Liverpool fans have a reputation of sticking by the club through thick and thin. Indeed, the same can be said for the club as a whole, that it is very loyal to its own. Two decades after Hillsborough, the Sun still sells extremely poorly in Liverpool as a result of an inflammatory (and fabricated) article about the conduct of the fans in the disaster and an ensuing boycott. Kenny Dalglish's conduct during the aftermath earned him a place in fans' hearts, and was a major factor in his return to the club in 2011.
This loyalty has its roots in several places. Liverpool's success in the 1970s and 80s, which saw the club lift four European Cups in eight years as well as numerous league titles, led to them being the team of choice for a generation of fans on both sides of the Irish Sea. Then there was the bunker mentality that took effect after the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, where Liverpool bore the brunt of the media and official ire. The season before Heysel was probably Liverpool's high water mark. Joe Fagan led the team to their fourth European Cup. Following the events of Heysel, Liverpool were banned from European competition indefinitely. In all likelihood, had they been allowed to compete, they would have added more European silverware to their collection.
The problem is that this event, followed by Hillsborough, contributed to a growing sense of persecution among Liverpool fans. The punishment that UEFA meted out as a result of Heysel was severe in the extreme, particularly given that the disaster was as much a product of a decrepit stadium as it was of unruly hooligans.
Similarly, Hillsborough was an accident waiting to happen, and only the abolition of terraces has prevented a recurrence. The problem for Liverpool is that these events have engendered a profound feeling of distrust for the rest of the world among its fans.
That Liverpool have achieved great things is undeniable. The problem is that they are no longer a great club, or at least no longer genuine title contenders. Their last title win was two decades ago, and barring the odd second-place finish, they haven't threatened to repeat it since. Trophies have been few and far between, barring the 2005 Champions League which, while memorable, was far more the result of hubris on the part of AC Milan than Liverpool truly being the best team on the night. Since then, the Reds have found themselves squeezed out of the Big Four by both Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City, and despite what their diehard supporters think, they are unlikely to be playing Champions League football for the next few years.
And yet, to the consternation of both rival fans and neutral observers, Liverpool fans enter every season with the bullish confidence that they can repeat the events of 1991, simply on the basis that they did it twenty years ago. Never mind the fact that they were long ago eclipsed by Manchester United's stunning run of form, and more recently by Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City, never mind the fact that since the mid 1990s their revenues have grown at only a fraction of the rate of the other big Premiership clubs, and never mind the fact that they look set to finish sixth again this season, the assumption that Liverpool remain genuine title challengers persists among their fan base, a fan base that has never really managed to expand beyond the shores of the Irish sea.
Conversations with men in pubs can be illuminating affairs, though usually one learns more about the speaker than the subject. Two such conversations I was involved in recently seem to me to highlight the mentality of Liverpool. The first was with a non-Liverpool fan who, when I suggested that a spell of mid-table mediocrity might lower Liverpool's expectations to a more manageable level, retorted that they were now so detached from reality that relegation might not affect their expectation. The second was with a Liverpool fan who asserted that, given the amount of times they have struck the woodwork this year, the team's goal difference should by rights be at least twenty goals better than it is. It is entirely possible that Liverpool might have had more narrow misses than most teams this year, but to suggest that this is having a major effect on the course of the league is laughable in the extreme, and serves to demonstrate the dislocation from reality that some fans experience.
The above 800 or so words is a rather elongated introduction to the main point of this article, namely Liverpool's abject mishandling of the recent controversy surrounding star striker Luis Suarez. The whole lamentable business is best viewed as another manifestation of the "us against the world" mentality that pervades Liverpool. Clubs, to a degree, have a duty to stand behind their players. In the days before professional football was one of the most lucrative careers on the planet, the club itself mattered more than the money. Liverpool, with its reputation of fierce loyalty to players, became correspondingly a good team to play for. In this respect, the decision of the team to back Suarez is understandable.
The problem is that Liverpool have now taken this far beyond the bounds of reason. In signing Suarez they knew there would be a lot of baggage. Gifted and all that he is, Suarez is also responsible for two of the worst fouls of modern times, the first being his intentional handball against Ghana in the quarters of the 2010 World Cup which cost them a place in the semis, the second being when he bit the shoulder of PSV player Otman Bakkal while playing for Ajax. The fact is that he has demonstrated a winning-above-all-else mentality that has led to a number of regrettable incidents.
Racism is unfortunately widespread in football. Granted, much of it is simply a form of gamesmanship rather than any genuine ill-feeling. The problem is what constitutes an insult depends on who it is said to, and how they take it. In the Liverpool-Manchester United game that kicked off this whole mess, the likelihood is that Suarez was trying to unnerve Patrice Evra to gain an advantage. However, that's not how Evra saw it, and a complaint of racial abuse was sent to the FA.
