It’s almost a cliché that the Christmas period shapes how a season unfolds. Those at the top at New Year usually win the league, those in the relegation spots usually get relegated etc etc. With games coming thick and fast whilst the rest of the country is wedged and bloated on the settee and either on holiday or recently unemployed (happy austere Christmas everybody!), there are crucial points to be won and lost during the feast of festive football. And by the time the hectic period is over, the managers have stopped complaining about too many matches and the commentators have started spouting clichés about the ‘magic’ of the FA Cup 3^rd round, the league programme will be into its second half.

We’ve had several significant Christmases over the years, so I thought I’d delve into Christmases past and see what they told us about what was to unfold later that season.

Boxing Day was always a traditional ‘go to’ match, with above-average attendances just expected as a matter of course. Not least because the Boxing Day match gets you out of the house and provides respite from the aforesaid settee and enforced jollity, often with people who don’t generally make you very jolly. Besides, you didn’t have to worry about having a ticket to go the match back then, you just got up and you and your mates decided to go.

For any managers, players or fans complaining about too much football over the holiday, spare a thought for the workhorses of the 1986/7 season. Partly because of how the dates fell in relation to a normal weekend fixture programme, there no fewer than four league games in nine days over the holiday period, something that has happened occasionally. We began on Boxing Day at Anfield against Manchester United, before they were any good. They were good enough to beat us 1-0 that day however with a late Norman Whiteside goal, their first away win of the season under their not-yet-purple-nosed new manager. The very next day we went to Hillsborough and won 1-0 with a Rush goal. New Year’s Day and we were off to Forest for a 1-1 draw with a late equaliser, again by Rush, then on Jan 3^rd another 1-0 win, this time against West Ham at home, came courtesy of a Steve McMahon goal. We finished the season a distant second behind the neighbouring bitters and lost the League Cup Final 1-2 against Arsenal (the first game we lost that Rush scored in), but won the big one, the one that mattered, the mighty inaugural Screen Sports Super Cup, beating Everton home and away in the final.

If you’d like a better Boxing Day against United, try 1978, when we whacked them 3-0 at the Big Top of Self-Delusion thanks to goals from Ray Kennedy, Jimmy Case and David Fairclough. We went on to win the league that season, as normal, with United ninth, Arsenal seventh, Spurs 11^th, City 15^th and Chelsea relegated!

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By Chris Rowland

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By Mark Wilson

A Jakarta-based journalist and editor. Author of Without a Dream in Our Hearts (http://withoutadreaminourhearts.blogspot.com), a blog about supporting Manchester City in the 21^st century.

It was a sorry sight. The players of the Indonesian national soccer team trudged off the pitch at the national stadium, and it wasn’t even full time yet. With fans venting their anger at the team’s performance by launching fireworks onto the pitch, match officials postponed the game while the air cleared, prolonging the embarrassment of a team that was about to lose 2-0 to Bahrain in a vital qualifying match for the 2014 World Cup. Outplayed, out-fought and out-thought by a country smaller than the Indonesian island of Bali, with a population of 1.2 million. I must admit, the future looked bleak for Indonesian football.

But not all is as it seems. Every weekend, on the fields surrounding the national stadium in Central Jakarta, a ray of sunlight may just be cutting through that ominous outlook. Here, a small part of the future of Indonesian soccer is taking shape – and Liverpool Football Club is behind it. For this is the home of Liverpool FC’s International Academy & Soccer Schools in Indonesia (LFCIAss). If Chris Wren, Commissioner of the Academy, has his way, then this Academy is going to do much for the future of Indonesian soccer.

“Liverpool FC is the first foreign club to set down a real footprint in this country,” says Wren, enthusiastic and passionate about the Academy’s vision. “The Club is committed to quality, sustainable development in Indonesia. Everything done here is in line with the standards of Liverpool Football Club. What you see here is a direct collaboration between the club, the Indonesian Liverpool supporters club [Big Reds] and this academy and soccer schools programme.”

LFCIAss informally opened its doors in June this year following a two-year relationship that tapped into the local expertise, credibility and networks of the British Chamber of Commerce. Today, LFCIAss in Jakarta welcomes 120 soccer-loving children onto its pitches every week on a pay-as-you-play basis, ranging between the ages of 6-17.

The soccer school in Jakarta is just the beginning. The Academy is looking to expand across the country. Beginning in February next year, there are plans to open one additional facility each month taking in the centres of Bandung, Solo, Medan, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Palembang, Riau, Makassar, Kalimantan and Papua. Then starting in March, the LFCIAss will be holding talent scouting competitions on a road show basis in six cities across the country, assessing around 3,000 kids every weekend. At the end of this process, the best 15 kids will be chosen to go to Liverpool to for a first-hand experience of the Academy.

This is one side of the Academy’s operations: developing talent and then channelling that talent to Liverpool. But that’s only half the story. The Academy also intends to give something back to Indonesian football.

“It would be fantastic to have a child accepted by Liverpool Football Club, but the LFCIAss model in Indonesia will make a significant contribution to raising the overall standards of youth soccer in this country,” says Wren, as a ball rattles the back of the net on the training pitch nearby.

“We’re keen to reach as many kids as possible. We’re trying to give them the Liverpool experience and we don’t want a situation where any child is excluded from that.”

Coach Paul Barratt in action

The Academy appears to be moving toward that target at pace. A Liverpool FC-branded pan-national youth league is in the offing, and the participating teams will come from 3,000 Indonesian football schools already active. The hope is that the youth league becomes a talent pool for the domestic football scene and beyond. To add to this, the Academy will be organising mobile football camps, engaging kids in towns across the country.

It doesn’t stop there. The plans extend to integrating Indonesian-centric health awareness sessions into football training. The academy also wants to organise a set of best practice sessions with Indonesian clubs, bringing over staff from the LFC Academy and transferring knowledge to clubs in Indonesia in terms of football administration. And if all that wasn’t enough, by the end of 2013 an Academy home will have been completed, which will include an educational centre offering scholarships for children to aspire to careers embracing all aspects of soccer.

Paul Barratt is the man responsible for implementing the soccer dimension of this vision. Barratt, 24, from Warrington, is himself a product of the LFC Academy. Aside from overseeing training sessions, he’s also responsible for identifying and training-up Indonesian coaches to the standards of LFC.

“Training-up Indonesian coaches is vital in sustaining the development of the game in this country. You need a group of people who can teach the kids the basics of the game,” says Barratt, who came through LFC’s ranks under the tenures of Gerard Houllier and Rafael Benitez.

I ask Barratt whether there is any sign of an Indonesian Steven Gerrard coming through the ranks. Not yet, it seems, but Barratt is keen to stress the potential of what he sees on the training pitch. “Many of these kids have the right skills but they lack a good understanding of the game. We focus a lot on movement. It’s really important for kids to understand space on a football field, how to move into it, how to exploit it. Emphasis is also placed on controlling the ball.”

This is a view that is echoed by parent Ardie, 33, from Central Jakarta. Ardie has one son attending the school, aged 14 years old. “My son really enjoys the coaching here. Having foreign coaches helps because they bring better drills. At other schools, it’s about endurance and physicality. Here it’s about technique and the game itself.”

