Coach Klopp has made us dream again.
Liverpool fabs cheered when Alan Shearer scored first to put Blackburn in the lead and then celebrated, signing YNWA after the final whistle.
They finished 4th.
Sure we sing YNWA before and after every home game. And thatâs just in the Ratoath Inn! The match going Liverpool Fans (MGLF) do the same.
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Youâd think a football man like @croppy_boy would know YNWA is sung win, lose or draw. Sure itâs in the lyrics
Was it common for them to celebrate the opposition scoring against them as well?
A club legend like King Kenny up against Slur Alex Ferguscum. The match going fans made the right call.
Iâd imagine man united and Liverpool fans are very very similar given they are both generally white working class English males from cities around 20 miles away from each other.
Indeed. Itâs almost like I was making that point.
Cityâs tradition and history of winning Premier league titles showed over last few weeks. Hard to beat it. 6 in last 10 years is it?
Anyone got the sub for this article from Sweeney?
Dublin and London are more than 20 miles apart
Manchester City won the title race but Liverpool made it great.
Without Jurgen Kloppâs side the Premier League would be Ligue 1, a championship entirely dominated by a behemoth overpowering all opposition through financial might.
The football authorities owe Liverpool a debt of gratitude for making the Premier League look more open than it actually is. But all the Sky Sports PR guff about the greatest league in the world canât disguise the fact that this race never includes more than two horses â 18 points separated second and third place this season. Four years ago when City also pipped Liverpool, that gap was 25 points.
More often, thereâs just one contender. Last season City had 12 points to spare at the top. Liverpool finished 18 points ahead of the runners-up in 2019-â20, City were 19 clear of the second-placed side at the end of the 2017-â18 season.
This termâs title race may have been ferociously competitive but the league in which it takes place is not. Aston Villa put in a gallant effort yesterday but the bottom line is that when City got their act together they rattled in three goals in five minutes to win game and title.
There was a certain inevitability about it. In the end Liverpool too got the goals they needed against Wolves. They were always going to.
Predictions that Liverpoolâs failure to beat City at the Etihad six weeks ago essentially doomed their title challenge turned out to be correct. It was easy to imagine the champions maintaining their two-point lead by winning all eight remaining games.
They slipped up once, drawing with West Ham. So did Liverpool when they were held by Spurs. Otherwise both teams swept aside the opposition. It was to be expected. Out of 76 games, they lost just five between them.
Thatâs in stark contrast with other famous down-to-the-wire title races. Ten years ago Manchester City and Manchester United had lost 10 games between them before Sergio Aguero settled the contest at the death. Back in 1989 Arsenal and Liverpool shared 12 defeats before Michael Thomas did likewise. Those were contests with real twists and turns.
The big twoâs dominance reflects a common trend in Europeâs major leagues. Paris Saint-Germain won Ligue 1 by 15 points this season and Real Madrid La Liga by 13. Bayern Munich took a 10th Bundesliga on the trot.
Liverpool prevented this seasonâs Premier League from following the Spanish or French model as they have prevented City from enjoying Bayern-style absolute rule. But this makes four titles in five years for Pep Guardiolaâs team and more will follow.
Carelessness left City without a top-class striker for the last two seasons. Their big signing this season was Jack Grealish whose presence on the bench yesterday confirmed his status as the worldâs most expensive luxury player. Erling Haaland will be a much more substantial addition and add to Cityâs advantage over their rivals.
The big-money additions will continue as everyone else suffers further collateral damage from their quest for the elusive Champions League crown.
Kloppâs achievement in running them close with a weaker squad is a miracle of management but canât be sustained for much longer. By the start of next season Mo Salah, Sadio Mane, Jordan Henderson, Virgil van Dijk, Joel Matip, Thiago, Alisson and Roberto Firmino will all have turned 30 while Andy Robertson and Fabinho will be 29. Kloppâs great side is nearing its end.
Cityâs key men are largely younger but that matters less than the clubâs ability to replace departed stars with high-quality replacements at will. Liverpoolâs effort this season was colossal but if winning 15 out of your last 18 league games and drawing the other three isnât enough to take the title, itâs hard to see what will be.
Yet with Chelsea and Manchester United heading for a period of transition and Antonio Conte probably heading for Paris, Kloppâs side should be the championsâ closest rivals again next season. They just wonât be as close as they were this term.
City should be grateful to Liverpool because without the challenge offered by the Reds their title triumph would seem an oddly bloodless and clinical achievement.
Guardiola, with typical good grace, has complained that everyone else wanted Liverpool to beat City.
The differing reactions of both sets of fans when their teams struggled in the second half showed why this is so. Anfield was a seething cauldron of anxious excitement with supporters trying to lift their team over the line by force of will.
The prevailing note at the Etihad, on the other hand, was a kind of sulky disbelief. âWhy is this happening? We didnât pay for this kind of thing.â The contest between City and Liverpool is a contest between the synthetic and the organic. And we live in a synthetic age.
As the match neared the end of injury-time, Guardiola stalked along the sideline as if about to take the ball and go home with it.
Frantically, he managed to browbeat a weak referee into ending the game when an injury to Ederson meant there was probably another minute and a half left to play.
Villa would hardly have scored during those 90 seconds but, like his employers, Guardiola doesnât believe in leaving things to chance.
It was a fitting sign-off for a classless man in charge of a classless club run by classless people.
City are the perfect champions for the neo-liberal era, true believers in the creed that money makes its own morality. They are footballâs Facebook, its Twitter, its Airbnb, its Amazon, its one-per-centers. But theyâre not Liverpool and they never will be.
Only the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Sovereign Wealth Fund and Newcastle United can save The Peopleâs Game now.
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I donât think the point can be made enough though that Irish men arguing that one group of working class English males have preferable behaviour to another group of similar men who live down the road from them is absolutely ridiculous. Definitely by far the stupidest thing of the whole footix phenomenon.
âThe group of men that like the same team as me are better singers than your onesâ
âyeah well at least my group of English men donât leave matches earlyâ
âyour group of men from a city in the north west of England are more racist than mine who come from an almost identical backgroundâ.
âi think that 40 years ago a group English men who you have nothing to do with behaved terriblyâ âfuck you Eamon you take that backâ
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The same intricacies exist in Ireland too. Far less than 20 miles apart in some cases. Itâs completely credible that dispirit groups can exist in close proximity without any cultural differences in essence
Yeah but what the fuck has it got to do with a lad in Clara
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Jaysus donât mention the Powers.
Agree though
Us match going fans that day at Anfield definitely made the right call.