Taking Sides: Liverpool vs Everton

I remember him (I scarcely have the right to use this ghostly verb; only one man on earth deserved the right...

Oh, dear. Can somebody wipe my brain, please?

I am tempted to say 'Everton should be worried', save that... I don't actually think they should be worried.

Should Liverpool be worried? The Guardian report today says there's a lot of worry around:

Houllier's worries at his players' anxieties

Liverpool 1 - 2 Arsenal

Kevin McCarra at Anfield
Monday October 6, 2003
The Guardian

In the fight for success managers have wretched spells when they feel as if they are trying to thump phantoms. Gérard Houllier is perturbed. Having improved the attacking potential of the Liverpool side, he now finds himself battling on a more mysterious front. The minds of his own players are a greater worry than the abilities of the opposition.

There are no more signings to be made and a dustsheet might as well be thrown over the tactics board. In this defeat by Arsenal it looked as if the side had simply forgotten how to challenge for honours. There was much to admire about Liverpool before the interval but ruthlessness was not among their merits.

Worse still, the team then grew preoccupied with its regrets and let a 1-1 draw shade into a defeat. "The boys got anxious," Houllier admitted. "It was as if they were saying, 'We have done so well, and didn't get the goals we deserve.' It was as if they wanted to keep the result rather than keep going forward."

In such circumstances talent is just a provocation. It annoys supporters to recognise ability that is not made to count. Harry Kewell put Liverpool in front with a rapacious first-time drive after an Edu clearance broke from Michael Owen but his performance is tied to a moodiness that has his impact fluctuating over the course of an afternoon.

Owen himself is usually steadier, yet he malfunctioned before collecting the injury that makes him a doubt for England's match in Istanbul. Given chances to add to the lead, a lob went high after Kewell's flick had sent him through and so too did a header from Steven Gerrard's superb, pacy free-kick.

There was excitement for half an hour. Liverpool are no longer monotonous and the tactic of pairing the elusive Kewell and Owen in attack left Arsenal's powerful centre-backs lacking anyone to grapple with. Houllier's side, though, could not sustain their display and so suffered a second consecutive defeat in the Premiership.

They do not appear remorseless enough to make up lost ground and challenge for the title. It is Arsenal, mystifyingly, who have turned into the kind of hard-bitten line-up whose results can be better than their displays. Only the wonderful winner, when Robert Pires bent a 25-yarder round Jerzy Dudek, revealed the Highbury club's virtuoso traits.

Jérémie Aliadière, in his first start for Arsenal, must have concluded that the Premiership's demands are intimidating but Arsène Wenger almost revelled in his memories of survival in a desperate situation. "We were on the ropes for 25 minutes," the manager said. "We couldn't get out of our half."

Arsenal were level at the interval because Edu's header from a Pires free-kick broke off Sami Hyypia for an own-goal, but Wenger's main thought was that his men needed to push up and choke Liverpool's flow in midfield.

Arsenal, on their Premieship travels, have followed a valuable draw at Manchester United with a win here and Wenger has cause to acclaim the "solidarity" of his squad. All the same the leniency of Houllier's side was still the key to recovery. With Edu a useful deputy for the injured Patrick Vieira, Arsenal eventually started to pass steadily, even if their old élan was lacking.

Although Ashley Cole had to deny Liverpool a late equaliser by blocking El Hadji Diouf's effort on the goal-line, the Highbury team became increasingly composed. Sol Campbell, back in action for the first time since the death of his father 17 days earlier, gradually recovered his focus over the course of the match.

"Sol was a bit in-between on playing; he didn't know if he was ready so I decided just to push him in," Wenger said. "Sol didn't want to let the team down. He was a bit anxious and in the last 20 minutes he looked a bit tired. But you could see that he wanted to dig deep to finish the game well. He needed a lot of mental strength."

The professional concerns of footballers are trifling by comparison with those of a bereaved man but Arsenal are performing with fortitude. It remains to be seen whether the durability will last if there is a battery of suspensions after the fracas at Old Trafford.

