When Shakespeare wrote " Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" he captured perfectly the turmoil and conflict associated with a change in governance. The same phrase can be used to describe the situation with Liverpool today!
I started supporting this club a long time ago when the media dismissed the clubs as the has-beens of english football. A club with limited international exposure but still supported by a group of fiercely loyal fans. The supporter oriented approach of the club may not have brought in the marketing revenue but held together a closely knit bunch of people; fanatics as some may call them who lived and breathed football and Liverpool. I was hooked to this club; the under-dogs, financially unsound and still reeling under the impact of Mr Souness. It appealed to me in a way no other club did and I officialy started telling people I supported Liverpool.
Under the Houllier regime Liverpool progressed a bit at first coming second in the 200-2001 season and winning the FA cup; league and UEFA cup. There was talk of the glory days returning but after that the club went into a decline till Mr Benitez took charge after disagreements with the board at Valencia.
The success in 04-05 Champions league and 05-06 FA cup saw the club back into the media glare but along with it got a new breed of fans or plastics as we like to call them. The club management changed hands with the arrival of the two cowboys Hicks and Gillet who seem to have taken an early lead in the race for the most reviled football club owners of all time.
The new stadium plan was changed a zillion times and almost a year after construction was supposed to have started; the plot for Stanley Park remains untouched ( apart from a little nonsense work which was done to appease the baying fans); the best manager liverpool have had in the last twenty years was under criticism and the management resorted to washing dirty laundry in public ( something unheard of in the club's glorious industry).
The recent Robbie Keane episode ( feel sorry for the bugger) highlights the cracks in the hierarchy of the club. Rafa and Parry have both sought to distance themselves from the whole farce but at the end of it all the club finds itself a striker short at a time the title is still within its hands.
The last two years have been a trying time for the fans. The takeover by DIC is still stalled and the owners have backtracked on all promises made to the fans. Fan agitations are the flavour of the day outside Anfield and the training grounds at Melwood.
The situation has deteriorated so badly that i feel alienated from the club. What was more important than life or death as said by the great Mr Shankley now has become a passing distraction. I would not say that I am shifting to supporting another club but the level of passion has certainly reduced due to my disgust at the way the club has been run in recent times descending to a unfunny caricature of what it once stood for.Unless the club ownership gets its act together and starts delivering on the promises made and gets 100% behind the manager ( I firmly believe Rafa is the best thing that has happened to the club in the last 15 years) it risks alienating a significant proportion of the fan base. A truly sad moment in the history of the greatest club in England.
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