Life ain't easy for a rat-faced boy
By Jimmy Conway and Steven Kelly
From Issue 57, Summer 2002
Has the phrase “winning ugly” ever
seemed more appropriate now that we’re about
to sign Lee Bowyer? This is a sad time for our
beloved club. We’ve completely abandoned
everything we’ve stood for in our 110 year
history. To quote every naff, talentless hack
working today would be easy, and I make no apologies
for adopting their predictable clichés:
Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley really will be spinning
in their graves. Bowyer is nothing but a vile,
nasty thug who has no place at Anfield.
I really don’t know what’s more
sickening, his inevitable arrival or the club’s
absurd attempts to justify it. Phil Thompson,
a Liverpool man whom I respect more than anyone
at the club, saw fit to use the Everton Echo as
a platform for the pathetic reasons we are chasing
Bowyer. I won’t quote him directly, I don’t
want to sully an honourable fanzine with such
feeble words, but comparing Bowyer to Terry Mac
is like comparing Jade Goody with Brigitte Bardot.
I’d love to know what Terry thought of that
gem. I can’t imagine him being thrilled,
even when he realises Thommo meant playing style
rather than character.
Stevie G and Vladi can fuck off as well. What
we don’t need is footballers telling us
what is good and what is not, especially one whose
greatness as a player should not delude him into
thinking he is the living embodiment of every
female fantasy, one who should give his knackered
groin and backside pinching hand a rest. I’d
be more interested to know what our black players
think of this deal, as I’ve yet to hear
any of them run out the “good player”
club spiel. How are they supposed to feel? By
what I’ve seen and read, Diouf doesn’t
seem the type of man who’d happily accept
a racist moron as a team ‘mate’.
So it’s hardly surprising that club propaganda
has centred on the player and not the man. I imagine
Slick Rick and the others are dreading the press
conference. I’d sell my house for a ticket
to see them squirm – especially the manager,
who’s been notably quiet. All the talking
has been done by Thompson, who could well be done
for “tapping” if the rumours are true
– I’m sure Leeds would protest if
they weren’t so desperate for cash. I wonder
who picked up the tab at the Motorway Service
Station. Bowyer must have been served by a white
person, though, otherwise we’d have probably
heard more about it!
I’ve no doubt Gerard thinks he’s
doing the right thing for the club, but he is
beginning to look like someone who gets a big
thrill from upsetting apple carts. Titi, Barmby,
Fowler, Jari, Anelka. The man is slowly but surely
slipping away from greatness in my eyes, no matter
how many troffies he has won or will win. With
regard to hiring or firing, he seems to adopt
a highly confrontational style that I have little
time for. Still, as long as Phil McNulty’s
impressed, eh?
I’ll argue endlessly that every individual
deserves a second chance, but Bowyer’s had
enough opportunities to redeem himself after trashing
McDonald’s and uttering racist abuse. The
aforementioned McNulty may pompously denounce
“kangaroo courts”, but even if Bowyer
is not a racist – what about his actions
on the field? Are they the actions of a Liverpool
player? How ironic that the Houllier acolytes
who bleat about Anelka’s “baggage”
after he was mercilessly dumped (the same fans
who turned a blind eye to it last December!) are
now suggesting that Gerard will be able to tame
a man with more baggage that Speke Airport.
The people I feel sorry for are Asian Reds.
What does it say about their “loyal and
valued support” when the club courts Bowyer
so fervently? I’m white and it sickens me
– I can’t imagine what they’re
feeling. I’d have thought Slick Rick’s
business nouse/greed would have alerted him to
the next golden Goose – the Asian market.
If our supporters out there follow the English
game as closely as we are led to believe, then
I doubt the new LFC bibkit (how apt) will be a
huge seller. Or are the club merely insulting
their intelligence as much as they do ours’?
As far as I’m concerned, any success achieved
with Bowyer is tainted and hollow. The day he
signs is the day I fall out of love with this
club.