Liverpool, however, are currently the more apprehensive club and once again there is talk of Gerrard and Owen seeking transfers if no Champions League place is won. Houllier did not deserve to see such speculation resurface but, although he was blameless on Saturday, it is always the manager's job to suffer.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By David Thomson

May 30, 2002 | Let me leave young women aside for a moment. I will come to
them. But what I want to say first is that this is that moment at which the
world comes to a proper celebration of something men were made to do,
something that is intensely physical yet profoundly imaginative, something
made out of muscle, speed, grace and the soul. I am talking about the World
Cup, about soccer, about football.

I know, that name is not quite allowed in this country because it is
supposed to be kept under lock and key for that other game -- not a bad
game, even if it compels men to be too large and replaces the real
adventures of the mind with the huddles, the jargon and the militaristic
submersion of identity in "planning."

So American football is a fine thing. Still, America could do itself good
all over the world by saying, Well, yes, after all, we all know what
football is, football is the game made by Stanley Matthews, Ferenc Puskas,
Pele, Maradona and Zidane, football is the world's passion and festival, one
of the greatest forms of play ever invented (and a turn-on). Therefore,
"our" "football" needs a new name -- let's call it "gridiron" or "attack" or
whatever you like. "Soccer" is such a stupid name. How many of the children
playing all over the U.S. today actually know why it is called "soccer"? How
many readers of this piece know? (For the answer, see below.) Give us back
the real meaning of "football."

And, no matter that the games are likely to appear on our television at
unearthly hours that do a lot to destroy the other rhythms of life -- you
should attend to this great contest. And its rhythm. Football is a game
played on a pitch at least 100 yards by 60, played at extraordinary pace, in
which most of the players are likely to be driven from end to end, back and
forth, while still finding the time to control, touch, deflect and guide a
ball that bounces to the moods of ground, wind and altitude.

Time and again, in football, you will see young men -- at the limits of
their physical capacity -- do astonishingly inventive things with the
rhythm, the direction and the winning of this very simple game. In its
essence, it should be played without lulls or stoppages. Only then can
change of pace and direction prove so decisive. It is trite to say that
football is like dance. Dance, after all, has no equivalent to danger,
contact, collision and courage. And dance is choreographed. The design is
meant to be carried out to perfection, whereas in football the perfection
will always emerge from spontaneity, accident and momentary impulse.

How sexy is football? As sexy as any performance where young men, trained
all their lives in skills and execution, still discover in an instant the
unexpected, the reversal, the purely personal option within a team's plan.
You will hear that some nations -- the Latin teams, say -- are more
naturally adept at this than others. Not so. Some of the greatest of players
have been European, and northern European at that -- consider Cruyff, Law,
Best, Beckenbauer and so many others. Some of the most turgid, paranoid and
overrehearsed football ever played has come from Italian teams. Still, there
is always the passionate example of Brazil, the savage moodiness of
Argentina, the exuberance of African teams and who knows what dark horse
this time?

Football does not take root in the U.S., so they say, and there are all the
old reasons -- not enough goals, not enough opportunities for commercial
breaks, an absence of melodramatic violence, too much stress on the mind.
Well, maybe America can and will live with those crushing definitions of
itself.

Or maybe it will observe something that is American in origin yet still not
figured out in many football-crazy nations: that it is a terrific game for
women. For if we have discovered something feminine in the game, then surely
the world is helped in enjoying the way men move. In that glimpse of
America's insecure maleness, there lies a way in which our culture of might
really moves ahead. But that would depend on more ordinary Americans
discovering the intensely sexual, intellectual allure of the game. Every
four years you get a new chance to abandon helmets, padding and the war
cries of the Marines -- and show us your legs, your knees, your thighs, your
invention.

*The game is called soccer because as it developed in Britain, it acquired a
Football Association (an organizing structure) to distinguish it from rugby.
The "soccer" comes from the "soc" in association. Which is not really a
proper way to name a great game.

As far as I know the same is true of Steven Gerrard.

I suspect we'll thump someone out of sight once every seven or eight games and the rest of the time won't be able to find the key to the garage door, never mind first gear. 10th at best. With Liverpool 11th.

What do the other Liverpool people around here think? And the non Liverpool people also?

Everton 1-0 Liverpool, Andy King 58min; Mike Pejic's long free-kick, Martin Dobson's knockdown (or was he outjumped by Phil Thompson?) and King's swerving 'fluke' volley from 25 yards. Clemence looked bewildered, shamed, hurt.