Syam Satrio, 43, from South Jakarta, has a 13 year-old child attending the Academy. He thinks the training has improved his son to the point where he’s now the captain of his team at school. “My son really hopes that one day he be able to play in Europe, but if not, perhaps for one of Jakarta’s clubs or even the Indonesian under-23 team!”

It’s clear that there is so much enthusiasm for football in Indonesia. That’s why it’s such a travesty that the country continues to languish at 140^th in the world rankings. But for the game to improve domestically, the answers may well lie in places like this Academy, which imbue both children and coaches with the right approach to the game.

And Wren himself is at pains to emphasise the long term view: “People expect results quickly, but development takes time. The important thing is we’re identifying the kids early on, so our results will only begin to take shape in around seven years’ time. We have to be patient. The process can be fast-tracked by corporate Indonesia coming on board early for the journey with us.”

If the academy continues to move forward, then one senses that this patience will surely begin to reap dividends for all concerned.

By Phil Dodds

Ah, the Luxury Player. How we abhor and adore him in equal measure. The sultry attitude, the Iberian flair, the alice-band and the greasy hair [stereotyping for artistic effect is OK ! - Ed]. The ability to do things that no other player in the team can, coupled with a frustrating failure to fully apply himself, either in terms of work-rate, consistency or fitness. The Luxury Player is fatally flawed – he can look great on Match of the Day, but critics and fans who watch his every game will be suspicious about his true value to his club.

The idea of “luxury” in a football team is almost anathema to the traditional English ethic of honest hard work and upright decency, a culture where your effectiveness is measured by the muddiness of your kit after the game – and the Luxury Player’s will still be as crisp and pristine as a vicar’s laundry. It suggests an unnecessary elegance/sumptuousness, an indulgent extravagance which can only be enjoyed by those who can afford it. It tends to suggest plenty of style but comparatively little substance, brains over brawn, and more beauty than hard graft.

No alice band necessary

Well, in that sense, Charlie Adam – a stocky, Scottish midfielder with bad teeth and a receding hairline – is emphatically not your typical Luxury Player. His greatest vices on the pitch are not vanity or laziness but over-enthusiasm, ill-discipline and a questionable ‘motor’. He could only be deemed a “luxurious” player in the sense that he has some valuable attributes, but they are counter-balanced (or perhaps outweighed?) by a number of shortcomings which can, depending on the situation, hinder his team’s chances.

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By Daniel Geey

The Premier League (PL) will soon find out whether they have won or lost a court case that may totally change the way supporters watch PL football. This will have significant implications for every PL club, including Liverpool. Yet very few people yet seem to be aware of what is just around the corner.

On 4th October 2011, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will rule on whether the way the PL sells its broadcasting rights in the European Union (EU) is legal.

The central question is whether an EU citizen should be able to legally find a live PL broadcast from a legitimate broadcaster, pay a subscription and view the game. As the exclusive PL broadcaster (along with ESPN) Sky argue that UK citizens should only be able to view PL matches by subscribing to Sky.

However there is a realistic chance such exclusivity will be deemed illegal. Such a ruling would send the PL scurrying back to the drawing board in order to commercialise its broadcasting revenues in the EU. More significantly, Sky, having ploughed billions of pounds into the PL since 1992, would presumably be less inclined to invest such large sums again – and that would have a major impact on the finances and budgets of every PL club.

To understand why this is happening, let’s go back to the case’s humble beginnings. You may recall the case of a Portsmouth pub owner, Mrs Karen Murphy, who used decoder cards imported from Greece to show PL games. She’s hardly the only one. QC Leisure is a stockist and supplier of foreign decoders to pubs and the general public in the UK. (There is a third case called Euroview but for simplicity’s sake, I will highlight just these two cases).

Mrs Murphy was prosecuted by Media Protection Services Limited for the use of an “illicit” Greek decoder card. QC Leisure was sued for copyright infringement by the PL. In their defences Mrs Murphy and QC Leisure both raised questions about the relationship between the EU principles of free movement of goods and services and highly lucrative European broadcasting rights. This led to a series of questions being referred to the ECJ by the English courts.

(It is important to note that this is not the same thing at all as internet piracy. Here Mrs Murphy was paying a legitimate subscription to a legitimate broadcaster who had won the rights in a PL auction to be the authorised broadcaster in that Member State.)

Mrs Murphy and QC Leisure argue that the way in which the PL enters into its contracts with various broadcasters throughout the EU, among other things, infringes EU principles of free movement of goods and services and EU competition law. They argue that the PL restricts:

1. the ability of PL rights holding broadcasters to screen live pictures outside their own designated territory; and
2. the capacity of Mrs Murphy or QC Leisure to either view, or purchase decoders to view, live PL matches from any source other than the exclusive national Premier League rights holding broadcaster (i.e. Sky and ESPN can only broadcast their exclusive pictures in their allotted UK territory).

Where Have We Got To So Far?

Earlier this year a European judge called the Advocate General (AG), gave her reasoned opinion on the matters of European law. It is fair to say that AG Kokott was pretty blunt. Simply put, partitioning individual Member State countries and allocating exclusive broadcasters for each territory was at odds with the internal European market. She believed that consumers should be able to search the European market for the cheapest product and not be exclusively tied into a broadcaster because of where that consumer lives.

The AG’s opinion is not binding however. The ECJ may still take a different approach in its judgment. But if the Court does follow the AG’s opinion, its ruling will strike at the very heart of the PL’s lucrative European broadcasting rights deals. Exclusivity has been the cornerstone of the PL’s highly successful broadcasting revenue strategy. Should the AG opinion be upheld by the ECJ, the implications for broadcasters like Sky, rights holders like the PL and consumers throughout the EU could be ground-breaking.

What are the Possibilities?

If the ECJ sides with Mrs Murphy, the PL will need a fundamental rethink of how it tenders for its lucrative broadcasting rights in the EU. At present Sky and ESPN are willing to pay large sums to the PL because the PL guarantees total national exclusivity for the broadcasters (i.e. UK consumers only have the option of Sky and ESPN).

If this exclusivity is ruled illegal, there are several potential possibilities:

1: The PL may decide to auction off its rights on a pan-European wide basis. That means that broadcasters who have EU wide capabilities may bid to offer consumers in any Member State the ability to watch PL football through a designated channel. Competition may be possible if more than one product is tendered by the PL so that numerous broadcasters can compete on price and quality of the product.

2: The PL takes a risk and starts marketing its own PL channel in the EU, thus by-passing broadcasters completely. This could happen, as occurs in the Dutch Eredivisie, where the subscription channel is available on every platform on a non-discriminatory basis. In the UK, that would mean a subscription PL TV channel being available on each of the Sky, Virgin, BT Vision, Top Up TV and FreeView platforms.

3. The PL may decide to stop supplying some Member States where broadcasters do not pay the high prices like in the UK. This would then have the effect of only targeting Member State countries where demand for PL matches is higher and broadcasters are willing to pay more. The result would mean there would not be large price differences, like those that exist at present, that consumers in the UK take advantage of.

4: The status quo remains. Sky and ESPN keep broadcasting PL football in the UK but the PL cannot forbid a consumer from going to another Member State to buy a legitimate PL broadcast decoder and decoder card. In such instances, the amounts that Sky and ESPN would be willing to pay would decrease rapidly because they are not guaranteed a captive subscriber audience.

