5th April, 2017 – Liverpool V Bournemouth – FA Premier League- 8 Pm KO, Anfield
When I sat down to research some links between Bournemouth and Liverpool, I was surprised to read that the Beatles played more gigs there than anywhere outside of Liverpool or London. In fact, it is believed that the first ever live performance of ‘she loves you’ took place in the town, as announced by Paul McCartney himself to the screaming crowd that it was their…
“new single being released on Friday”
...of course, they bought it in droves. They loved them. The town has even had a Beatles exhibition in the recent past to show off its historical links with the band and its’ part in the craze that was to be known as ‘Beatlemania’. Of course, that song, as with many others, went to number one.
Fast forward 53 years to December 2016, Bournemouth AFC fans themselves were probably looking forward to seeing the ‘live’ version of the new thing from Liverpool, also with similar aspirations of being number one.
JKlopp’s boys arrived in town with a reputation for guaranteed entertainment and with goals a near certainty whenever they played, the highest attendance of the season thus far was a given. Liverpool were expected to dish out a hiding.... granted there had been a slip up at newly promoted Burnley back in August, but that was against a side who sat back and soaked up pressure…. Bournemouth weren’t that side…their style was to attack…. they were tailor made for us to pick off…. and besides, since the Burnley game, we had been demolishing teams at home and away with some of the most delicious football seen since Suarez, Sturridge et al were in tandem. The attacking play could be brilliant, the defending could be comical ……. but you just didn’t know which one would be on display.
Unfortunately, on that day we saw both.
Looking back, it’s probably the match that made me first really doubt we could win the league this year. Prior to this match, I had heard and read all the naysayers opinions in the media, telling everyone that we “wouldn’t win the league playing this type of football…. Klopp needed a new goalie……. he had no plan B ……. we couldn’t win ugly …. BLAH BLAH BLAH …”
You know who they are, they do it every year and they seem to enjoy saying it. I had told myself….
“this year would be different …. we would prove them wrong”
I have been doing it since 1990.
Well we know what happened that day in December. It seemed all those individual criticisms manifested themselves in one game. You just knew the critics would be loving it. For context, if we had won that day, we would have gone 1 point behind Chelsea. It would be the nearest we would ever get to them again.
Fast forward four months…. the title dreams have long since subsided and have been replaced with a more realistic ambition of nailing down one of the Champions League places. The dark days of January seem to have been flushed from the system, and we go into the home game v Bournemouth, no longer with aspirations of the number one slot but certainly with a growing optimism of feasting at champions league buffet next season. Saturday was great, our tails are up and we are playing with some style again. Wednesday is a home game and we may even have an eye on revenge of sorts….at the minimum, a score to settle?
We Know what we’ll get from Bournemouth. Nice football. Nice manager. We knew it in December.
As the Beatles song goes …
“Don’t let me down”
Prediction: 2-0
