The headline on the BBC website is really extraordinary, if you take even a second to think about it. It says: “Liverpool reclaim top spot”.
Nota bene: reclaim.
Now I've just checked all the tables, match after match, and apart from the end of the first day, we were not top, but neither were Liverpool. Since then, we've been top until the end of Liverpool's match last night. In short, Liverpool Football Club have not been top at any point this season.
And in fact, unless I'm very much mistaken, they have not been top for months and months, since either Arsenal or ourselves were top for the latter part of last season.
Perhaps I'm being as paranoid as the Spanish Inquisition. But I strongly object to this kind of rhetoric, which is insidious, and is designed to plant unconsciously in people's minds (not just dippers, for whom it is literally an article of faith, anyway) that Liverpool's rightful position — it is in the order of nature, it is natural — is to be at the top of the table. Like a king who has been temporarily deposed, and who is now reclaiming his rightful throne. Or like an invading power reclaiming land that they consider was once theirs, and is inalienably so.
They are not fucking reclaiming anything!! If we go top (or Arsenal), that is exactly what it says, i.e. “City go top”, “Arsenal go top”. And that is quite right. The term is neutral, and factual.
This might seem like a rant and (I suppose) it is, but there is a lot of this knee-jerk rhetoric around Liverpool F.C. on the part of the media, and I just grow weary of it.
Even the choice of the term “claim” would speak volumes. You claim something that is rightfully and naturally yours. It is not a neutral verb. It is rhetorical. And reclaim indicates that you are taking back what was unlawfully taken from you.
The media have their tongue so far up LFC's backside it's not funny.
Just sayin’…
