Liverpool Have Earned Right To This Belief...
Mocking Liverpool fans for 'this is our year' talk has become easy sport, but Johnny argues that this is no ordinary club - they have earned the right to blind belief...
A lot of people like to laugh at Liverpool fans. It's started already with scorn being poured on those who feel this coming season could, at last, be a victorious one for them in the Premier League. This ambition alone is enough to make their critics howl in contempt as though daring to dream of success is in itself a form of madness and delusion.
After all, it's over two decades since Liverpool topped the league - enough length of time for everyone under the age of 30 to be unable to recall. To them it must seem an ages-old piece of history.
While there's no doubt that there is a section of Reds fans who are, to say the least, somewhat over-reactive to criticism and thus attract a disproportionate amount of ire and mockery from the rest of the football community, I often feel that those keen to stick the knife into Liverpool and who treat them as just another club with bonkers fans both underestimate and under-appreciate the nature of Liverpool FC.
It is not a normal football club with title pretensions. Rather, it is one of the few - possibly the only club - with the resources, weight of legend and self-belief to break the Chelsea-Manchester United hegemony and challenge Manchester City's vaulting ambition.
Unlike City, and unlike other outside title bets such as Spurs or Arsenal, Liverpool were once the biggest club in world football. They were unrivalled. They were a football machine. They were all-conquering, not just for one or two seasons but season in, season out for the best part of 20 years. They were a by-word for success the world over.
This is not a title to shrug off lightly, not even 20 years since a title victory. It is the stuff of myth and legend and it drives their fans the way it simply cannot for a club such as Arsenal with no European success or Spurs with no title win since 1961.
It goes some way to explain the depths of hurt and desire for success that pervade the club. To my generation, who grew up inculcated with the Reds' dominance, it still - even all these years later - feels wrong that Liverpool are not fighting for the title every season. It feels almost unnatural. It doesn't feel like that in relation any other club; not one. Liverpool is unique.
Other football clubs aspire to greatness. Chelsea and City want global domination and global brand awareness but Liverpool had that 35 years ago. Liverpool were a red army that put all European and domestic challengers to the sword with a ruthless brilliance that no-one has ever matched since. No amount of money spent by either club is likely to match Liverpool's achievements and even if they did, it would be tainted by virtue of the size of that financial weighting. In other words, they will never out-Liverpool Liverpool. They've been there and done it already.
There is collective folk memory of those times that lives on in the hearts of all true Liverpool fans, even in me as a neutral. I witnessed one of their glory nights of European football - a 1977 quarter-final against St Etienne. Needing a third goal to win the tie, supersub David Fairclough, a 20-year-old streak of red flame, ripped through the dark night to win the game with a goal in the dying minutes.
It was awesome in every sense of that word. The whole of Anfield united as one living, breathing, screaming organism. This wasn't the polite delight of the corporate world in which we now live. This wasn't the seated, suited and booted world of 2011, this was when the Kop ebbed and flowed like the tides of the Mersey. This was a more dangerous time. But it was life-affirming and sodding brilliant.
Now I only saw that one game live, but if you or your parents or relations had spent their life at many such games, the emptiness of the last 20 years must be a unique pain. Liverpool were the highest of the high and will not, cannot let go of the feeling and belief that they will and should be again.
This is why Kenny Dalglish is so important in the new gold dream. He is a visceral link to those days of world dominance. The desire for him to be the mainline vein to connect the past to the present is overwhelming so any decision he makes, be it to buy Jordan Henderson for quite a lot of money or Andy Carroll for a massive amount of money, is welcomed and believed in. Kenny wasn't just part of the Liverpool machine that ruled European football - he was the hero of that side; the jewel in a glittering crown and thus, like no other man, is held to be the guiding light to take them back to the summit of world football again; to reclaim their crown.
You might feel Liverpool is in love with its own myth to the point of self-harm and you may be right. But if anyone has the right to believe in future glory it is Liverpool FC. They are no ordinary club, they are no ordinary set of fans; they have a history that simply no other club can match. They have been deposed for a long time but they are still kings in waiting; a sleeping dog that has already awakened.
This is why the passion is so near the surface and why the need to believe in near and future success burns like an abandoned Vauxhall Nova in Norris Green. It should not be so easily mocked nor so easily dismissed.
With a summer spending money and revamping their squad, the feeling that Liverpool are on the up is irresistible.
