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Columns

No regrets come May by Paul Tomkins
Thursday, September 21, 2006

One thing I often wonder, as I discuss football with friends and also with fellow Reds on internet forums, is how much of our personal lives and our current state of mind filter through into our appraisals of the action.
Everyone's mood affects how he or she perceives the game; at times it's impossible to get a true handle on the performance of the team we support.

The PSV Eindhoven game was one of the starkest examples of this I've seen. I don't think I've ever read such wildly differing views on one single game of football. The response ranged from extolling the virtues of a highly professional performance in gaining an excellent away point, to damning indictments of how a ‘poor’ Dutch side were let off the hook.

I can't say I watched the midweek match in the best frame of mind. Last week I split up with my girlfriend, someone who was very special to me, whom I had met shortly after returning from Istanbul.

It may sound daft, as it had nothing to do with football, but somehow the split just had to come after the big derby defeat and ahead of a trip to Stamford Bridge. To finish me off it just needed a midweek visit to Old Trafford, and defeat to an outrageously freakish goal (I'm thinking along the lines of: Rafa encroaching onto the pitch to give instructions to a player when the ball cannons off his forehead and sails 50 yards into the top corner. Either that, or a spectacular overhead kick from the referee.)

My life increasingly revolves around the club we love, and its fortunes. I rely on the sales of my books on Liverpool FC to make a living; and after a bad result, even the most hardened of men would rather read Cosmopolitan's Top Ten Tips on Waxing than have to think about the Reds in too much depth. (My next book, Paul Tomkins' Top Ten Tips on Waxing, is out at Christmas). I am also proud to have a commitment to write a piece every Wednesday for this website, and while I remain an optimist who prefers constructive criticism, it can be hard to find the positives when you're feeling pretty miserable.

What's going on in our daily lives distorts our perception. So much anger, frustration, hope, joy and despair is bound up in supporting your team. It's then released at the weekend, or midweek: the point where our feelings converge with the events on the pitch, for 90 minutes of ecstasy or torture. As a passionate person with an artistic temperament, the challenge for me is often to remove the surrounding issues from my head, and focus just on the action.

It's about removing the emotion to see the clearer picture. Too much rubbish is written and said about football in a state of high passion; it may feel like the ultimate truth in that moment, but those thoughts are heavily clouded. It's why managers rarely smile when their team scores; they've learned to stay level-headed. (However, the day I don't go nuts when we score is the day I start watching crown green bowls.)

I sense a lot of depression and angst amongst fans, who look to the Reds to provide a miracle cure to snap them out of their blues (a too painfully apposite word following two the last two league defeats). And that's a big part of football's history: the escapist world we emigrate to, in our heads, for that hour and a half.

I don't think I've ever had such a sense of foreboding about a game as the one I experienced leading up to the Chelsea match. I really wasn't in the mood for it, for the reasons already mentioned, and due to what was at stake, and the fiery nature of these clashes; where you can't help but find yourself wound up like the tautest watch spring. But I knew I couldn't avoid it. It loomed large, something that could not be welcomed nor escaped from. It was there to be endured, one way or another. A victory wasn't going to wave a magic wand for me and change what had gone wrong; but a defeat would feel like a final nail in the coffin of my week.

But defeat came, albeit rather unluckily, and I still somehow managed to keep it in perspective. Defeat could never mean the end to a season with 34 games still remaining, especially with three of the first four Premiership games tough away ties (which clearly skewed the league table), and all of the four fancied teams losing at least once already. But losing to Chelsea certainly wouldn't make it any easier.

It was another defeat where the margin of inches played a part, as the Reds struck the woodwork for the fifth time in eight days. There was yet another failure by a ref to award a clear penalty, which makes it five good shouts for a spot kick already this season that have been waved away.

It was one of those games which you can look back on and think 'if only', but as ex-Chelsea striker Tony Cascarino said, Rafa didn't do anything wrong. The Reds created more good chances in one game at Stamford Bridge than on the previous three visits, getting in behind their defence on a number of occasions. The finishing was just out by a matter of inches. Those players may regret not scoring, but at least they got in there in the first place, rather than holding back; and at least they took on the chance, rather than looking to pass the buck.

At the moment I know I'd like to be able to turn back the clock and do things differently. Regret is such a frustrating emotion; because the one thing you cannot go back and change the course of events.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, be it altering something that should have been said or done, or even a rotated team selection. In the last 90 games Rafa has changed his team every single match, but bar the odd regret he will have on occasional results, those 90 games include winning the Champions League, the FA Cup, as well as the Reds' second-highest percentage of games won in a league season.

American journalist Sydney J. Harris perhaps said it best: "Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

I just hope the players aren't looking back with any serious regrets in May. Being beaten fair and square is one thing, but knowing you could have, and should have, done more is difficult to live with.

Finger Acrobatics Performed by Avloomat @ 10:14 PM, ,