Liverpool Walking Alone: What Has Happened to Anfield?
Meanwhile, The Kop is no longer moving as one, a swaying human monster of noise, but seated. There will never be terraces again for obvious reasons, but the anonymity of those amongst the crowd has grown as they all sit separated. Friends are often forced to sit apart due to unavailability of seats together, and inhibitions are brutally exposed. Fans are now reserved by the comfortability of their surroundings, feeling that singing may upset those around them. The courage to make noise has dissipated as peoples environment has improved. The penultimate reason for the demise of Anfield, and in fact all Premier League grounds atmospheres is yet another necessary handicap set by the evolution of the modern game. Football has grown into a source of entertainment; a product. Many games are now televised, leaving dispassionate fans to wonder, with the score at 0-0, whether the admission price was worth the trip with a warm sofa, big screen and skybox waiting at home. Fans now expect to be entertained, and now believe their role to simply be a viewer, unaware that they themselves can help push the ball over the goal-line, inspiring their team to perform at their very best and find that extra 10%. Young fans have been raised on this idea of football as entertainment, ruled by the media, and are uneducated in the times when football was a game where those from all walks of live bonded, and Anfield was its home. Yet there is only one real, and very obvious reason why Anfield no longer threatens to deafen opposition fans. Liverpool are not as good as they used to be. The club is now burdened by its past successes; a noose of expectation hangs from the yardstick of European and League trophies, choking almost everyone involved with the club in modern times. Liverpool Football Club and its fans have been to hell and back over the last 5-6 seasons. Disbelief, anger, fear and depression has not yet departed the air that hangs inside its ground, with the fans appearing nervous, tense, quick to anger and slow to warm up. The wind has been stolen from the sails of their ships, leaving them shaken and disillusioned. From the poor management of Graeme Souness and Roy Hodgson to Hicks and Gillett, the two that nearly destroyed everything Liverpool had built, it has not been easy. Each new leader has provided a false dawn, and many cannot believe the decline of Liverpools performance since the glory days. Fans didnt bounce back from going into administration. Songs were not sung, and positivity was not evident even after the club had come back from the brink of collapse. Tension still filled the air. Even after Kenny Dalglish was returned to his throne at the head of Liverpool, the historic fanfare that greeted him quickly dissolved into yet more worry about where things were heading. The smallest setback seems enough to set fans off or shut them up, and many feel they are not permitted to sing once Youll Never Walk Alone finishes playing. There is doubt. There are inhibitions. Going to Anfield is no longer a release of tension, but a provider of it.