The sun dipping behind the Park End stand, flooding the BBC lenses, lending the whole thing a washed out, unreal feel. Couldn't we have scored in front of the Gwladys Street - dancing mass of blue, in full 625line contrast? No, this was better - look at the miserable sods behind the goal.

"Delirium at Goodison Park!" squealed Young Tyldesley on 194m MW. The same watery autumn glare in our old front room, Clive on the stereogram, my brother staring at the same piece of carpet for the last 32 minutes, hoping, praying (we still did then).

Richard Duckenfield's breathless fulltime scoop interview gets as far as "Andy King..." before a jobsworth rednose bobby intervenes. "Gerrof the pitch..." A staple on What Happened Next for years.

Magic/tragic/etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/3261175.stm

When he turned on a tuppence and pelted the post from nowhere I think I actually heard myself exclaiming "ROY OF THE ROVERS!".

A fan is reported as saying: 'all the talk's about catching up with Manchester United... but 14 years ago we were way ahead of them in terms of success, income and support'.

(14 years! It sounds like the kind of thing that... that *I'd* say.)

(Those bags, by the way - what a strange convention they were, utterly accepted and almost omnipresent, yet now presumably nonexistent.

I assume we know what bags I'm talking about.)

Perhaps the meaning of it all is that Liverpool now mean football's past? So I am keen on them.

cf. David Lacey's Guardian article also.

Everton were alas defeated in the capital.

Anyway -- assuming a Liverpool comeback of some kind, how far can it go?

I hate Michael Howard more than ever right now.

Kilbane and Jeffers good again vs Fulham, but we wasted too many early chances. I fancy us in the forthcoming Cup rematch though.

Much talk a la: "Liverpool now have to prove they're worthy of him".

But why? He is part of the team which has (relatively) failed - is he worthy of Liverpool? Shouldn't he be going out and proving it?

Insofar as he's not part of the failed team, it's because he has repeatedly seemed to play so few matches per season. So shouldn't he also be proving that he's fit enough to be offered a contract?

Dear me, BIG SAM and his TV promoter Robbie Earle won't like that.

It's sad, there was so much promise a couple of years ago and now what? sliding again into turgid mediocrity

Aren't people overestimating the quality of the Liverpool squad a bit? I mean, they're 26 points off the title pace - that's not all down to GH's tactics/motivational skills, is it? They're clearly a cut above the Premiership median and still probably favourites for 4th spot (57-60pts will do it this season) but this seems a weaker collective pool of talent than 2000-01 (OK, that is GH's fault).

I still think they'll get fourth. Does that constitute a decent season? I dunno.

Everton are even worse.

I liked Ian St John's claim that Houll the Ghoull is transforming the Anfield faithful into 'zombies', traipsing across a mist-shrouded Stanley Park.

That's nine misses in nineteen attempts! Who else would have him?

Everton - the Grand Old Relegation Struggle again. We can't even comfort ourselves with the notion that it's us and a dozen others because a gap has developed in the last couple of weeks and we're on the wrong end of it. I'm going to see them on Saturday - my first trip to Goodison in a decade - and hopefully it'll be our first league win of 2004. If not, I don't see us keeping the likes of Leeds, Wolves and Leicester at bay with any ease - none of them are in freefall, they're still snaffling up points here and there.

We seem to miss a similar proportion of chances to Liverpool, we just create a third as many. And we're leaky at the back in a way not hinted at by 02-03. This season we possession-dominate 0-1 defeats; last season we pinched even-steven games with late wonder-strikes. Gravesen is the most frustrating player to watch - occasionally inspired and inspiring, he misdirects more passes in 90 minutes than Paul Bracewell did in his whole career.

What I've seen of Cisse he's been great, but always with the backing of Kapo while playing for Auxerre, maybe Kewell will provide similar service if he ever decides to start being a decent player again.

I'm not sure about that - he only played a dozen or so games last campaign but started this season in great form (the hat-trick against Leeds being the highlight) and then got injured. But, yes, terribly ineffective since his return. We've missed a fit Kevin Campbell this year but we're going to have to get used to that - it's twilight time for KC.

Ha, just checked the stats on the website and Gravesen makes 77% of his passes, making him EFC's Mr Accuracy. Sorry, Thom!