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Chelsea 0 - 1 Liverpool FC

All credit to the Rafa

Manchester United 1 - 4 Liverpool FC


Nuff said!

And I think to myself ...

Some news today just seems to jar and shock me into a little perspective, especially when seen side by side.

Firstly, it appears that Irish and Spurs soccer captain Robbie Keane has fulfilled his lifelong dream of playing for Liverpool FC. This dream comes with a four year contract on just over 100,000 euro PER WEEK.

My lifelong dream is to have a job doing anything that pays 100 large ones weekly for ninety minutes work. Seems like Robbie got my lifelong dream as well as his own.

"Feel the size of me walleh, Claudine?'

Meanwhile, back in the reality that is existence for the vast majority of people on the planet, soaring global food prices have now become so high that not only is there another famine in Ethiopia, but in Haiti people have resorted to eating MUD.

Yes, mud. Baked earth. Because they have no food.

Breakfast, Haitian style. Same menu for lunch and dinner.

And finally, the billionaires behind online mong-magnet Bebo have decided to beam some of the social networking inanity into space so that, on the off-chance there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, they too can ROFL @ de kewl LOLs uv da Bebo thang.

OMG!!!! Alienz r kewlllll!!!!111!!!

My jury remains out on who has my pity the most this morning, the poor Haitians, the aliens or the long-suffering fans of Liverpool.

Like I said, perspective is proving elusive.

What a wonderful world.

The capital of East Ireland

This BBC radio 3 debate was only recently drawn to my attention. It dates from December 2006, prior to Liverpool's assumption of the European City of Culture title. But it has possibly more relevance now.

The question posed is fiendishly simple: Is Liverpool really an English city?

Or is it actually the primary outpost of Irish cultures (Gaelic and Dissenter) in Britain, some sort of proto-capital of a notional East Ireland?

Or is it better seen as a city state, a one-time global port now irreparably independent in spirit with a greater regional than national sense of identity?

Or perhaps like Hong Kong or Cape Town, Liverpool is really just the nearest of the many obscure outposts of the Empire to London, a post-colonial entity struggling to shrug off the post-imperial hangover?

There's no doubt that the city suffers disproportionately from negative stereotyping and slurs from the rest of the nation it purports to be part of. And there's no doubt that the denizens of Scouseland love to assert their separateness in a wide range of ways.

So, is Liverpool really an English city? Best listen and find out what the locals think.

Poor Liverpool

First they have to share their European City of Culture status with some frozen Norwegian village.

Then it emerges that the arsehole Americans who bought Liverpool FC have been attempting to remove Rafa Benitez from his job and replace him with former Olympic diver Jurgen Klinsmann.

This is beyond tragic.

Thankfully, Rafa kept winning long enough for the blond bombshell to look elsewhere and he will now be mismanaging Bayern next season instead, thank fuck.

It seems that the Arab consortium which wanted to buy LFC last year, but were beaten to the deal by the Yanks, are still interested. Fantastic. Let's all pray to Allah that the Americans sell out to them and fuck off ASAP.

Hicks and Gillett - you are no longer welcome at Anfield. You do not understand this sport, or this club. You have over-indebted yourself for this ego-trip at our expense. Do not dare lumber LFC with the financial mistakes you have made. And do not dare sack Rafael Benitez.

Please sell up to the Arabs, who at least are proper fans, and vanish back across the Atlantic now.

You're not fucking welcome.

Wanted...!

One ticket for the Champions' League final in Athens!

I'm serious! I was in Istanbul, and I really want to be in Athens to see Liverpool pick up their sixth European Cup.

If you have a genuine ticket that you want to sell, please mail me and tell me how much you're looking for. I've got the money, and I want to go very badly.

Please help!

Man United - violence's common denominator?

Anyone who can work out what I might have been doing in Istanbul in May 2005 will quickly realise that I'm no fan of Manchester United.

The team that Fergie built always annoyed me. Not their successes. Every trophy gets won by someone each season. But the fact that the authorities always seemed to side with them. Jammy decisions, long minutes of extra time when they are losing, no away penalties at Old Trafford...

It all added up to a genuine annoyance factor.

But now there's a new reason to be concerned about Manchester United. Let's rewind briefly to the Eighties to explain this fully.

In the late Seventies and early Eighties, English teams dominated European football. In only a few seasons, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa all claimed the European Cup. Other teams like Ipswich and Tottenham claimed the UEFA Cup.

Even Everton and Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen won the Cup Winners Cup. Europe simply couldn't compete with the British footballing juggernaut. The only rivals they had were each other.

Then came Heysel. The facts of Heysel, despite a number of different investigations, remain unclear. But what is certain is that UEFA approved a delapidated and dangerous stadium for the 1985 European Cup final.

Then local police, who swiftly lost control of the Juventus and Liverpool fans flooding to the game, allowed overcrowding to develop to dangerous levels in some parts of the ground. An hour before the game, trouble began between the two sets of fans.

It is believed by a number of eye-witnesses that members of the infamous Chelsea Headhunter gang were responsible for initiating the violence from within the Liverpool crowd. Whether this is true or not, the trouble began in the Liverpool end.

Then the wall collapsed, and in the aftermath, 39 people died, mostly Juventus fans but including one Irishman Patrick Radcliffe. UEFA made sure the game continued despite the deaths, but once the game was over, they made Heysel - which was in part their own fault for choosing a deathtrap for a European final - the excuse to throw all English teams out of Europe.

It was a popular decision with clubs from other countries. They felt they might stand a chance of winning something again. English clubs were banned from European competition for five years, and Liverpool six.

While occasional trouble still marred the terraces in Britain in the Nineties, it was nowhere near as bad as the hooliganism had been only a few years before. Sporadic, occasional terrace or post-match scraps would occur, but nothing remotely like on the scale it had previously.

But following a series of studies, the removal of terracing and the creation of the Premiership, soccer violence became extremely rare in Britain by the time that English clubs were permitted back into European competition.

And so to this season, and why we should be concerned about Manchester United. Last night, in Rome, Manchester United fans fought with Italian police in and out of the ground. No doubt, the London press will highlight harassment of fans, claim the police were heavy-handed, point out how local 'ultra' Roma fans attacked and targetted the poor English.

I'm sure this will occur, because that's exactly what happened the last time that Manchester United fans were involved in trouble abroad. When was that, you may ask? Less than two months ago, actually, when again Manchester United fans were involved with clashes with police, in France on this occasion.

Now, once again British teams are becoming dominant in European competition. Liverpool winning the Champions League, Arsenal making last season's final, Chelsea perennially in the semis. Even clubs like Middlesborough and Celtic reaching the UEFA Cup final.

As the Guardian's Paul Doyle has astutely pointed out, such is the financial dominance of English teams that, more even than during the early Eighties, English football dominance in Europe is set to become the norm.

So, when Man United's fans get into trouble on the terraces with police in two different countries in two months, I start wondering what the common denominator is. And the answer is, of course, Man United's fans.

And then I think back to how Heysel was used as an excuse to break English dominance of European football competitions, and I wonder how many more terrace rampages from United's band of travelling thugs it will take before UEFA decides to ban English teams in Europe once again?

Update, Friday 6th: And now we have Spurs fans rioting in Seville in Spain, and it has emerged that UEFA chief Michel Platini wrote to every FA in Europe last month in strong terms warning about violence being the poison that is killing football. How long before English clubs get banned? One more incident? Two?