The Dim in Beirut

Goodbye Street Fighter Poet

So, today, Luis Suarez has confirmed his desire to leave Liverpool this Summer.

It’s the news every Liverpool fan around the world was dreading. But it was also the news that most Liverpool fans not living with their heads in the sand were expecting.

There’s been a lot of vitriol thrown at Suarez for the last couple of days. People saying he owes Liverpool one more season; others saying that they feel greatly let down.

In all honesty, people need to give the guy a break.

I don't know what certain members of the Liverpool FC fanbase were expecting this Summer, I really don't.

You can't bask in Suarez's brilliance all season, proclaim him as one of the league and world's best players and then get pissed off that he wants to leave a club that have finished 6th, 8th and 7th in the league behind the likes of Newcastle and Everton since he arrived here.

World class players, which Suarez is, deserve a world class setting. He deserves to be playing somewhere where he can compete for major honors; every single honor available to him. Everyone giving him flack must have had your heads in the sand all year to be honest.

The news comes as no surprise to me. It's completely consistent with Suarez's character. The man is a winner. He is the sort of player willing to break his grandmother's ankles for 3 points. He is the one player that looks absolutely destroyed when we lose football games. For him to stay at a club that have lost something like in 1 in 3 or 4 for the last 3 years would be in complete contrast to his character.

Forget all the other talk of the media hounding him (which is a factor, no doubt, but not the main one). Forget whatever conceptions you have of loyalty. None of you were complaining about loyalty when he came to us DIRECTLY after biting some player in Holland and incurring a 7 game ban, with Ajax out of the Champions League places. None of you said he deserved to give Ajax one more year due to their support.

Suarez owes us nothing. He could have easily gone last season; Kenny left and there was the fallout of the Evra affair. He didn’t. He had other offers and decided to give us a chance. He did more than anybody else to make us successful this year; carried us through half a season. He never moaned about having a 17 and 18 year old next to him in attack. He never went crying to anyone that he had no backup for 3 months. He took on the responsibility on his shoulder and relished it.

I'll be gutted when he leaves; more than most. Suarez is, along with John Barnes, the best player I've ever seen in Red. Win, lose or draw I take so much pleasure just from watching him play football. He is the most enjoyable and entertaining player I've ever seen play for us. I thought I was deeply in love with Fernando Torres, but I realized that I never knew what true love for a player was until we got Suarez. With Torres, there was no bad times, nothing to challenge my affection for him. With Suarez, the bad times made me love him more.

Further than that, the way the press and the UK in general have treated him reinforces everything I ever thought about England, it's media and the hypocrisy of those in positions of power (be it the FA or any other institution). But again, I don’t believe that has anything to do with him leaving.

For me, we let him down. On and off the pitch. 

Off it, Suarez came at a time where we've been the weakest for the last 20 years: just at the start of FSG’s reign, where they knew more about weather conditions in Wisconsin than the sport of football.

Suarez should have been a lot more protected by the club during his time here. We should have banned the Daily Mirror from LFC the minute they splashed RACIST as their headline for example. We should have sued for libel the second that happened but took it up the ass like little bitches.

We should have taken the 8 game ban straight to CAS. Anybody who has read it knows there is 0 evidence bar Evra's word. The FA chose to believe Evra and not Suarez and we took it up the ass like little bitches.

We should have gone to war against the FA over the 10 game ban thing when Defoe got picked for England the week after he bit Masch. Gone to war. Instead what did we do? We took it up the ass like little bitches.

The only person that fought for Luis Suarez and Liverpool Football Club and went to war against the media and the FA got fired, in part, because of his "mishandling of the affair". 

I dont believe for one second that any of this has to do with Suarez leaving: he's way too good for a 7th placed team. But for Liverpool Football Club to rise again then it needs to stand up to itself, and stop letting itself be treated like an irrelevant little child. Winning trophies and protecting the club should become a priority as opposed to increasing brand value and making sure Henry Winter, Martin Samuel and Paul Hayward are writing nice things about you.

On it, we'll spend the rest of our lives thinking what could have been had we spent 76m pounds a bit more wisely than on Carroll, Downing, Henderson and Adam. God knows what could have been achieved had Suarez been surrounded by players like Coutinho, Sturridge et all... for more than 4 months.

As far as I’m concerned, he goes with my full blessing. I've been expecting his departure this Summer since the United 3-1 Kuyt Kuyt Kuyt game in 2010. I could see how talented he was and how impossible it would be to keep him here without Champions league football.

I'll remember him with great fondness. The cheekiness of Robbie Fowler, the tenacity and hard work of Dirk Kuyt, the back to goal brilliance of Kenny Dalglish, the flair of John Barnes, the dribbling skills of Steve Mcmanaman, the unpredictability of Titi Camara, the heart of Steven Gerrard, the creativity of Peter Beardsley, the nastiness of Steve Mcmahon, the goal threat of Michael Owen, the star power of Fernando Torres aligned with the desire to use every single blade of grass on the football pitch that is unique to him.

