REGENERATION GAMES

  

“The socialism I believe in is not really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day.”

It has been quite a month of moving on for Liverpool Football Club. After the cathartic findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report and the announcement of a full investigation into the cover-up and smear campaign of South Yorkshire Police, last week, more than a decade after ground redevelopment (or relocation) was first seriously discussed, and two years to the day after FSG’s arrival, the club have been given permission to expand Anfield.

Provisional outlines are for around 15,000 seats to be added to the main and the Anfield Road stands, all of which is of course conditional upon the agreement of adequate compensation for the neighbours whose houses stand to be demolished. And this is where things potentially get difficult – a crumbling block as a stumbling block.

Ian Ayre stated last Monday at the town hall: “It is not Liverpool that is acquiring the properties, it is the city council and Your Housing Group [a social housing developer]. We have passed the ball really. If we get through this next stage then it becomes the role of the planners and whether our planning application will be accepted”. Pass and move – forward, but not to Stanley Park.

Despite the club had already lost £59m in the 2010-11 financial year on plans for the new stadium project, it is still actually a surprise to learn – or to be told – that the project will not be wholly or partly financed by Liverpool, since it has been green-lit by Liverpool City Council as part of the regeneration of Anfield district. However, it seems that not everyone is yet sold on the idea of leaving their homes and others are dissatisfied with the terms being offered by the City Council.  

Monday’s Sky News carried an interview with the Chair of Anfield’s Rockfield Triangle Residents’ Association, Patrick Duggan, who said the club had acted in a manner that was “unkind”.

Is this the classic story of a corporate behemoth – although in this case a much-loved one – steamrolling over the wishes of its near-powerless neighbours? On the other hand, is it right that the will of a single resident – and those of a conspiratorial bent have suggested there could be Evertonians on Lothair Road – could derail a project that could potentially reinvigorate a great institution and much of the area?  

Duggan claims that there has been a deliberate policy of running the neighbourhood down – a duty of dereliction? – essentially making it unliveable (it wouldn’t take much of a stretch to imagine city councillors, after glasses had been clinked and flesh has been pressed, colluding in some skulduggery, would it). 

Anyway, Liverpool FC own ten properties and have relocated residents to different areas of the city, leaving those ten units unoccupied and boarded up. Arena Housing has done similarly to nine properties (three are owned by the council, four owner-occupied, four rented, five uncertain). With abandoned property has come anti-social behaviour: first ex-con tenants re-housed there by the council, then street gangs looking for territory and the everyman dope-and-vodka oblivion-seeking of the underclass. After that came the plunderers: scrap metal, copper piping, anything. Not only did this drive out residents, it also depreciated the value of the property, making it cheaper for Liverpool (or whoever) to buy – and presumably the football club would have to buy the land from any third party – and yet, at the same time, perhaps making the residents less inclined to sell.  

Noises from council and club are that they’re “optimistic for a positive solution”, whatever that means. No doubt emotional pressure will be brought to bear; guilt trips may be mobilized: “you’re holding the club to ransom”. Compulsory Purchase Orders have been mentioned. Are these the same fans who bat not an eyelid at the news that Joe Cole and Alberto Aquilani’s combined weekly salary was around the £180k mark? I will be quick to say here that there is not a single set of supporters in the land who will prioritise class solidarity with fellow fans of rival clubs over the particular, parochial interests of their own club, who will not acquiesce in the mind-boggling absurdity of these wages, leading to the one-eyed turning a blind eye (well, a look of awe and disgust) to it all.