Of course, the ECJ may yet rule in favour of the PL. If that is the case, simply forget options 1-4! However, it seems likely that with the AG opinion in favour of Mrs Murphy and QC Leisure, there is a fair likelihood that the ECJ will rule against the PL.

Conclusion

Many PL clubs rely heavily on broadcasting money, primarily from the domestic Sky deal. Although overseas broadcasting revenue has increased dramatically since the last global tender process, there is the potential for a large shortfall in the money paid to the 20 PL clubs should the PL not have a back up plan to maximise commercial revenues in the wake of a negative ECJ decision.

4th October is likely to be an interesting day for all of football’s stakeholders.

Daniel Geey advises clients in the football industry. Such guidance has included advice on the Fit and Proper Person Test, ownership requirements, parachute payments and the football creditors rule, disclosure obligations under the relevant football authority’s rules, conflicts of interest and third party player ownership contracts. Daniel has also provided guidance on UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations and how the rules may affect the future financial planning of football clubs. He has also given briefings and spoken at workshops and conferences on the interplay between Competition Law, Football and Broadcasting.

So apart from losing 0-4, having two men sent off and one taken off injured, everything went according to plan at White Hart Lane then! It was a sobering defeat and awful performance alright, the sort we don’t get too often, mercifully, and on a par both quantitively and qualitively with the worst of them. But not unprecedented. And where can you look for context, for solace, other than history? How often do these heavy defeats happen and what can we learn from them? How were we doing at the time they happened – in a trough already or did they come out of the blue? – and what effect did they have on us subsequently? Can we find any comfort from heavy defeats in the past?

Well yes actually. We’ve had a few spankings over the years and come back stronger from most of them. Shanks himself wasn’t immune. In the mid-1960s we were on a sharp rise, from Division 2 winners in 1961/2 to Division 1 winners two seasons later, FA Cup winners the year after and champions again the season after that. We got our first taste of European football in 1964/5 and made a pretty impressive start, reaching the semi-finals of the European Cup at our first attempt  before losing controversially at Inter Milan 0-3 in the second leg after a 3-1 win at Anfield. The season after we went one stage further, reaching the final of the Cup Winners’ Cup before losing 1-2 to Borussia Dortmund at Hampden Park in Glasgow, to a freak own goal. We were learning fast. And as learning experiences go, we certainly got one in the 1966/7 season’s European Cup. On 7^th December 1966, all aglow from England’s World Cup win and our own fast-burgeoning European pedigree, as well as a run of five wins in six games ahead of the game, we went to Amsterdam to take on a pretty unknown (at the time) Ajax (in fact so unknown, even the TV commentators pronounced the ‘j’ and made them sound like the well-known domestic cleaning product. But it was us that were taken very roughly to the cleaners, by a side containing a very young Johan Cruyff). The Dutch champions tore Liverpool apart in foggy Amsterdam and were four up by half-time. They eventually won 5-1, with Chris Lawler scoring for us in the very last minute. Roger Hunt scored twice at Anfield in the return but so did Cruyff, and Liverpool lost 3-7 on aggregate. This football lesson was delivered by a club that would go on to win the Champions’ cup for three successive seasons.

How did this severe thrashing and shock to the system affect us? Nobody does that to Liverpool, right? Well the game right after Amsterdam we got a creditable 2-2 draw at Old Trafford against a United that would finish champions. Following the second leg at Anfield that saw us eliminated from Europe, we did a 2-1 double over Chelsea (interestingly, on Christmas Eve then Boxing Day!). But as we finished fifth that season and didn’t win another trophy or make any progress in Europe until 1972/3, you might say there was no long term bounce back from Ajax, though you could hardly blame the drought on that one game.

Three years later, on 1^st November 1969 we took our next horrible hammering, 0-4 at the Baseball Ground, by an ascendant Derby County who would soon – well in 1971/2 – be crowned champions. We’d beaten Southampton 4-1 at Anfield in the previous game – nothing to suggest what was about to happen. A goalless home draw with Wolves followed, then a 1-0 defeat at Vitoria Setubal in the European Fairs Cup. Three games without a goal, and we went on to finish fifth and won nothing.

Another defeat that season, although a more modest 0-1, proved more pivotal. When 2^nd Division Watford humbled us in the FA Cup quarter-final at Vicarage Road, the lacklustre show by an ageing Reds side prompted Shanks to break-up the successful team of the mid-1960′s and prepare to build another dynasty for the early-1970′s. For the likes of keeper Tommy Lawrence, Chris Lawler, Ron Yeats, Peter Thompson and Roger Hunt, their days were numbered. To replace them came such as Ray Clemence, Phil Neal, Larry Lloyd, Kevin Keegan and Steve Heighway. You know the rest.

It was another seven years before our next humiliatingly heavy defeat, at Aston Villa on 15^th December 1976 (I was there!) Again it followed a routine 3-1 home win, against QPR. Again, no clue of what was about to happen. Also, notice how these heavy defeats are very rarely followed by another in the same season, or even for a few years – grounds for optimism there.

We were 5-1 down by half-time at Villa Park that night (so drew the second half!). As left back Joey Jones said:

“When we trooped off at half-time, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, Ronnie Moran and Roy Evans were waiting and each delivered his rollicking in his own particular way. Joe lost his cool, to say the least, and when he did that we all sat up. Then Bob, Ronnie and Roy gave their verdicts. Now matter how big the name, we all caught it in the neck. I had never known anything like it.”

The following game we lost again, 0-2 at West Ham, but got back to winning ways the game after, 4-0 v Stoke at Anfield. To say the season itself suffered no terminal damage at Villa Park would be an understatement; as I like to remind Villa supporters still gloating over that score, who won the title that season? And the European Cup too? And reached the FA Cup Final?

We had not one but two nasty defeats at Coventry City – 0-4 on 10^th December 1983, and 1-5 on 19^th December 1992. The first was a real oddity, sandwiched between two wins before and a 4-0 home win against Notts County immediately afterwards. How much harm did it do? Not too much actually, since we went on to win the League, European Cup and League Cup.

The 1992 defeat – our biggest for 16 years since the Villa Park debacle – was notable for the team we put out. It included Hooper in goal, Mike Marsh at right back, Torben Piechnik, a debuting Bjornebye, Paul Stewart … what could possibly go wrong? Yet strangely we dominated the match for over an hour – for that reason alone I’d put it ahead of the performance at Spurs on Sunday. Jamie Redknapp scored and got sent off when we were 3-1 down. It heralded a bad run, even by Souness’ managerial standards. We’d been knocked out of the League Cup the previous midweek at Palace, and went on to draw two then lose three, two of them consecutively at Anfield. We finished sixth that season. This time the defeat was not entirely unsynchronised with its context.

Another team who inflicted more than one heavy defeat on us was Luton Town – this time twice in one season, 1986/7. On 25^th October we lost 1-4 at Kenilworth Road in a league game. Weirdly, we won the game before 4-0, and the following three 4-1, 6-2 and 3-1 – so the heavy defeat was a real aberration. Later, in January, we lost 0-3 there in an FA Cup Round 3 replay, again amongst a run of decent results. Boss Kenny complained loudly about the plastic pitch – remember the joke? What’s the difference between Kenny Dalglish and a jumbo jet? The jumbo jet stops whining when it leaves Luton. That season we lost the League Cup Final to Arsenal and finished runners-up to Everton in the league.

