A popular chant from back in the day. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, though…
Just one word about the FA Cup draw – yoikes. OK, “bloody hell”, “fuck me” and “got any spares?” are also phrases you’ve muttered over the last 12 hours or so.
But seriously, this is the draw that has made you clean the sticky mess from the ceiling.
It looks like my threatening behaviour plea to the Football Gods after the Wycombe game finally paid off 😉 And yes, I know I also mentioned about Franchise getting a reprieve, but you have to admit, it’s some tradeoff.
Needless to say, a sunny day in May 1988 has already got a shitload of coverage (and how much does that piss off the Franchise mongs?). There’ll be plenty more shots of Lurch’s save, the Sanchez header, and even a certain Mr V Jones making McMahon look like a gobshite.
And for nostalgia purposes, it’s great to relive that.
But I think in amongst all of that, we should dig out this game as well, as I still feel it remains one of the under-appreciated clashes of the 1990s. Spot the guy who is taking the final spot kick…
Whatever happened to Brian McAllister, by the way?
At last, we’ve got a decent tie. Shame it’s not at Anfield, but that will be for the replay 😉 There was always the fear beforehand, or at least the morbid anticipation, that we would get another L1/L2 side who we then lose to.
All things being equal, we should get gubbed when we face them. Although if our game at Brizzle City was anything to go by, a decent performance and who knows what can happen?
This is why we should keep the game at KM and resist any temptation to move it. Just because a lot of our fans are actually accountants doesn’t mean they should act like beancounters all the time.
Yes, we know if we could move it we would get a lot more money in from executive box sales. But this is one of those fixtures that transcends just thinking about the balance sheet.
It’s Liverpool. Fucking Liverpool. The team that could have won the Premier League last season, and perhaps should have done if Steven Gerrard had put the right size studs in his boots.
They will HATE playing at KM. Yes, we know it’s not fit for purpose, but use it to our advantage. And I don’t just mean showing everyone why we need a bigger, better stadium back home.
It will be an intimate atmosphere, it’s tight, we’ll be in the majority (at least, if the club doesn’t fuck its own support over tickets) and it will have all the ingredients for a cup shock that could eclipse 14/05/88.
I would guess every single squad member will be actually buzzing for this one, and not a Sammy Moore-esque buzzing either. There is always the danger that we get distracted by it, so if NA has any managerial sense he would be using this month to see who should start the game.
A cursory glance at social media suggests the Scousers are a bit wary of the Beast. This could be one of those games for him, in either sense of the word, and I hope he doesn’t let the inevitable intense focus get to his head.
Which applies to everyone. Make no mistake, if we show some of the weaknesses we showed against Wycombe, it will get embarrassing. If not, and we put in the performance we know we’re capable of, then who knows?
We’ve waited a long time for this, certainly since 28/05/02, and there needs to be the big game where we finally turn up in. I don’t mean Eastlands, as we were in the purple patch that we’ve never since replicated.
There have been “big” games like Millwall away (twice), Coventry at KM, Wycombe at KM when we were Conference South, and Franchise in the FAC – we’ve lost them all.
By rights this should be another one in the “L” column, but we have to win a “big” game at some point, and this will be the biggest of the lot. Liverpool aren’t nearly as good without Suarez, but they should in theory still have waaaaaaaaay too much for us.
But theory is one thing, practice is another.
This game won’t break things, but it could make a lot of names. It really is a genuine no-loss fixture, and it doesn’t half make up for the horrors of having to go to Franchise twice in a season.
Our cup final? Yeah, but we’re good at those against Liverpool.
Anyway, that’s for next year, and while we await whether we’re on telly (which we should be), we still have four fixtures this month to get through. It’s a pretty telling – and cringeworthy – stat that the last time we won a game in December before Wycombe was Eastbourne Borough on 28/12/2010.
Keeping out Raheem Sterling may be easier than focusing our players on getting something out of York/Mansfield/Pompey/Exeter. Especially as we haven’t really been setting the place alight.
I would hate to go into the FAC without a victory in seven league games, which on past form is more than likely. One can only guess what is planned in terms of January transfers, but if any player is a borderline case now’s a good time to prove themselves.
One could say we’re underachieving and that would be correct. So it’s now time to start correcting that.
Anyway, one final thing about all this – who will Chris Slavin be supporting? He should remember who is paying his wages……