Mocking Liverpool fans for 'this is our year' talk has become easy sport, but Johnny argues that this is no ordinary club - they have earned the right to blind belief...
A lot of people like to laugh at Liverpool fans. It's started already with scorn being poured on those who feel this coming season could, at last, be a victorious one for them in the Premier League. This ambition alone is enough to make their critics howl in contempt as though daring to dream of success is in itself a form of madness and delusion.
After all, it's over two decades since Liverpool topped the league - enough length of time for everyone under the age of 30 to be unable to recall. To them it must seem an ages-old piece of history.
While there's no doubt that there is a section of Reds fans who are, to say the least, somewhat over-reactive to criticism and thus attract a disproportionate amount of ire and mockery from the rest of the football community, I often feel that those keen to stick the knife into Liverpool and who treat them as just another club with bonkers fans both underestimate and under-appreciate the nature of Liverpool FC.
It is not a normal football club with title pretensions. Rather, it is one of the few - possibly the only club - with the resources, weight of legend and self-belief to break the Chelsea-Manchester United hegemony and challenge Manchester City's vaulting ambition.
Unlike City, and unlike other outside title bets such as Spurs or Arsenal, Liverpool were once the biggest club in world football. They were unrivalled. They were a football machine. They were all-conquering, not just for one or two seasons but season in, season out for the best part of 20 years. They were a by-word for success the world over.
This is not a title to shrug off lightly, not even 20 years since a title victory. It is the stuff of myth and legend and it drives their fans the way it simply cannot for a club such as Arsenal with no European success or Spurs with no title win since 1961.
It goes some way to explain the depths of hurt and desire for success that pervade the club. To my generation, who grew up inculcated with the Reds' dominance, it still - even all these years later - feels wrong that Liverpool are not fighting for the title every season. It feels almost unnatural. It doesn't feel like that in relation any other club; not one. Liverpool is unique.
Other football clubs aspire to greatness. Chelsea and City want global domination and global brand awareness but Liverpool had that 35 years ago. Liverpool were a red army that put all European and domestic challengers to the sword with a ruthless brilliance that no-one has ever matched since. No amount of money spent by either club is likely to match Liverpool's achievements and even if they did, it would be tainted by virtue of the size of that financial weighting. In other words, they will never out-Liverpool Liverpool. They've been there and done it already.
There is collective folk memory of those times that lives on in the hearts of all true Liverpool fans, even in me as a neutral. I witnessed one of their glory nights of European football - a 1977 quarter-final against St Etienne. Needing a third goal to win the tie, supersub David Fairclough, a 20-year-old streak of red flame, ripped through the dark night to win the game with a goal in the dying minutes.
It was awesome in every sense of that word. The whole of Anfield united as one living, breathing, screaming organism. This wasn't the polite delight of the corporate world in which we now live. This wasn't the seated, suited and booted world of 2011, this was when the Kop ebbed and flowed like the tides of the Mersey. This was a more dangerous time. But it was life-affirming and sodding brilliant.
Now I only saw that one game live, but if you or your parents or relations had spent their life at many such games, the emptiness of the last 20 years must be a unique pain. Liverpool were the highest of the high and will not, cannot let go of the feeling and belief that they will and should be again.
This is why Kenny Dalglish is so important in the new gold dream. He is a visceral link to those days of world dominance. The desire for him to be the mainline vein to connect the past to the present is overwhelming so any decision he makes, be it to buy Jordan Henderson for quite a lot of money or Andy Carroll for a massive amount of money, is welcomed and believed in. Kenny wasn't just part of the Liverpool machine that ruled European football - he was the hero of that side; the jewel in a glittering crown and thus, like no other man, is held to be the guiding light to take them back to the summit of world football again; to reclaim their crown.
You might feel Liverpool is in love with its own myth to the point of self-harm and you may be right. But if anyone has the right to believe in future glory it is Liverpool FC. They are no ordinary club, they are no ordinary set of fans; they have a history that simply no other club can match. They have been deposed for a long time but they are still kings in waiting; a sleeping dog that has already awakened.
This is why the passion is so near the surface and why the need to believe in near and future success burns like an abandoned Vauxhall Nova in Norris Green. It should not be so easily mocked nor so easily dismissed.
With a summer spending money and revamping their squad, the feeling that Liverpool are on the up is irresistible.
