’t sign most of them. Most of them were signed by their real dad. A man who had quality strikers like Crouch and Bellamy on his books yet sold them so he could bring in a left back like Dossena.

I’m loath to criticise an Englishman but where exactly is the captain Steven Gerrard? His furrowed brow is all well and good, we know he cares about the club, but in recent games he’s been nigh on invisible. Why does he not find himself on the receiving end of some fan disgruntlement? It seems as if it’s one rule for Roy and one for special Stevie.

I remember when I was in the middle of my career and we had a change of manager. The fans didn’t take to him at first, chanting against him because the man who came before him was popular. It didn’t matter that he’d nearly had us relegated. The fans loved the way he dealt with the press, the chairman, the players. The new man found it tough at first and we players let him down just as the Liverpool players are letting down Roy Hodgson.

During one game some of our fans showed their support by going to his house and spray-painting an enormous penis on the side of his house. Rather than watch their team they did that. And that’s what Liverpool fans are doing to Roy Hodgson. They are spray-painting a giant penis on the hallowed turf of Anfield.

Maybe the Liverpool fans need to take a long hard look in the mirror. When times are tough a real supporter supports his team, through thick and thin and all that. There are those who say the crowd should react to the team, and that’s a fair point, but what about the crowd being the 12th man? At the moment Liverpool’s 12th man is Ronnie Rosenthal against Aston Villa, a tubby Jew who isn’t much good except missing an open goal from 8 yards out.

Is that how they want to be seen across the world? Liverpool’s problems go deeper than the decent Roy Hodgson. They might start in the boardroom but they spread to the pitch, the dressing room and to the stands in which these so-called supporters sit.

Sure, they want what’s best for their club but maybe they ought to realise that their mum has kicked out their real dad for being mean and abusive. They may not like who their mum is sleeping with right now but they’ve got to grow up, stop being kids and just play with the chewed up lego they’ve got.

Nobody likes crybabies or spoiled kids and that’s what Liverpool fans are right now.

So Liverpool have appointed Damien Comolli as Director of Football Strategy. The cunning addition of the word ‘Strategy’ won’t fool many: this is, in essence, a reprisal of the ‘Director of Football’ role which has failed so many times in English football, and indeed at Spurs, where Comolli held his highest-profile position to date.

In theory, it’s a progressive move from Liverpool, and one which acknowledges their financial limitations. Comolli will be charged with identifying affordable potential with residual value, as John Henry becomes the umpteenth of a owner Premier League to try and imitate the ‘Arsenal model’ of player development.

Arsenal, of course, is where Comolli rose to prominence. There is a lot of debate about how significant a role he played in player acquisition. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that he identified a 17-year old Gael Clichy playing for Cannes. Steve Rowley, the Arsenal chief scout, has reportedly privately played down Comolli’s influence. The Frenchman, meanwhile, would probably tell you he taught Thierry Henry how to kick a ball.

Comolli’s credentials are clouded further by his time at Spurs. When he and Juande Ramos were dispatched, his reign was viewed as something as a failure. However, since then, some of the signings held up as example’s of Comolli’s incompetence have gone on to excel: the likes of Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Heurelho Gomes, and of course Gareth Bale. Comolli would say that this is evidence that his role can only be proven to function over the long-term.

Whatever your opinion of the Frenchman, his appointment surely comes as a blow to the authority of Roy Hodgson – especially when you consider that Hodgson was already working under the shadow of a Liverpool great, Kenny Dalglish. The Hodgson-friendly portion of the press will tell you no English manager is better equipped to deal with this continental system of management. Maybe not, but bringing in a guy to head player recruitment is essentially taking away part of Hodgson’s remit.

And looking at his summer signings, can you blame the new owners? The limited impact of the likes of Paul Konchesky, Joe Cole, and Christian Poulsen won’t have had NESV overly excited about their manager’s recruitment acumen. With Hodgson’s short-term future still very much in doubt, and his signings failing to impress, I wouldn’t want him spending precious pounds in January either.