Of course, presuming the Lothair residents are not being recalcitrant out of any ulterior motive, not overly sentimental, not holding out for unrealistic prices (mayor, Joe Anderson says 800 new homes are to be built as part of the regeneration project), the residents can do their bit for the football club (and for this part of the city). Assuming they receive a fair price, naturally, and there’s the rub…

Regardless of how high-handed the mayor gets in rushing through the purchases, perhaps the players can also do their bit to expedite the materialisation of acceptable compensation. They could each donate a week’s salary. It’s a devastatingly straightforward idea, one that ought to hold some sort of resonance for a club, the edifice of whose modern rebirth was cemented together by a hefty dollop of Shanklyist socialism (heaven only knows what he’d have made of the salaries they’re paid these days) and who ought to feel deeply uncomfortable about the allegations from Duggan that they have been left to walk alone. “We believe that the people, even now, are being exploited,” he said. “They’re being dealt with in a very underhand manner and are being offered peanuts for their houses after years and years of uncertainty”.

Footballers often talk about “wanting to become legends”.

One assumes that, as they take their first footsteps in the professional game – before they get sucked up and up to Felix Baumgarten country, where the exorbitant rewards create de facto microeconomies, the player now a whale with its pilot fish – those childhood dreams of glory must still be at the forefront of their thoughts. 

Then – imperceptibly and yet implacably, one supposes – come the distractions (not all players necessarily succumbing, too): the tenpercenters start their whispering; the self-taught factotums (and their own overwrought scrotums) appear like foxes-in-the-box pouncing on a parried save; maybe the player’s ego gets tangled up in pay-indexed pecking-order concerns. Innocence is lost. Detached from real world numbers, caught up in salary blingo, alienated from the lives of the fanbase, these Citizen Kanes’ demands for an extra £20k per week, the venality of the modern player, has been captured by the synecdoche, ‘Cashley’. 

Footballers also talk about “giving something back to the community”.

Beyond the odd famous last-ditch tackle or legendary goal, this can be the players’ way of truly “giving something back” – not just paying lip service to this notion when forced to wander along to a school or a hospital to fill out their afternoon. What is £100k out of the annual salary of Gerrard, Suárez, Reina, Joe Cole, Carragher…?

There may be some resistance. We know Gareth Southgate managed to summon the indignation (maybe faux, maybe vrai) to avoid signing up to the Nurses’ Hardship Fund five years ago, to give up his honest day’s pay for his honest day’s work, but could the Liverpool players – even those with a naturally weaker connection to the club – really raise the chutzpah to say “Sorry, I cannot afford to give up one week’s lucre for the sake of ensuring our neighbours are re-housed fairly and that the club can move forward”?

Liverpool’s annual salary bill for 2010-11 was £129m. This works out at £2,480,769 per week. With FFP around the corner, it’s perhaps significant that wages to turnover has increased from 54% just three years ago to the present figure of 70%. With 35 houses in the street, this would mean each household received £70,879 (the ones long since moved on could also receive money, in theory, albeit adjusted for inflation). Of course, some calculations would be made to ensure that ‘ordinary’ members of the staff at Liverpool FC didn’t have to forego a week’s earnings. Just the players and coaching staff. 

In the wake of the extraordinary PR debacle around their recently appointed Director of Communications, Jen Chang, and the blogger and fictitious Twitter persona Duncan Jenkins, this might be a chance to post some good news through a neighbouring street’s eight remaining letterboxes.

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JENKINS AND THE JEN-ERALISSIMO

So, you’ve had time to digest the extraordinary story of Jen Chang’s off-piste meeting with the blogger Sean Cummins, the man behind the Twitter character @DuncanJenkinsFC, eh (mates)? Pretty mantle, eh? (Sorry, I apologise for apeing his rather tedious joke; I shall desist voluntarily – there’s no need to be putting dogshit through my virtual letterbox, you average football fan, you.)  

There are several disturbing things to have come out of the brouhaha: principally, that people insist on calling @DuncanJenkinsFC a “parody account” (Telegraph) when to be a parody you need to be parodying something or someone – in this case, a real life person called Duncan Jenkins, or Jenkinson, or somesuch. It is a fictional account, a persona.

Nor was the blog “anonymous” (Mail): it’s pseudonymous.  

