I’ve just returned to Kopblog HQ after my few days away in Kerry where I enjoyed some of the best scenery in the world along with some of the best beer in the world and had a great time. Before I left on my trip I got the news about the verdict in the court case involving Steven Gerrard and I was delighted for the lad.

It was great to see him being cleared and I never had any doubts about his innocence in this matter. The coverage he received in the media during the trial was bang out of order with all of them failing to see that he was in fact the victim in the alleged confrontation. The CC TV footage of the incident clearly showed our captain being viciously head-butted in the fist on three occasions by that nasty manc DJ thug!

Seriously though, I think the skipper might have caught a break and I’m glad it’s now over with and behind us. However one good thing that may have come out of the situation is that the bond between our manager and our captain seems to be stronger than ever. Rafa has been a constant source of support to Gerrard throughout this ordeal.

It’s even been suggested that his now famous press conference in which he hit back at the mancs earlier this year, was designed with the dual purpose of rattling Alex Fergiescum and also taking the spotlight off the skipper. If that was the case it certainly succeeded and if there is now a stronger bond between Stevie and Rafa it can only be beneficial to us going forward.

Over the weekend it was also great that Gerrard had a good run out and scored for our reserve side in a game against John Barnes Tranmere. On the other side of the world we had a very good 5-0 win over Singapore with the best performance of our pre-season so far and some very good individual displays. You can now start to see a gradual improvement in our form in these games and I’m looking forward to our next one against Espanyol on Sunday.

But of course the big news at the moment is on the transfer front. Arbeloa is now definitely on his way and it’s looking increasingly likely that Alonso and Dossena won’t be far behind. I will be sorry to see all three of them go but that’s the way it goes in football these days and we’ll just have to get on with it. However, departures will almost certainly mean arrivals and we will all anxiously wait to see what new faces Rafa will bring in, but we will come back to that subject in the next blog.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I much prefer to avoid veering too far away from the football side of things, but there are unfortunately some occasions where it is unavoidable and this is one of them. I’ve noticed in the comments section of the last two or three blogs that there has been a lot of talk about an American TV presenter by the name of Steve Cohen.

This joker has an intense hatred for Liverpool Football Club, its supporters and it seems even the city itself. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t cause us to lose any sleep but the problem with this clown is that he, for want of a better term, is a “sports journalist” who works in the US media and he contaminates the airwaves over there with his hate filled comments, filth and downright lies at every given opportunity.

Some of his lowlights include:

• Showing a total ignorance of the facts, he has constantly claimed ticketless Liverpool fans were to blame for the Hillsborough tragedy.

• He has attempted to link Hillsborough to Heysel by claiming, in relation to Liverpool fans, that “a leopard doesn’t change its spots.”

• On various occasions he has referred to Liverpool fans as Nazis, anti-Semitic and anti-American.

• Has on occasion worn anti-Liverpool t-shirts on air such as “I had my hub-caps stolen outside Anfield” etc, not really a big deal but are you beginning to notice a theme here?

• Questioned the need for us to hold a 20th Anniversary Memorial for Hillsborough and called on UEFA not to support our petition to have our CL game with Real Madrid moved to avoid it having to be played on the same day.

• As a Chelsea fan, he proudly told his listeners that while attending a game between ourselves and the chavs a couple of seasons ago he joined in with the chanting of “Murderers” towards the Liverpool fans.

There’s more I could add to that but I think you get the picture and if you want to hear any of this stuff you can get most of it on You Tube.

Basically this guy is a parasite trying to make a name for himself by using the lowest form of self publicity and what he may lack in intelligence he more than makes up for with his lack of human decency. His verbal attacks on our club and our supporters have been cowardly and on several occasions he has been forced to apologise for his comments but each time it wasn’t long before he reneged on those apologies, which is a good indication that he also suffers from a lack of integrity.

Recently he has also been whining about receiving some death threats from Liverpool fans which is something that cannot be condoned under any circumstances, but his whining does sound to me to be a little like a guy who sticks a pointy stick into a hornet’s nest and then wonders why he’s been stung! Even his own club Chelsea have distanced themselves from him and stated they don’t want to have anything to do with him, for which they deserve great credit.

Thankfully the North American branch of Liverpool supporters had all they could take of this clown and organised a boycott which received support from all over the world and has been a great success. Just as he attacked our weak spots, they adopted a similar policy and bombarded his sponsors with an e-mail campaign.

This was a very successful strategy and quite a few sponsors pulled the plug and disassociated themselves from him and yesterday I was delighted to hear the news that he had been sacked as the host of the Fox Football Fone-In show. So I guess now he has something that he can genuinely blame on Liverpool fans!

