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ECHO Comment: "Fears of Witch-hunt Against Liverpool FC" part 3

PaulPowersTash said:
Bravo!
Take a bow. That is a superb post and encapsulates things perfectly.
As you say the drop off in form really is astounding. Why is no one
in the media saying what you are?
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because the majority of the football media is propped up by the fan bases of two teams. Positive Liverpool and United headlines generate the most clicks, and the flip side of that is negative City and Everton ones generate a similarly high number. If Sky Sports suggested that one of those teams had been doping they could lose a huge percentage of their subscription base. Same as any news website, they know what the kopite mob is like, their traffic would take a huge hit. Plus football is very much a closed shop where everyone knows everyone, what journalist is going to threaten their own career to uncover a story no one wants out. It will never happen. It would genuinely believe that every other sport has had or has drug problems but football is 100% clean then that’s up to them.
 

Saint Domingo said:
No, too damaging to the brand of the PL, too damaging for bookmakers etc. They’re probably not the only team doing it either. There’s been (and continue to be) performance enhancing drug scandals in every single other sport, even niche ones like track cycling. Yet the biggest game in the world, with the most money at stake has been completely clean all this time. It’s a load of rubbish. It definitely happens and one day there’ll probably be a game wide expose but they’ll probably never be able to pin it on certain teams.
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I think that tennis too has a mind to ignore doping. Again a huge tv driven and funded sport.
 
Moonlight dribbler said:
Fwiw I think they are legal but the nutrition is second to none. It is superior to others and they are definitely using everything within their powers. I read 3/4 of their squad are classed as asthmatic and using Salbutamol. They are also using nutritionalists that have worked with the German Olympic team. Those same nutritionalists have achieved incredible results. Mark Warnecke was a world swimming champion at 35 he then worked with Dara Torres who had 7 years out of swimming, and made the US olympic team at 41. All credit to the 'secret drink'.

Heard the cycle thing before but why not have the squad staggered. I also think their are no whistle blowers because even the squad would be unaware of illegalities. Certainly fascinating stuff.

One thing for certain the pre match meal is not steak and chips followed by 6 pints of guiness after the match in the bar.
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Thats it for me. If you were planning it properly of course you stagger it. If you can plan to win a CL and league you can plan to cycle off without crashing your team too.
 
Saint Domingo said:
because the majority of the football media is propped up by the fan bases of two teams. Positive Liverpool and United headlines generate the most clicks, and the flip side of that is negative City and Everton ones generate a similarly high number. If Sky Sports suggested that one of those teams had been doping they could lose a huge percentage of their subscription base. Same as any news website, they know what the kopite mob is like, their traffic would take a huge hit. Plus football is very much a closed shop where everyone knows everyone, what journalist is going to threaten their own career to uncover a story no one wants out. It will never happen. It would genuinely believe that every other sport has had or has drug problems but football is 100% clean then that’s up to them.
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What you say is absolutely right, and at best there is an enormous subconscious pressure on officials etc with those two teams.

However Lance Armstrong was even bigger and more establishment than both of them. We had school assemblies on what a wonderful man he was. It didn't protect him in the end, Partly because a story like that is just pure gold. Can you imagine how many clicks/checks/information is gained from such a story, as United or Liverpool drugs cheating? It's absolute gold. The money for the drama of it, the legal money out of it etc etc. It's huge. The interest in the league would be huge as a result as well.
 
brieverton said:
If there was doping, I'd find it hard to believe that it was, is, and could be left uncovered to such an extent.

There would always be at least one person with a personal agenda to act as a whistleblower.

There would be more than a whiff of it doing the rounds. I accept football is riven with sycophantic journalists but I'm sure there would be at least one willing to call it out, to the extent of the exposé on Lance Armstrong, for example.

If LFC were doing something co-ordinated on these lines, then its been done sufficiently well to avoid any serious scrutiny.

I look at them over the last few years, and reluctantly say that the sum is much, much greater than the individual parts.

We need to focus on ourselves. Denying that they have been an exceptionally good side does nothing to further our own ambitions, to the extent we have any.
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I basically agree with this. I also live by the Groucho Marx maxim of "if he walks like an idiot, and he talks like an idiot, then please folks don't be confused but that man is an idiot".

I think people like a nice simple, clean explanation. We are seeing that a lot with the wider world currently. It's easy to fit everything into boxes. The world is more complex and less conspiratorial than that.

The idea they are the bogeyman, who can go back to doping again anytime and be brilliant just isn't there for me. Why did it take FSG 5 years to work out to start doping as well if they did it? I just don't get it really. Too many question marks.
 

catcherintherye said:
What you say is absolutely right, and at best there is an enormous subconscious pressure on officials etc with those two teams.

However Lance Armstrong was even bigger and more establishment than both of them. We had school assemblies on what a wonderful man he was. It didn't protect him in the end, Partly because a story like that is just pure gold. Can you imagine how many clicks/checks/information is gained from such a story, as United or Liverpool drugs cheating? It's absolute gold. The money for the drama of it, the legal money out of it etc etc. It's huge. The interest in the league would be huge as a result as well.
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I disagree with this bit, the rest is bang on.
 

catcherintherye said:
What you say is absolutely right, and at best there is an enormous subconscious pressure on officials etc with those two teams.

However Lance Armstrong was even bigger and more establishment than both of them. We had school assemblies on what a wonderful man he was. It didn't protect him in the end, Partly because a story like that is just pure gold. Can you imagine how many clicks/checks/information is gained from such a story, as United or Liverpool drugs cheating? It's absolute gold. The money for the drama of it, the legal money out of it etc etc. It's huge. The interest in the league would be huge as a result as well.
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I watched a documentary on Lance Armstrong which showed the only reason he got caught was because one of the wives of his teammates found him so intolerable she pursued the case to any end. It was an open secret in the cycling world, everyone knew about it, his team, former teammates, competitors, even the anti doping people, but he passed every test and was seen as too high to take down.

The money involved will be in comeltlelly different proportions. Lance was one cyclist in a sport that is pennies compared to what’s at stake. Liverpool or United being fined or stripped of a trophy would be a multi billion pound decision. Look at the damage to Serie A after the cheating scandal there, and if anything the numbers would be even bigger now. It would never come out. These clubs could pay for better lawyers than any other organisational body. Look at City v uefa. Can you imagine the libel suit against whichever paper brought a charge of doping against one of these clubs and they managed to get out of it? United or Liverpool could sue them for billions and it would be a whole newspaper or media outlet immediately underwater. No one is ever going to take that risk. The best hope would be for a whistleblower, but which player suddenly escalated from a no mark to the best in the world winning trophies is going to come out and say that Klopp had them taking special inhalers. None.
 

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