Results tagged “Andy Proudfoot” from Liverpool FC News, Discussion & Debate | Liverpool Banter

IT'S not been a good week if you're a football fan.

I suppose by now we should be used to being taken for granted, fleeced for overpriced tickets and virtually strip-searched for having the temerity to attend an away fixture.

Now we can add being found guilty of inciting players to misbehave; being massively disrespected by those allegedly acting in our interest; and cheated by blatant play-acting.

FLORENCE and the Machine may be a success at the moment, but Florence without Mascherano certainly wasn't.

Tuesday night's humbling experience in the Stadio Artemio Franchi was a wake-up call so loud that the players' ears will still be ringing by the weekend.

Rafa Benitez may not have been surprised by the energy and creativity shown by Fiorentina, but you can be sure his team were.

IT WAS late Saturday night, and the two guys at the bar, who had enjoyed more than one or two scoops to celebrate Fernando Torres's return to form, were creating their own version of a famous Two Ronnies sketch.

"Whatever happened to..." said one. "Baby Jane?" replied the other.

"No, no, whatever happened to..." the first bloke tried again, this time to be met by "the Likely Lads?"

IN times gone by, the confused bat that dive-bombed those of us in the Upper Tier at White Hart Lane in broad daylight last Sunday would have been taken as a portent that great misfortune was about to befall us.

And so it proved as our worst fears were realised and we carried our abysmal pre-season form into the league season.

Rafa can bleat all he likes about the penalty decisions which didn't go our way, but had we grabbed a point with that performance we'd have sneaked out of the ground as sheepishly as Harry Redknapp had in the same fixture last season.

YOU WOULD think I'd be excited by the advent of the pre-season friendlies. After all, they presage the coming of yet another hopeful tilt at the Premier League title, the sense of anticipation perhaps greater this season than at any time in the last 15 years.

Yet somehow I'm just not ready for the weft and weave of the football season: the spurious transfer speculation, the pointless takeover rumour, Fergie's latest ludicrous pronouncement.

The thought of taking to the motorways again to track our next attempt to land title number 19 doesn't get the adrenalin pumping just yet; the delights of Sunderland and Portsmouth are yet to stir the blood.

RAFA BENITEZ must feel like he's found a peseta but lost a pound.

No sooner was he celebrating the arrival of Glen Johnson, while admitting he may have paid just a tad over the odds for him because he was English, than he received the devastating news that Andriy Voronin, the 'Bovine Ponytail', plans to return to Anfield from his loan spell at Hair Fair Berlin and "conquer the Premiership".

Assuming that nothing was lost in translation, and that he didn't mean to say he wanted to win the Conker Premiership, at a stroke he knocked about £3m off Rafa's transfer budget.

IN SIMPLER times, Kop Holdings might have referred to dubious practices outside The Grafton on a Friday night (as in "come on darlin', cop hold of this...").

But in these days when football and high-finance are as inseparable as Channel Five and bad programming, the object of scrutiny is more likely to be a set of accounts from a company of that name than a less-than-savoury member of the opposite sex.

The publication of the consolidated figures of Messrs Hicks and Gillett's holding company, which encompasses the fortunes of the commercial entity we know as LFC, brought with it predictable howls of anguish and outrage as the full extent of the loans heaped on the club through the 'leveraged' acquisition became clear.

SHOULD Newcastle United be relegated, there'll no doubt be the usual British barely veiled glee that often greets the fall of those who purport to portray themselves as above their station.

But for me any satisfaction at seeing the Geordies plummet into the Championship will be borne of good intention: for if there was ever a club and its supporters in need of a reality check, it is Newcastle United.

It might just take a seismic shock of this sort to bring the club to its senses and to start living in the real world rather than in some illusory existence where Newcastle have a right to expect their team to be successful and playing the sort of football which would make even Barcelona envious.

AFTER the harum scarum of the last few weeks these few days seem a welcome respite from the mentally, and at times almost physically, draining business of following Liverpool FC.

Loads of goals at both ends, matches turning on their heads like a Bronx breakdancer, and the odd moment of light relief (thanks Fergie) have all combined to make the last two months one of the most eventful, if stressful, periods in our recent history.

As fragile at the back as we now seem so potent up front, it looks like we're going to be living on the edge right up to the last game or so.

WE DON'T usually do glorious failure at Liverpool.

Failure is just that - something other than success. But for once, a page in our illustrious history must be devoted to a magnificent effort against all the odds, which so nearly brought a result that would have beaten all but Istanbul in our annals of great comebacks.