God bless you Luis, you street fighting poet, and best of luck.

Never Again

So a football manager announced his retirement this week.

Not just any football manager mind. Alex Ferguson, the manager of one of the biggest and most famous football clubs in the world. A man who has ruled English football with an Iron Fist for the past 2 decades or so. A man whose political connections are so far reaching, he was awarded a knighthood after helping out Tony Blair win his first prime ministerial elections.

This knight of the realm will, for the rest of his lifetime, be remembered as the greatest football manager in the history of football. What happens after he passes away though, no-one really knows. In England, your achievements are safe until you die. After that, all gloves are off.

The fact of the matter is that Ferguson has achieved so much during his 27 year tenure at Manchester United, that he deserves all the accolades he gets. What is also an undeniable fact though, is that so much of his success has been accompanied by the ugly stench of what Man United fans call coincidences and the rest of the world calls corruption.

From Ferguson’s first Premier League trophy at United when more than 7 minutes of injury time allowed his team to score 2 goals to set them up for the 1992/93 title.  To his last one, where his team did not concede a penalty ALL SEASON (not a single one in fact since October 2011) and did not have a man sent off until well after they wrapped up the league; United’s success have left a lot of football fans scratching their heads.

Ferguson has won 13 English league titles. And just 2 European Cups. The same as Juventus who are the most storied club in Italy. And much like Juventus, many question why United’s domestic dominance did not translate into a European one.

Maybe the simple explanation is that without English referees, United could not translate their dominance into Europe. After all, ask yourself this: would an English ref have dared send Nani off at Old Trafford against Real Madrid?

It’s no “coincidence” that the term “Fergie Time” has entered the football lexicon, a common an expression as any in English football. It’s no coincidence that gambling websites offered punters the chances to bet on Howard Webb becoming Fergie’s replacement at United (4 people actually put money on this!).

It’s no coincidence that Ferguson exits as he ruled: with the tongues of so many journalists wedged so far up his bottom that a sudden outbreak of Cherry Bosom poisoning on Fleet Street would not come as a surprise.

These journalists have been as complicit as anyone in allowing Ferguson an unhealthy amount of power in the English game .For example, Daniel Taylor of the Guardian wrote an article entitled “The Eulogy, the Apology, the Thank You”.

This is a man, like many others, who Ferguson has banned from Old Trafford for years. It did not stop all of them falling over each other to get down on their knees and bow to the “Great Man”.

The sycophancy of the press corps during this last week has been vomit inducing and completely unsurprising. In many ways, its akin to the North Korean’s media reaction to Kim Jong Il’s death.

Not a single article raised the fact of how powerful Ferguson was, or the unhealthy relationship which exists between his club and the Football Association. Not a single article highlighted the abuses of power, the bullying and the double standards that were such a fixture of Ferguson’s reign.

 And as for the issue of the refereeing selection process and the strange “coincidences” involving Manchester United...  forget about it. The media do not want to research, report of highlight this matter.

And not a single one highlighted a key fact: Ferguson has certainly left his club in very good hands. The new FA Chairman, Greg Dyke, is an ex Man United director. The FA Vice chairman is David Gill, current United CEO and future Board member (like a certain Mr. Ferguson). And the new Premier League chairman, Anthony Fry, is a self confessed United fan.

Taken individually, there is nothing wrong with that. The current FA Chairman has links to Man City while other heads of the FA have had links to football clubs.

But at no stage in history (anywhere in the world I imagine), has a club held all 3 powerful positions as strongly inside the country’s football institutions. That this has been allowed, without comment, to happen is the final nail in English football’s media “fair and balanced” reporting.

Ferguson leaving has to teach English football lessons. English football needs to put measures in place to ensure that the years of abuse of power that have formed Ferguson’s reign never happen again:

Never again should a football manager have so much power within the game, to the point where he has his key allies in positions of power inside the country’s football institutions

Never again should a football manager be allowed to abuse the system

Never again should a football manager have his colleagues punish other clubs for firing his son

Never again should a football manager be allowed to bully referees without punishment

Never again should a football manager be allowed to build political connections while working in the game

Never again should a football manager be allowed to ban and bully reporters at a whim

Never again should a football manager be allowed to tamper with the refereeing selection process

Never again should a football manager be allowed to go years without fulfilling his media obligations, with no punishment

Never again should a football manager be allowed to ban referees from taking charge of this team (ask Graham Poll or Jeff Winter)

Never again should a football manager force his players to use his son as an agent, and threaten punishment if they don’t

 

I suggest that the ideal person to take the first step is the new Manchester United manager, David Moyes.

After all, in 2009, Moyes, as Everton manager, demanded the FA investigate Mike Riley. Moyes wanted to ascertain whether Riley was a United fan, such was his bias while refereeing United games.

The investigation never came. Instead, Riley retired and then became the head of the PGMOB; the group responsible for assigning games to referees. He’s the man who decides who referees Man United games.

Over to you Davey.