Which brings us to Arsenal, who have inflicted more heavy defeats on us than any other team. The 0-4 on 20^th April 1992 against George Graham’s abdicating champions was Liverpool’s heaviest league defeat for nine years – since Coventry. Liverpool caretaker manager Ronnie Moran (Graeme Souness was recuperating from heart surgery) admitted:

“I’m sick inside, but you can’t show that – life must go on. It was embarrassing the way we lost the goals. That was Sunday league defending, but it is not just only the men at the back who were at fault.”

Sounds familiar from Sunday? That game was preceded by two draws and two defeats, and followed by another draw – not a good run, yet three weeks later we won the FA Cup, against Sunderland. We finished sixth in the league.

A couple of FA Cup defeats, though only by the odd goal,  triggered bouts of inner searching – the final against Wimbledon in 1988 and especially the semi-final against Palace (3-4) at Villa Park in 1990.

Most humblings have, naturally enough, come away from Anfield. But there have been a few Anfield horrors too over the years. A Bobby Charlton-inspired United won 4-1 at fortress Anfield on December 1969, just over a month after that thrashing at Derby. Yet the week before we’d won the derby 3-0 at Goodison, and won 5-1 at Burnley in the following match. Another out-of-context heavy defeat. Much more recently, there was that 1-4 v Chelsea on 2^nd October 2005 (when we were defending European champions), with a certain Joe Cole on the scoresheet. And let’s not overlook that bizarre 3-6 against Arsenal in the Carling Cup in January 2007.

There have been other 0-4 defeats in our recent Prem history. The one at Ranieri’s Chelsea on 16^th December 2001 (a lot of our heaviest defeats have been in December) was our first Premiership defeat in 13 games, and meant Phil Thompson’s side (Houllier was recovering from his heart op) had wasted the opportunity to establish the kind of lead from which championships are won. Instead, we remained just three points clear of our closest rivals Arsenal, who went on to win the title with us as runners-up. The game was preceded by a goalless draw at Fulham and followed by another defeat, crucially at home to Wenger’s Arsenal, before a run of four without defeat.

That 4-0 loss at Old Trafford on April 5^th 2003 was of course tempered by the early sending off of Sami Hyypia after just three minutes, so doesn’t count! The game came in the middle of a good run, preceded by three league wins and followed by four more. Also, we did beat them in the Carling Cup Final in Cardiff earlier in the season, and we again finished fifth.

A defeat doesn’t have to be heavy to be damaging to morale; for example two 0-2s at St Mary’s against Southampton, one of which prompted expert pundit Alan Hansen to say it was our worst performance in 40 years, and a few under Roy Hodgson (Blackpool, Wolves and Northampton at home, Stoke and Everton away) were pretty morale-sapping at the time. And remember that 0-3 at Goodison early in the 2006/7 season? The same season in which we lost heavily three times to Arsenal, 3-0 away in the league, 3-6 in the Carling Cup and 1-3 in the FA Cup. Yet we beat them 4-1 at Anfield in the league with a Crouch hat-trick and went on to reach the Champions League Final.

All of which goes to prove conclusively there’s life even after a heavy beating or three!

(For more on this theme, read Brian Durand’s blog: http://thekop.liverpoolfc.tv/_Bad-days-Nothing-new/blog/5147142/173471.html)

The second part of my look back at our summer transfer activity over the years brings us up to date, excluding this summer’s business on the grounds that it probably isn’t finished yet. It’ll be interesting to see where it ranks in terms of net spend. I’m guessing pretty high up.

I look at each summer’s transfer business, in and out, and the costs, and try to set it in some context as to where the club was at the time, where it needed to be and to what effect those transfers might have had. Which were solid gold, which were just OK where we got our money’s worth, which didn’t turn out very well and which were downright disastrous? As ever, it’s a balance between cost, playing contribution and sell-on price.

Solid gold – Xabi Alonso, £10.7m, 2004. Sold for £30m, 2009. No doubts which category of transfer he fitted into.

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Part 1 – 1992-2000

As transfer speculation is one way of whiling away the summer – well if you’re not changing managers or owners anyway – I decided to take a look back at our summer transfer activity over the years to see how well it’s worked out and what effect the summer signings had. And since football only began in 1992, I thought that might be the place to start.

One conclusion you draw is that some summers’ business succeeds in raising expectations to fever point, while others leave us distinctly underwhelmed. Some are just notably, totally horrible – the summer of 2002 being the prime example. Our summer horribilis followed our 2001 cup treble and first qualification for the Champions League, so there was a rising expectation that we were on the brink of returning to the very top after a dismal decade. Then came Diouf, Diao and Cheyrou, out went over £18 m, and down the big snake to the starting square went LFC.

What was also highlighted was the spectacular wastes of money under the reign of one Graeme Souness. If people criticise Rafa for spending money on tat – which has been refuted time and again by those awkward things called facts – then how did Souness ever get away with it without a media mauling that made Rafa’s look like polite dinner party chat?

The review finishes with the final Rafa/Hicks and Gillett seasons, when a new requirement entered the sorry picture – to make a transfer surplus rather than spending to build a title-winning team when all arond were strengthening and even Stoke and Wigan were outspending us.

I will look at each summer’s transfers, in and out, in the months of May, June, July and August, and the sums involved, and try to set each summer’s business in some context as to where the club was at the time, where it was trying to be and to what extent those transfers helped in achieving those aims. (I guess the trite answer would be that they didn’t, judged by the club’s overriding requirement of winning the title.) It’s a story of a few oh-so-close near misses and the occasional shot that was so wide it went out for a throw-in.

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This is an abridged version of the final chapter of From Where I Was Standing, Chris Rowland’s tale of the trip to Brussels with his usual collection of match-going mates, and how events, after a care-free journey, took a turn for the worse.

Chapter 10

IN CONCLUSION

In the days and weeks that followed, Heysel continued to dominate the news. From the newspapers to TV chat shows to the House of Commons, it was just about the only topic of debate. A few days later, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pressured the FA to ban all English clubs from Europe indefinitely. Our own Football Association had pre-empted them by withdrawing our clubs from the following season’s European tournaments pending UEFA’s announcements. Two days later she was granted her wish as UEFA banned all English sides for what they stated was “an indeterminate period of time”. Liverpool received an additional ban of “indeterminate plus three years”, or more precisely, three further years in which Liverpool qualified for European competition. If they didn’t, the ban would roll on until they did. Given Thatcher’s previously stated dislike of the city of Liverpool –– probably because of its left-wing politics and strong opposition to her government and philosophy –– and her very apparent dislike of football and football supporters generally, we hardly expected any help from her. It was the excuse she and her cronies had been looking for to put the boot into football just the way they had with the miners.

She and the Queen issued formal apologies to the people of Belgium and Italy. That must have helped. Liverpool Football Club itself would have been justified in feeling harshly treated; it had done all within its powers to control its own supporters, and sold no tickets for the ill-fated Block Z. It was not the club’s fault that some other agency fatally did so, nor that some of its supporters could not resist a punch-up. Liverpool FC also had no part in the decision to stage a major match at Heysel in the first place; indeed Liverpool’s secretary Peter Robinson urgently requested that UEFA move the final to a more suitable and safer venue, but his plea was ignored. Neither was the club responsible for the appalling condition of the Heysel Stadium, the inadequate supervision outside it or the supine inertia of the authorities inside it. Above all, Liverpool FC had good reason, based on precedent, to trust its supporters.

