Never doubted it for a second…ok, I’m not going to lie, I did. I won’t go into minute detail about everyone involved in today’s game, I’d be here until at least the Norwich game if I did, so please someone give Martin Skrtel, Raheem Sterling and Simon Mignolet the write-ups they deserve because they were superb. Instead, I’m going to concentrate on one or two individuals and I want to start by reiterating a few things I said after the Spurs game two weeks ago:
You look at Jon Flanagan and you just laugh at the beautiful absurdity of this young man coming in and playing to a level that none of us expected. You laugh at a Brazilian World Cup-winning full-back following him on Twitter and singing his praises, this young, unheralded local lad with 30-odd appearances to his name. You look at him and you just laugh at the magic of it all, of how he dropped the shoulder at Old Trafford and sent all £37m of Juan Mata on an Antarctic fishing expedition as he rampaged up the field, and yesterday, that turn, those tackles. Pure and utter desire. I wonder if Manchester City have someone like Jon Flanagan? Oh I know, I know they’ve got plenty of talent and ability, plenty of shiny new toys, some of them still in the packaging (if they put Stevan Jovetić up for sale on eBay, for example, the ad would surely read “one Montenegrin international, in mint condition, barely used”). But do they have a Flanagan, a Gerrard, local lads living their dream and playing for more than just medals and money? I don’t care if it sounds gay, Gerrard’s smile this season has been something to behold. He believes, not only that Liverpool can win the title but also in the players around him, something which hasn’t always been the case and that almost gives me more confidence than anything else. You can see it written all over him that he thinks this team is fucking brilliant. There’s no agitation, no sense that he has to stretch himself if this Premier League thing is going to happen before he retires. Two local lads, one of them a legend, one a young lad still feeling his way into a Premier League career, both becoming larger and bolder than life itself right when their team needs them to be. Do Manchester City have anyone like that, I wonder?
No, no they don’t. And that’s no knock on City because they were fucking
immense today. When it went to 2-2 I genuinely only saw one winner, and it wasn’t the team wearing red. There’s been a constant battle for me this season, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, between the head and the heart. The head’s been telling me for the past few months, maybe since the 5-0 at White Hart Lane or the back-to-back defeats at the Etihad and Stamford Bridge over Christmas but certainly since that trouncing of Arsenal in early February, that the League title is a bridge too far, that top-four was the aim at the start of the season and I should be happy with it, that the amount of points necessary to finish top at the end of the season was simply unattainable and I should just make my peace with that. Yet it was the heart in control during the first-half today, a combination of the noise inside Anfield and the day that was in it assuring me that Liverpool
had to win, that it would be such a travesty for
this club to lose
this game on
this day as to upset the natural order of the universe, and then we’d
all be fucked. It simply
had to happen and everything that transpired during those first 45 minutes told me that it would: Suárez shrugging off a challenge and playing Sterling through, the little magician going right, then left, then right and making
fools of two superb players in Kompany and Hart, the celebrations which followed, Touré going off (I’d never wish harm on a wonderful football player like Yaya Touré but, to be fair, it
was a massive boost to Liverpool’s chances of winning), Skrtel’s second, Johnson clearing off the line and ending up in the back of the Anfield Road net, Mignolet’s save from Fernandinho, it felt like it was meant to be in a way that, much like religion I would guess, can’t be adequately described to a non-believer, it has to be felt. Well I felt it today. The three points, and along with them the League title we’ve been awaiting for 24 years, were moving ever closer.
