In the preceding blog I covered the first half dozen significant Manchester United induced traumas for Liverpool over the past three decades, in the hope that facing those traumas head on in the spirit of EMDR would help me and other Liverpool fans process them and move on. And in this third blog of the LFC-EMDR trilogy I have another list of traumatic memories to throw at you. So let's get going.
Trauma number 7: Liverpool players of the past three decades
Considering the success of United players during Ferguson’s reign (e.g. Ryan Giggs ending his career as by far the most decorated player in the history of English club football) also gets me thinking of the fortunes of individual great Liverpool players who ended their careers with relatively little in terms of silverware. Hard as it may be to fathom, players such as Robbie Fowler, Fernando Torres, Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez never won a Premier League medal. Even the wonderful Michael Owen only won a single Premier League medal, and that was with United.
Fernando 'El Nino' Torres scored 81 goals in a relatively brief spell with Liverpool (142 games between 2007 and 2011) before moving on to Chelsea.
Michael Owen scored 158 goals for Liverpool in 297 games between 1997 and 2004, with perhaps his most memorable performance coming in the 2001 FA Cup final. He would go on to win one Premier League medal with (of all clubs) Manchester United.
Trauma
number 8: Liverpool managers
Then there are the Liverpool
managers during the Ferguson years. Eight men and ten different managerial
combinations tried and failed to win a top flight league title after Kenny
Dalglish’s success in 1990.
The physical and emotional
toll of leading Liverpool through the Hillsborough disaster was a major factor
in prompting Dalglish’s resignation in February 1991. In keeping with Liverpool
tradition, they looked to the Boot Room and appointed Ronnie Moran as caretaker
manager.
Kenny Dalglish resigns as Livepool manager in 1991
Boot Room men and that last Division One title, 1989-1990. Ronnie Moran (left) would take over as care-taker manager after Dalglish (centre) before club legend Graeme Souness came back as manager in April 1991. Souness left in 1994 and was succeeded by Roy Evans (right). Evans would be the last manager from the long sequence of Boot Room appointees, being succeeded by Gerard Houllier in 1998 after a brief spell of jointly working with the Frenchman.
Then Liverpool went back to another
former playing hero and appointed Graeme Souness in April 1991 as the permanent
successor to Dalglish. Souness attempted
a Shankly-esqe clear-out of dead wood from the playing staff but his spell was
ultimately unsuccessful, winning just one trophy, the 1991-1992 FA Cup.
Graeme Souness had a glorious playing career with Liverpool, winning 5 league titles, 3 European Cups and 3 League Cups. His spell from 1991 to 1994 as manager would be considerably less successful.
After Souness, Liverpool again looked to the Boot Room and appointed Roy Evans in January 1994. Evans led Liverpool to the 1994-1995 League Cup and his teams played some swashbuckling and scintillating football at times, e.g. that April 1996 4-3 victory over Newcastle United at Anfield.
Roy Evans, the last of the Boot Room managers.
In pursuit of a Premier
League breakthrough, Liverpool went outside the Boot Room in 1998 and appointed
Gerard Houllier as joint manager with Evans. The joint arrangement lasted until
November 1998, when Evans resigned leaving Houllier as the sole manager.
Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier during their brief spell as joint managers of Liverpool in late 1998
Houllier would go on to lead
Liverpool to a cup treble of FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup in 2001 (a
quintuple if you include the European Super Cup and Charity Shield), along with
a quite sweet League Cup victory in 2003, beating United in the final. But like
all before him, the Premier League proved elusive.
Houllier was followed by
Rafa Benitez, who managed Liverpool from 2004 to 2010. His crowning glory came
early in his reign, winning the 2005 Champions League. To this he added the
European Super Cup of 2005, FA Cup in 2006 and another Champions League final
in 2007 (this time losing to AC Milan). However, despite coming desperately
close in 2008-2009 when coming second to, of course, Manchester United, Benitez
also left Anfield without a Premier League title.
Rafa Benitez managed Liverpool from 2004 to 2010 and, after initial success with the Champions League in 2005 and the FA Cup in 2006, he ended his stint without a Premier League title.
Rafa Benitez and Fernando Torres in 2012-2013, reunited at Chelsea
After Benitez came a brief
and troubled period when Roy Hodgson was landed into the deep end of a
footballing and financial crisis at Liverpool. Needless to say, his six months
of management ended in failure, with Liverpool at times flirting with the
relegation zone and the ownership of George Gillett and Tom Hicks pushing
Liverpool close to the verge of financial ruin.
Roy Hodgson managed Liverpool for a turbulent period in 2010-2011 - it was a tough ask for Hodgson and a tough time for Liverpool FC and its supporters
In their time of most
desperate need, Liverpool looked to their greatest living hero and appointed
Kenny Dalglish as manager in January 2011 for the second time. He led Liverpool
to a League Cup success in 2012 followed by an FA Cup final defeat and was
replaced in 2012 by an up and coming young Irish manager called Brendan
Rodgers.