Normally I would be very sympathetic about anyone losing their job, particularly as I am currently in the same position myself, but this moron abused his position to abuse many innocent people with his hate-filled vendetta and deserves whatever he gets as far as I’m concerned. But while this boycott and e-mail campaign has been successful so far, it’s not over yet. This joker still has a radio show and other avenues to vent his lies and we cannot rest until he is permanently off-air.

Many thanks to FS for taking the time to bring us all up to speed on this situation in the comments section of the previous couple of blogs and to NigeriaKopite for also providing us with some e-mail links to this guys sponsors. Below this blog I have a suggested e-mail template and a list of e-mail addresses to companies still sponsoring this guy and equally important there is also a thank you e-mail template and a list of e-mail addresses of those who have chosen to support the boycott, which I have taken directly from the NYC LFC supports website. Check the comments section here for any updates.

If you haven’t already done so, please take a few minutes to e-mail these people and spread the word to others. There are a couple of other more pleasant items both myself and Mr Jack Hill would like you to lend your support to, but I don’t want to get them mixed up with this stuff so I’ll keep them for the next blog.

On a final note, you may feel curious and want to tune into this guy to hear him for yourself but please don’t do that as you will only help to boost his already flagging ratings. This clown is just a useless wart on the arse of humanity and he isn’t worth your time. If you do find that you have a desperate desire to hear the demented ramblings of a clueless moron, why not go to an Alex Ferguson press conference instead!

Keep the Faith

Email to sponsors of Steve Cohen:

To whom it may concern,
You advertise on either or both of Steve Cohen’s shows on Fox and Sirius. Steve Cohen has, and not for the first time, told lies about the deaths the 96 fans at Hillsborough, claiming that Liverpool fans were responsible for killing their own, amongst other lies. Is this the type of person you want representing your company? Steve Cohen has done this before, apologising when the outrage grew too large. Clearly, he will not stop, so our objective is to see him being put off air permanently.
I urge you to reconsider your purchasing of advertising.
I will be boycotting all your products and services until your support for Steve Cohen and his lies ends.
Thank you,

Jack The Lad
Gary Allen
Sales@jackthelad.us and garyah63@msn.com

Press Display
Alex Kroogman
akroogman@newspaperdirect.com

PSG Sports
Nick Roberts
nickr@psgsports.com

Cartan Tours
Cartan Tours Info
info@cartan.com

We Speak Wine
We Speak Wine Customer Support
support@wespeakwine.com

Objectivo T-Shirts
Matt Lengkeek
matt@objectivo.com

The Fix
Declan Hill
declanhill2002@yahoo.com

VIP Communications
customerservice@joinvip.com

Email thanking the sponsors supporting the campaign:

To whom it may concern,
I would like to congratulate and thank you on supporting the ongoing boycott of Steve Cohen for spreading lies about the 96 Liverpool fans who died at Hillsborough. It is wonderful to see such corporate responsibility these days.
Whenever I have the chance, I will buy and recommend your products and services as my way of showing support for your company.
Thank you,

World Soccer Daily Shop
Jeff Stephens
JStephens@365-inc.com

Four Four Two Magazine
Ollie Stretton
Ollie.Stretton@haymarket.com

Who Are Ya Designs
Moki Williams
moki@whoareyadesigns.com

Sporting Glory
Michael Coyle
michael.coyle@lawdit.co.uk

Ruffneck Scarves
Jeff McIntyre
Ruffneck Scarves

Seattle Wolves FC
Alexander Caulfield
acaulfield@seattlewolvesfc.com

Heineken
Heineken Customer Relations
Heineken

As the last few grains of sand fall through the hour glass of our season it seems our time has almost run out. I’m extremely proud of Rafa and the teams effort to keep our challenge alive and we’ve seen some great performances from them, particularly recently.

Unfortunately the favours we hoped for from other teams haven’t been forthcoming and now our only chances of taking this thing to the last game of the season lay with Wigan and Arsenal. They are two teams whose recent performances certainly wouldn’t fill you with confidence but you never know, there just might be one more twist before this season is done. However, just to take a little break from all the game and transfer speculation going on at the moment, I want to focus on another subject that is close to my heart.

All of my life I’ve been a proud Irish supporter of The Reds, as was my father before me and his father before him. There has always been a special relationship between Scouse and Irish that goes beyond football, to such an extent that in this part of the world Liverpool is often referred to as the capital of Ireland. In every season since the club was founded in 1892, thousands of loyal supporters have made the pilgrimage across the Irish Sea to add their voices to the Red Army and over the years there have also been a number of Irish players who have played a significant part in the clubs success.

So I was delighted to hear that a book was being worked on to celebrate these Irish Reds and honoured to be invited to write a piece for the publication. That was a number of months ago but finally the book, The Irish Kop , has now been published. I’ve just finished reading a copy and thoroughly enjoyed it, it really is excellent.

