External Pressures Loom as Liverpool Concede the Title

It’s round about now when many of us are feeling deflated.

I recall something I read over the festive period by the Tory Politician Anne Widdecombe who expressed her concern at the counter-productive nature of making over-ambitious resolutions on Jan. 1.

Her pearls of wisdom may resonate with some more than others as the stodgy food and bad habits slowly creep back in.

Edging past my evening quota of black stuff at the turn of the year, I too stand culpable of making bold proclamations, and upon reflection concede, setting an objective of completing my first novel in 2009 may have been a tad premature.

Widdecombe’s antidote was to write 12 resolutions on scraps of paper: Six easily achievable (like reading more in the evening) and six less doable (like contacting and arranging to meet up with a friend you’ve not seen in five years or more).

At the beginning of each month she would pick one at random from a hat and vow to make a diligent and importunate effort to achieve this task.

The demanding world of football wouldn’t go far wrong if it adopted a similar approach.

A club that knows all about mammoth expectations is Liverpool, with many portioning blame on the club’s illustrious history. Post-eighties players and managers alike have subsequently carried this self-defeating burden.

We only have to look at McManaman, Smicer, Kewell and Robbie Keane, who tried and failed to fill the No. 7 shirt once famed by Keegan, Dalglish and Beardsley, to see how such pressures can affect even the brightest of prospects.

It is revealing to see Edwin van der Sar breaking records up the East Lancs. Rd. where a long line of successors to a certain ‘Great Dane’ had previously been stripped of their confidence and unsympathetically slipped out the back door, visibly shaken.

Some of these ‘United failures’ have managed to rebuild their careers under less glaring lights of so-called smaller clubs, most notably Tim Howard at Everton.

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