Whatever we might feel about the quality of this current Anfield squad, a criticism often levied against many of its immediate predecessors cannot be pinned on this one: that they lack the stomach for a fight.

NOT so long ago, a TV broadcaster trumpeted its forthcoming World Cup coverage with a slogan something like "90 minutes of gut-wrenching, heart-pounding tension. Can't wait".

Outside of emotional European nights, I'd begun to forget what that felt like.

But now it's back. It's April, and we're still involved in the Premier League title race. Maybe we're still the outsiders, but there's no mistaking the real thing.

EMPLOYMENT opportunities are thin on the ground at the moment, but it would appear that Liverpool have embarked on their very own job creation programme, if reports in one of last weekend's papers are to be believed.

I SUPPOSE last week could have been better. I don't remember Kelly Brook wandering into my office asking if I could help with her bra strap.

If Richard Branson wrote me into his will, he forgot to tell me.

And if Johnny Vegas went on the wagon, it passed me by.

IF Rafael Benitez really is contemplating leaving Liverpool at the end of the season for the lucrative but precarious hot-seat at Real Madrid, then he couldn't possibly have written a better application than the performance which engulfed the prestigious Madrilenos on Tuesday night.

Widely criticised both at home and abroad for his negative approach to the game, the Rafatollah produced the greatest surprise since Michael Douglas pulled Catherine Zeta-Jones by sending out his team to produce a blistering attacking first half the like of which hasn't been seen at Anfield for several years.

While every fan, coach, pundit and Kop pigeon were expecting a cagey, tactical approach designed to lure Madrid into exposing themselves to rapid counter-attacks, instead Benitez sent out his team to launch a crushing onslaught which effectively ended the tie in the first half-hour.

A COMFORTABLE win. How often have we been able to say that this season?

It seems that, even when we were riding high at the top of the Premier League, every game has been a scrap with the tension lasting well into the latter stages of the game. There's been the odd exception, but generally the fans' nerves have been stretched tighter than Dawn French's leggings. Good for the neutral maybe, but I'll settle for a hefty proportion of regulation 2-0 wins thanks very much!

Not that Tuesday night was all plain sailing. Had Kenwyne Jones not had a massive attack of stage-fright as he bore down on Pepe Reina early in the game, then we really would have seen which of our players had the stomach for a fight. I know who I'd be avoiding in a sweep.

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THERE'S nothing better than an 'All time...' list to get the airwaves, e-mails or blogs humming. All the more so when a brave writer leaps into e-print with his '50 Greatest Liverpool Players' on a national newspaper's website, as happened this week.

The writer's credentials look sound, and he justifies his choices well, often belligerently based on his personal memories and preferences. Of course everyone's entitled to their opinion, and that's why I'm going to give you mine.

The top four will get no argument from me: Dalglish, Gerrard, Barnes and Souness.

WHO WOULD be a Premier League football manager?

Before you all put your hands up and cry "Me, Sir, Me!", consider the downsides of this once respectable occupation.

Job security a City banker would scoff at; public ridicule frequently heaped upon you by upwards of 25,000 spectators, not to mention the hundreds of thousands who read the papers and view photoshopped pictures of your head on some dim- witted animal or vegetable; and deemed a failure for being the third or fourth best at your job in the country. Still fancy it?

HONEST. I really, really wanted this week's column to be about the much-improved performance against Chelsea - the commitment, patience and control; Torres' glorious return to form; the indefatigable Gerrard.

Even to revel in the deserved dismissal of Frank Lampard, albeit four years late.

Yet even as we trooped elated away from the ground, the literal and metaphorical storm clouds gathered as rumours began to percolate that Robbie Keane might be heading for the exit door, just six months after his signing was trumpeted as a major coup to give a much-needed boost to our firepower.

SAY what you like about Old Red Nose down the East Lancs Road, but there's no doubt that he's second only to Derren Brown when it comes to playing mind games.

His publicly voiced query as to whether Liverpool had the nerve to maintain a title challenge certainly seems to have struck a chord which has hummed away at the back of the players' minds in recent games.

The inability to kill off teams who set up defensive road blocks is now developing into a fully blown phobia, and the strain is beginning to show.

DON'T believe what you read in the papers - Preston taught us a lesson last Saturday.

Admittedly not on the pitch - though at times in the second half I was grateful that John Arne Riise wasn't around to threaten our near post - but in how to treat spectators, and their own history, with respect and prove that comfortable facilities can still be provided even when resources are thin.

Deepdale has been completely rebuilt in the last 15 years, yet they've managed to retain the sense of history surrounding the oldest professional football site in the world while producing a smart, modern stadium perfectly sized for their league status.