I hope that whoever is overseeing this new managerial reshuffle sits down with the new manager and spends time going through our club’s wonderful but often troubled history and not just what is expected of the team on the pitch. Anyone offered the job needs to understand just how lucky they are being offered this once in a lifetime opportunity and they also need to take on board exactly what this club is all about. We might be lucky getting a top-drawer manager, but by God, they’re not half lucky getting the chance to manage Liverpool. They need to understand that from the start.
Anyone taking the job needs to understand just what he’s taking on and should be made to study a dossier on the club pre and post Shankly, as well as being given a crash course on the culture of the city and the changes and influences that both have undergone in the last 75 years. To understand the city is to understand the club.
And not just, even if I’m sidetracking. I suggest that any new player to the club is also given the same dossier to study before they put their boots on for the first training session. It should be an imperative before anyone is given the honour of pulling on our glorious colours. I would suggest that this is also a must for any supporter who hasn’t been brought up on our traditions. Half an hour in the club shop is not a fast track to understanding Liverpool Football Club. (It’s not too late for the club owners to have a read themselves, but that’s another story!)
Occasionally, managerial applicants give the owners dossiers on who they are and what they’ve done . It’s high time that we gave a file to everyone who joins the club from outside . They need to understand what is our mind-set and just why they have a privileged yet difficult responsibility. This is not any other club and this is not any other city. It’s an Irish, Welsh Chinese Jamaican African mix of stubborn down-to-earth kindness, without forgetting the self-destructive head-case streak that comes out on occasion.
Whoever comes in needs to be told about the rebellious streak which runs through the heart of our city. They need to understand the dockers’ struggle in the city for social justice in the 60s, just why our city stood up to Thatcher in the 1980s and why the Dockers again resumed their fight and stood their ground in the 90s. They may then understand why Robbie Fowler displayed his famous t-shirt .They might understand also why the same bloke told the ref at Highbury that the penalty that he’d just given shouldn’t have stood. It might also help them to understand why a city fought for Hillsborough justice when it knew from the start that things had been very different.
The new management team should also be given pages about what was happening musically in the city in the 60s and just what effect it had on the city when mixed with the club’s resurgence under Shanks. Fuckin’ hell. Try putting that cocktail in a bottle! Legal high or what!!
There should be a chapter or two about the glorious evenings on the terraces of our famous stadium. Other clubs will have had their own evenings, but I challenge any club in world football to have experienced the evenings of pure emotion that have been experienced in Liverpool 4. Not Barcelona, Real, Napoli, or The Mancs. No other club in the world. I personally reckon it’s the Celt in us. Others may have their own take, but whatever it is, it’s pure emotion . The atmosphere ‘s not there all the time, and a lot of the time, admittedly, it’s piss poor, but something special can still be created when there’s something in the air. Thanks to the football Brendan Rodgers’ team was playing 18 months ago, the atmosphere and buzz running through the city were truly spectacular.
Our new management team needs to have a word with Montse Benitez to understand why she hung around in our city when there were so many other appealing places to live. Montse will tell them about the down-to-earth gritty generosity of a city which has suffered more than most but has mostly tried to look after others less fortunate than themselves. She brought her kids up as proud scousers as did Sir Bill, Sir Bob and Sir Kenny. These were people who understood our culture and understood what our city and our club really mean. Mrs Sanchez might have preferred North London but Montse wanted the Wirral.
I’d put a sound-track of our music in the dossier too. I start with the Kop singing the Beatles in the 60s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNboU_PbZMY . I’d give them Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire and then I’d finish it off with Pink Floyd and the Kop ‘s Fearless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeyHPAdxuy0 .
It’s been on this site before, but it doesn’t matter. I certainly don’t apologise for putting on a song that heralds our glorious support again. A lot of us also need reminding just who we are.
Taking over our club carries with it enormous responsibility. Only the very best candidates need apply .
Mr Klopp, Ancelotti or other applicants please read this carefully. Are you up to the job?
WE ARE LIVERPOOL!