Timbo,
I am grateful to you and others who took the time to remind us of the meaning of supporting the team through tough times.
I used think this kind of reminder was second nature to the footballing community when adversity appears, but we live in weird times --- people forget so easily, become distracted with others, and forget their own roles in helping others.
Wish more would go back and read your book! Cheers mate.
I put the following post up in Fitzy's 'criticism' thread but felt it was just as pertinent to this thread. The redK84 post it responds to is in Fitzys thread.
Fingers crossed for tomorrow J lad. A repeat of last season maybe?
It is.
But the people raising valid concerns and being put in that knee jerker/bed wetter box is also intolerable and happens far too often.
There is no way around it as far as I can see....people are just too different. Especially when anonymous and online and talking about a passionate topic.
Best to just limit time on the keyboard or not take it too seriously. Difference of opinion is not the devil, just a fact of life
We all love the reds tho
I was in the process of responding to your initial post on page 1 where you first raised the issue you're now opening up about, when we had a messy leak in the kitchen and duty called so I never managed to complete it.
I will try to finish it when I get the chance because I felt your concerns deserved comprehensive consideration. As it happens, I was finding it bloody difficult in any case to formulate a response as that particular post seemed so nuanced to me I was never quite sure of exactly what you were driving at.
Your subsequent posts have, however, now made that clear; namely, in essence, a platform for differing opinions and a disapproval of such a platform being denied. And who could or would ever dispute such an entitlement on forum such as this one?
That said, there are times as supporters of a football club - and this one more than most I'd affirm - when opinions of the negative and fault finding sort suddenly emerging all over the show as things go quite grievously awry, fly so perversely in the face of what is the true unpalatable reality of the situation that robust rejection of such negativity becomes almost an essential riposte to the negativity. It might never shut down such negativity but hopefully it makes its point as forcibly as possible, namely that we are supporters of our club first and foremost as distinct from discerning stats-laden transfer aficionado critics of it and its players and manager.
You might or might not have noticed that along with Keyop and John C it was myself who put up the thread about supporting the team through this injury ravaged season. I put that post up for a reason. Ostensibly, of course, because this is irrevocably the most injury plagued season Liverpool Football Club have ever suffered. Two or three times worse than any I've witnessed in well over 60 years following the club.
Of more concern, however, - and the main reason for posting the thread - was a genuine fear of where the burgeoning negativity might lead as the team and manager continue forward with one foot let alone one hand tied behind their backs as one crippling injury follows another. It is a concern borne of years of watching in these post internet times how the sort of negative and fault-finding opinions we've been seeing since we've begun this recent awful run of results can very rapidly escalate and take on a self-fulfilling prophetic life form of its own. We saw it with Houllier. We saw it with Rafa. We even saw it with Kenny. We saw it with Brendan Rodgers. The sort of undermining and negativity we've been seeing recently - Bobby Firmino being a principal target but many others too including Jurgen himself - can very quickly assume an unstoppable downward fan/media driven viitriolic spiral which undermines things ever further.
I most certainly do not want to see even the faintest whiff of the same sort of thing emerging now with Jurgen at a time when he is being fucked left, right and centre by things totally beyond his control.
Let's be frank. The team is on the ropes right now. Sure, we might bounce back up tomorrow lunchtime. But we are not the same team just now and we could just as easily be picked off once again. Unprecedented injuries - amongst a litany of other things as identified by Keyop in that opening post of the injury ravaged season thread - have fucked us up good and proper. And continue to do so. Now more than ever the club needs everybody pulling together no matter how the ensuing results might go. Just as we would be doing if we were in the ground. Right now, we have no need whatsoever of stat-obsessed Liverpool fans citing why the likes of Bobby Firmino is currently failing to pull up assist and goal-scoring trees. What we do need is a collective realization that the likes of Bobby and Jurgen and his an injury ravaged team needs their supporters now more than ever before.
Hopefully, all the foregoing may explain why occasionally I have felt down the years that difference of opinion can indeed be the fucking devil.