United’s Dross Is Liverpool’s Gain

There was one question that was answered for me during Sunday’s game at Anfield.

I was pleased when Liverpool went 2-0 up, felt dejected when City equalized, and was then unashamedly happy when Coutinho benefited from Kompany’s skewed clearance to fire a lovely shot to the inside of Hart’s post. Questioned answered: I would much rather Liverpool won the league than City.

In many ways, we have so much more in common with the Scousers. The fan base, the European endeavors, the heroes of the past and, of course, the tragedies. If there was ever a player that deserved his medal, it must Gerard, even though Fergie does not think he is a top, top player.

Liverpool have played some lovely football this season; even Suarez seems to have redeemed himself and the emergence of Sterling, Coutinho and Flanagan has been breathtaking. One wonders how good Januzaj would be now if Moyes didn’t keep fiddling with the team!

The players seem to be buying into Brendan Rodgers’ style of football, a style we envied at Swansea and now Liverpool. I wondered if Welbeck, five years his senior, could have taken Sterling’s goal with such aplomb – I doubt it. How would Moyes have deployed his team in such a tense and important game?

I guess what hurt the most was the sadness and envy; these were the type of games that we always competed in seriously. Do or die, where one point was make or break, where we had to keep our winning streak going to regain or retain our Premier League trophy.

Now we can only look on at our noisy neighbors and our old enemies from down the M62, who are having a party at our expense. The wealthy West Londoners are there in the mix as well, and we are stuck in seventh, stuttering from one game to another.

Roberto Martinez was the guest pundit on our Sky pre and post match debate, and what a wonderful, articulate man. What a great understanding he had of the positional strategies about to be played, while he stood with Andy Townsend at the big screen, discussing with eloquence the sequence of events to follow.

When I look at Moyes and his dithering post match comments, his undersold press conferences and his lack of confidence in his own team, spewing out half-arsed clichés (“We must do better”, “We can play better” “We were unlucky”, etc.), it makes me wish we had a manager more like Martinez or Rodgers – brave, tactically intelligent, modern and charismatic.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Oh Fergie, what have you done?!