At the beginning of 2020
(pre-COVID-19), it was becoming clear that Liverpool’s lead at the top of the
Premier League was starting to look unassailable. Even the most hardened and
cynical of Liverpool fans (myself included) were starting to accept that
nothing short of some global catastrophe could stop Liverpool’s breath-taking
romp to the title. And even when that global catastrophe did come along,
Liverpool fans took comfort from Jurgen Klopp’s words and most of us realised
that it was just a matter of waiting patiently before the title was finally ours - see link here to that blog from last March: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/football-life-and-death.html
Also around the start of 2020, a number of throwback articles and television items started to be produced, taking us on a nostalgic, historical spin back to 1990, the last time when Liverpool were top flight champions of England. But while these items were designed to be light and whimsical in nature, I found them to be quite depressing as they highlighted the true extent of Liverpool’s disappointments over a three decade period, see link here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSmOTHAY8Uc
Suddenly all the false dawns, near misses and heart-breaking disappointments of the previous three decades were compressed into one awful but potentially forgettable chapter, using those psychological defence mechanisms of repression and avoidance. But while repression and avoidance can be helpful psychological defence mechanisms, sometimes the bad old memories start to crop up again, especially when watching and reading those aforementioned nostalgia pieces.
And that got me thinking of
a psychological therapy for Liverpool fans who have lived through the countless
disappointments since 1990.
LFC-EMDR
therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization
and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a slightly wacky sounding but apparently
effective treatment used for helping people deal with psychological problems,
especially traumatic memories. The patient is encouraged by their therapist to
address head on their previous traumas and, in actively reliving the memories
while the therapist induces saccadic eye movements in the patient, the
traumatic memories are ‘reprocessed’, thus losing their traumatic potency for
the sufferer. A common finding in EMDR work is that addressing one trauma may
unearth further traumas, and each one must then be dealt with separately and
sequentially.
Now while the emotional ups
and downs of a football fan are in no way comparable to real personal and
family traumas, I would like to apply some principles of EMDR to helping the
older Liverpool fans like myself who remember the original good old days up to
1990 and then had to live through three decades of trauma and disappointment. LFC-EMDR is the name I will give to this modified, Liverpool focused version of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.
In the spirit of LFC-EMDR, I
plan here to face head on the various traumas since 1990 one by one. But how
can I even start to organize and classify so many football related traumatic
memories?
Well this is where our great
rivals Manchester United come in and, in particular, their greatest ever
manager. Because while Liverpool’s three decades of heartache were punctuated
by a few great successes (e.g. Istanbul in 2005), the traumatic disappointments
were really compounded by the concurrent unprecedented successes of Ferguson’s
teams. Gore Vidal said that it’s not enough just to succeed: others must fail.
Likewise, failure for your football club is painfully compounded by the
concurrent success of your greatest rivals. Such was the case for Liverpool,
when compared to Manchester United, for most of the three decades after 1990.
So instead of just going on
a chronological tour of Liverpool’s heartaches over a three decade period, I am
going to dial up the intensity of the traumas by viewing Liverpool’s failures
in the context of Manchester United’s successes during that time. In thus
focusing on this era of wild Manchester United success, I plan to accentuate
the volume of the trauma in the hope that I can finally (in the manner of a
football based EMDR session) neutralize and purge the memories from my mind and
get on with everyday worries, such as the current injury crisis affecting
Jurgen Klopp’s team.
To begin with, let’s just
sketch out the extent of the Liverpool FC traumas during the time of Ferguson’s
reign. Although Alex Ferguson arrived at Manchester United in November 1986,
his reign of terror did not really begin until the early 1990s; until then, he
was seen by many as just another failing Manchester United manager.
Three years in and Ferguson had yet to impress as United manager - if only he had heeded this fan's message and headed off around 1990...
There were of course some strong
hints as to Ferguson’s potential. At Aberdeen he had proved that he could take
on and beat the two perennial kingpins of Scottish football, and win silverware
in Europe. And it may be that it was during his management of Scotland at the 1986
World Cup when his great rivalry with Kenny Dalglish started: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/oct/12/sir-alex-ferguson-kenny-dalglish-anfield-stand-liverpool-manchester-united-old-rivals
There was also a more than
subtle hint of his intentions and ambitions in his oft quoted comment that he
planned to ‘knock Liverpool off their f…ing perch’ as the top club in English
football. With his first trophy (the 1990 FA Cup) coming in the year of
Liverpool’s last top flight league win (until this year, of course), the
respective fortunes of the two clubs went in directly opposite trajectories
from 1990 onwards. Unfortunately, Liverpool’s trajectory was to be steeply
downward.
Manchester
United trophies under Ferguson
Let’s start the EMDR
sessions by listing off the Manchester United achievements during Ferguson’s
reign.
Firstly there was their
complete domination of the Premier League. From their initial win in the
1992-1993 season (bridging a 26 year gap to their last top flight win in
1966-1967), Ferguson’s teams would go on to win thirteen titles in all,
finishing only eight of the subsequent seasons not as champions.
In the domestic game they
also managed to rack up 5 FA Cup and 4 League Cup wins during this time.
In Europe and international
competitions, Ferguson’s teams won two Champions League titles, a Cup Winners’
Cup, Super Cup, Intercontinental Cup and Club World Cup.
And while the Charity Shield
is not really regarded as a ‘proper’ trophy by most football fans, it can be
used as a proxy measure of general league and cup success; Manchester United
won nine Charity Shields during Ferguson’s reign, sharing that 1990 Charity Shield
with Liverpool.
Liverpool’s
trophies during the Ferguson years
In comparison, Liverpool’s
trophy acquisition from 1990 to Ferguson’s retirement in 2013 was meagre. There
was of course the miraculous Champions League win of 2005 and a wonderfully
exciting FA Cup success in 2006. And Gerard Houllier’s best season saw
Liverpool win a cup treble of FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup in 2001, followed by a
League Cup victory over Manchester United in 2003.
But Liverpool’s total trophy
count for the 1990-2013 period is a stark and traumatic reminder of the extent
of the domination of Ferguson’s teams: 28 trophies for United in comparison to
Liverpool’s 10 (not counting those Charity Shield trophies, where the count was
nine to two in United’s favour, with that shared 1990 Shield).
Then looking at actual head
to head matches from 1990 to 2013, the count is also very telling. As far as I
can see, Liverpool’s all-time win/loss ratio is in their favour against every
other English club, apart from Manchester United. For example, Liverpool has beaten Arsenal 90 times
in history, in comparison to 81 wins for Arsenal against Liverpool. The
win/loss ration against Everton is even higher, at 121/82, while the Manchester
City win/loss ratio of 105/57 highlights just how recent the rise of Manchester City has been.
But the ratio against United is 77 wins for Liverpool versus their 88 wins (and 67 draws).
United managed 27 wins
against Liverpool in all competitions during the Ferguson era in comparison to
Liverpool’s 17 wins against United. United even managed to win one more league
game than Liverpool in their Anfield league encounters during that time (10
versus 9).
In 1990 the historic head to
heads between the two clubs saw United barely leading on 61 wins in comparison
to Liverpool’s 60. With a current 88/77 win ratio in favour of United, the damage was clearly done
during the Ferguson years.
So with those background stats, the LFC-EMDR therapy has begun in earnest and the scene has been set.
In the next two blogs I will
identify and confront various specific LFC related traumas during the Era of Fergusonian Terror...
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