Guardian Fiver getting stuck into Brendan and $tevie Me.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/sep/25/a-swelling-hubris
PRIDE COMES BEFORE A ($TEVIE MBE) FALL
Ah, Liverpool. What to do with Liverpool. Even when they win, as they technically did on Wednesday, edging out on penalties a Carlisle side that damn near disappeared from the Football League last season, they still manage to look faintly ludicrous. A bit like a man tripping over in a pub but just about managing to avoid spilling his drink everywhere – technically a win but you still have to sheepishly get up and shuffle back to your table. Talking of Liverpool and tripping over, $tevie Mbe has been in the news again.
$tevie, despite now winding down his career by playing alongside such titans as Donovan Ricketts, Gio dos Santos and the Ghost of Robbie Keane at LA Galaxy, is keeping himself in the news back home. And how? Why, he’s got a book out! Did you know he’s got a book out? Kept that quiet, didn’t he? Another one! The first volume of the 35-year-old man’s autobiography came after meekly slipping out of the 2006 World Cup, while the second volume lands on our bookshelves after losing 6-1 to Stoke. Still, we’re sure there are lots of interesting tales to tell, particularly about conversations with Merseyside disc jockeys, meek exits from international tournaments and that time Liverpool nearly won the Premier League.
This is the chance to get the inside track on why Liverpool didn’t so much trip over the final hurdle in 2014 as run into it, demolishing it into a thousand pieces and burrowing a nine-foot hole in the ground, particularly when there’s one moment that readily springs to mind, involving a certain former Anfield midfielder and a small falling incident.
$tevie wrote, about Liverpool’s nearly season and the game that ultimately cost them: “I’ve never been able to say this in public before but I was seriously concerned that we thought we could blow Chelsea away. I sensed an over-confidence in Brendan’s team talks. We played into Chelsea’s hands. I feared it then and I know it now.”
So there you go. One does wonder why, if $tevie sensed this swelling hubris, why he perhaps didn’t use his senior position as Liverpool’s designated deity to, y’know, have a word and try to calm things down a bit. But still, it’s always handy to have someone else to blame when the defining moment of Liverpool’s glorious failure involved a brief ball control calamity, a subsequent balance snafu and a terrace song that has caught on rather nicely. Presumably Brendan’s over-confidence extended to $tevie’s own assuredness in his footing, the skip thinking too much of how grippy his studs were, and thus came the unfortunate meeting of his mush and the Anfield turf.
Still, as if by magic, as if the universe is as serendipitously generous as to arrange things exactly (although it possibly had more to do with whoever schedules Liverpool’s press conferences), dear Brendan was talking today as well. And as if to scotch talk that he might be a tad over-confident, he trumpeted: “I walked in here as a 39-year-old manager and as I sit here now I am a much better manager but I understand I must get results. We know with one win you are back near the top four.” It is worth pointing out that one win will actually put Liverpool 11th, and that’s assuming everyone else loses. But let’s not nit-pick.
As you might imagine, most of the questions posed to the owner of the whitest teeth in football were related to his job, or potential imminent lack thereof. “I’m never complacent enough to think it never has been,” Brendan parped when asked if his position was unsure. “You need to be at your best every day when you come into a club of this stature, and thrive on that positive fear. It does not affect me. I have a belief in what I do. We nearly achieved great things.”
There you go. They nearly achieved great things. They nearly won stuff. They were nearly good. And Brendan may well nearly have a job soon.
