Lovebitesandeveryfing
Well-Known Member
The Anfield atmosphere is one of the biggest myths in football. Don't get me wrong, those flags and banners on the Kop look decent enough and when things are looking rosy on the pitch they can get it going alright but so can pretty much any other set of fans in the league. I often complain that our fans are too quiet if things aren't going too well for us on the pitch but I honestly think Liverpool fans are worse. As soon as there was a drop off in their intensity yesterday, the crowd suddenly went quiet. I wouldn't mind but it wasn't like they were getting battered - it was 0-0 and we were beginning to suss them out a bit. That's all it needed to silence the fuckers. We pretty much smashed their support out of the park all afternoon. One of my favourite moments was when "Where's your famous atmosphere?" got an airing on about 28 minutes and there was fuck-all response from their lot. Even funnier while we were singing that was looking over at their main stand and seeing one lone fan remonstrating with the Kop to get it going instead of just trying to get it going himself, plus loads of them in that main stand were weirdly making their way out of their seats. This wasn't just one or two fans going for a piss - it was literally a stream of them - and they certainly weren't getting in the queue for a half-time pint because this was before the half-hour mark. Fucking bizarre behaviour.
Like I say, they can certainly be loud at times but I swear that hearing the whole of the Hawthorns sing "The Lord Is My Shepherd" (as West Brom fans were some years back when they were beating us 2-0) makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck far more than anything I've ever witnessed from Liverpool fans.
It is completely a myth, one constantly fed by the way that club is presented on television worldwide. You get the obligatory rendition of YNWA which gives the watching world goosebumps (so I'm told) and then that's it. If things aren't going their way, they're exactly the same as anyone else.
You know, mate, that there's a thread on RAWK called Let's Improve The Atmosphere at Anfield, which is currently at 253 pages. And a quick trawl round many other forums reveals the same kind of threads, and exactly the same kind of complaints as we see on here. No, sorry, but this is a problem of society: it has to do with the general bourgeoisification of footballand professional sports in general, the hygienisation (sorry for these ugly made-up words) of stadiums (which has not only brought negative factors, incidentally) and a visibly aging fanbase, because the whole of the west itself is aging.
I have to say that I think our atmosphere is very poor on European nights, but I can't say much about it, since I can never get over for midweek matches, because of work. Liverpool's does seem to be audibly better on that count, not sure about the likes of Chelsea, Spurs, Rags, and whether they generally get more excited about European football than we do.