Atkinson / Gibbons Make Us Dream

The Story of Liverpool's 2013/14 Season
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-909245-21-1
Verlag: deCoubertin Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

Liverpool's 2013/14 campaign was no ordinary football season.  It was the season when everything changed. A year of hope, fantasy, adventure; where joyous reclamation met crushing disappointment and won. A season defined by many individuals, moments, goals and memories.  A time when the brand of heroic and daring football - and footballers - that seemed consigned to the sepia toned era of the game's past returned. It was a season when millions of Liverpool supporters dared to dream again. Make Us Dream is the story of that season.

Neil Atkinson's first game saw Liverpool win 5-0 and Gary Gillespie score a hat trick. If ever a bar was too high... Since that halycon day in 1986 Neil's gone to school, started and finished a Liverpool fanzine and performed a series of office jobs to varying degrees of success. Currently he is in the process of writing and producing cinema while presenting The Anfield Wrap in its myriad of forms. He is usually to be found in Liverpool City Centre. Running late. John Gibbons got his first Liverpool season ticket in 1992 when he was 10 years old. He's had it ever since. He has been to 10 of the 12 cup finals Liverpool have played in this time. John's best imagined in a suit and carrying a trumpet rushing from A to B as he plays with a variety of bands in Liverpool who request his services. He organises and promotes the popular Dovedale Social music night on Penny Lane.  He has written for The Anfield Wrap about football and music since 2011. When time allows he writes for other Liverpool outlets about music. Neil and John present The Anfield Wrap on CityTalk 105.9 and get a load of people to come into a room and talk football with them. They decided to do this in book form about a season they both loved. They hope you like it.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Atkinson, Neil

