Here it comes again –
predictably, unavoidably, inevitably. A grey autumn and bleak winter
poisoned by greed, heartlessness and bitter feuds. Long, inescapable
months of false hope, dashed dreams and cruel blows dealt swiftly and
without mercy to even our most modest ambitions.
Luckily there's still
eight days until the House of Commons sits once again, so in the
meantime we can spend all our energy focusing on the return of that
most chronic of sporting obsessions, the Premier League. We may be
but a week into the new term, but already, after a mere handful of
results, all around the country supporters are beginning to fall in
line with the apparent path of their clubs’ seasons. Some will have
realised that a long, troubled nine months lies in wait. Others will
have been pleasantly surprised by their club's opening results, and
are only now daring to dream of what might be in store come next May.
For all concerned, the new season brings renewed optimism, even if it
is only for a few fleeting hours.
Now that Andy Murray
has cured seventy-seven years of British hurt (albeit tennis-hurt,
which is admittedly a milder strain than football-hurt, closer in
threshold to a nagging hangnail than, say, five days trapped under
earthquake debris with a scant ration of bugs and your own urine for
sustenance) perhaps it's time one of our great footballing institutions
wiped away the tears and started winning stuff again. I am talking of
course about Liverpool, who, under the leadership of David
Bren- sorry, Brendan Rogers, have started to
recapture some of their lost swagger of yore. Indeed, rarely do
expectations of success weigh heavier than at Anfield, starved as
they are of a league title for so long now that the mere effort of
counting the barren years, and repeating the sad total, feels more of
a chore with each changing of the calendar.
Of course in some ways the nature of
expectations at Anfield have been tempered with the passing years,
with a top four place essentially as good as a title triumph these
days, certainly when competing with the financial clout and Premier
League pedigree of the teams in their way. In that spirit, Liverpool
have gone about their summer shopping with the bare minimum of fuss,
trading up on talent whilst splurging only a modest gross outlay.
They've raided La Liga for Sevilla's Luis Alberto and Celta Vigo's
Iago Aspas, swapped the fading Pepe Reina for Belgium's sprightly
Simon Mingolet and replaced Sky Sports-bound Jamie Carragher with
Kolo Toure, an experienced, title-winning campaigner. More arrivals
may still be on the cards, but the succinctness with which they've
gone about their business bares sharp contrast to some of their more
warchest-beating rivals.
Arsenal's grim,
ultimately fruitless pursuit of Liverpool striker/bogeyman Luis
Suárez had threatened to overshadow both sides’ summers, yet the
contrasting handling of the resultant deadlock speaks volumes about
each side’s comprehension of their current reach. Whilst Liverpool
rejected all approaches and seem to have made peace with Suárez
(and, vitally, his agent), Arsenal continue to throw big, wet
splodges of cash at unrealistic targets in the hope that, sooner or
later, one sticks.
In truth, their failure
to land Suárez is probably a blessing in disguise. As undoubtedly
talented as he is, Suárez would have represented the most
un-Wengerlike of Arsène Wenger signings. When a docile kitten like
Cesc Fabregas can cause such protracted ructions, one can only
imagine the carnage Suarez would have brought: picture the monthly
sight of a flustered Wenger rushing about the Emirates shielding
reporters’ ears from racial slurs while a frustrated Steve Bould
quietly sweeps bits of opposition skin and bone into the corner.
Arsenal's only summer recruit at time of writing is Yaya Sanogo, a
20-year-old forward released by Auxerre with a grand total of 21
professional games to his name. And they say satire is dead.
Anyway, back to
Anfield. Liverpool had the honour of opening the new season in front
of the TV cameras and an amassed audience, most of whom were emerging
bleary-eyed from ten weeks of hibernation. But even they will have
struggled to miss the biggest recruitment drive of the summer. I'm
not talking about Spurs or Monaco but rather BT Sport, the new
broadcasting kids on the block for whom the season's curtain-raiser
represented their bow as a Premier League power-player.
Having greased the
Premier League's hands with £3bn
for 38 matches per season for the next three years,
BT Sport have spent the summer amping up the rhetoric in their battle
to cement the number two slot in the domestic football broadcasting
stakes. Their advertising campaign has been modern, ambitious and
slick, led by a series of punchy TV slots fronted by sixth form
prefect-cum-anchor Jake Humphrey (for whom a
bit of Twitter rabble-rousing didn't go amiss
either) and a plethora of media fanfare. As such, the expectation –
see what I did there? – on them to hit the ground running has
swelled as the season has made its groggy approach. Come 12:45pm last
Saturday the stage was set for Anfield to host the next chapter in
two grand footballing narratives – twin forces of ambition striding
into the dark, cold unknown. The grand old bruiser and the fresh
young whipper-snapper. A starting gun for twin contenders. A tale of
two cities. Well, one city. And a TV station. Let's move on.
As Liverpool and Stoke
got the new season under way, all eyes were on the new signings on
display – namely BT's commentary due of Ian Darke and Michael Owen,
alongside former league referee Mark Halsey, whose presence felt like
one of those mysteries of the Earth whose meaning we can only really
ever hope to understand with the fullness of time, like Stonehenge or
Mumford & Sons’ popularity. During the early exchanges Darke
and Owen did their best to form a combative frontline, pairing the
former's commentary box experience with the latter's on-pitch
pedigree – who better, frankly, to evaluate the unfolding action
than a man with 158 goals in Liverpool red and upwards of three hours
playing time for Stoke?
