Liverpool thread 2019/20

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What gets me is this myth about them being a "socialist" club, just because Shankly once said it. Even their formation was straight out of the capitalist handbook.

Everton had been a church team originally, named St Domingo, after the chapel by the corner of the ground. They moved to Anfield in 1886 and the chairman, brewer John Houlding, owned the ground, which isn't very socialist. He wanted to cash in and sell it to the club. However he wanted to sell his own beer in the ground and the other directors refused. So he put the rent up to a level that Everton couldn't afford, meaning they had to vacate the ground. So that's rapacious landlord behaviour, which also isn't very socialist. Houlding had a ground but no team. When most teams were very much based in their communities, Houlding literally bought a whole new team of players, mainly from Scotland. He didn't go out and find 11 local lads.

When Houlding died in 1902, the club owed him £10,000 and he was also guarantor for their £5,000 overdraft. So they'd aachieved success (won their first title in 1901) using borrowed money. The family offered to give up their shares and wipe out the debt in return for being released from the bank guarantee.

After winning the league in 1947, they declined, to the point where they spent the second half of the 1950's in the Second division. They appointed Bill Shankly, who narrowly faield to get them promoted in his first two seasons. John Moores, of the wealthy family who owned Littlewoods, backed Shankly financially and he spent the money, getting them promoted and winning both the league and FA Cup. So once again, this "socialist" club had relied on the backing of a wealthy capitalist to get where they'd got.

At the end of the 1970's, on the verge of their most successful period, the chairman John Smith decided that they couldn't be succesful purely on the money that came from ticket sales. so they were the first British club to wear a sponsor's name on their shirts. That of course gae them additional income. They ensured they had even more income, when they were one of the clubs who led the threat of a breakaway from the Football League unless the arrangement whereby gate money was split with the visiting club, was ended. This was probably the start of the separation of the 'haves' and 'have-nots' in football and its significance really hasn't been appreciated enough. Socialism, as Shankly said, involved sharing in the rewards but that went right out the window when they thought there was a few bob in ditching the concept of sharing.

They were one of the leading clubs who negotiated with ITV, for a putative deal, whereby only the "big" teams got shown and were paid for that. Yet again, "sharing the rewards" was the furthest thing fom their mind . The more they could get, the better and sod the other clubs. Same applied when the PL was formed, with five clubs, primarily Liverpool & Arsenal, sticking two fingers up at the Football League while the FA encouraged them. They wre on of the original G-14, continually threatening a breakaway from UEFA (as they do to this day) unless they got a bigger share of the European pot and were effectively guaranteed qualification and the lucrative goup stage instead of a straightforward knock-out tournament.

They made life intolerable for residents around Anfield so that they could get rid of them and build their Main Stand extension. Hardly very socialist.

Every fucking step of the way, from their very formation to the present day, when they're owned by a group of amoral venture capitalists who are demonstrably happy to cheat their way to success, they've been as far from socialism as it's possible to be. Yet they continue to perpetuate this myth, of "socialism" of sharing, of being somehow a family, where it "means more".

You'll Never Walk Alone (unless there's more money in it in which case you're on your fucking own).
@Prestwich_Blue is it time yet?
 
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