Who is Hansen (& Lawro) trying to protect?
They're protecting themselves.
Sure, sometimes you think to yourself that the consistent failure of these people to understand even the simplest of events is solely down to them not even having enough braincells to form a five-a-side pub team. And most of the time you'd be right. In this case, however, nobody's going to tell me that Hansen isn't aware of what's going on at Liverpool. You don't need to have been captain of the club for the best part of a decade to have a basic grasp of that. Hansen and many more of our former players, the ones you might expect to be following Thommo's example and actually doing something positive for their former employers by speaking out and telling the truth, have been eerily silent and, in many cases, have actually been spreading misinformation. Hansen's "forget the manager, forget the owners" comment last night is a prime example.
To me, it's just another case of going with the flow, sticking to an agenda that might not be theirs but damned if they're going to deviate too much from it. After all, what's in it for them to rock the boat? Nothing. These people are comfortable, way too comfortable to be sticking their heads above the parapet and making a stand for the club they supposedly love. In my view, it’s also one of the main reasons that their logic regarding Rafa always seemed so skewed and distorted (not to mention nonsensical). The general flow of opinion was only ever going one way, why go against the grain? I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the only ex-players I heard defending Rafa last season (John Barnes and Peter Beardsley) are not professional pundits, and therefore, have no agenda to stick to. I don’t know what they’re doing with themselves these days, but I rarely see or hear either of them talk about the game. A lot of our ex-players, on the other hand, make a comfortable living off television, radio and newspapers, and feel no responsibility (or affection) for this club anymore, at least not as much as they do for their pay cheques. That’s the reality.
I don't want to bring this back to Rafa too much, believe it or not I'm doing my best to forget him out of pure necessity. But look at the evidence. Even last season, his worst at the club, many of our ex-players sought to ignore the real causes for concern (yes, for once they actually had some real reasons to criticise him) and instead continued to twist facts and outright lie. Remember Ronnie Whelan stating on RTE that the Liverpool side which beat Debrecen 1-0 at Anfield cost £250m? But once again, Hansen was the best example of logic being butchered and the truth twisted to suit an agenda. In an article published on 19th October 2009, Hansen said the following: "Benítez has struggled in the £3-10m region...Benítez hasn't done well with anybody in that price region...over a length of time, you need four or five players in the £3-10m bracket to become great buys, but I don't see any at Liverpool."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/6366147/Alan-Hansen-Liverpool-cannot-afford-to-lose-this-week.htmlThis is not the place to argue his point, merely to state what Hansen said. By 4th June 2010, in the immediate aftermath of Rafa's exit, Hansen had altered his position...er, somewhat. "Benítez has had money to spend, but when he has bought players in the mid-range market of £3-5 million, they just have not been good enough and that is why Liverpool's bench has been so poor in recent months."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/7801708/Alan-Hansen-the-time-was-right-for-Rafael-Benitez-to-leave-Liverpool.htmlSo suddenly, Rafa's signings in the £5-10m bracket were ok then? And exactly how many top players have the big clubs bought in that tiny £3-5m window? It doesn't matter. Clearly someone had pointed out to Hansen after his October article (Paul Tomkins for one) that Pepe Reina (£6m) was an undisputed superb signing in the aforementioned £3-10m price range. But instead of dropping it, he simply moved the goalposts in order to fit what he wanted to say. Never mind that the examples he used to prove his point in his first article (£7m Vidic and £5.5m Evra) were now effectively excluded. The idea was to conjure up reasons for Rafa's sacking that fit a certain profile. It's what they all spent last season and beyond doing, and before anyone says anything, there were obviously causes for concern last season. What I'm saying is that every one of these ex-Liverpool players turned pundits completely ignored those (possibly because they weren't sexy enough) and concentrated on twisting the facts into something bigger. Hansen was one of the worst offenders, so what he said last night didn't surprise me in the least.
I used to think that Hansen was different to the others, but clearly I was wrong. Uber-respect as always for what he achieved as a player, that goes without saying, but I expect nothing from him these days, or his ilk. These ex-Liverpool players that we all so admired when they played for us have since reinvented themselves as pundits (Hansen, Whelan, Lawrenson, Redknapp (ok, "admired" might be a strong word here), Houghton, McMahon, Molby, Souness). Have we heard any of them making much noise about the real issues at the club as we know them? Which is funny because you couldn’t shut the fuckers up last season. These individuals have made a living based on the fact that they used to play for this club, the implication always being that they “know” the club inside out, that they have some kind of insight into it. Where better to get the inside track on all that ails Liverpool than former captain and legend Alan Hansen / Ronnie Whelan / Graeme Souness, right? Yet they have no sense of responsibility whatsoever. They embrace the "legend" tag willingly while shunning the club that gave it to them in the first place.
Which is why it’s so damaging when Alan Hansen simply dismisses the protests and the ownership issue like his did last night. “Forget the manager, forget the owners.” And people are out there taking this as gospel because this is Alan Hansen! I had a feeling of foreboding from the moment I saw him squashed onto the couch beside Seedorf and Dixon. Hansen never appears on MOTD 2, am I right? But the red flashing phone in
Wayne Hansen Manor must have been ringing off the hook as soon as Kyrgiakos’ header was saved deep into injury-time yesterday afternoon. “Shit, Liverpool have lost at home to Blackpool, they’re in the relegation zone, get Hansen in here now!!” (I wonder how much his fee was last night, by the way, from a television corporation funded by the tax-payer?) And once again, what depth of anlysis did we get? Put it this way, if Alan Hansen's MOTD 2 analysis last night was a swimming pool, I'd let my toddler go in the deep-end.
But, as I've alluded to, I don't think we can blame stupidity for this. Just like Hansen's shifting of the goalposts last season with regard to Rafa to suit an agenda, that's exactly what he and his kind are doing this season with the real issues at the club. Certain ex-players (Molby and Whelan that I know of) have already explicitly stated that this is Rafa's fault. Meanwhile, no criticism whatsoever has been sent in Roy Hodgson's direction, despite the manifold faults exhibited by our manager thus far. And for the most part (Thommo being the most honourable of exceptions) the ownership/refinancing issue has been swept under the carpet. What Hansen said last night is no different to what Jeff Stelling said about the supporters concentrating on what's happening on the pitch, or Colin Murray's idiotic aside after they showed pictures of the march, something along the lines of "the Blackpool fans are the exact opposite, win, lose, or draw they're singing and supporting their team, they're just awesome," as if to say the Liverpool fans who marched should be more like them (and he's one of us you say?).
It all follows a pattern, it's fitting an agenda, and anyone who watched the half-arsed broadsides and insidious half-truths and lies launched at Rafa over, not one, but six years should know very well that this is what's happening, and also that it works. It does work. Well all I'll say is that you can have tremendous amounts of respect for what someone did on the football pitch, but there comes a time to man the fuck up and take a stand for something you love and care about. Hansen and the others who would absolve the owners (even partially) and Hodgson, instead putting the blame solely on the players (and they deserve their share, but not all of it) or Rafa Benitez, are either cowards or they don't give a shit about this club. There is no option C as far as I'm concerned.
