Where’s the ‘THIS COULD BE OUR YEAR!’ excitement?

Liverpool have gone 27 years without winning the league. That’s ten years longer than their previous longest wait, once you discount the seven seasons lost to a little thing called ‘World War II’.

People who are old enough to remember Liverpool’s last title win have paid off their mortgages in full. They have children who have mortgages of their own, and grandchildren who can accurately read the word ‘mortgage’ with minimal prompting.

For a club that had previously enjoyed success much, much more consistently than anyone else in England, this is unacceptable.

But Liverpool fans have great cause for optimism: Liverpool have their most capable manager since Rafael Benitez, and their most charismatic since Bill Shankly. They have the best playing squad they’ve had since Jamie Carragher, Xabi Alonso, Steven Gerrard, Javier Mascherano and Fernando Torres graced the hallowed turf, with more big-money signings on the way. They will be playing in the Champions League for just the second time in eight seasons, having not got beyond the group stage since 2009. The stadium is finally 19% bigger than it was little over a year ago, after 20 years of stasis and broken promises.

Forget what the bookies say about their odds (fifth or sixth favourites, and as long as 14/1). There should be a full smorgasbord of optimism on…well, not the streets around Anfield, because they’re mostly derelict and boarded up (see: stadium expansion), but in the general Liverpool area, at least.

Fans should be Thrilled, Excited, Raring To Go, or just plain Optimistic, but the only flavour with widespread availability in the red half of Liverpool is Cautious.

This is largely because Liverpool have experienced so many close-but-no-cigar moments over the past 27 years that the fans no longer really believe that at the end of the storm there is, in fact, a golden sky; just more inclement weather and unstable warm fronts.

Nevertheless, there’s something oddly unsatisfying about people refusing to get carried away. I use Liverpool as the example above because it’s the one that seems strangest to me, but you could make the same case about Spurs or Manchester United – there’s something oddly tempered about this pre-season, and that’s quite unfulfilling.

It’s like those people you hear about who win a seven-figure sum on the lottery, but just use it to go on a two-week Jet2 holiday and redecorate the house before returning to their nice receptionist job two days a week.

I’m sure it works for them and makes them happy, and that’s the only things that really matters; but you still just want to shake them and say: “Why? You’ve escaped! You can do anything! You can pursue that unrealistic creative job you always wanted! You can build the house of your dreams! Just show a bit of bloody imagination!”

That’s symptomatic of a general deadening of optimism that we seem to have had in football over the past few years. Perhaps this is nothing more than a “back in my day” rant based on a half-remembered and rapidly-fading youth, perhaps it’s just that it’s still only June and things haven’t really got going yet, but I can’t remember a pre-season in which practically every set of fans in the country has regarded the upcoming season with a shrug of the shoulders. Nobody knows what to expect, so they’re not expected anything. It all feels a bit flat.

Ten years ago, when concern about the Premier League’s Big Four (Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool) was at its greatest, we’d have welcomed this as a sign of increased competition. The idea that we would have six, potentially seven teams semi-realistically aiming for a title challenge going into the 2017-18 season would have been considered a great thing. Surely increased competition gives more fans more to look forward to, making the whole thing more electrifying for everyone?

Now that we’re here, though, it feels like the league has the same net amount of excitement, but spread more thinly, leaving everyone feeling “yeah, this is OK I guess”. It’s nice, but if it’s a rave you’re after then you want at least one or two people buzzing off their tits to liven it up a bit. That’s why Bez is a thing.

In hindsight, then, I wonder if there is something finite about a season’s capacity for thrills, and it’s simply a matter of distribution. When a side romps to the title (as seems to happen every time Chelsea win it), it’s boring. Conversely, when there’s a lot of sides largely doing just OK and a victor emerges by default, you never really get into it because it’s too diluted. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the default winner ended up being bloody Leicester in 2016, it would not be regarded as a classic.

The sweet spot is the two- or three-horse race. All of the greatest Premier League seasons have taken that form: Man United v Blackburn in 1995, Man United v Newcastle v Liverpool in 1996, Man United v Arsenal in 2003, Man United v Man City in 2012, Liverpool v Man City v Chelsea in 2014.

We say we don’t want a closed shop, we say we want the league to be more “anyone can win”, but the current apathy leaves me wondering whether in terms of creating and sustaining excitement throughout the season, we had it about right with a Big Four: all four felt like they had a chance and could get excited for the year ahead, but nothing was so certain that the title race was boring for the neutral, and if one or two sides had an off year you still had a title hunt on your hands. Ideally, which clubs make up that quartet would shift around a bit from year to year, but in principle it feels about right.

We make fun of the fans with a full set of “this year will be our year!” badges, but the truth is we need those cheerleader types to carry the cynics along from time to time.

So come on Liverpool fans. Whip yourselves up into a frenzy! This could be your year!! YEEEAH!!!

Steven Chicken