JIMMY CONWAY
I wonder if Jimmy’s feelings are now the
same as mine and many other Reds I’ve spoken
to since the deal thankfully fell through. Relief
that he wasn’t coming here after all, then
anger at the fact that he was ever considered.
I suspect they probably are. I know the transfer
collapsed just as Dave Usher’s next issue
was going to print – he did a lot of rewriting
and reorganising for ‘The Liverpool Way’,
but I just thought “screw it”. (a)
because I’m bone idle and I do not feel
like changing anything (b) I thought it would
be important for people like Jimmy and The Creator
Supreme (see Tell Big Ed) that others should know
they were against it from the off and weren’t
one of these mysterious pod people who just say
“well done Gerard” whenever the man
makes a decision one way or the other.
Personal embarrassment became a factor –
for about 5 minutes. There were two segments from
issue 56 that came back to haunt me in a big way.
One diary entry read “if they sign this
racist thug I’d have to think long and hard
about carrying on (supporting Liverpool)”.
To be honest, it was one of those moments of bogus
bravado. There’s no way I’d give up
supporting Liverpool because of the presence of
one (admittedly obnoxious) individual, and since
the report that diary entry was based on appeared
in the ‘Mail’ I believed it to be
an utterly fraudulent and pernicious piece of
‘journalism’. Ordinarily, I’d
be big enough to apologise to the hack in question
for doubting their word – but it’s
the ‘Mail’, so fuck ‘em.
Then, in the middle of a contributor’s rant
about Leeds United, I placed that sickening picture
of the Leeds fan’s banner that read “Lose
Bowyer, Lose The Title – It’s Your
Choice” beside my own comment: “nice
to have priorities, eh?” – little
knowing that my own club was really planning to
bring him to Anfield. As I said before, my dilemma
lasted for 5 minutes. Any thoughts about giving
up a season ticket lasted for less and any idea
I had about giving up on Liverpool FC, no matter
how greedy arrogant or immoral they may become,
didn’t even register long enough to qualify
as a thought. That’s what it means to be
a supporter. I’m sure you felt the same
way. We’re here for the long haul, and individuals
like Souness (the manager), Ince or Bowyer are
simply passing through – like the contents
of a bull’s digestive system. We’re
just the ones who are left to deal with the mess
afterwards.
In fact, the comparison to Souness post-‘Loverpool’
is quite apt, since that was the last time I really
had such thoughts, where the offence was so great
that it called into question whether you could
stand/sit there and cheer for the team while that
particular individual was still present and far
from correct. Just like with Bowyer, I got the
feeling that there was a major split amongst the
support. I couldn’t determine the exact
figures, but at a guess I’d say: there was
20% who didn’t want Bowyer, wouldn’t
cheer for Bowyer whatever he did and would consider
any team achievement as being cheapened by his
presence: there was 20% who couldn’t see
what the fuss was about, he was a good player
who’d been found “not guilty”
of any ‘affray’ and when he had a
red shirt on he was entitled to wholehearted support
no matter what. The rest of the support would
be the silent majority. They would keep their
heads down and their mouths shut. No, they weren’t
very happy about the situation and they had their
doubts, but they were going to wait and see how
things panned out. If it became the right decision
on a football basis, they would turn a blind eye
and celebrate the championship that inevitably
followed.
And it would be this 60% of Reds who would ultimately
decide whether Bowyer’s transfer was appropriate.
As with Souness, they would be the ones to turn
first and decide on his future. Back in 1993,
everyone thought he was out. Virtually everyone
did. Thanks to Moores’ screw-up, he survived
– but it was for months and not years. Part
of my Anfield nightmares involve those horrible
moments on the Kop when “Souness out”
vied with “Sooooooness” for the loudest
chant of the day. When a club’s support
is split, it usually spells doom for the team’s
performances on the pitch. And Gerard Houllier
would have been a very naïve man indeed if
he believed that any future derision would have
fallen solely on Lee Bowyer’s bony and no
doubt pockmarked shoulders. It would have made
Danny Murphy’s ‘Southampton Hell’
look like Gerry & Gordon walking round with
the FA Cup, sure – but the manager would
have had to take his fair share of abuse.