The man who put it all together is John Hynes a native of County Tipperary and believe me in that part of Ireland the word “native” should be taken quite literally, in fact the only good thing to come out of that place is the road to Dublin! But despite this early handicap he has done very well and is now a journalist for Sport Media working on the official weekly LFC Magazine and the official matchday programme.

The book is divided into sections with the first part dealing with the Irish players who have donned the Red and there are very interesting pieces with just about every Irish Red from Heighway through to Robbie Keane as well as a nice article about the great Elisha Scott. The second part has some Irish celebrity fans telling their stories and the third part is a writers section featuring people such as Brian Reade, Dion Fanning, Chris McLoughlin, Paul Tomkins and even little ole me! Finally there is a fans section at the end which is full of great little stories from Reds all over Ireland.

The Irish Kop is very well put together and a very enjoyable read that I know I will be thumbing through time and again for a very long time to come. I think it’s a must-have not just for Irish fans but for all fans so take my advice and use the links above to get yourself a copy, it’s a collectable item well worth having. As a preview I’ve added my piece from the book below this blog.

I’m off now to sacrifice a couple of chickens and to cross my fingers, toes and anything else crossable in the hope that the entire Wigan team might suffer some temporary amnesia and forget that they are crap for long enough to get a result against the mancs tonight.

Keep the Faith

It’s never been easier for Irish Liverpool fans to travel over to see a game at Anfield then it is today. I get on a plane and I can be at the stadium in little more than an hour, and if needs be I can get home again just as quickly. It’s something we all take for granted these days but it’s vastly different from the way things used to be.

I think we can even take credit for adding one of our own songs to The Kops bumper collection with The Fields of Athenry a.k.a The Fields of Anfield Road. It’s this combination of Scouse and Irish which ensures that even if our team may struggle on the pitch, up in the stands our supporters are simply unbeatable!

Another league game, another quality performance and yet another three points for Liverpool. Back in the day, that was the kind of opening line you would regularly read in any newspaper’s match report of our games. Back in those days we were often referred to as The Red Machine, such was our ability to roll over teams and churn out result after result. Now I’m not going to try to suggest that our current team has reached anything like that level at the moment but there are times, such as during our 2-0 victory over Bolton at the Reebok on Saturday, when I could swear that I am beginning to hear the faint sounds of an engine starting to kick into gear.

I enjoyed watching our display last weekend. We usually find it difficult to get a result from the Reebok and I was a little worried about that ahead of the game but from the kick-off , we comfortably controlled the vast majority of the 90 minutes. There is a quiet but noticeable confidence in our performances recently that I haven’t seen in a very long time and in some ways it is becoming predictable, but predictable in the best possible way. The patient build-up, the use of the width, the switching of play and the probing periods of pressure applied to opponents in and around their own area, are becoming familiar features in our play.

Bolton’s tactical plan was to man-mark Steven Gerrard but the team easily coped with this and adapted so well that they eventually put together a 20 pass move that didn’t involve the skipper, and it was finished off with a brilliant header by Deadly Dirk to open the scoring. We had enough good chances to comfortably put the game to bed after that but we didn’t take them. We had to wait until Rafa brought on the lively Torres for the last half hour and he eventually went on to set up Gerrard for the second gaol and game over.

There’s no doubt we missed a number of sitters in the game and I hope Robbie Keane gets that hole in his foot patched up before the next game, but to be honest I don’t worry too much about missed chances, I’d be more worried if we weren’t creating the chances. In the past we’ve too often seen the team miss a few sitters and go on to sloppily draw or even lose a game but at least on Saturday we created enough chances and eventually took two of them, and that was enough to take the points.

So here we are a third of the way through the season and still sitting joint top of the table, second only on goal difference. Every season has a beginning, a middle and an end, and in previous seasons we’ve usually got it wrong at the beginning, found our form in the middle and finished strongly but have been too far behind to make a real impact at the top of the table. However this season our start to the campaign can hardly have gone much better and it remains to be seen if we can sustain this challenge until the end. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t but right now I’m really just enjoying the football and the big effort being put in by Rafa and the team so let’s just take it one game at a time and we’ll see what happens.

Competition Info.

Anyway, enough of my random musings and on to the competition. This is the first time I’ve run a competition on Kopblog and it’s a biggie! A pair of hospitality tickets to next week’s Champions League game between Liverpool and Marseille is the excellent prize that one lucky visitor will be winning. The prize has been donated to the site by the good folks at Champions League sponsor Vodafone, who have come up with a new piece of kit that really is the dog’s dangly bits!

Vodafone have teamed up with Dell on their new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook – a mini-laptop with Wi-Fi and embedded mobile broadband – the first of its kind in the UK (all the others rely on dongles). The laptop’s pretty small and dinky – it has an 8.9″ screen and weighs less than 1kg. It’s one of the fastest mobile broadband connections for such a model (up to 7.2Mb/s) and is exclusively available from Vodafone – more information.

