Patience my arse. I’m going to kill something.

It’s hard to walk away from your football team. Even when you know it’s the sensible thing to do. Even when the alternative is unremitting anger and sorrow.

When you’re sharing a house with your father who’s a lifelong supporter. When you met your very best friend at the match. When you’ve committed a significant proportion of your life to Liverpool FC. It’s fucking hard to walk away.

And I can’t. Not yet.

But I’m close to it. Every day Roy Hodgson remains at Anfield and Melwood is an insult. An insult and an injury.

There are people who preach patience and argue that the new ownership has done nothing wrong and that they simply need time to find the right people to run and manage the club.

I disagree. I say that if they were prepared to invest almost half a billion dollars in Liverpool FC they should have already known who they wanted to run the club and manage their investment.

I say that if they want me to be patient, then they need to get in their private planes and make the trip to Liverpool. Stay in the city. Feel the anguish. Savour the gallows humour. Listen to the sound of a football club and half a city in pain. Take the trip – home and away – to the games. Sit and suffer with their paying customers. They’ll never feel this pain as badly as I do, because they have no history with the club, they live an ocean away. and they have their millions and their Red Sox to keep them warm. But until they share just a little of this torment, then they have no right to expect anything other than impatient fury.

I’ve seen people – typically those who hope to build a relationship with John W Henry – argue that I shouldn’t expect anything to happen in a hurry because that’s the Liverpool Way. They point back at the era of Peter Robinson and Sir John Smith and remark that the old guard never washed their dirty linen in public. No, they didn’t. But they did live in Liverpool. They did go to every match. And when Anfield called for the head of Graeme Souncess after a second ignominious exit from the FA Cup then they dealt with the issue overnight. Souness was out. His assistant, Roy Evans, was in.

Clearly there is no-one working at Anfield today that is capable of stepping into the job and taking the club forwards. But there are candidates who could step in and fill an unattractive Hodgson-shaped void until the end of the season. Sammy Lee. Phil Thompson. Kenny Dalglish. Obviously Dalglish would be the popular choice but I fear that the owners distrust his long term ambitions and are reluctant to allow him to extend his powerbase at Anfield. Regardless, they ought to be capable of either reaching an agreement with him or killing his under-the-radar campaign — if it exists — outright. Isn’t it easy? Offer him a job til the end of the season and a pre-defined role upstairs thereafter. If he refuses, leak it to the press.

Of course, my personal choice – however politically unrealistic – remains Rafa Benitez. I love the man. He loved the club. He loved the city. He still fucking lives here, for eff’s sake. We had a truly world class manager. We let him go. We have a chance to bring him back. We should be biting his hand off.

The most critical assessment of Rafa’s last season at Anfield that I’m prepared to accept is that he let himself down a little. Having come so close in 2008-2009, his goal for 2009-2010 had to be to win the league. Everybody seemed to agree that the way to achieve this was to open out and play a more expansive, attacking game. So he brought in Glen Johnson for Alvaro Arbeloa – after, let’s not forget, Arbeloa had been targeted by the influential Jamie Carragher. Sami Hyypia – unable to hold down a first team spot – moved on. The Xabi Alonso saga reached its inevitable conclusion. And the replacements Rafa brought in failed to fill Sami or Xabi’s shoes. As the season progressed and our luck got worse and worse, it became clear that toys were being thrown out of prams inside the changing room. Carragher, it’s believed, was at the heart of this. A future manager in his own mind at least. But really, who the fuck knows?

What I do know is that after all his excellent work previously, Liverpool FC should have BACKED not SACKED Rafa Benitez. He should have been given the change to repair the club. If necessary, he should have been allowed to sell one or two “untouchable” players, bring in replacements, and have another go. We owed the man that much. And more.

But instead the long knife was wielded and media darling Hodgson – who had been in talks with Christian Purslow for the previous six months – was comfortably esconced in Rafa’s Anfield office. With pomp and circumstance everywhere. Except in Liverpool.

It was a shameful period for Liverpool FC. And everything that’s happened since has just rubbed salt in wounds that refuse to heal.

So. Yeah. If I was the owner of Liverpool, I’d sack Hodgson today. I’d bring Rafa in tomorrow. And allow him to list ANY player he thought we could do without and spend every penny raised. And then I’d sit back and wait til the end of the season.

But what do I know? I don’t even know the rules of baseball. But one thing I do know. If the owners don’t do something soon, I will find it in myself to walk away.

Memories