Gibbons, John

Leseproben

LIVERPOOL 4 NOTTS COUNTY 2 27 August 2013. Goals: Sterling 4’, Sturridge 29’, 105’, Henderson 110’; Arquin 62’, Coombes 84’ THE EXUBERANCE OF YOUTH I ENJOY THE MUCH-MALIGNED LEAGUE CUP. It’s cheap for a start, which will always appeal to my frugal nature. The dearest ticket for this game was £20 and kids could get in for a fiver. These prices mean you get a lot of younger fans at the game, which makes a nice change from old fellas moaning down your ear, although I’m sure having to repeatedly get up because a young lad needs the toilet/wants a hot dog/both would wear pretty thin eventually too. The away fans are miles better, selling out whole ends and actually acting like they are enjoying themselves. It had been over 20 years since we’d played league games against Notts County, so many of their fans would have been visiting for the first time, with a spring in their step, at least until they saw the dreadful view you get from the back of the Anfield Road. Excitement to be at football can be sniffed out by the ‘too cool for school’, seen it all before crowd, but I’ll take it over miserable class traitors from other Northern towns singing ‘Sign On’ at you any day of the week. Mostly though I look forward to watching the emerging talent at our club. I’ve never understood those who demand a full-strength team for the early rounds of the cup. I watch them lads every week. But I’m not quite enough of an anorak to go to under-21 games yet, and my girlfriend has firmly decided we watch ‘quite enough of that football’ in the house for me to get away with 90 minutes of Norwich under-21s away, so this is it for me. A chance to either be baffled why someone isn’t getting more of a go in the league, or slowly realise why they weren’t even making the bench. Either way, we’d have fun finding out. Team-wise it was the first chance to have a proper look at Alberto and Cissokho, although the latter would last only ten minutes before getting injured. I was also looking forward to seeing Wisdom at centre half, although due to the make-up of the bench that only lasted ten minutes too before he was shifted to full back for Daniel Agger. But perhaps the most intriguing starters were the wide duo of Raheem Sterling and Jordan Ibe. It’s almost impossible to imagine at the time of writing, as the season draws to its close, but at that point some were suggesting Ibe might have moved ahead of Sterling in the pecking order, after a terrific cameo last game of the season against Queens Park Rangers and some very assured performances in pre-season. Even if this wasn’t quite the case, it still made for an intriguing battle between the two. If this was a straight shoot-out for the title of most likely to emerge, Raheem Sterling fired first, scoring after four minutes. It was the type of goal he’d scored many times on his way through the age groups, moving past players at will and finding space for a shot, but had not managed up to then for the first team. With the goal coming so early it is hard to know if this changed the way the wide players played, but they certainly seemed to decide the direct approach was the way forward after that. Another reason to favour young players in games like this is that they just try harder. Keen to impress or excited to play in front of a big crowd, they will run harder than an older pro who has one eye on the weekend league fixture and is slightly concerned by the enthusiasm of the opposition tackling. However, young players can often try too hard, and that is what seemed to happen to Sterling and Ibe in this game. In their determination to recreate Sterling’s early goal that had seemed all too easy, they were frequently on the ball a touch too long, trying to take on one extra man, rather than looking to shift it quickly. It was frustrating given how easily we carved open their defence for the second goal that such flowing football wasn’t attempted more often. It must have been very frustrating for Daniel Sturridge, who found more open space than ball. But these can be tough games for inexperienced players, who often seem to struggle to work out the level they are playing at. They know they are better than other players their age, they know Premier League football is a massive step up from that, but whereabouts do Notts County sit on that scale? Sterling’s early goal seemed to convince him and Ibe this was similar to what they were used to, but their defenders were much more streetwise, and wouldn’t be fooled again, despite multiple attempts. In the end it was a more experienced young player, Jordan Henderson, who came off the bench to seal the game for Liverpool with a schoolyard goal of his own. The difference was he recognised when the move was on, extra time bringing tired legs to defenders who had given their all. The fact that it went to extra time could be seen as ammunition for the ‘play the best team’ brigade, but I disagree. A good mix allows young players to experience genuine first-team situations, and they will have benefited from the experience. But what of Alberto? I just remember him looking perplexed by the whole thing. Perhaps, of this type of football, he had much more learning to do. John Gibbons TWELVE - NIL ‘I’D RATHER WIN A LEAGUE GAME 12–0 than win the League Cup this season.’ Tony Evans is furious. He’s spluttering with rage. Rory Smith is laughing. Refereeing. ‘Don’t interrupt, Tony, you had your say.’ ‘And I’ll have it again. The youth of today.’ We’re at the christening of Francesca Heaton, in an Ormskirk pub. The congregation are an eclectic bunch and Andy Heaton (who produces loads of our material and will be a recurring character through this book) has told me emphatically there must be no shop talk. I’m with Steve Graves and Kate Forrester, Rory and his partner Kate, Brockle and Tony. All there is is shop talk. It’s a room of people obsessed with shop. It’s a room full of people who do nothing but talk. Evans: ‘You get to show London who’s boss.’ It fascinates me, this. I know what Tony’s referring to. A late-70s, 80s feeling of going down to London, acting, looking, being cock of the walk. Cream of the crop. Staying over, having a great night, an adventure. Saying to them, we are this wonderful, beautiful, brightly coloured thing that you can never be. But currently there are two issues with this: 1. We aren’t cream of the crop. 2. I don’t care what London thinks of us. I really, really don’t. The first of these is more straightforward. So let’s talk about the second first. Sitting here with these erstwhile gentlemen of the press, The Times of London no less, it occurs to me, though I don’t say it, that showing off in front of London leaves me cold. The game’s global now, not national, not European. Global. And while the League Cup might have a global audience, while Liverpool will always have a global element, the London aspect does nothing for me. I’d rather go mad in the city of Liverpool after we’ve scored twelve than mooch round whatever disconnected borough of the capital we end up in in London, always thinking the party is better somewhere else. I don’t care about impressing those there or rubbing it in their faces. I’d rather the cup finals weren’t played in a fraudulent, Pharisaic capital. Our football isn’t their business. We don’t even need to be defiant; we’re self-confident enough in Liverpool now not to need to impress. I don’t hate London, though I do hate what it does to this country, I just don’t care about it. It is theirs. It is other. They have their things – gross inequality and Nick Robinson, for instance – and we have ours. Come to ours. Come. We have shop. We have talk. An endless supply. You’ll have much more fun. On the first issue what I try to explain to the spluttering Evans, still lamenting the standard of Liverpudlian education, is that a 12–0 home win leads us to a world where we are cream of the crop. Putting 12 past a side at home leads to fear and to intimidation. It helps the goal difference. Finishing in the Champions League places leads to adventures and staying over and great nights. In front of the world. You get all this wonderfulness. They’ll be watching in London too. You also get a bigger squad with more good players in. You put yourself in a better position to get the results you need across a host of competitions. You put yourself in a position where League Cups can be continually challenged for. What I want to say to him, though I can’t, is that more than anything in the world I want a world where they bow down, where they all submit. Give in. I want that world. Tony had that world and that world had baubles like League Cups to go with the constant submission. To be part of that world. What a world it must have been. We’ve had League Cups since then and there isn’t one I’d give back but now, more than ever, I want the 12–0, that record, I want what comes with it. Being a side that can score 12 goals in a league match. I want the good players, the Champions League adventure, I want the journey towards the top and then, when there, when the world knows it, when Europe...