To promote the launch Vodafone have given an Inspiron Mini 9 to a bloke they’ve nicknamed LiveGuy, who will be touring around various parts of the UK, including Liverpool, testing out the netbook whilst leaving behind clues to his location. Every day he’s out, he will have up to three Inspiron Mini 9s to give away to anyone who comes up to him and says the magic phrase, and a fourth will be given away online to who can best locate him on a Google Map. It kicks off next Monday (the 17th) and you can check out how he gets on via his blog as well as Twitter and YouTube, so give it a go you might just get lucky.

Anyway, on to our own competition and I wanted to make this as fair and as transparent as possible, as we’ve all got busy lives I also wanted to make it as simple as possible and to give everyone an equal chance of winning. So after thinking long and hard about it, this is what I’ve come up with and I think it ticks all those boxes.

Liverpool play Fulham at Anfield on Saturday and with that game in mind, I need you to do two things. Firstly, I need you to predict the score-line of the game, if you are the only one to correctly predict the score, you win the tickets. Secondly, along with your predicted score-line I will also need you to include a guess at the minute when the first goal of the game will be scored so that if there is a tie or in the event that nobody correctly guesses the correct score, the person who guesses the closest minute wins the tickets, and it’s as simple as that.

Just one more thing, I did say earlier that I wanted to make this as transparent as possible so please don’t e-mail me with your match predictions or else they will not be considered for the prize. All your entries must be posted in the comments section of this blog so that everyone can clearly see who the winner is and that I have not influenced the decision in any way. You can make as many entries as you like up to when I post a “Competition Closed” message about a half an hour before the kick-off on Saturday, but only your last one will be considered for the prize. For first time posters on the site take note, sometimes there can be a delay before your first post appears on the site. This is due to the system I use to filter out spam from appearing on the site but don’t worry about it, the time of your entry will be registered and it will appear on the site after a hopefully short delay.

I think that’s about as fair as I can make things but I would ask that you ensure that you, or the person you are trying to win the tickets for, are available to go to the game next Wednesday as it would be a real shame to waste the tickets. I will hopefully have a few more competitions coming up from time to time, whenever I can blag a few prizes from somewhere. So that’s it, good luck everybody and I’ll contact the winner for their details over the weekend.

Keep the Faith

It seems that great books about Liverpool FC are like country buses, you wait around for ages and suddenly two come along at once. A couple of weeks ago on the blog, I did a review of the excellent “Here We Go Gathering Cups in May” along with an interview with one of its authors, the Liverpool Echo’s Tony Barrett. I mentioned at the time that great books about Liverpool FC come around about as often as a Jamie Carragher goal, but it seems I was wrong.

Following that blog someone suggested that I also give “Far Foreign Land” by Tony Evans a read, so I decided to give it a try. Evans is the Football Editor of The Times and I have always found anything written by him to be well worth reading. He was born in Liverpool, is a lifelong Reds fan and is one of the finest football writers in the business.

The book was actually released two years ago but it’s recently been re-issued so I’d no trouble picking up a copy. On my recent holiday, I sat down one sunny morning and began reading it and found it impossible to put down. It’s only about 140 pages long and in the hands of a lesser writer this might seem quite short, but Evans doesn’t bother with the usual pointless page-filling pre-amble you often get in similar such books and gets straight to the point, so one of his pages is probably worth three pages of anyone else’s.

In May 2005, he travelled to support Liverpool in the Champions League final the hard way and took an arduous five-day journey by train to Istanbul, without a match ticket! This book tells of his experiences on this journey but it also describes his experiences on the wider journey to Istanbul that began 20 years earlier and travelled through some dark places, such as Rome, Heysel and Hillsborough.

This is by no means a fluffy rose-tinted spectacle account about what it means to be a Liverpool supporter. The author is brutally honest about his experiences and I must confess that there were certain passages that I found quite unsettling, but perhaps the greatest compliment that I can pay this book is that three weeks after I‘ve finished reading it, I find its still on my mind and I am still discussing it with friends.

In keeping with the format I used last time, I contacted an extremely busy Tony Evans but he couldn’t have been more helpful and I was delighted that he agreed to make some time to answer a few questions for me. I think some of the answers he gave me will give you a flavour of what you can expect from the book.

Welcome to Kopblog Tony and many thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. Firstly, let me congratulate you on your amazing book, I’ve already read it twice and know that I‘ll be pinching quotes from it for a long time to come!

I’ve heard of people suffering for their art but an eight day train journey across Europe in often appalling conditions to get to Istanbul in May 2005, rather you then me mate! For those who haven’t had the pleasure of reading the book yet, can you tell us where the idea came from?

