WHY is it that Liverpool FC cannot get over the line to capture that illusive 19th title? What are we doing wrong?
Is it our fault as supporters? Or are the players and manager always to be blamed for this?
As I sat there watching through gritted teeth at the under-par performance against Southampton, I ask myself: ‘why do I love this club, “why do I sit through this year in, year out, why do I profess my undying love for LFC every chance I get?’
Finally I have the answer.
I love LFC because we are the 18 time English champions, the 5 time European Champions – we are Liverpool FC! But what does that mean these days?
It certainly means nothing to the young Man United fan shouting ‘up yours’ to the travelling Kopites, or in the reverse fixture, making the trip to Anfield and leaving happy. What does this mean to my fellow LFC brothers?
The answer is simple, it means…NOTHING!
The hoodoo of the 19 started in 1992/93 season when the first LFC fans uttered the words ‘we are the 18 time champions’. It further grew on us when the first fan shouted ‘come back when you’ve got 18’. Well, the unthinkable has happened; Man United came back with 18, and we are still the 18 time champions!
Imagine we said ‘we will be the 25 time champions’ – would we have then jumped this 19th hurdle? We have taken this hoodoo to a whole new level. The players know that we are looking for the 19th title and the manager knows what we want. However, we that HUGE monkey on our backs called inconsistency!
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The truth about LFC and the number 19 hoodoo is a scary one and we have many examples of the number 19 jinx: our 19th game this season was a 3-1 loss to Stoke, Ryan Babel failing to cement a regular place wearing this jersey, Stewart Downing…let’s not go there, Robbie Keane cost the club £19 million, the last time we won the league was in the 19 hundreds, we concede many of our goals in the 19th min and the 64th minute (19th minute after half time) and the 71st minute (19mins from full time). Last season the goalpost at the Kop end was hit 19 times (ok this was made up but it’s just to prove a point and if you want to do some research on this then feel free to correct my stats!)
So, is there an upside? When Luis Suarez beat the dreaded number 19, he scored a hattrick, becoming the league’s outright top scorer and lifting us up the table towards the European places, bringing optimism.
The world took note of LFC once again and other teams started thinking about us as a real threat. There was a shift in tectonic plates and I think it even started raining in some parts of the world that were experiencing severe droughts! We beat the number 19 and almost the whole world made sense again, albeit for a little while…
We will break this hoodoo, and when we do, it will be EPIC!
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