In the end, the ban on English clubs competing in Europe ran for five years, with Liverpool’s extra three years reduced by two. As English clubs had dominated the European Cup in the eight seasons before Heysel, winning it seven times (Liverpool in 1977, 1978, 1981 and 1984, Nottingham Forest in 1979 and 1980, and Aston Villa in 1982), this left a considerable hole in Europe’s most prestigious football competition. It took until 1999 for an English club to win it again, with Manchester United’s victory in Barcelona. That long gap was Liverpool’s fault too, apparently, because all our clubs had to catch up again after the ban that Liverpool caused.

So Liverpool’s “punishment” was only an extra season’s ban beyond that of the other English clubs that qualified for European football. But in truth the ban was the bill English football had to pay not only for Heysel but for over a decade of violence by English football followers, in which Liverpool’s supporters actually played very little part. Incomprehensibly, the English national team, the epicentre of more exported hooliganism than all the individual clubs put together, was never banned, and was still allowed to participate in international football in Europe. So the very same fans, the very same individuals, whose clubs were banned had only to trade their club colours for their country to be able to roam the continent freely and legitimately following England. The inconsistency of UEFA’s decisions extended to the remarkable leniency shown to Juventus for the considerable part played by their supporters in the disturbances at Heysel. Their ”punishment” was to begin the defence of the trophy they won in Brussels by playing their home European Cup games the following season behind closed doors. Hardly hard line. The point was made that Juventus’ fans had no particular ‘previous’ before Heysel; true, but neither did Liverpool’s.

But such was the prevailing terrace culture of the mid-’80s, with violence endemic in and around football grounds throughout England, and such was the level of antagonism surrounding English football at the time, that a major crowd disaster was bound to happen somewhere, sometime. In Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby puts it this way:

‘The kids’ stuff that proved murderous in Brussels belonged firmly and clearly on a continuum of apparently harmless but obviously threatening acts –– violent chants, wanker signs, the whole, petty hardact works –– in which a very large minority of fans had been indulging for nearly 20 years. In short Heysel was an organic part of a culture that many of us, myself included, had contributed towards.’

A series of goodwill gestures and well-intentioned wound dressing between the two clubs and cities followed –– memorial services in Liverpool and Turin, exchange visits between the two cities, the possibility of a friendly match in Turin between the clubs. British and Belgian police forces swapped intelligence and photographs ad infinitum –– you couldn’t pick up a newspaper or switch on the TV without seeing a circled “wanted” face. The Belgian government creaked under the weight of questioning and accusations of gross incompetence, and, fatally holed below the waterline, eventually sank. Meanwhile its British counterpart, Thatcher’s hang ‘em flog ‘em brigade, maintained a continuous stream of anti-football, anti-Liverpool invective, threatening draconian crowd control measures, the introduction of identity cards and probably the reintroduction of National Service and the death penalty, the compulsory sterilisation of Liverpool mothers or the ritual slaughter of their first-born. Scapegoats were in huge demand, and the slavering tabloid press led the hunt voraciously, revelling in its self-appointed role as the Voice of Reason whilst displaying absolutely none, and the licence Heysel appeared to give it to rant unchecked in an orgy of self-righteous bigotry. Balance and reason, it seemed, had no part in this public “debate”.

A series of increasingly bizarre and surreal conspiracy theories began to emerge in the wake of Heysel; there were reports of extremist right-wing groups having been present, claims that swastika flags and banners and far-right propaganda had been found amongst the debris. There were some suggestions that these may have belonged not to British but Italian fascists who had been there to agitate. It would certainly be difficult to imagine stonier ground for right-wing dogma than the vast bulk of Liverpool supporters, whose red allegiance was not confined to football. Their politics, and the city they come from, inclined sharply towards the left.

The very day after the disaster, UEFA’s chief observer, Gunter Schneider, stated, “Only the English fans were responsible. Of that there is no doubt.” He said ‘English’ fans, not solely Liverpool fans, because several Juventus supporters who were at the game had claimed that there were supporters from many British clubs, including Chelsea. Not quite as unfeasible as it may sound; Chelsea stood to gain from a Liverpool victory –– or a Liverpool ban –– as they themselves would then qualify for European football the following season. Besides, a European Cup Final in Brussels would make an attractive, possibilities-packed Bank Holiday week alternative for a Londoner, just a short and easy hop across the water and barely further than Brighton, Southend or Margate.

The lack of ticket control at the ground certainly made it impossible for the authorities to know who was in the ground and where; here’s an account from a football website –– though not a Liverpool one:

“It was impossible for police to weed out known troublemakers, and easy for pockets of hard core hooligans to assemble wherever they wished. As a result, two hours before kick off, perhaps the most malevolent assembly of football supporters ever seen in one place had gathered, and as far as they were concerned, it was payback time (for Rome 1984). It should be understood that not just Liverpool hooligans were present. There were contingents from a great many firms all over the country, from Luton MIGS to Millwall Bushwackers, West Ham ICF and Newcastle Toon Army. After the events in Rome, club rivalries had been put aside: Juventus were to catch the full fury of the English hooligan elite. There was a score to settle.”

The Heysel disaster’s capacity to fire the imagination reached its nadir when, in April 1986, nearly a year later, a typed, unsigned letter bearing a Los Angeles postmark was received by The Guardian newspaper in London, claiming that the whole tragedy of Heysel had been a “mafia-inspired conspiracy” to blacken the name of soccer and so further the worldwide expansion of American football. “Italian Americans,” it said, “mingled with the Juventus supporters to provoke trouble; Liverpool fans, and English soccer in general, took the rap.” Well the last bit was undeniable; but the theory sounded more like a plot for a paperback and the product of an over-fertile imagination.

All I can say is that none of these things were witnessed by any of us. Although it did not feel quite like the usual Liverpool crowd that fateful evening in Brussels, and much as though we would love to be able to shed some of the responsibility and have it shared by Chelsea or any other club’s fans, right-wing extremists or the Mafia, the fact is that when twenty six names to be charged with manslaughter were released, most had Merseyside addresses.

The release of those names triggered a protracted period of legal jousting and bumbling as the process leading to their extradition degenerated towards farce. It wasn’t until late in 1987 that the accused were finally taken to Belgium to face trial, after over two years of waiting to have their fates decided. It seemed that everything connected to the Heysel, even afterwards, had to be tainted by incompetence.

The ‘Official Reports’ season duly began. Firstly, the Popplewell Report on crowd safety and control at sports grounds, already commissioned by the UK Government pre-Heysel, had its remit widened to incorporate a specific study of Heysel. Published in January 1986, it acknowledged that the first crowd disturbances at Heysel had in fact occurred at the other end, where the main body of Juventus supporters stood, as they clashed with police. This, the report stated, led to English fans firing flares and throwing stones into the mostly-Italian crowd in Block Z –– an observation so at odds with what the ranters in Government and media preferred to believe that they ignored it completely. The report went on:

“Between 7.15 and 7.30pm, English fans charged Block Z. There were three charges, the third resulted in the Italian supporters in Block Z, who were seeking to escape, being squashed and suffocated. Everyone knows that those guilty of the violence, those responsible for the deaths of the victims, are the violent groups amongst the English supporters.”