I’d written a very short piece about my mother and brother going to Rome in 77 by train and my sports editor remembered it. Now that really was appalling conditions but everyone on those trains will recall the trip to their dying day. Anyway, he thought it would be fun if I went to Turkey by train, revisiting the places me and Liverpool had been in the 80s. I jumped at it. I’m from the generation of Persil vouchers and Transalpino and love these journeys. By the way, the reason I didn’t go in 77 was a Commerce ‘O’ level. Passing or failing it had no effect on my life. My message to parents is that exams aren’t important, European Cup finals are. Yes, I’m still bitter.

The real journey to Istanbul actually begins more then 20 years earlier and in the book you re-visit some of your experiences in the mid-80’s and take the reader to some dark places such as Rome, Heysel and Hillsborough. I found your first hand accounts of these events very unsettling, are you still haunted by those memories and considering UEFA’s continued disastrous handling of games, such as the CL final in Athens 2007, do you worry that there may be more such disasters to come?

Definitely. Uefa is still putting big games into stadiums that are not equipped to cope with the crowds. In some respects, all-seater stadiums are more dangerous than terracing – when mass bunks take place, for example. Everyone’s standing but there’s an 18-inch trip wire in front of you – the seats. There are scores of problems Uefa need to address, from the corporate love-ins to ticket prices. The bottom line is that they treat the fans with contempt. We have emotional ties to our teams, but football’s rulers just see us as mugs to be fleeced for every penny. When they announced Moscow as a venue, my forlorn hope was that they’d get a Monaco v Porto type final with empty terraces and empty coffers.

As for being haunted by the memories, Hillsborough is the most difficult. None of us who lived through it will ever get over it fully. I’m still angry about 1984. Roma continue to stab and slash people. If a British club acted like they did, they’d have been closed down years ago. They are my second most hated club.

Heysel is more complex. I behaved badly that day. I was an angry, 24-year-old working-class boy who was determined not to suffer at the hands of ultras again. I never went with any thought of “revenge” – a word that’s cropped up over the years. What did I have against Juventus? If it would have been Roma I would have been looking for revenge, bloody right. I was wary and aggressive in Brussels, though. I’d seen Italian boys in action and wasn’t going to take any crap. Essentially, I was on a hair-trigger. There were a lot like me.

I hate all this stuff claiming it was Londoners, England hooligans or a National Front mob who caused the problems. If any of those people would have shown their faces, they would have been seen off pretty quickly. The reason people died was that a wall collapsed. But a chain of events led up to that point that, had any link been taken out, they would have gone home alive. The behaviour of some of our fans – me included – was a big link in that chain.

People are critical of me for saying this. Loads of people went, weren’t aggressive and saw none of the hostile undercurrent, I know. My mother, my youngest brother and my sister – both barely teenagers – were there and they did nothing to feel blameworthy about. My other brother was with me and was disgusted by how me and members of our group acted. We did nothing violent but were boorish, aggressive bullies. There were too many like me that day and it was very different behaviour from our usual demeanour in Europe.

I took the ordinaries to matches, drank in the Yankee and the Wine Lodge and moved in matchgoing – away matches, that is – circles. It wasn’t a hooligan culture but they were different days. It was a time of confrontation – picket lines, the city council, Troops Out marches – and that doesn’t even take into account going the match and bumping into the idiots looking for Scouse blood.

After I wrote about Heysel for the paper, someone on RAWK suggested I was an Evertonian making it up. I suppose this is a longwinded way of saying that the denial haunts me more than what I did. I wasn’t so bad. I was just a prick. But I did play a very, very small role in something that ended up with people dead.

For a lot of people, it seems to me, there wasn’t even any empathy until after 1989. Now there’s a new generation who think Heysel was nothing to do with us. It was. At least some of us.

Travelling long uncomfortable train journeys across Europe to get to a game is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, with most fans these days either preferring to catch a plane to the match, or to stay in the comfort of their own home and watch the game from 57 different camera angles on the likes of Sky Sports. So are the type of passionate fans who made those long arduous treks to support the team throughout the 70’s and 80’s also becoming an endangered species in the modern game?

Yes. It will get worse. People are not forming the bonds with the clubs that we have. When I was 9, I’d go up the ground for 12, be first in at one and hanging over the fence at the front of the Anny Road for the rest of the afternoon. When Stevie Heighway took a corner, I could hear him grunt when he hit the ball. I was there, I could touch the atmosphere, was part of it. Why do I still love it? It’s because of that. Because I believe it’s my culture. Because it’s part of my identity. Can you get that from a telly?

The same with being at games. Even when you lose, you have adventures you can talk about for decades – you should come out and be bored by me an my mates still abusing each other about incidents half a lifetime ago. What adventures can you have in front of the television?

Towards the end of the book you gave a stark warning of the dangers foreign investors and the games globalisation might have on the traditions of a club such as ours. This was pretty prophetic considering you wrote the book three years ago, long before the sorry day that George Gillett and Tom Hicks took over at Anfield. What have you made of this whole ownership mess and could it have been avoided if some proper homework had been done on these Americans?