So why am I still waffling on, even though he’s
not coming? Because a lot of wounds have been
opened up, and it will take a lot of time to heal
them. Initially, I felt the same as I did in the
80’s. The racist chants and noises stopped
because we signed a black player who beguiled
everyone with his skill, pace and vision –
the mighty John Barnes. In the dark months after
the Hillsborough disaster, the smallest of straws
to clutch was that at least those vile songs about
Munich had ended. You can get on a high horse
and say they should have stopped because we all
felt they were wrong, not just because we had
a black man in red or we had our own pain from
our own disaster – but most if not all fans
who hated all that stuff simply contented themselves
with the fact that at least it had been stopped.
So why not say the same about Bowyer? Look,
he’s not coming here – who cares why
we stopped the deal, let’s just be grateful
that it was halted. Well, I’m not prepared
to just gloss over the extreme lack of judgement
and good taste that meant he was almost signed
and sealed, but for the player’s own greed
and not because we took exception to his past
and personality. From what you’ve read so
far, you’ll have no doubt which side of
the fence I was standing on. I hate Lee Bowyer,
hated the thought of him coming here, would never
have sung his name and would have considered any
Liverpool success with him in the side as sullied.
I would like, though, to be thought of as a man
who isn’t simply besotted with his own viewpoint
and that I could look at it from the opposite
side, to take those views on board and analyse
them with a modicum of intelligence and without
prejudice.
One fact that is indisputable, however, is that
there would have been a split, there would have
been arguments galore and it could possibly have
spilled over into violence on the terraces amongst
our own. Something that should never, ever happen
but occasionally did under Souness and even under
Evans (one night at the Riverside was appalling).
It would have been a casual dismissal of the role
we play, our importance to the team’s cause,
if that aspect had been totally overlooked. Further
dissent would have been caused by those fans who
weren’t chuffed about the treatment of certain
other players (Camara, Fowler, Anelka) who were
considered by Houllier not to have 100% sympathy
for his “team first” philosophy. Take
Chris Bascombe’s article on Anelka, for
example. The day after we decided we weren’t
signing him, he waded in armed with remarks about
Nic’s “baggage”. He wasn’t
the only one. Having been the recipient of such
wholehearted (blinkered?) support, how would those
same fans have reacted to Houllier signing a man
whose “baggage” would have made Nic’s
747-sized luggage look like a Prada bag? Not very
well, is my guess.
There were stories about fans, at the first
friendly in Le Havre, collaring Gerard and letting
him know exactly how some fans felt about the
possibility of Bowyer coming here. By that time,
the deal had stalled on Bowyer’s wage demands.
The next day, the Daily Mirror ‘coincidentally’
carried the story of the forthcoming private prosecution
being taken out by the Najeib brothers. Every
other paper had the sad, sickening news of Harold
Shipman’s final body count (well over 200)
– but not the Mirror, oh no. Pages 1,2 and
3 were on Lee Bowyer. For anyone who had been
living on Mars for two years, all the sordid details
appeared once more. The brothers’ employment
of the same solicitor that Stephen Lawrence’s
family used was another telling factor –
that people who make it their business to focus
on the many injustices suffered by minorities
in this country considered Bowyer on a par with
the Norris’s and Acourt’s of this
world. And that’s just the kind of company
we want to be keeping isn’t it – however
indirect the connection is.
In a way, we may still carry the stigma from
attempting to buy Bowyer in the first place. It
wasn’t morality that stopped us, that’s
for sure - it was Bowyer’s greed. It became
obvious that he wanted his Bosman cash a year
early, so he didn’t having to go through
the whole palaver of pretending to be committed
to the Leeds cause while he ran down the clock
on his contract. He obviously went to Leeds and
said “look, you can get £10m for me
now, let’s split it 50/50 and I’ll
sign a new contract – that way you’ll
get £5m. In a year you’ll get nothing
because I’ll walk”. Leeds, in a rare
show of principle, tell him to go fuck himself.