The report acknowledged the poor condition of the stadium and the failure of the police to intervene quickly enough or take adequate action, and added, with masterly understatement, that “a ban on the sale of alcohol outside the ground was not enforced”. Indeed it wasn’t.

By November 1986, after an 18-month investigation, the dossier of top Belgian judge Mrs Marina Coppieters was finally published. In sharp contrast to the one-sided version of events on this side of the Channel, it concluded that perhaps blame should not rest solely with the English fans, but instead should be shared by the police and football authorities. Several top officials were incriminated by some of the dossier’s findings, including police captain Johan Mahieu, who had been in charge of security on May 29th 1985 and was now charged with involuntary manslaughter.

That bears repeating: the police captain who had been in charge of security at the Heysel Stadium was charged with involuntary manslaughter. How many anti-Liverpool ranters over Heysel are aware of that? Then again, many of them weren’t even born at the time, but just accepted their own club’s fans’ warped view of it.

We had known all along that without significant other factors, there would have been no deaths, no major news story, just a minor routine pre-match skirmish followed by a game of football. That somebody somewhere had finally acknowledged it brought huge relief.

There is no doubt that events at Heysel Stadium amounted to a disaster without parallel for European football. Neither the Ibrox or Bradford disasters that preceded it, nor Hillsborough that was to follow, though all involved loss of life, had crowd violence at their core. In football terms they were also purely domestic affairs, with no pan-European dimension.

It has become the accepted version of events that the Heysel stadium disaster was solely the result of hooliganism and rioting by Liverpool fans. Yet none of the 39 victims lost their lives as a result of being beaten, kicked, stoned or stabbed. And none who fought and sought to intimidate and subjugate did so with murder in mind or with even the faintest notion of what was about to follow. Perhaps only an architect or engineer could have foreseen those. Even describing the skirmishes at Heysel as ‘rioting’ would be misleading. Judged by the standards of the time, or indeed any time, what Heysel actually witnessed was nothing more than a token bout of territorial terrace ritual involving some fist-flailing and air-punching during which few blows were actually landed and from which few injuries resulted. On any other day it would have led to nothing more than the odd bloody nose or black eye, a bit of tut-tutting from onlookers and commentators, with the whole episode of minor scale pre-match disturbance completely forgotten and unreported as soon as the game got underway. Some missiles were thrown –– in both directions –– and several charges across the terracing occurred. Threatening and unpleasant behaviour, but wholly unexceptional at that time, and only possible because it was made possible. Nowadays it wouldn’t be.

But then a wall collapsed and changed everything. Ultimately, what converted an unremarkable skirmish into a fatal tragedy, what transported Heysel from the mundane to the extraordinary, was not the scale or degree of savagery but decaying cement, a structural defect, the final executioner not hooligans but the crumbling, decomposing perimeter wall of Block Z. The wall, no more than four feet high and twenty feet long, was more than 50 years old, its cement cladding crumbling away from the rotting brickwork. Its obscene result was 39 fatalities.

Hooliganism was only the penultimate link in a long chain that stretched right back to our first sight of the match ticket, in that Coventry pub on a Monday evening a full nine days before the match, when we first saw that portentous blob overprinted across the letter Z. To us, it clearly signified that Block Z would be either empty or occupied by neutrals, for crowd segregation purposes. That’s how it always was in England and Europe at the time, for every single game, with rival fans segregated and empty buffer zones between them.

But instead, 5,000 supposedly “neutral” tickets for Block Z were placed on open sale in Brussels. On the morning of the day that they went on sale, they were all gone. Inevitably and utterly predictably, most found their way towards Brussels’ substantial local Italian population or to Juventus supporters back in Italy, after large blocks of tickets had been bought up by Italian travel agents and ticket touts, with very few falling into neutral local Belgian hands. The open sale was halted when this became apparent, but too late. They were sold or sold on to the people who were to die. That was the first link in the chain, and when the tragedy of the Heysel Stadium really began. The Belgian football union, which organised the match, had taken the decision to sell those tickets rather than allocate them to the two finalist clubs, to increase its profits from the game. Anyone involved with football would have known what was going to happen to those tickets beforehand, it was blindingly obvious. As the Popplewell Report confirmed:

“… some organisations bought large quantities of tickets … by using their employees to take it in turns to go to the ticket windows. A large number of tickets for Block Z came into the hands of Juventus fans.”

So the stadium management and presumably UEFA and the local police, knew in advance that Block Z, the block immediately adjacent to the main body of Liverpool supporters, would be neither empty nor neutral, but occupied by rival supporters. They already knew that. You don’t have to be a genius to work out the potential danger of such an arrangement. So wouldn’t you reasonably expect, given this advance knowledge, that Block Z would be strongly policed and segregation rigidly enforced? Instead there was no gap at all between the two sets of supporters, no empty buffer zone, and just a flimsy stretch of chest-high chicken wire between them, unable to withstand any attempt to breach it and guaranteed not to deter one. And the police presence in that area of the ground? When the exchanges between the rival sets of fans began, there were “five policemen and two dogs” separating the crowds, which would sound laughable if the consequences hadn’t been as they were.

Even then, after those initial exchanges, when the potential problems had made themselves all too clear, there was still no response, either from the handful of police present in that area or more tellingly, from the police control (I use the term loosely) operation at the stadium. That would have been the obvious time and opportunity to send in numbers, restore order and separate the two sets of fans with an armed human barrier. It certainly would have happened in England. It later transpired that that the police in Block Z had been poorly trained, strictly third division, ‘the bottom of the basket’ as the French phrase has it. Nor was there a police command centre in the Heysel Stadium to coordinate response, and besides, police radios weren’t working anyway, to compound their inability to react to the situation. Furthermore, the officer in charge of policing had not attended any of the planning meetings before the European Cup Final. In short, the police operation was an utter shambles, which explains why the officer in charge received the involuntary manslaughter charge.

In summary, none of the usual factors to prevent or discourage confrontation was in place. As British police forces responsible for crowd control at English football matches will confirm, these are basic precautions. The control and planning at Heysel fell shamefully short of the most elementary requirements, and amounted to a dereliction of responsibility that made effective crowd segregation impossible. The then secretary of Liverpool FC, Peter Robinson, said:

‘From day one I was concerned about this neutral area. I argued all along that we should have one end and Juventus the other. We suggested there should be a meeting between the two clubs but the Belgian authorities said no. There were serious planning mistakes. That doesn’t excuse what happened, but the problems would not have occurred if it had been done in a different way. It could all have been avoided.”

Short of withdrawing from the match because of their concerns, there was little more that the club itself could have done either before, during or after Heysel.

Long before the day of the game, many concerns had been expressed that the ground was unsafe. When Arsenal had played there several years previously, their supporters had complained about how dilapidated the stadium was. Built in the 1920s, the Heysel Stadium was quite possibly the worst venue in the world to host such a volatile encounter. The game was due to be the last match ever played at the ground, as it had been condemned many years previously for failing to meet modern standards of safety and design. As a result, little money had been spent upon it, and large parts of the stadium were crumbling.