But, as with all
revamped squads, the new signings didn’t gel straight away, with
Owen finding certain moments particularly uncomfortable. Within the
opening half an hour, Darke had drawn our attention to some vital
statistics, reminding viewers with no appetite for numbers that,
“Stoke failed to score in 15 of their 38 matches last season”. A
sly dig, if ever I've heard one. “In fact, wasn't that the season
you played for Stoke, Michael? Do you remember that, Michael?
Michael?”, he might as well have added. A few minutes later, having
sat through a rather dry summary of the visitors’ limited summer
transfer spend, we were informed that Stoke were still in the market
for “a pacey striker” – you know, the kind you used to be
Michael. Before it all went south. You remember that don't you
Michael? Michael? Michael...?
As the half wore on,
Darke tried to add a dash of post-modern commentarial flair –
throwing in pop culture-referencing quips, trotting out researched
fluff about some Ligue 1 transfer target or another – but generally
came a cropper, too often sounding like a sixty-year old dad
attempting a conversation with his teenage daughter about chart music
only to end up sad and frustrated that she doesn't know who Hall &
Oates are. Halsey chipped in every now again too, basically to praise
the referee and to the remind viewers that the Premier League has
“the best officials in the game”, a brazenly sycophantic touch
that will no doubt reap handsome rewards for the station come
contract renewal time.
As for Owen, his
post-retirement plan may well be to fashion himself into a kind of
Gary Neville 2.0 (a real blow for Phil Neville, that) but he is
quickly learning that there's more to the modern football pundit than
a new suit and a smart turn of phrase. As Liverpool were awarded a
set piece on the corner of Stoke’s box, Owen pointed to the height
mismatch between the two sides, noting that apart from the
centre-halves, the visitors towered above their Merseyside
counterparts. Within seconds, Steven Gerrard's whipped delivery was
headed in by Daniel Sturridge, only for the flag to go up. Owen was
reprieved – for about 45 seconds, when Kolo Toure headed a corner
against the bar. Stoke's behemoth backline had been left reaching
skywards scratching their heads and Owen was receiving a very public
lesson in the pitfalls of punditry.
Still, he wasn't alone
when it came to learning on the job. At half time, with Liverpool 1-0
ahead, the still marvellously-coiffured David James – the channel's
matchday goalkeeping specialist – pointed out that new Anfield
number one Mingolet – sporting the number twenty-two jersey – had
shown “a bit of nerves” on his debut. As it turned out,
Mingolet's last minute penalty save ensured Liverpool's victory, his
bit of nerves calmly extinguished. Somewhere, in a custom made,
future-proof, eco-sustainable land-pod, G-Nev was resting easy.
There was of course
plenty to keep us entertained on the pitch too, not least the mere
presence of Philippe Coutinho, who is rapidly becoming one of those
players that everyone says Liverpool fans deserve to see – a sharp,
shuffling, hip-swivelling box of tricks, brimming with intelligent
passes and nimble link-up play, an heir to the creative Anfield
lineage of days gone by – think Barnes, Kennedy, Dalglish. Kuyt.
Rogers has the makings
of a vibrant, entertaining side on his hands, and is slowly
solidifying them into a team capable of challenging for, if not the
title, then certainly the top four. But if Liverpool are settling
into a decent rhythm on the pitch, back in BT towers things were
about to take a turn for the weird, with Humphrey – looking about
as comfortable as a man sat next to Tony Pulis for three hours
physically can – linked post-game to a
Big-Match-Live-meets-Top-Of-The-Pops
performance/montage mash-up of the new single from Primal Scream. It
was an odd, awkward moment. I couldn't quite tell if the Scream were
live in the studio or whether this was a pre-recorded segment, but
when you consider that Bobby Gillespie probably didn't know either I
guess it doesn't really matter. In fact, with the band's 1990 hit
'Come Together' featuring heavily as the ad break sting music
throughout, my sole earthly hope now is that Gillespie and co have
been recruited as some kind of BT Sport house band, so that come May,
as Humphrey auto-cues himself into an early grave over the season's
seventy-fourth live take of 'Swastika Eyes', the whole thing will
resemble the aftermath of an early 90s acid-house party; the season’s
final broadcast drawing to a close as co-analysts Steve McManaman and
Owen Hargreaves frantically chew their lips and gaze at the studio
lights while Kate Moss slides a powdery mirror across the desk to a
clearly tired and emotional Pulis. Now that would be worth
changing your broadband provider for.
But that scenario,
regretfully, will have to wait until another day. In the meantime
this exciting Liverpool side would do well to remember that it took
Manchester United twenty-six years to bridge the gap between Sir Matt
Busby's championship side of 1967 and the team which took the
inaugural Premier League title in 1993 – that is to say, marathon
dry spells can spring life once more. It's been twenty-three years
this summer since Liverpool last held the league trophy aloft – so
long, in fact, that it's not even the same trophy any more, just as
it wasn't for United either. Returning to the very top might be a bit
of a stretch right now, but let's not forget that this season signals
a new era for United and for the Premier League. Who's to say it
won't for Liverpool too?