I feel angry and impotent. The last thing I’m interested in is who owns a club. I want what they want – to win – but for a completely different reason. They want it because it makes them money, I want it because it makes the people happy. The club was owned and run by small men with no vision or ambiton and they made it easy for the Americans . Why did Rick Parry not see what Arsenal’s directors saw: that a new stadium could make the club financially secure and all it would take was a relatively small loan and some balls? And then, to sell to men who would be exposed as dangerous by a google search? It frightens me. Nobody takes into account how important football clubs are to communities, what they symbolise, what they mean. Least of all the people who own the club now. These are dangerous times.

If there is a positive side to this mess, the adversity has had a unifying effect on Reds fans with massive public shows of support for the manager, supporter groups such as the “Son’s of Shankly” (I just love that name) emerging and aiming to preserve the traditions of the club, and Rogan Taylor’s, Share Liverpool Scheme which is attempting to raise enough capital from supporters to put control of the club in the hands of the fans, what a wonderful idea! Have these things given you encouragement for the future?

I’m impressed by the energy and creativity of our support. It’s always been there – football culture as we know it was shaped by our boys, after all. As well as that, the Reclaim The Kop innitiative was a step in the right direction. The Union can only be a good thing but everyone needs to get involved, no matter where they come from. There’s been a growing gap between the young Scouse fans and out-of-towners. It needs to be closed. I see the club as part of my Scouse heritage but, as far as I’m concerned, supporting Liverpool is right and proper wherever you’re from. Unity is crucial at the moment. Resist, resist, resist. Togetherness is just about the only weapon we’ve got.

Sadly, though, I don’t think the Share Scheme will work. Too much cash at stake. But the great thing is that people care enough to try.

As a journalist, does being a lifelong Liverpool fanatic make it difficult for you to remain neutral on reporting on the issues affecting the club and does the internet play an important role in keeping you in touch with fans opinions?

I came to journalism very late and have had no training. So you don’t get the same level of professionalism with me. No, seriously, it can be hard sometimes. I was editing The Game, The Times’ Monday football supplement, when Rio Ferdinand scored in the last minute at Old Trafford. I had to pick the picture for the front, write the headling and write ‘The Game says’ comment. All I wanted to do was lock myself in a darkened room. Moscow was hard, too. But I’d defy anyone to see who we support reflected in the paper, except when I write pieces which clearly identify me as a Red.

The internet’s great. I don’t really need it to keep in touch with fans’ opinions – my mates, who I’ve been going with for 25 years, let me know. And my brother’s never off the phone. If we get it wrong, I hear about it quick. When Martin Samuel – the best football writer bar none – misheard the “Inter” chant as “England” in Milan, my phone went crazy. I got off the plane and turned it on and couldn’t believe the number of texts waiting for me. I blamed the people in the office who let it get into the paper. After all, they work with me every day and hear plenty about Scouse separatism.

But I do love the sites. The energy, invention and wit do us proud. I only became aware of them after the book came out and now am never off them.

Even in the old glory days, Liverpool have never enjoyed the type of positive media image that seems to be reserved for the likes of the mancs and the gooners etc. All clubs suffer from negative press from time to time, but it sometimes seems to me that there are certain press and TV reporters who seem to take an extra bit of relish in putting the boot into our club at every opportunity. As someone who earns their living in this media, is this a view that you share?

No, I come from the opposite point of view. We’ve got so many friends in the media. There are Liverpool supporters everywhere in the sports departments and a lot of the writers have a soft spot for us. Of course there are always a few who come from the opposite angle, but by and large we’re well thought of. Sports department have traditionally treated the club and fans better than the front ends of the papers have treated the city. The number of writers who tell me how much they love going to Anfield never ceases to amaze. Our fans get great publicity. The thing is, we always remember the negative stuff.

Every set of fans think the media hates their club. There’s probably someone on Red Issue now saying The Times is biased against United because the football editor’s a Kopite. Well I am on a personal level but not professionally. The thing is, certain clubs are more newsworthy. We’re one of them. So there’s more coverage, both positive and negative, than you’d get for a small club (just to clarify for our Evertonian friends, I’m thinking of Stoke. Honest).

And there are times when every club attempts to deflect criticism by blaming the media. They blast you for a piece, saying it’s made up, even though they’re the people who gave you the story in the first place.

Rafa Benitez had a massive rebuilding job to do at the club when he arrived. When you consider that the constraints of his transfer budgets meant that we missed out on signing such players as Alves, Simao and Vidic etc, I firmly believe that if he had access to the kind of funds that are enjoyed by his rivals at the other top sides, we might already have won the Premiership by now and a lot more besides. But season after season he has been making increasing progress with the first team and we also now have a successful reserve side full of exciting young prospects for the future. Do you get the feeling that we could be on the verge of something great again and could Benitez turn out to be a Shankly of the modern age?