It was at this point that Liverpool made their first big miscalculation. A swift apology and an internal disciplining of Suarez would have gone a long way to salving things. Instead, the club decided to focus their defence on impugning the character of Evra, who admittedly has had a dubious history himself and only a nodding acquaintance with honesty. As a defence, everything hinged on Suarez sounding more credible than Evra.
A number of problems are apparent with hindsight, and Liverpool should have seen them beforehand. Firstly, Evra's complaint had merit. Suarez even admitted to using the word "negro", though denied that it was intended to be pejorative. The second issue was that if the tribunal upheld Evra's complaint, then they would punish Suarez all the harsher for attempting to deceive them. In the event, that's exactly what happened.
The FA made one mistake in the affair. By failing to release the full report at the same time as handing down the eight-match ban Suarez received, they allowed Liverpool fans' imaginations to run wild. Had the report come out, the punishment would have looked more justified and a lot of difficulty would have been avoided.
It was at this point that the two aforementioned Liverpool traits, namely the sense of loyalty to their players and the perception of a hostile world came to the fore. Liverpool could still have walked away from the whole sorry affair and grudgingly accepted Suarez's suspension (In the event, that's what they later did, but by then it was too late). They had gambled that Evra's testimony could successfully be denied, and it had failed. Luis Suarez had received an admittedly hefty ban, but the whole affair could have been let go.
Instead Liverpool did something absurd. They rejected the finding out of hand, questioned why the report wasn't released, and stood full square behind Suarez. The problem is that, in the eyes of many, standing behind the man is also standing behind the deed, and Liverpool were implicitly condoning Suarez's acts. This culminated in the team wearing T-shirts with Suarez's photo on it before a game against Wigan. Meanwhile, the club were waging a propaganda campaign against the FA, insisting the whole thing was a stitch-up and that their player was the victim of a witch hunt. At this point, the club had moved beyond supporting a player to a) implicitly defending racism, and b) attacking the moral integrity of the FA.
Of course, when the report came out, it was clear that Suarez's testimony simply had no credibility. Even his teammates had delivered inconsistent statements. Evra, on the other hand, stuck to his story, and the independent commission accepted his claims over those of Suarez. It appears that sometime in the previous week Liverpool realised they were out on a limb, and they sensibly declined to appeal, but the damage has now been done.
As a result of Heysel, Liverpool have since had that unpleasant tinge of hooliganism about them. In reality, their fans are probably no more racist than those of any other Premiership team, but perception is what counts, and Liverpool have created a perception of being a club that's soft on racism. Already, there is increased focus on racial issues involving the club. In a subsequent match against Oldham, a fan was arrested in connection with racially abusing Tom Adeyemi, an Oldham youngster of Nigerian extraction. No doubt every such incident in the near future will attract more media attention than Liverpool would like.
A more worrying aspect is the extent to which this insularity pervades the club. The decision to wear T-shirts in support of Suarez was not the act of a single individual. It had to have been signed off on at multiple levels, and at no point does anyone seem to have thought how inflammatory it was, or how the FA might react to having its decisions questioned so publicly. Clearly, the culture in the Liverpool is dangerously introverted.
This introversion has two negative consequences. Firstly, it creates a tendency to blame all the club's issues on external factors, rather than any internal failings. Even internal failings, most recently the debacle of the Hicks/Gillette ownership, are turned into external, by characterising the American owners as outsiders. The fact that they sold out to another set of Americans is, of course, not a problem, at least until there are any issues with them, at which point they will no doubt become outsiders again.
Secondly, it blinds the club to events beyond Anfield. This whole unfortunate business has left Liverpool looking like a group of sulking children. Having played every card wrongly, and persisting in denying any liability, they then backed out of an appeal, presumably because anyone with a modicum of common sense knew that the FA was hardly likely to be better disposed to them after weeks of impugning their judgement. That animosity is not going to go away. Barring heroic efforts on the part of Liverpool, the FA Cup Fourth Round match between Manchester United and Liverpool is going to be a charged affair. Should he play, Patrice Evra is going to come in for a lot of abuse, some of it no doubt racial in nature. And, to make matters worse, the eyes of the world will be watching. Then, to make matters worse, when Luis Suarez finishes his ban, he will be playing United in the league. Once again, expect an explosive situation. Liverpool have only days to make sure that their fans don't exacerbate it.
Liverpool have had a great history. However, in order to have a better future, the team, the management, and the fans have to recognise that this is in the past. The sad reality is that, as of now, they haven't.
Post by Greg Bowler
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