Jurgen Klopp tried his best to blow away his statement on fans leaving early on Sunday evening. Little did he know that he had addressed an elephant in the room that’s been sitting there since he arrived, waiting for the bubble to burst.
A fair portion of our fan base remains stuck in the euphoria of 2005 and the depression of the title that never was. We cling on to the hopes that we will get a new Gerrard and Suarez, Alonso and Torres and even Dirk Kuyt! We still passionately believe that we deserve a place amongst Europe’s elite!
Its success of the past, that creates the anxiety in the present.
The only way to fight time is to not look back too much. If you do, it can make you feel anxious and guilty.- Arsene Wenger for Lequipe.
We are so proud of our history and rightly so, but its time to let go of the past and accept the present sitation we find ourselves in. The landscape of football has changed so much in the last ten years, that the divine right of being a top four team no longer exsists
What once was a formality between Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool has been blown wide open with well structured and well-funded teams such as Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton and Southampton turning the league from a top four to a top seven.
If we should have a divine right to European football based on our recent record, then so should Tottenham Hotspurs, who themselves have played Champions League once in five years.
Premier League clubs have received millions off the back of teams like Liverpool’s, who’s post-2005 domination of European football along with Man United, Arsenal and Chelsea helped solidify the Premier Leagues attraction worldwide. With so much money in the Premier League, the so-called smaller clubs now have money to attract talent that are looking to expand their profile by playing in the most watched league in the world.
This is why defeats to teams like Crystal Palace is not the end of the world.
Sure, a team of our stature should be winning this game. But with the wind of change that has swept Liverpool over the past 18 months, a slump in performance was inevitable. In 2015, you cannot afford to have an off-day with any of the 18 teams in the League.
This is why we need to stop acting so snobbish and start supporting our team to the final whistle. Nothing in football is guaranteed, no matter how glorious our history once was.
Liverpool is going through a period of growth pains. A new manager and new players represent a new chapter in the glorious history of the football club, but Liverpool are in no position for instant success.
Whether you like it or not, Liverpool’s expenditure on players has been that of a side that should finish fifth in the league; there will be no Manchester City or Chelsea style solution of throwing money at the problem and regardless of Klopp’s managerial stature and ability, the teams also fighting for the top four are in a much more stable condition than us this season and so realistically should finish above us (Chelsea being the shocking exception to the rule).
A new core and a new set of heroes will need time to make a claim for that divine right once again, but we must accept that finishing outside the top four this season is a real possibility.
To feel dissapointed by this fact is normal. We should expect to be at the top of the mountain, but we must accept that we need to build again and we must believe in this process.
But the only way the players will start believing in Liverpool, is when we start believing in them!
Not knowing what is going to happen is what makes football fun to watch. We need to start appreciating good performances more. It’s time for us to seriously reexamine what a fan actually is. Is it a customer, entitled to results, passively waiting for the side to deliver?