I’m very wary of Shankly comparisons. I seem to recall “Are you Shankly in disguise” being sung to Houllier.
Rafa is his own man, with plenty to recommend him. He can be frustrating but he delivers success. Istanbul, the FA Cup, another final in Athens and a Riise brain fart away from another. Those who call for him to be sacked are deluded. He is very focused, ruthless and is a winner.

Last season was a disappointment but he was hanging on to his job by his fingernails for half of it. As for needing more money, he’s had plenty. The problem has been more about how he’s been allowed to use it. He feels his transfer policy has been obstructed. If he’s free to do as he pleases, he believes he will get the right people in.

With the fantastic Torres, the exciting Babel and the impressive Skrtel among others, successfully added to the team last season, what or who do you think needs to be added over the summer to make us serious contenders, or indeed even potential winners, of next seasons Premiership?

I would have liked to see some pace and width in the midfield. Gareth Barry is a good player and will strengthen the squad but we may have to rely on the full backs for width.

We have a fine spine and Babel will be better next season and play more. Skrtel’s great and Torres is class. And we’ve also got some fella from Huyton who can play a bit. Gerrard still has untapped potential. I’ve been critical of him over the years, but he’s one of the best midfielders in the world. Mascherano, if he can add a little more tactical nous and positional discipline to his game, will play a big role.

I suspect that without the boardroom upheaval, we’d have been much closer this season. But it really is house in order time.
Next year is an emotional year for us. It will be a difficult spring. It would be nice to bring home the title and dedicate it to the 96. Now that I’ve said that, it seems so trite. But, like I tried to illustrate in the book, there are so many emotions tied up with every ball that’s kicked, so many unresolved issues that hang across the decades. The title would be wonderful but justice would be better. Both would be the answer to a middle-aged man’s dreams.

Far Foreign Land is available at http://www.farforeignland.co.uk/buy.html and the Hillsborough Shop, £1 is donated to the HJC for every copy sold.

Many thanks for the well wishes and apologies for the photos. I’ll put up a proper snap when the award arrives here at Kopblog HQ, but until then I figured I better put up something and unfortunately those were the best I had available. Anyway, as much as I’ve enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame, its time to move on and get back to the bread and butter stuff.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Olympics and recent news on the football front has given me even more reasons to dislike them. I mean if I really felt a burning need to see a load of drug-induced morons running as fast as they can and jumping over fences etc, I’d just take a stroll down to one of the parks or fields in my local area and wait for a police car to turn up.

The Olympics has long since given up the pretence of being amateur games and has become a bit of an embarrassment to the spirit of the athleticism it claims to represent. The ever changing rules of its football competition is a perfect example of this. Previously it was an event only open to amateur footballers from around the world and it gave those normally young players a chance to shine and perhaps go on and make a career for themselves in the professional game.

More recently it became open to professionals and developed into an under 23 event, and now countries are also allowed to add three over 23 players to their squad. Gradually it is trying to turn itself into yet another international competition of which there are already too many. Obviously I am a bit pissed off that we are likely to be missing 5 or 6 players for the start of the season thanks to this Mickey Mouse competition, but I also think that it is bang out of order.

For the likes of Insua, Leto and perhaps even Lucas, playing in this competition could be beneficial and perhaps help in their development but for players who are already fully established internationals, I think its ridiculous. These players are already released by their clubs for international tournaments, qualifiers and meaningless friendlies around the world, but to also add the bloody Olympics in on top of this is taking things way too far.

I was very disappointed to hear that Ryan Babel had damaged his ankle ligaments in a training session for Holland and has now been ruled out of playing in Euro 2008 (click here). He was the Liverpool player I was most looking forward to seeing in the competition because I think he would have gained the most from the experience. It was a relief to hear that he would only be sidelined for 6 or 7 weeks and should be back in time for the new season, but the Dutch have now added insult to injury by claiming that if he returns to fitness in time they will now want him to be in their Olympic squad, which leaves us in a no-win situation.

Probably the most annoying of our players likely to be called up for the Olympics is Javier Mascherano. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the guy and he’s one of my favourite players. But as an over-age player he has the option of not going and yet he comes out with this John Wayne bullshit about the importance of answering the call of his country crap. He is a player who will be more then doing his bit for his country in the many World Cup and South American Championships he will be sure to be playing in, in the rest of his career.

He needs to get his priorities right. Rafa Benitez practically rescued his career and its time for some pay back. This Olympic competition runs between August 8th and August 24th, meaning he would miss the start of the Premiership and our Champions League qualifiers. But the reality could be even worse because he would likely need another 2 or 3 weeks beyond that before he gets back into action with our first team. He doesn’t need to play in this competition and quite frankly I’m a little disappointed in any player that has played in front of our fans, who could possibly even consider an Olympic gold medal as being more important then doing everything in his power to bring some success to The Kop. Think about it Masch, think about it long and hard.