Back to the rescue. Despite Liverpool being at a near all-time footballing and financial low point, Dalglish returned to lead them to a League Cup victory and FA Cup final appearance in 2012.
Irishman Brendan Rodgers came desperately close to leading Liverpool
to a first Premier League title in 2013-2014.
Rodgers managed Liverpool
from June 2012 to October 2015. In the 2013-2014 season, the first season after
Alex Ferguson’s retirement, Liverpool again came agonisingly close to the
Premier League but finished in second. The Premier League winners were a Manchester club, but at least it was City on this occasion.
Trauma
number 9: Hollow successes
The 2000-2001 season under
Gerard Houllier was Liverpool’s most successful season during the Ferguson
years. Liverpool won a penalty shootout League Cup victory over Birmingham
City, an equally dramatic FA Cup final against Arsenal and an absolutely crazy
UEFA Cup final against Alaves.
I remember exactly where I
was for all three games. I listened to the League Cup penalty shootout on the
radio while parked in my car. For the FA Cup final, The Blonde and I were in
the air flying to Malta to make our wedding preparations. This was in the days
before smartphones and other instant news sources so I had to wait to get from
the airport to our hotel before I could find out the result. On arrival at the
hotel I anxiously asked the hotel receptionist ‘Who won the FA Cup final - Liverpool
or Arsenal?’ Picking up on my anxiety he smiled somewhat sardonically and said
‘Wolves’.
As for the UEFA Cup final
itself, we were still in Malta at the time so I dragged the long suffering
Blonde along with me to watch it in a hostelry.
Despite these wins (followed
later in the year by the Charity Shield and the European Super Cup), the
footballing year of 2001 still felt hollow because the record shows that the
true (Premier League) champions for 2000-2001 were, yes you guessed it,
Manchester United.
And dare I say it,
considering how delirious the fans of most clubs would be for such a success,
but even the 2005 miracle comeback in Istanbul in the Champions League final
against AC Milan filled me with a sense of poignancy for the real heights from
which Liverpool had fallen. That 2005 win was Liverpool’s 5th
European Cup/Champions League success, the last being in 1984. But 2005 reminded me of just how far back Liverpool had slipped since 1984.
Despite winning that final, Liverpool finished 5th in the Premier
League that season, 37 points behind champions Chelsea and a special case had to be made
for their inclusion in the Champions League of the following season.
And there was part of me
that thought that the very term ‘the miracle of Istanbul’ referred not to the
magic of that second half comeback and penalty shootout victory but instead to
the fact that the Champions League had been won by a team of underachievers.
Trauma
number 10: May 14th 2011
I mentioned earlier in the blog trilogy Alex Ferguson’s
comment about knocking Liverpool of their perch. Well in the long litany of
Liverpool heart-breaks and United triumphs during his reign, May 14th 2011 was a key
watershed date. Because it was on that date that United won their 19th
top flight league title, thus leapfrogging Liverpool to the summit of the roll
of honour. When Liverpool had won their 18th league title in 1990,
United were still stuck on 7 titles since 1967, thus highlighting the extent of
overhaul that they accomplished during Ferguson’s reign.
Thankfully, this particular
trauma for me was extinguished completely just two weeks later when The Blonde
gave birth to our son. He arrived on a weekend of sporting magic, with Barcelona beating United in the Champions League final (how I relished in ABU joy) and Tipperary
beating Cork in the Munster Hurling Championship (see earlier blog: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/05/three-may-babies-and-their-sporting.html ).
Trauma
number 11: being made to feel old
In anticipation of Leeds United’s long awaited return to the Premier League I wrote a blog back in July (see link: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/07/footballs-wars-of-roses.html ) that highlighted how one’s age can sometimes be inferred from the club that one supports. So while the successful Leeds teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s has an ageing army of Irish Leeds fans, Manchester City’s recent dominance of the English game has produced a generation of followers who still haven’t had their Confirmation. During the height of Ferguson’s reign at United it seemed that kids wore only United jerseys and the only occasional Liverpool jersey wearers were ageing football fans like myself. So to add insult to all the other injuries, Ferguson and his teams made me feel old before my time.
The
future
Now that I’ve identified and addressed head on a painfully long list of the key football related and primarily Manchester United induced traumas of the past three decades, I’m starting to feel better. I think LFC-EMDR works, even though the process of recollecting so many traumas is not pleasant.
It’s a
full seven seasons since United have been Premier League champions and it seems
that even the talismanic Ole Gunnar Solskjaer cannot reignite the success of
the Ferguson years. But they are never far away.
And while the footballing history of the past three decades cannot
be changed, with trust in Jurgen Klopp and our current squad, Liverpool FC will
hopefully go on to carve out a future that has far more triumphs than traumas.
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