Anyway, those crucial issues of terminology aside, it appears that Liverpool FC thought that Jenkins was the nom-de-clavier for a real journalist (perhaps one forbidden to tweet as ‘himself’ by an employer) who was party to high-level information from within in the club – in fact, there’d been speculation that he had a mole in the club (not realizing that Santi Cazorla played for Arsenal). Apparently, the LFC hierarchy – including amateur eyebrow raker, Ian Ayre – were miffed that Jenkins’ Twitter activity had cost them money in transfer deals, adding £300k to the value of Fabio Borini after AS Roma were disgruntled that the “maximum discretion” they’d asked for had been apparently breached. Not that Jenkins was gruntled when he found out.  

So it was that the club’s Director of Communications of four months, Cambridge alumnus Jen Chang – perhaps after an evening of, you know, sitting around feeling powerful – took it upon himself to squash the fly in the room in a manner, alleges Jenkins in his blog, more befitting of Chow Yun-Fat. Internal Affairs, only ‘Dunc’ knew no insiders. (Yes, I’m aware the original film was Infernal Affairs, but that joke wouldn’t work, yeah?)  

You couldn’t make it up. Except that you could. Not that ‘Duncan’/Sean has made it up, although that’s what Jen Chang is reported to believe, quoted in The Independent that he won’t respond to “nonsense”.

But what is Liverpool FC’s position on this PR disaster? I know, let’s ask– …Oh. Oh, I see.

What’s that you say – Jen Chang is unavailable for further comment? And whom has issued that statement, pray tell?

See, this is the thing: postmodernism tends to push us beyond good old-fashioned brazen hypocrisy (thinking or feeling one thing, saying or doing another) to a kind of structural cynicism. A lawyer doesn’t need to believe in the law; a civil servant or politician doesn’t need to believe in the government. You just need to perform your duties, to simulate the assigned image that comes with your role. And in the PR universe (often quite high-handed and paranoid at the top end), the image-polishing duties mean that individual bodies are frequently forced to split themselves into private and public selves. (Incidentally, I was going to call this piece ‘Compartmentalization of the Self’, but no point losing readers at the title stage, eh [mates]? I also thought ‘Chang on the Ching?’ might work.)

In fact, it’s probably more nuanced than that (even private individuals are not some untainted residue of authenticity), but the point stands that Chang can, in theory, speak about this affair privately (by which I mean publically, on Twitter, but in a private capacity), but he cannot, or will not, do so professionally – on the Liverpool website, say.

His Twitter profile sums up the absurdity of this situation – and it is absurd; if you don’t think so, that just means you’ve internalized the rules of the game, absorbed the proscriptions against honesty, become a cynic – by stating, as is now a commonplace: “Views expressed are my own opinions and do not represent those of the club”.

So, we go knocking on the door of ‘the club’ looking for a statement about Jenkins’ claims – and again, we need to find someone else since, in his professional capacity, Mr Chang will of course be the flesh-and-blood personage behind the PR cliché “Liverpool FC say…”. According to the aforelinked piece in The Independent, “The club said they were aware of the allegations but had no statement to make”. Hmmm. Yet presumably he is in charge of whether or not he can speak in his professional capacity, as ‘The Club’. Such is the conundrum when a PR gaffe is made by the PR Executive.

Anyway, having myself just (with barely lukewarm zeal) started in this rarefied specialism that is Public Relations – I was also a perspiring journalist, of sorts, after leaving academia – I’m perhaps not yet qualified to diagnose this situation as a “PR disaster”. Nor am I sure what talking head Max Clifford’s line on it all is as yet, but I’d certainly say it’s too early to be calling Mr Chang a PR Guru solely on the basis of the status of his current job.

At the time of writing, being decidedly not ITK (and unable to see how peddling semi-spurious transfer gossip is a professional achievement), it looks like this is what will transpire here: a powerful institution simply denies it happened and, without witnesses, without recorded evidence, the story slowly goes away.

That’s exactly how me and Max-C – M-dog, the M-Unit – would play it, eh Jen.

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THE WISDOM OF CROWDS

I was happy to have a second piece accepted for BT Life's a Pitch website this week, particularly because they (a) answer my emails, and (b) pay very well. 

