And take your bullshit advice for like 'we need a town cryer in the stands' and 'the Kop should wear Timmy Mallett glasses' or whatever bullshit you come up with as suggestions to make Anfield louder (but we all know it's just an attempt to belittle the Anfield atmosphere and compare it to your home ground Stamford Bridge). Hope you had your ears tuned in last night because THAT was noise. That was Anfield. But you wouldn't know would you.
I'm not sure what you mean; the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge is atrocious. As is the atmosphere at the Mancs, at City, at Arsenal (theirs is arguably the worst of all), etc etc. Most clubs these days in England have awful atmospheres.
The atmosphere the other night was indeed incredible---in spurts. But let's not pretend like the atmosphere for the ENTIRE GAME was good. It wasn't. It was incredible pre-match, but go back and listen to the "atmosphere" between when they scored the second goal and when we scored after halftime: almost a full half hour. You could barely hear a peep. Don't take my word for it (people often have short memories, it's why witness accounts at trials are not reliable, people often remember things incorrectly), here's a link where you can watch the whole game, go click on it and just click around after they scored the second goal, see if you can hear the "incredible" support you claim was there the whole game:
http://www.fullmatchesandshows.com/2016/04/14/liverpool-vs-borussia-dortmund-highlights-full-match/So. The atmosphere was awful after they scored the second goal. Suddenly the crowd got back into it after we scored. Which basically means they're a bunch of glory hunters. When the going is good, they get intense, when it's not, they shut up. Maybe that's just the way it is these days in football in general. I don't know. But you could argue that in fact
the exact opposite is true of player support: instead of the crowd going silent when we go down 0-2, that was the time that the intensity was needed THE MOST. The lads needed us to get behind them.
If you click on the link above and just click around during the entire game, 95% of the time you'll only hear the Dortmund supporters. The last 20 minutes our support was out of this world. Absolutely. And it was incredible.
But the rest of the match consisted of our supporters singing a song lasting about 20 seconds, then slowly dying out back into quiet. Meanwhile, you could hear the constant singing non-stop of the Dortmund away support. You could say "ah yes but opposition away support is always good." Fair enough. But the fact is that they have that kind of support AT HOME too. You could barely hear *our* supporters when we played there! And ours were really giving it a go---that's how loud THEIR support is, that they drowned out our top away support!
Anyway. I don't see who benefits from pretending that our Anfield support is somehow special. It can be at times. But it's not like the 80s when there was non-stop singing the entire game, making Anfield into a real cauldron. Even in a game like the other day, an absolute stunning game that everyone will always remember, there were huge stretches of 10 to 20 minutes where there was just polite golf clap from our support. In fact go back and listen to a couple of minutes before Coutinho scored, the build up to that. You can't hear ANYTHING from us. And that's on a huge night! If we can't sing 90 minutes straight for a huge night, forget about it when it's in the middle of the season for a league cup game vs West Brom. Like a morgue.
I've said this before:
the only club that consistently shows the best support at their home matches is Crystal Palace. I have no idea why. They're not special. But their games, regardless of who they play, regardless of the competition, their ground is always intimidating, loud, throughout the whole game. So why can't we do that?
You think it's funny to ridicule my ideas to improve the support, okay, go on and have a laugh then. At least I'm trying to come up with something. At least I care enough about the bad atmosphere to say "hey, why don't we try x or y." You're happy to sit there and listen to our quiet support game in and game out, because you don't want to come up with crazy ideas. I'm not. Crazy ideas have given us some of the most incredible advances in human history.
Actually, watching some of the Bundesliga games recently, another idea (besides bringing a drum) would be to have one of those song leader type blokes that a lot of the German clubs have. They've got a bloke with a bullhorn who actually faces the supporters, with his back to the game, and starts and leads songs/chants. Why not try it? The club could even incentivize it; for example, designate one of those people for each stand, and the ones who do it get their seat for free or something. So we would have someone in each stand always whipping up the crowd during those moments when the noise inevitably dies down.
You may like the idea or not like it; but at least it's something. I myself can't understand how someone could listen to the atmosphere at our home matches and think "no, we shouldn't try a drum" or "no, we shouldn't try a bullhorn." F**k's sake, just give it a chance. One game. If it doesn't work, fair play, it doesn't work. But to not even
consider it? to just cross your fingers that something will change when it hasn't for almost a decade now? that doesn't help anything either.
The difference is, our support CAN at times be unbelievable; periods during the Dortmund game, or the match we played vs City in 2014. Incredible support for parts of those games.
But why can't we create a cauldron at Anfield for ALL our matches?
Think about it this way: if Anfield was a boiling cauldron, would we win more often? I think everyone can agree that the answer is yes.
Right now we're in 8th place, on 48 points. If we wanted to be 4th right now, we would only need 11 more points. So let's take some of those less sexy games this season at Anfield and add up the points had we won:
1-1 vs Norwich; +2 points with a win;
1-1 vs Saints; +2 points;
1-2 vs Palace; +3 points;
2-2 vs West Brom; +2 points;
2-2 vs Sunderland; +2 points;
From those home games alone, we've already got the 11 points for us to be in 4th right now. And we've already established that if the atmosphere were more intimidating, we'd win more. We already know that. But of course opposition players say it too, they don't feel intimidated anymore playing at Anfield.
And that's a direct result of the crowd support. Top Anfield support at ALL games, even the less sexy ones, and we'd be much higher up the table.
We're supposed to have some of the best supporters in the world. But when you've got a club like Dortmund, whose home fans sing all ninety minutes, regardless of the competition, vs ours, who sing intensely only at games when the stakes are high, and even at that only for short stretches---how can we say ours are the best?
I go back to the issue of Palace. No one would claim that Palace have the best supporters in the world. And yet they create the best atmosphere in the league. Why? I don't know. Maybe more of their match going support is comprised of local fans, whereas a lot of ours are tourists who don't want to get involved.
But if Palace can do it, then there's really no excuse why we can't.