So he comes to us with the exact same proposition.
Instead of being delirious that anyone would have
him, never mind one of the greatest clubs in the
world with a Champions League spot and a genuine
crack at the title, he starts on us with the exact
same proposal – and that’s when Houllier
finally gets wind of what he’s dealing with
here. I can’t prove any of this, you understand,
but I’ll bet that’s how it went down.
So now he’s back at Leeds, and Ridsdale
is “delighted”. I’ll just bet
he is. Now the contract is going back and forth
between Leeds and Bowyer, still unsigned –
and I’ll swear that’s how it stays
until he eventually gets his money. One way or
the other.
************
I’ve been thinking long and hard about
some of the arguments for signing Bowyer. Some
were weak and some were strong. Nearly all of
them depended on whether you actually wanted to
be fair to Lee Bowyer. That’s something
a lot of the Reds I spoke to did not even begin
to want to do.
A lot of the arguments, for or against, came
back to the same problem – PERCEPTION. We
are not dealing with indisputable facts here.
True, Bowyer has that one guilty verdict to his
‘credit’ from the time he was a young
lad at Charlton, but I think we’re all big
enough to realise that one incident should not
be enough to condemn a man for life, no matter
how obnoxious his behaviour. It has been argued
that he has been through two trials, not one of
which found him guilty. He has also ended up with
an image which borders on the insane. Having been
smacked in the nose (ironically, the victim for
once) and with blood pouring from the wound, he
was photographed bullishly celebrating a Leeds
goal – that image is one of the scariest
I’ve ever seen. He looks like Hannibal Lecter,
for God’s sake, and it’s that photograph
which is often used in articles that have attacked
him. I think we can all agree that the use of
that (innocent) image alongside other, more serious
charges, is an abuse of the truth, no matter what
we may think of him.
But that’s it in a nutshell. How is he
‘perceived’? If we’d taken a
poll of Liverpool fans, asking them to tick words
which they would use to describe Lee Bowyer before
we were linked to him, two words would have been
marked more than any others: “racist”
and “thug”. That is the perception
of Lee Bowyer. I’d like to think it doesn’t
really matter how someone is perceived, but how
he actually is that matters – but that’s
not how things work in the real world. Lee Bowyer
is seen to be exactly that which he is often accused
of – and Liverpool FC would similarly have
been perceived rightly or (I think) wrongly for
harbouring such a man, and employing him despite
national contempt simply in order to win some
football matches. We would not have come out of
it well and, actually, if we’d been successful
with Bowyer we may well have come out of it looking
even worse. How can the club’s hierarchy
not possibly have known that was going to happen?
If anything had been uncovered to further prove
people’s perception of Bowyer, or he’d
got involved in anything similar in the future,
how could the club have defended itself by saying
“well, we had no idea he was like that”?
The answer, of course, is that they couldn’t.
What a massive gamble it would have been.
And things would have become worse still once
the private prosecutions began. The Mirror story
of 20th July, the day before we called it all
off, gave just a brief glimpse of what we could
come to expect. It was a nasty read. There were
futile denials about timing the prosecution and
article to coincide with Bowyer’s expected
move to Liverpool. I’m not buying that for
a second. I have strong objections to any newspaper
setting itself up as judge, jury and executioner,
but even if there were elements of vengeance in
the Najeib brothers’ actions – who
on earth could possibly blame them for that? It
reminds me in a way of the Hillsborough families
and their private prosecution – a feeling
that people had got away with something and a
desire to make sure they were punished. There
are similar cries for “justice”, but
what they actually want is a guilty verdict and
suitable punishment, and they are never going
to rest until they get it. Our very own Bereaved
will never accept the courts’ numerous verdicts
that Duckenfield and Murray are innocent, nor
will we. The Najeibs have in fact seen someone
go inside for 6 years, which must be a small consolation
(it’s more than we’ve had for 1989),
but obviously they feel the “celebrity perpetrators”
got away with it.