The subject of the article was how the Anfield crowd could see through the poor results (the pitch was made before the victories at WBA and Norwich) and discern genuine signs of improvement under Brendan Rodgers. The impression that the Ulsterman is a man of great perceptiveness and cogency is being confirmed  by the manner of Liverpool's play and the results, not to mention some snippets from the slightly corny Fox documentary, Being: Liverpool. 

Overall, I thought the BT LAP sub editors did a decent job with the copy I submitted, although they did manage to excise two quite good gags (one comparing Gary Neville to Morrissey, the other describing Hodgson's 4-4-2) that I will keep up my sleeve for a future date. They also removed a phrase that sought out some rapprochement between the Liverpool and Manchester United supporters after the unseemly chanting at the end of last weekend's match. Where I talk of "the furstrations of the American owners to reinforce one of the strongest spines in Europe", I'd added, parenthetically, "in another life, reason enough to foment solidarity between the ordinary supporters at either end of the M56". Oh well. 

Read The Wisdom of the Anfield Crowd.

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THAT LONDON'S FOOTBALL FANS

Before Chelsea's frankly pretty flukey Champions League win this May, it was well known that no team from London had ever won Big Cup. At first glance, such a fact appears decidedly strange, given the size of the city and the number of clubs...only that, perhaps, is the point: no other city the size of London has quite so many top-flight clubs. Anyway, the distribution of the city's variegated football fans is neatly shown by this map (a WIP).* The only club missing is, of course, Manchester United... 

* Thanks to Jake Goretzki for the source, not to mention the gag that follows, although I would also have made it. Open goal, eh? 

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THE AUTUMN OF STEVEN GERRARD

They say the darkest hour comes before the dawn, although whether or not that includes false dawns – of which there have been a few at Anfield in recent times – isn’t entirely clear. It has been confusing not only for Liverpool’s battered and bruised supporters to ascertain whether the pale sun above them was rising or setting, but also for their talisman, Steven Gerrard.

He has seen the promise of Benítez’s side allowed to wilt on the vine and the early Dalglish bump run aground on a catastrophic shopping spree. Now, Liverpool’s failure to secure another striker in the summer transfer window leaves him further away than ever before from capturing another Premier League title.  

Brendan Rodgers had arrived on Merseyside with the promise of tiki-taka (not easy to say in a Scouse accent), something that even the most wildly optimistic of supporters realized would take time to deliver. Yet the almost face-spiting parsimony and inactivity of the transfer window saw the skies darken again on Merseyside, and moved John W. Henry to send the supporters a ‘Letter from America’: “We should have held you / We should have told you / But you know our sense of timing / We always wait too long.” 

This new upswell of doom and gloom crested the Sunday before last at home to Arsenal, when Luis Suárez – attempting a too-cute finish to a chance that he needed to put his foot through – spooned a shot over the bar and into the groans of the Kop. Sky Sports’ summariser Alan Smith – no stranger to spoiling the mood at Anfield as an Arsenal player down the years – and co-commentator Rob Hawthorne instinctively (and appropriately) adopted the sort of solemn, hushed tone that one hears at funerals. There was no scope for any other reaction: the Kop’s native stoicism prevented any self-pity or maudlin; realism foreclosed any voluble and explicit condemnation of the player, now Liverpool’s sole experienced centre forward.

The cameras cut briefly to Gerrard, the man who has spent the tail end of his career witnessing such disappointment. Heaven knows what was going through his Steven Gerrard’s mind at the time of Suárez’s miss, or 36 hours earlier when the window was shut and curtains closed on Rodgers’s squad reinforcements.

However, recognised or not, the forlorn skipper’s mood was undoubtedly the greatest cause for solemnity. After all, this was surely the moment (or the match, at least) when the long-cherished dream of a nineteenth top-flight title – or a first, depending on your point of view – was finally, irrevocably extinguished. No more sunrises.