So Liverpool have their shiny new owners. They got rid of those dastardly Americans, and replaced them with… well, some other Americans. But these ones are different. They’re not systematic family rapists, for one thing.

Yesterday saw the first game of the NESV era. And there was N.ot E.ven the S.lightest V.ariation.

Fans, players, and managers of Liverpool Football Club have, for too long, blamed their poor form on the pitch on matters in the boardroom. The inescapable truth is that whilst the club have been able to drop Hicks and Gillett, they can’t drop the likes of Konchesky, Lucas or Maxi until January at the earliest.

The change of ownership is, in seriousness, an essential and positive thing for Liverpool Football Club. But there are eleven more immediate problems, and they took to the field today disguised as a football team.

A recent spate of injuries has seen a sparse squad looking barer than ever. The likes of Kyrgiakos and Konchesky simply aren’t good enough for a team with Champions League pretensions. When needing to turn the game around, calling in the cavalry of Jovanovic, Babel and Ngog doesn’t inspire too much confidence.

Even more worrying is the form of established stars like Joe Cole, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres. Torres looks a shadow of himself, Gerrard has been shunted between different midfield roles without success, and Cole’s contribution has Arsenal and Spurs breathing heavy sighs of relief at a £80,000 p/week bullet successfully dodged.

A large portion of blame, however, must fall at the feet of Roy Hodgson, whose purchases have thus far failed to impress. If the new ownership really are going to invest in the playing staff in January, one would understand if they were loathe to entrust him with the cash.

Every week Lawrence Gray-Hodson, a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a former Scotland and England international, writes a column exclusively for Three and in.

This week it’s the situation at Liverpool

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Like many of you I have been astounded by the shocking situation at Liverpool this season. Beaten last weekend by Blackpool, which is the football equivalent of Muhammed Ali being beaten up by a dwarfer, they find themselves in the bottom three and the fans are not happy.

While I understand being upset at such a defeat I have to say their fans have acted quite disgracefully in turning on the owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks. I watched the now famous YouTube video in which Liverpool fans started by talking about how much they loved their club and then ended up talking about raping the Americans and making threats to burn down their houses. If you’re capable of love you should not be capable of sexually violating a fellow human or man, let alone burning his house down. What if his wife and children were there? His dog? Why would you burn somebody’s dog to death? It’s unconsciousanable.

Frankly, it was unbecoming of a club whose fans have always carried themselves with a quiet, unassuming dignity. We didn’t need Benny from Brookside or the fat beardy fella from The Royal family to preach at us. We can all look, with our own eyes and ears, at what’s going on at Anfield and it strikes me that the Liverpool fans are completely misguided.

The team is playing badly, the new manager is proving quite quickly he’s not up to the task, his signings have been dreadful, and they can’t even beat a third division side in the Carling Cup, so what do the Liverpool fans do? Blame the players, no. Blame the manager, no. Blame the previous manager who left the new manager a poor squad, no.

Instead they blame a pair of businessmen who have always tried to do their best for Liverpool Football Club. Some might argue that’s not the case but not once have I heard a decent argument to back that up. Do you think Hicks and Gillett actually bought Liverpool to run it into the ground and lose millions of pounds in the process? Of course they didn’t. They wanted to make money so why would they do anything other than their best?

Torres wants to go back to his native Italy

Another thing to consider is just how many games have the Americans played for the club. That’s right. Not an appearance between them. They haven’t played, they haven’t picked the team, they haven’t told the managers who should play. They gave Rafa Benitez £20m and he wasted it on Alberto Aquilani, an Italian so abject and spineless he wouldn’t even get a job as Berlusconi’s shoe shine. Where’s the anger directed at the Spaniard for getting that transfer so wrong?

“It’s the owners, it’s the owners!”, they cry instead of looking at the evidence right in front of their eyes. Perhaps if Steven Gerrard put as much effort into his football as he does into telling disco bar DJs which songs to play they might be doing better. Perhaps if Fernando Torres didn’t have the groin of a clapped out gigolo he might score the odd goal. Perhaps if Poulsen hadn’t been signed just to make Lucas look good, perhaps if Martin Skrtel focussed more on the game than his vicious body art and perhaps if Jermaine Pennant could get in a decent cross now and again things wouldn’t be so bad.