And then the head unexpectedly seized control during the second-half as City came out of the dressing-room like true fucking champions, absolutely refusing to give this up without the mother of all fights. They proceeded to repeatedly cut us to shreds, bossing the game with a level of power and control that was truly something to behold and gradually making their way back into it, first with a disallowed Silva goal at which we all breathed a huge sigh of relief but was nonetheless like the first warning shot fired by a marauding army of invaders, then the
actual Silva goal which followed a very similar pattern in the build-up. Then there came what seemed like an endless flurry of last-ditch blocks from red shirts, the home side barely able to get into the City half for any meaningful period of time, and when more intricate work in the Liverpool box saw Johnson slice into his own net it felt like the inevitable culmination of the better team, the one which had similarly come back from 2-0 down at the Allianz Arena earlier in the season against maybe the best club side in the world to win 3-2, exerting their dominance against a young upstart. Sturridge came off (it wasn’t Daniel’s best day, let’s just leave it at that), Allen came on, and
still the pressure mounted with no one seemingly possessing the wherewithal to stop the bleeding. A Dzeko shot was blocked, a Nasri effort drifted wide, then Aguero skinned Skrtel and Silva narrowly missed from point-blank range. Surely the winning goal was coming? Surely to fuck it was coming? That was what the head was telling me anyway, what it was
screaming at me as we entered the last 15 minutes.
Well cometh the hour, cometh the man,
men in this case, diminutive of stature but exuding the presence of titans today. Here’s how the early part of those last 15 minutes after the Silva miss (20 including Clattenburg’s mystical extra 5) played out: at roughly 76:30, Jon Flanagan wins a header against James Milner (a man twice his size judging by the shot of him with his shirt off just before his introduction – fuckin’ hell, a WWE career beckons upon your retirement from football, James) and sets Philippe Coutinho away down the left against Zabaleta. Zabaleta is the clear favourite but the little Brazilian, as he has all day, simply
won’t be beaten. He chases down the combative Argentine, tussles with him briefly, then manages to escape from his clutches in an incident which sees the City full-back booked once the ball goes dead. But Coutinho isn’t waiting around for a referee’s whistle, he speeds away infield where he finds Henderson, who finds Sterling and, ultimately, Di Michelis finds touch with his clearance like a rugby full-back hurriedly slicing clear under pressure. 35 seconds later, the ball is in the net from the little Brazilian’s world-class finish (I say “world-class” only out of necessity because other words fail me at the sheer glory of it: first-time shot with City players bearing down on him, pinpoint accuracy under the pressure of stakes which crush lesser men, and the way in which he wrapped his foot around it…just glorious…if Brazil leave him out of their World Cup squad, another Phil, Scolari, has either gone stone mad or they’ve invented a time machine in Rio or Sao Paulo which has allowed them to draft in members of the 1970, or at least 1982, squad).
Anyway, so now the crowd redouble their considerable efforts (unbelievable today, an absolute credit to their club) and City need to do the same, but within about 40 seconds of the kick-off it’s that man again, Jon Flanagan, making the statement having reserved his ‘Soldado tackle’ for when his team needed it most, clattering into Milner and clearing the ball on 79 minutes. From the resulting throw-in, a mere 20 seconds or so later, Milner tries to flick it past him and Flanagan responds by forming the equivalent of a steel curtain around the ball which the City player simply
bounces off. The other Scouser on the field, his captain who has come over to help him out, leaves again without having had to do anything, almost as if he was saying “nah, I’m leaving this for Jon, let’s see how the lad does”. Then, on 80:24, Liverpool’s left-back wins another header against Milner from a cross-field pass and a massive cheer goes up from the stands as he undrapes himself from the advertising hoarding and makes his way back to the action. Finally, from the resulting throw-in at about 80:47, he nips in front of yet another City player and clears for a corner. In roughly 5 minutes, from the time of Silva’s miss (74:51 which, in hindsight, proved to be the final throes of City’s dominance in the second-half) to Flanagan’s clearance for a City corner, the game has been turned on its head. The crowd is a factor again, the players have settled, the scoreline is 3-2 and City are shit out of ideas beyond lumping balls in the general direction of the Liverpool penalty area (all they were missing was Robert Huth). I ask again: do City have a player, a
man, like Jon Flanagan? And, for that matter, do they…
…have anyone like Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho, who have known the frustration of watching from the sidelines with successive coaches distrusting their talent, itching to get a chance, a real chance, or players like Jordan Henderson and Lucas Leiva who have been written off and made into scapegoats in the past? Do they have players like that who have clawed and scratched to make it to here, to not only be a part of something real but to be front and centre in making it happen? How could they? When dropping £30m for a readymade, mint-condition superstar seems as easy as taking a chequebook out of your pocket and leaving the amount blank, why would you bother with rehabilitation or redemption? Why indeed.