And it’s this morass of violence, accusation
and counter accusation that Houllier and LFC happily
dragged us into. Think back to the Grobbelaar
trial. He was a Southampton player, he had also
been accused of throwing Saints matches –
but how was he always described? As “the
former Liverpool player”. Would Bowyer have
been described as “the former Leeds player”?
Fat chance. National perception would end up with
him having been involved in this attack (and the
private prosecution will throw new light on the
nature of that involvement) as a Liverpool player
– the stain would be on our character. How
could we have lived with that?
Another argument ran thus: “he’s
a great player, worth the risk and the bother,
not everybody with talent is a nice person”.
Strangely, I do have a bit of sympathy with this
view. I’m a massive Bowie fan, and yet there
were times when he crossed the line. His songs
have often had links with vaguely Nazi/Superman
ideals, he’s talked of fascism in a number
of interviews and not always in negative terms.
The excellent book “Strange Fascination”
by David Buckley has pages and pages on this subject,
along with eye witness accounts of the infamous
‘Nazi’ salute at Victoria Station.
So having read all this, am I about to dump all
my Bowie CDs into the bin? Am I hell as like.
Bowie claims that he was coked out of his head
and didn’t know what he was saying most
of the time, but a lot of those lyrics stem from
pre-cocaine days – “gotta make way
for the homo superior”, indeed. But then
Bowie’s never been accused of kicking the
shit out of someone, has he? Someone who has been
violent is Jerry Lee Lewis, as racist and sexist
a shitbag as ever lived – but you put “Great
Balls of Fire” on the Slater’s jukebox
and watch me dance like an elasticated fool.
We’ve also had people like Tommy Smith
and Bruce Grobbelaar playing for us, and racist
remarks they’ve made are a matter of public
record. While I don’t personally revere
them as men, they were great Liverpool players
and I’m not sure I want their achievements
to be wiped from history because of the kind of
people they were/are. Yet again, though, they’ve
not been accused of beating somebody up, although
Grobbelaar might have done it to Mark Walters
at Goodison, if McManaman hadn’t got in
the way. But that’s another story. I could
talk about film critics who drone on and on about
the wonderful cinematography of Leni Reifenstal
in “Triumph Of The Will”. I mean,
who cares that she’s trying to make Hitler
look like a god – when did that ever do
any harm? Just concentrate on those images, man.
But is Bowyer really in this kind of genius category?
Ferguson knew Cantona had several screws loose,
but he was vindicated by four championships in
five seasons - and Cantona missed the one failure
because (irony alert!) he kicked a racist in the
chest. Can Bowyer honestly be considered at the
same level? Hand on heart, I’ve never thought
so. Very good player, but not worth all the hassle.
Many Reds argued, like those Leeds fans with the
banner, that Bowyer’s presence would mean
an instant title. I really don’t see it
that way at all. We have a great chance in 2002/03,
even without Bowyer. Especially without him, in
my view, since that team spirit will still prosper.
Supporters of the move felt that “everybody
deserves a second chance”, and this idea
of redemption, of forgiveness, is certainly a
strong one. It’s slightly easier to forgive
when you’re not the one who was almost killed,
but maybe that’s nitpicking. There’s
one incident from my youth than I’m deeply
ashamed of, and thankfully I was taught a valuable
lesson at the time. Maybe my feelings don’t
stem directly from that very day, but for a long
long time I’ve hated racists. It would certainly
hurt me if I were perpetually abused for one act
of stupidity, that this one instance of moronic
behaviour is actually how I really am - BUT it
was ‘only’ verbal, I came out of it
looking like the fucking idiot I was and no violence
was involved. I’ve deeply regretted it always,
and in a way I’ve been trying to make up
for it ever since. Ask yourself this: in your
opinion, can Lee Bowyer honestly say the same?
Do you think there is a possibility that Lee Bowyer
could get involved in something like this again?
If the answers to these questions are “no”
and “yes” respectively, then how can
you still believe that he should have signed for
Liverpool?