In other matters, there’s another of our players that needs to be put back in there place pretty quickly. I noticed in a report a few days ago that John Arne Riise has been demanding answers from Rafa Benitez about his Anfield future (click here). Well there’s a few answers I’d like to demand from Riise, such as how can a 27 year old professional footballer not be able to kick a ball with his right foot? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the future holds in store for Riise at Anfield, it involves an exit door and him not letting it hit him in the arse on the way out.

Our links to Gareth Barry seem to be growing stronger by the day and I would be delighted if we manage to sign him. He’s a quality player I’ve always liked and is probably the best left-footed player in the Premiership. I also like the fact that he is versatile, can usually be relied upon to get you 9 or 10 goals a season and he seems to link up very well with Steven Gerrard in the England team. We will likely be using our 4-2-3-1 system again next season but in some games particularly against teams who will stick 8 or 9 players behind the ball and defend for their lives, I wouldn’t mind seeing us go with 4-1-4-1 formation.

Masch is more then capable of playing the defensive midfielder role on his own, particularly against a side with little interest in attacking and Barry might be well suited to pushing further up alongside Gerrard. This would make it a lot more difficult for such teams to get out of their own half and give us more chances to open them up. Of course, the price we may have to pay for Barry is losing Xabi Alonso who’s a player I’ve a lot of time for, but in truth he hasn’t been consistently at his best for nearly two seasons now and it could work out that a change might be the best option for all concerned. (click here)

There isn’t a lot more happening on the transfer front at the moment but there is a very important item that I don’t think has been given enough coverage, so little in fact that it almost managed to escape my attention.

To my mind the greatest Liverpool player I ever saw was beyond a shadow of a doubt King Kenny. A few years ago there was a survey conducted among match going Reds asking who they felt was the club’s greatest ever player and the player who came out on top of that survey was John Barnes. No doubt in a few years time Gerrard, Carragher or perhaps even Fernando Torres might be at the head of some peoples lists.

I know some other fans who would also argue the case for Souness, Hansen and Rush among others. While we may all slightly differ in our opinions on this subject, I think we would all agree that all of these players were truly great footballers. But this is a bit different from how things were when I was a young lad growing up in the 70’s. Back then if you asked any of the older supporters from the pre-60’s era, auld fellas as we used to call them, who was the greatest ever Liverpool player, you might be lucky not to get yourself a clip round the ear for daring to ask such a stupid question but the answer would always be the same, Billy Liddell.

If you don’t already know about the Legendary Liddell, then shame on you but here are some brief highlights. He signed for the club as a 15 year old in 1938 and remained on the clubs pay roll until 1961. He was a Scottish international and during his time at Anfield he played in 537 games, scored 229 goals and never picked up a single booking. He played mainly as a left winger but as he could play equally well with either foot, he would sometimes be moved around when other players were injured and was so versatile that he played in an incredible 9 outfield positions.

In his hey-day he was such a good player that the club became known as Liddellpool and he was the top scorer for eight seasons. In the prestigious United Kingdom vs. Europe games of 1947 and 1955, he and Sir Stanley Matthews were the only two players to line up for the United Kingdom in both games. He died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2001 and was honoured by Liverpool Football Club with a commemorative plaque at Anfield in November 2004. But perhaps another true measure of how great Liddell was, is the fact that when the club’s official site asked fans to vote for their “100 Players Who Shook The Kop” in 2006, 45 years after he last kicked a ball for the club, Liddell finished at number 6.

Those are just some brief highlights of the great man’s career but I think you can clearly see that he was not just a great Liverpool player, but one of the greatest players to ever play the game. Of course, it is great players such as this that the likes of Sly Sports seem to try to airbrush from history with their over-hyping of the Premiership to such an extent that they almost refuse to acknowledge that football existed before this triumph of marketing was created in 1992, but that’s another blog!

The reason I bring all this up is because there is a group known as the Billy Liddell Memorial Group (click here) who are attempting to have a lasting memorial of him erected in his home town of Townhill, Dunfermline and they have an online petition which needs as many signatures as possible before it closes on the 30th of June and goes to the Scottish Parliament. The last time I checked, it had just under 1500 signatures but surely one of our greatest ever players deserves more then that, so I would ask that you please sign it and try to get as many of your friends and family to sign it as well. (click here)

The second goal of the Billy Liddell Memorial Group is to have the great man’s name added to the Scottish Football Association’s Hall of Fame. Like me, you’re probably a little amazed that his name hasn’t already been included but it hasn’t and you can help by emailing the Scottish Football Association Hall of Fame on HallOfFame@hampdenpark.co.uk and nominate Billy for inclusion. All of this will only take you no more then a couple of minutes and it’s the least we can do for one of our Greatest Legends, so what are you waiting for? Get to work!

Keep The Faith