Why? Well for days like today, of course. Contrary to what will no doubt become a fashionable opinion should these last four games go to plan, Liverpool did not
buy any of their success this season. Instead, what you had was a manager with a vision and the talent to execute that vision, who has wilfully embraced the freedom and, yes,
naivety of an approach which states boldly and without apology that “‘the mentality is to be fearless”. It’s a philosophy which may have to change as the club returns to Champions League action next season (YES!! by the way) but it has served his team well this season and again today, and it’s something which won’t and
can’t change in these final four games now that Liverpool find themselves the toast of the Premier League party because, as Lester Freamon once said in
The Wire, “I don’t wanna go to no dance unless I can rub some titty”. It was the hunger, the desire and, above all else, the
fearlessness of those Liverpool players which got us to that dance, which allowed us to win today's game, and it can’t stop now when we’re so close to that glittering (albeit ugly) prize. Philippe Coutinho and Jon Flanagan are 21 (twenty-fucking-one). Brendan Rodgers has coached them to be what they are, what they were today, the slayers of giants because that’s what Manchester City are. They’re the best that England has to offer and we beat them today in a game that meant everything. It makes me laugh when others clamber to the moral high ground and accuse Liverpool of buying success. Jordan Henderson was a £16m (or was it £20m? – nah, just kidding, £16m) misfit as recently as this time last year, money wasted according to the same people, but now because Rodgers has tapped into his obvious talent and made him a better player, that £16m is suddenly evidence of buying up the best talent? As a mate of my dad’s used to say, "do me a fucking favour" (he also used to say that “a .22 bullet wouldn’t go astray" on people he didn’t like, but we won’t go there…)
Anyway, my overriding sense during this ride (or journey, as our manager might say) remains as follows:
I get the feeling that, should these lads face a moment of truth, a gut-check, call it what you will, they’ll face it and stare it down together, as a team, as a “group”. No doubt in my mind. Should Manchester City or Chelsea face similar odds, I’m not so sure your Nasri’s and Fernandinho’s, your Willian’s and Etoo’s, could be relied upon in quite the same way. This team has been forged through wind and rain, through hardship and trial, and now a fanbase glimpsing history is joining in and making itself heard like never before. I’m now convinced that the togetherness, the bond of teammate and fan alike, is what will pull this team over the line and give it that extra advantage to make up for having Victor Moses where City have Edin Dzeko to come off the bench, where Chelsea have Schurrle. Most of all, this team has the best player and the best manager in the Premier League.
It also has the best captain. I don’t think I’m out of line in suggesting that if Steven Gerrard’s smile has been a joy to behold this season, then his tears after today’s game set many a grown man and woman, from Merseyside to Dublin, Sydney to Johannesburg, New York to Mumbai and anywhere else this wonderful flag is flown, to tears themselves (myself included, truth be told). City don’t have a Gerrard, but that’s ok, nobody really does (Vincent Kompany is one magnificent specimen, but he’s still no Steven Gerrard). The man is a one-of-a-kind and once-in-a-lifetime event, a bolt of lightning that Liverpool Football Club has somehow managed to hold in its hand for the entirety of his career and the majority of his life. And I’d like to think that those tears today weren’t just about a long-awaited League title moving closer, in fact I
know they weren’t (heart talking again now, by the way). They were borne of a deep bond that he feels with his community, the same bond that ultimately kept him from the clutches of Chelsea all those years ago, a connection that goes beyond and yet is indelibly linked to football and is presumably what Bill Shankly was talking about when he said that it was “much more important than that”. It’s not what Sky think it is, it’s not what morons who can’t bring themselves to respect a simple minute’s silence think it is, it’s not what UEFA or FIFA or the FA think it is, it’s an escape and a salvation, it’s a passion and a dream, it’s “everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards”. And damned if I didn’t feel like a rich man today.