When ordered by the judge to survey the disaster scene, leading Belgian architect Joseph Ange concluded:

“… areas reserved for standing room [including the ill-fated Block Z] remain as they were at the time of their construction in 1930. They are in an advanced state of decay. Only the hand-rest remains on most of the handrails, most are unstable and several on the point of collapse. The handrails were quickly and easily destroyed by the pressure of the crowds, which had no proper means of escape. Concrete terracing was eroded and, crucially, neither the barrier between Blocks Y and Z nor the wall in Block Z were strong enough to resist crowd pressure.”

A London council surveyor sent to the stadium after the tragedy confirmed that there was no way in which it would have been allowed to operate under British regulations. Hans Bangerter, then general secretary for UEFA, criticised the police, though not UEFA themselves of course: “The disaster would not have happened if our specific instructions on security had not been so badly disregarded by the Brussels police and especially the gendarmerie. The English vandals would not have been able to perform such terrible deeds and create such misery if they had not been helped by the frightful incompetence of the Belgian security forces.”

Nor if your organisation had selected an appropriate venue in the first place and not ignored advice and even pleas to switch it, Mr. Bangerter.

This article appeared in the News on Sunday on July 12 1987:

“I went to the Heysel Stadium in the autumn of 1984 –– about six months before the disaster –– for a World Cup qualifying match. I remember only too well the reaction of myself and my friends upon entering the stadium; it was an absolute disgrace. Rickety safety barriers, crumbling walls, ancient terracing, non-existent facilities: a recipe for disaster if ever I saw one. Of one thing I am certain; if basic safety checks had been made and proper segregation been enforced, that wall would not have collapsed and those people would still be alive now. That stadium would have been unfit for a women’s institute convention, never mind a European Cup Final. And as far as the received wisdom that all the trouble was caused by Liverpool fans –– I remember vividly the Italian thugs with their fascist flags and their ‘Reds are Animals’ banner, the guy with the gun, the stick-throwing mobs … and above all, I remember the total impotence and incompetence of the Belgian authorities who stood by while a full scale riot took place, completely and utterly unprepared. A number of Englishmen, not all from Liverpool, behaved like evil scum. They should be extradited and dealt with in the severest possible manner by the Belgian authorities. But it is my contention that the blame should be shared by the Italian thugs, and by the Belgians themselves. We should never forget what happened in Brussels. But it’s time we threw off the guilt, which is not all ours by any means.”

It was also reported that, “… while it is true that the stadium was in abject condition, that Juventus’ supporters found their way into a supposedly neutral section at the Liverpool end, and that local police inflamed the situation, the fact is that without these antagonistic charges, nobody would have died.”

Well, you could just as easily turn that around. Had the stadium not been in abject condition, had Juventus’ supporters not found their way into a supposedly neutral section at the Liverpool end, had local police not inflamed the situation, nobody would have died either. It took all those factors to be present for the tragedy to occur, you can’t just highlight one over another because it suits your purposes.

Yet despite all the concerns about the Heysel Stadium’s unsuitability as a venue for a match of such magnitude, and the ticking time bomb of ticket distribution in Section Z, UEFA still refused to amend their decision that this outdated and universally condemned stage was suitable and safe for Europe’s showpiece football match between two of Europe’s most passionately-followed teams. In doing so they were taking a dangerous and highly irresponsible risk. They gambled and lost, and blamed somebody else.

Poor crowd control and segregation and a stadium in appalling condition is a potentially lethal combination. As a result of the ticket selling arrangements and the decision to overlook the ground’s poor condition, 50,000 people were in danger without realising it, before they even left home. These elements were already swirling in the ether long before the day of the game itself; all it would take for the final link in the chain to be joined was a couple of other factors, notably the failure to enforce an alcohol ban and the presence of forged tickets in circulation. It just left the hooligans to deliver the coup de grâce.

Nobody from UEFA, European football’s governing body, has ever been truly called to account for the tragic events in Brussels, and for their disastrous decision to stage the game at this shambles of a stadium. UEFA has never had the decency to admit to its culpability, to its significant part in what happened. Liverpool’s hooligan fringe kept the authorities out of the spotlight where they really belonged, right alongside them.

Over the years, much of the worst of football violence has occurred outside the stadia, in surrounding streets and town centres. Where crowd trouble has occurred inside football grounds, two factors have routinely been present; inadequate crowd segregation and alcohol. By May 1985, there was every reason to expect that the football authorities and police everywhere had learnt those lessons. Alcohol had long been banned inside grounds and on organised transport to matches, and fans had long come to accept that bars near to grounds would be closed. Indeed, finding a bar or pub open and trading normally near a ground would almost be an insult to a hooligan, as though he had been deemed not worthy of special measures, not dangerous enough, his presence not acknowledged, thus providing every motivation to prove them wrong. A town shuttered and boarded up whilst its residents cower behind locked doors and hold their breath is enough to make any hooligan burst with macho pride. It is possible, even commonplace, for a city to impose a fairly effective, if not cast-iron, alcohol curfew. Rome had certainly got close to it twelve months before Heysel. Of course it is an imposition upon the normal lives of the local population, and of course it isn’t fair. Of course it cannot be justified just because some English can’t control themselves after a few beers. But it can be done.

In Brussels, however, it was harder to find a bar that was closed, even in the vicinity of the Heysel Stadium itself, including one right opposite the main approach to the stadium for Liverpool supporters. We witnessed with rising disbelief (and it must be said, delight) how easy it was to buy beer. For the bars of Brussels it was business as usual, and they did a lot of business that hot sunny day. The carrot was dangled, and taken voraciously. It meant many Liverpool fans arrived in varying stages of intoxication –– that is beyond doubt. But there was another, less obvious effect of the bars remaining open: it sent a signal that today lads, all your usual rigorous match day disciplines and impositions are suspended. This cultural remission made it feel like being on holiday; the end of wartime rationing; a prisoner finding his cell door wide open and nobody about. A tone was set, and an underswell of recklessness, lawlessness and anarchy developed: we don’t have to behave today. Some football supporters don’t need any second invitation, but they got one nonetheless.

If any confirmation was needed that normal rules had been suspended for the day, the casual laissez faire attitude of the police and the flimsy security checks outside and inside the ground provided plenty. In another major departure from convention, few fans were stopped and searched at the turnstiles, or had their tickets checked on the approaches to the stadium. In Paris in 1981, fans had been required to show their tickets at several concentric rings of steel before reaching the stadium. Without a valid match ticket, that was as close as you were ever going to get. At Heysel, although there was no shortage of police and barking dogs and metal barricades, it appeared as though they were there for a separate event entirely; they didn’t intervene in our lives in any way.

A similar absence of familiar basic procedures prevailed at the decrepit, archaic turnstiles. Had there been stewards or police immediately beyond the turnstiles to deter people from either trying to break in without tickets or from using fakes, it would have paid great dividends. Again, that was the custom at home. Instead, a sea of forgeries swept through unchecked and unnoticed, some fans just offered cash or pushed through, and the word spread rapidly that tickets may not be entirely necessary to get in to this match. Our precious tickets that we had sweated to get hold of were relegated to optional extras. Once again, the message seemed to be “do as you please, we have no control, no idea and quite frankly no interest”. Like children given too much freedom and not enough discipline, that freedom was abused by some.

Once inside the shambolic stadium, the ineffective control over ground admission, the apparent lack of expertise in handling a crowd and the magnitude of the occasion led to the inevitable result: utter chaos. More supporters were crammed into Blocks X and Y than there was room for.