Even the flintiest of footballing hearts ought to acknowledge the transcendent suffering in this. Perhaps out of respect, then, the camera refused to linger on Gerrard for a second time that afternoon – for he had already had one abject look beamed across the globe, having earlier been guilty of a careless, close-up eliciting misplaced pass that led to the first goal (although to fail to acknowledge the brilliance of Arsenal’s counter-attack would be a travesty).

Of course, the last time Stevie G struck up a swanky partnership with a world-class Spanish-speaking forward, he was in his pitch-bestriding physical prime – a phenomenally effective player whose strengths were rooted in athleticism, courage and responsibility (even if those same traits meant searching too hard and too often for the Hollywood pass) – while his ‘other half’ was a stunner. His fling with Fernando Torres was a glorious, passionate affair – a summer of countryside lovemaking and frolics across the Old Trafford turf – but now the England captain must cosy up to his new Uruguayan clinch without the vitality and soft skin of his youth and with the grooves on that brow deepened as the furrowing has grown more frequent.

Some may argue that it is still not too late for Gerrard at Liverpool, citing the fact that his performances at Euro 2012 – up until his front-row seat (or was it third?) for Andrea Pirlo’s regista masterclass – were widely praised.

Yet there is the lingering impression that Rodgers’ way – concerted pressing and ball possession, using the full acreage of the pitch to achieve that – implicitly endorsed in Henry’s open letter might signal Gerrard being eased toward the Anfield periphery (although the punditariat are already getting twitchy and stuck in about playing out from the back). To provide guile, the Ulsterman has brought in his trusty deep-lying midfield playmaker, Joe Allen, along with Nuri Sahin; to add thrust, there’s Fabio Borini, Oussama Assaidi and greenhorn Samed Yesil. In short, the component parts of Gerrard are gradually being outsourced, a squad makeover that inevitably invites us to ask: where does this leave Cap’n Stevie?

Slow revolutions are not ideal for the peace-of-mind of a 32-year-old for whom the competitive fires must continue to burn fiercely. He still no doubt wants to play like the best in kid in primary school, the one who scores 117 goals per season and is four inches taller than the others, but the body’s protests are always reluctantly accepted by the mind and this athlete-footballer doesn’t appear to have as straightforward a veterans’ niche as, say, Paul Scholes, six years his senior, at Manchester United. Like a favourite yet ageing dog who, happy to be off the leash, scampers after the first couple of throws with alacrity before succumbing to the complaints of his weary limbs, the veteran Gerrard must adapt, slow down, and stop chasing the ball all the time.

Even so, it is certainly not yet time for Liverpool to look into the dimming, waxy eyes of this favourite Koppite pooch and make the difficult decision of taking him on that journey to the vets for that injection. But tactical discipline and simplicity have never been his forte (which is why Benítez moved him forward for his halcyon years, away from the boiler room) and so the future remains unclear.

Either way, if the Arsenal game is the definitive onset of Gerrard’s autumn, physically and emotionally, then, as his nights draw in – even, perhaps, as a new dawn approaches for Liverpool – we do need some proper perspective on this final phase of his career, to take stock of his contribution to the game on these shores. And respect would be the correct tone. 

Has he been frequently overrated in the British media? Perhaps. A sower of chaos? Without doubt. But for better and for worse – both occasionally confusing the positioning of teammates, yet providing considerable final-third cut and thrust.

Yet beyond the partisans’ squabbles, the hype and the jibes, we should remember that Gerrard is that rare creature: a one-club man. And not a one-club man like Giggs and Scholes, Baresi and Maldini, Xavi and Puyol, with their trophy cabinets the size of swimming pools and thus scant incentive to think the grass could be greener anywhere else. No, here’s a one-club man for a team that, during his career, has rarely been truly competitive over the long course and which, perhaps increasingly burdened by its history, both glorious and tragic, has often struggled to punch its weight.

Here is a man who, while well remunerated for his work (although he would surely have been equally so at Real Madrid, Chelsea or a host of other suitors), has sacrificed opportunities for glory elsewhere for the love of his club and for the dream of making its fans’ dreams come true.

