Is It Really Our Year?

By Luke Green.

Like a relationship, supporting a football club is full of ups and downs. For me however, those ups and downs have been far too frequent recently. Liverpool Football club are impeccable at pulling at supporter’s heart strings week in, week out. I have more faith in Brexit going well than I do us winning when Saturday rolls around (it really is that bad). Now I’m not going to complain too much, after all, I could be publicly admitting I support Tottenham or Bottle Job United as they’re more commonly known these days. Regardless of who you support though, the prospects of winning the league for the first time since it changed from the First Division is tantalising to say the least. As I sit here biting my nails watching the goals roll in against Watford, I ask myself, could it really be our year?

Ever since I was old enough to understand the rules of football, I’ve supported Liverpool. Whilst it may have taken me some time to get to grips with the offside rule, I very quickly pledged my allegiance to the Liverbird . When I started watching them, the attacking forces of prime Gerrard and Torres marauded around the pitch. That’s a combination sure to get any FIFA player excited. Gerrard would ping a ball to Dirk Kuyt on the wing; a sublime cross would follow and you just knew the blonde-haired saint would be on the end of it for a tap in. After selling Torres to Chelsea in 2011 for £50 million, I thought our time in the top four was going to come to an end. Side note: it took him the equivalent of 32 episodes of EastEnders to get his first Chelsea goal, I’d call that good business in all honesty. Thankfully, the arrival of a future hero of Anfield was going to change our fortunes. A little-known Uruguayan striker by the name of Luis Suarez joined our ranks in 2011 for a fee of £22.8 million from Ajax. However, that was soon to be broken by the £35 million announcement of Andy Carroll just a few hours later. The less said about that acquisition the better though. Suarez lit the club alight, scoring 13 goals in his first season alone. Considering he joined in January, I’d say 13 in the last half of your debut season is pretty respectable. He really was somebody to be admired, arguably the sole reason we came so close to getting our first league title since 1989-90. Scoring 31 league goals in the 2013-14 season, he cemented himself as a cult hero in Liverpool history. Along with his partner in crime, Daniel Sturridge, they created the new SAS (Sturridge And Suarez) after Shearer and Sheringham originally coined the phrase for Blackburn in the 1994-95 season. Between the pair, they managed to score 52 premier league goals come the end of the season. This was the point where we as a club felt we were on top, only 3 games to go and the title (looked) like it was ours. However, we all know that feeling was to be cut short. This is where I’ll stop before I start getting ridiculed for the famous “Gerrard slip”...

Credit: Getty Images

Well there’s my childhood relived, time to move onto the question I poised at the start. Can Liverpool go one step further than that famous 2013-14 season? Can we finally watch the premier league trophy be lifted by a Liverpool player? If you’d have asked me at the Christmas break, when we were ten points clear, I would have said no. If you ask me now, yep you guessed it, the answer is still no.

Before you start hurling abuse at me, let me explain my reasoning. While the additions of Van Dijk and Mohammed Salah have brought untold talent to our squad, the ability to see out games is still lacking. At the time of writing, our last 5 games have resulted in 4 draws. At Christmas we were running away with the league, but now it looks like we’ll be scrapping with Man City until the final day of the season. I’m not going to pretend for a minute that I know what changes need to happen for us to win, but I can express my opinion. For me, we lack the squad depth and tenacity that city possess. Speaking to a friend, we concluded that their second-string team could easily finish 5th or 6th in a full season in the premier league. On the other hand, Liverpool’s would probably struggle to beat a depleted Huddersfield (sorry to all Huddersfield fans). We’ve lost one game all season but drawn 6. City meanwhile have lost 4, but only drawn 2. Believe it or not, these draws are what have closed the seemingly uncatchable gap. With only 10 matches to go, I would love to see Liverpool win their first league title in over 25 years, but alas, I fear city are just too strong. The bottom line for me is that I fancy City to gain points more than I do Liverpool to secure them.

In all honesty, you never know what’s about to happen in the world of football, but one thing’s for certain, it’s never boring.