By 7pm on match day, all of these factors conspired to leave many thousands of Liverpool supporters shoehorned into a shabby, sweltering, over-crowded terrace under a warm sun, with a collective air of indiscipline and the temporary suspension of usual match day patterns. An industrial quantity of alcohol had fired imaginations, deadened inhibitions and further fuelled the brooding undercurrent. And there, just a few feet away in the adjoining section of terrace beyond some flimsy chicken wire, was Block Z, not empty or neutral but occupied by rival supporters. That football fans will partake liberally if bars are open is one of life’s constants. Their refusal to tolerate rivals in their midst is another. Football supporters are nothing if not territorial, and this was after all our end of the stadium. To some amongst the Liverpool supporters –– those who have ingrained within them that dismal primal instinct for violence –– the Italian proximity was inflammatory and, as the US military might put it, an intolerable violation of their territorial integrity. And Block Z, as yet by no means full, also held the blissful prospect of the extra space that our section so clearly lacked. And what was to stop us laying claim to it? –– a handful of ill-trained police and a flimsy stretch of chicken wire.

Could you ever devise a more volatile cocktail at a football match? There was motive, opportunity, and no apparent deterrent –– the conditions were perfect. In the circumstances, the only surprise would have been a trouble-free evening. And given an identical set of circumstances, there can be little doubt that had any other mass-supported major English club reached that final instead of Liverpool, their fans would have behaved exactly as Liverpool’s did, if not worse. There would still have been confrontation, the ground would still have been a ruin, the wall would still have collapsed, and the same history would have been made.

Proper ticket allocation, good ticket control at the stadium approach and access points, effective crowd segregation inside, adequate policing and security arrangements, appropriate facilities and strictly enforced alcohol bans or restrictions: all these actions would have denied the opportunity for violence. ‘Controlling the controllables’, in business jargon. In failing so transparently in every single one of those basic areas, the authorities handed on a plate to the small thug element amongst Liverpool’s contingent the sort of opportunity which they had properly been denied at home for years, and which in all honesty they never expected to see again. And when they saw it, a depressing handful tucked in like a beggar at a banquet.

And yet, and yet, even then, even at that late stage, after virtually everything that could have been done wrongly had been, the tragedy could still have been averted. All that was needed was for the police, inadequate in numbers and training though they were, to be quicker to recognise the blindingly obvious warning signs and take decisive action to separate the rival sets of fans and defuse the inflammatory, simmering eyeball-to-eyeball proximity, by forming a human barrier between the rival supporters and creating a buffer zone. It was the custom then, in England and almost everywhere else. They could then have maintained the buffer zone throughout the match, with the aid of reinforcements, or had the option of leading the Italian supporters out of Block Z to the other end of the ground where their own supporters were (and where they would have preferred to be anyway), which would also have allowed the Liverpool contingent to overflow into Block Z to ease the congestion. Instead, they became paralysed by indecision as the situation worsened, and when what a Belgian eyewitness in Block Z later described as “the incomprehensible panic of the Italians” took hold, the police merely herded the fleeing Italian fans at baton point back towards the trouble they were seeking to escape. The pressure on the flimsy, crumbly perimeter wall grew and grew, and finally, disastrously, proved too much, leaving the police to watch on helplessly as the results of their indecision swelled to monstrous proportions.

Liverpool in particular, and English football in general, took all the blame and responsibility. In the dock of public opinion, Liverpool’s supporters stood alone, guilty without the need for a trial. But alongside them, shoulder to shoulder, belonged a host of others: the UEFA officials who nominated a venue unfit to host anything more tumultuous than a whelk stall; the Heysel Stadium management who knowingly, willingly and openly sold tickets for the Liverpool end of the ground to Italian supporters; the bar owners who against their better judgment, police advice and all known precedent remained open and serving alcohol throughout the day; the police, who displayed a complete lack of awareness or urgency in the face of blatant warning signs, and incomprehensible inertia when clear decisive action could still have saved the day; and the Juventus supporters who carried inflammatory flags and banners to the match, as well as at least one firearm (a starting pistol, as it turned out, but who was going to know that from a distance?), who destroyed perimeter fencing, fought with police and launched an attack on Liverpool’s supporters from the running track around the pitch, yet somehow emerged with their reputations intact.

Weighed down by collective guilt, Liverpool’s mass of genuine supporters felt utterly let down by the behaviour of the few at Heysel, whose lack of self-control brought appalling consequences for the Italian victims, but also besmirched their own club’s proud name across Europe and brought shame, disrepute and universal vilification to each one of us that we have still not shaken off. For many years it deprived club and supporters of the most exciting, uplifting experience available –– involvement in European football. As individuals we felt as though we had paid the price many times over. Every Liverpool supporter I know and have ever met was sickened that innocent people, fellow football fans there for the same reason as us, died at a football match, and that a small minority of our own fans had a large part to play in it. I don’t know any Liverpool supporter who seeks to deflect responsibility for the actions of some of our supporters that night. But I still believe that the accusation that Liverpool’s supporters killed 39 people that night is narrow and over-simplistic. As I said at the start, I didn’t think the story had been properly told. Heysel is unfinished business.

The deaths at the Heysel were wholly and easily preventable. They were the obscene consequences of gross negligence, stupefying incompetence, criminal lack of forethought and a whole succession of people –– from the decision to use the apology for a stadium to the ticket selling arrangements to the policing –– failing to do their jobs properly.

Had they done so, ugly primitive tribal aggression would have been properly denied its stage, and the chain would have broken.

Tragically, it held.

These are the names of those who went, like us, to watch a football match, and never returned:

Rocco Acerra (29)

Bruno Balli (50)

Alfons Bos

Giancarlo Bruschera (21)

Andrea Casula (11)

Giovanni Casula (44)

Nino Cerrullo (24)

Willy Chielens

Giuseppina Conti (17)

Dirk Daenecky

Dionisio Fabbro (51)

Jaques François

Eugenio Gagliano (35)

Francesco Galli (25)

Giancarlo Gonnelli (20)

Alberto Guarini (21)

Giovacchino Landini (50)

Roberto Lorentini (31)

Barbara Lusci (58)

Franco Martelli (46)

Loris Messore (28)

Gianni Mastrolaco (20)

Sergio Bastino Mazzino (38)

Luciano Rocco Papaluca (38)

Luigi Pidone (31)

Bento Pistolato (50)

Patrick Radcliffe

Domenico Ragazzi (44)

Antonio Ragnanese (29)

Claude Robert

Mario Ronchi (43)

Domenico Russo (28)

Tarcisio Salvi (49)

Gianfranco Sarto (47)

Amedeo Giuseppe Spalaore (55)

Mario Spanu (41)

Tarcisio Venturin (23)

Jean Michel Walla

Claudio Zavaroni (28)

The 25^th of May is a very special day for all Liverpool supporters. Rome ’77 and Istanbul ’05 -possibly – no, make that definitely – the two most celebrated occasions of Liverpool FC’s history – occurred on that same magical date. One or the other will be on top of the ‘Best Ever’ list for every fan like me who was there at both.

They say you always remember your first time. Well the mighty reds, I and about 30,000 others all lost our European Champions virginity in Rome’s Olympic Stadium on May 25th 1977. Rome will always be our first love, always special. We even went back there to win it again in ’84. The images are still fresh in super-colour in my mind. I thought nothing could ever surpass it, or even get close.