*********
How much damage has been done to the club and
the manager? I don’t suppose it’s
news to you that I’ve never been 100% about
Houllier. Maybe the nature of a fanzine is such
that I should always look at the one flaw instead
of the 99 perfections, but I admit there’s
more to it. There’s just something about
him that bothers me. It’s strange, because
when he first came here I thought “good
man, probably not a great manager”. Now
it’s the reverse. He has every chance of
being the next championship-winning manager, but
I like him less and less. The Bowyer deal has
whittled away at my feelings further still.
When Barmby signed, Gerard expressed astonishment
at the reaction of the blues: “you’d
think he was changing his religion”. I laughed,
we all did, because we thought he was winding
up Evertonians. Now I’m not so sure; with
the determination to sign Bowyer, it’s possible
he actually doesn’t understand anything
beyond its implications for the footballing side
of things. When he turned his little propaganda
machine on Fowler after the Charity Shield, I
don’t think he quite understood how some
Liverpool fans could still side with Fowler and
applaud him at the West Ham game. He professes
astonishment at any accusation that Liverpool
can be boring. There’s the sheer idiocy
of his denial that his decision to replace Hamann
cost us at Leverkusen. All of these little moments
where we’ve thought “no, he does see
it, but he’s just being clever and keeping
it to himself” – do you find yourself,
in the light of his determination to sign Lee
Bowyer, thinking twice about all of these things?
There are disturbing rumours coming from Melwood.
About power, about ego. One of the more ridiculous
claims from the “sign Bowyer” brigade
was this idea that “if anyone can tame him,
then it’s Houllier”. Based on what,
exactly? Name me a player who was wild before
he came to Anfield and came under GH’s control
and prospered. Camara? Thompson? Fowler? Anelka?
As soon as they’ve given him even a hint
of trouble to come, he’s dumped them. What
evidence is there to suggest that Bowyer wouldn’t
have ended up the exact same way? Was this move
initiated by ego? They all think they’ve
got ‘a Cantona’ in them – count
how many managers have taken a chance on Stan
Collymore, only to realise later on that they
couldn’t control him.
But a lot of Liverpool fans believed. They see
Houllier as The Miracle Worker, and nothing is
beyond him. Houllier wanted Bowyer, and that was
enough for them. They’re probably the same
people who, if we made Harold Shipman club doctor,
would back the club and say “well, he only
hates pensioners” …………since
when did being a loyal (and often entirely sycophantic)
Liverpool supporter take precedence over being
a good person? The signing of Lee Bowyer was just
plain wrong on so many levels, and yet a large
number of Liverpool fans were not only prepared
to look the other way, they openly celebrated
over our “new arrival”.
I expect this kind of blinkered Planet Football
mindset from those inside the game. When Terry
Venables came to Leeds, he spoke about Jonathan
Woodgate. “He’s been through a difficult
time”………excuse me? Jonathan
Woodgate has been through a difficult time?!?!
What about the poor bastard who was kicked senseless?
But that is typical of football in general. These
people exist in a vacuum, and some live in a moral
one. There is what’s good for the club and
good for the game – and that’s it.
What else matters? What else is there?
In a way, the Lee Bowyer fiasco (and that’s
what it was) really asks deep questions about
all of us. I said, from day one, that he couldn’t
come here because football fans need to have heroes
– and how could anyone possibly make a hero
of him, no matter what he did for us? And then
you start to go further: “for God’s
sake man, you’re 43 years old and you still
think of these greedy, egotistical children as
your ‘heroes’ because they can kick
a ball well – isn’t it time you grew
out of this?”. It’s true. I’m
weak and I’m stupid and I place an inappropriate
amount of importance on something that quite plainly
isn’t important at all, but I can’t
help it. I need this, I’m guessing you do
too. Without Lee Bowyer at Anfield, I can just
about hold up this ‘truce’ with my
inner, saner voices. If we’d bought him,
they may well have won.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
STEVE KELLY
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