In this of all ages, supporters of all colours – even those along the East Lancs Road and across Stanley Park – ought to acknowledge and respect the old-fashioned virtues in that loyalty.

A version of this was published by ESPN. It’s fair to say the homoerotic passage didn’t go down very well…

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HARRY REDKNAPP ON THE RUNNERS AND RIDERS

RELEGATION CANDIDATES 
Aston Villa Top, top coach, Paul Lambert. They'll be fine. 
Fulham I think Martin's bought some fantastic players in. They'll be fine. 
Norwich It's going to be difficult, but I honestly think they'll be fine, I really do. 
QPR They've backed the manager, that's for sure. They'll be fine. 110%. 
Reading Yeah, no, I think Brian's got some real good players there, y'know, and Reading'll be fine.  
Southampton They'll have a right go. They'll be fine, for me. 
West Brom Steve Clarke's a good coach – top coach – and they'll be absolutely fine. 
West Ham Big Sam's bought well. I think they'll be fine. I can't see them matching the fifth-place finish I got there in 1999, but they look powerful, solid, and they'll be OK. 
Wigan They'll be fine. They'll be alright. Roberto Martinez? Absolutely fine. 

EUROPEAN CANDIDATES 
Arsenal Top four, for me. Nailed on. 
Chelsea Robby did ask me about the boy Hazard in the summer and I thought he was talking about Micky. Told him he'd retired 20 years ago. No, no, seriously, I told him I thought he'd be a triffic signing. He can pass it, he's got everything. I wouldn't be surprised if they won it, I really wouldn't. 
Everton What a job Moyesy's done. Incredible really. Year in, year out. Triffic manager. Top six, for sure. 
Liverpool Yeah, Brendan came and did a week with me at Tottenham. Bright lad, good learner. They'll sneak in for Champions League, no doubt about it. 
Man City I think they look strong. I can't see them not winning it, to be honest. 
Man United They've got goals in 'em. Van Persie and Kagawa, y'know, are top, top, top players. They'll win it for me. 
Newcastle Scouted well has Alan Pardew. Top six, without doubt, maybe even Champions League this time. 
Sunderland Yeah, he's got some good signings in has Martin. I like the look of the boy Johnson. They'll be top six, no question. 
Tottenham Had they not lost Luka, who's just been flying ever since I moved him in off the left, y'know, then I'd've said they should be favourites for the title to be honest with ya. But top three, top four, for sure. 

MID-TABLE KNIFE EDGE 
Stoke I can't see them being sucked in. They'll be fine. I even think Tone could squeeze 'em into Europe, I really do. Crouchy... No, top six. 
Swansea I like Laudrup. Tried to bring him to Bournemouth when I beat Man Utd in the FA Cup with 'em in '84, but he was happy at Juventus. But no, they'll kick on this year, for sure. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they get in the Europa League. 

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HUDDLESTONE: LIBERO?

For an aspiring writer, the endless effort to find publication at places that actually pay hard currency is gruelling and soul-destroying in equal measure. Thus, it was pleasing to have a first pitch accepted over at BT Life’s a Pitch; even better that, five days later, it was the most popular piece on the site (assuming that wasn’t manually chosen). Its subject matter? Why Spurs should deploy Tom Huddlestone as a libero.

Now, popularity’s not necessarily a good thing with things like this. It could simply be the result of how off-beam the opinion piece was: a car crash has a certain fascination, after all. If you read the first comment, the suggestion is that I’d been “smoking crack”. Nevertheless, a few people sprung to its defence and, overall, it sparked a bit of debate, which, I guess, is what websites are after: traffic, innit. Triffic.

Anyway, irrespective or not of whether I was talking sh*te, it undoubtedly contains the best Stature of Liberty-related pun you’re going to have read on the whole Internet that day. Describing Big Tom as a potentially “statuesque libero,” I went on to say…well, have a look for yourself.

T-Hudd: a ‘CB’?

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