Perhaps is a small word with a big meaning and it’s easier for Liverpool fans to point fingers at two, honest, hard-working Americans than at the bigtime Charlies who are picking up their massive wages and simply not putting in the required effort to win football matches. And who pays those wages? Exactly.

It reminds me of a time early in my career when we went to Milwall when their fans were particularly disenfranchised with the men running the club.

“It’s brilliant”, said one Milwallian in the player’s bar after we’d won 5-1, “they’re so wrapped up in their hatred of the chairman that they don’t even notice how bad we are. We don’t even have try. Chug chug, mate”. We got so drunk that night I ended up vomiting in Cyrile Regis’s front garden. I don’t think he ever knew it was me.

His words were shocking to me at the time but it’s part and parcel of the game, any pro will tell you that. And that’s what’s going on at Liverpool right now. There’s a culture of excuse making. The manager and the players know they can coast through games and the ire will be directed at the board. Why bother trying your best when someone else can take the blame?

I suppose if and when the new Americans take over that things will be all sweetness and light for a while but if the team loses a few games the same old story will emerge. Fans, too cowardly to blame their half-baked on-pitch heroes, will decide these Americans are no good as well and threaten to kill them.

When you consider how the Americans helped us out in our great fight against the Germans it makes me ashamed that Hicks and Gillett are being treated like this. They should know that those of us who love football in this country appreciate what they’ve done and a few ‘scallies’, as they love to be known, do not represent us.

They’re walking through a storm with their heads held high. Oh yes they are.

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Comment below or you can contact Lawrence by email.

Didier Drogba celebrated his backheeled goal against Arsenal by crossing himself and thanking a higher power.  For Drogba, it was unusually and unnecessarily modest.  Whilst he could never have predicted the ball would cannon in off the post in that fashion, his unconventional flick was the mark of a player instinctive, alert, and opportunistic – all signs of a striker at the very top of his game.

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Already this season, Wolves have picked up 21 cautions and two red cards.  Unsurprisingly, they’re now starting to worry that they might acquire something of a ‘reputation’.  Kevin Doyle has insisted that any notoriety is misplaced:

“If you were to look at it on paper you’d think we were a dirty team, but if you look back to last year we were one of the fairest sides in the league.”

Which as defences go is pretty weak.  The evidence of Wolves’ physicality is clear.  What did or didn’t happen last year is irrelevant.  If Wolves are, God willing, relegated this season, then they won’t be able to appeal to the Premier League on the grounds that they played much better the year before.  In football, the present is all that really matters.

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The chief perpetrator of Wolves’ overly-physical approach has been Karl Henry.  Perhaps he’ll be forced to reconsider the manner of his ‘tackling’ having been dismissed so early in their game against Wigan for his latest lunge.  With any luck, a referee will finally step up and apply the same disciplinary sanction to Nigel De Jong, who this weekend did what he had been threatening to do for some time and snapped the leg of Hatem Ben Arfa in two places.  The warning signs were there during the World Cup – De Jong serves little purpose other than to clatter his opponents.  His style of play shows a basic lack of respect for the safety of his fellow professionals, and it’s essential that referees respond accordingly.  If they continue to allow such challenges to go unpunished, then the FA or Premier League will be forced to introduce retrospective action.

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Mark Hughes looks healthier, happier, and settled in to his new job at Fulham.  He says it’s because he’s put on weight.  Maybe it’s actually because he’s finally found a club whose ambitions are compatible with his love of a level scoreline.  It was a run of seven successive draws that essentially ended his spell at Manchester City.  Six ties from his opening seven games as Fulham manager, however, have seen him heralded as captain of an unbeaten ship.  As a player, Hughes was something of a sharpshooter.  As a manager, it seems he’s still quick on the draw.

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So Liverpool have slumped to a new nadir.  One question: would a foreign manager be under more pressure from the media than struggling Woy?

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As ever, your thoughts, observations, and ramblings are welcome.