Never mind the ballot, boys

The Spirit Of Shankly held an EGM over the weekend. The minutes of that meeting and the subsequent announcement of a boycott of the Auto Cup Scheme have both opened my eyes.

My initial gripe with the minutes was the massively disrespectful way in which they refer to the former manager of Liverpool FC, Rafael Benitez Maudes.  The Spirit Of Shankly clearly ranks “Benitez” along side “Moores”, “Purslow”, “Broughton”, “Hicks”, and “Gillette”. That’s right. Whereas everyone else referred to in the minutes gets the courtesy of first a full name and job title and then a friendly first name, our former manager gets treated with the same contempt as the men who are generally held to be responsible for the club’s perilous position.

Reading and watching more closely, I also notice that the Spirit Of Shankly is prone to.

• Exaggerating the numbers in attendance – 500 my arse.
• Selective quoting of opinion from the floor – A Union Officer is quoted on his unwillingness to give up his season ticket but no mention is given to the man who argued coherently for a full-on boycott of just one single game, complete with picketing. This anonymous and conveniently omitted man received at least as much applause from those present as any other speaker on the subject. Similarly, the lady who used Steve Cohen as an example of what can be achieved by a supporter boycott is also left out of the minutes. The Spirit Of Shankly clearly prefers to focus on the actions that its leadership had already agreed upon before the meeting began.
• Cherry-picking from general supporter initiatives and presenting them as their own – the 4th of July Independence Day March has moved rapidly from an independent supporter initiative to become the Spirit of Shankly’s own Independence Day Rally.

Someone recently asked me if I was a member of the Spirit Of Shankly. No, I’m not. I take the act of joining a movement seriously and I was waiting for this EGM before joining. And now I won’t. I have no confidence in them, or in my own ability to influence them to step one inch outside their cosy comfort zone. And I won’t be cannon-fodder for anyone I don’t believe in or respect.

Talking at length to friends and family, it seems clear that I’m not alone. Concerted supporter pressure against the Royal Bank of Scotland is our only way forward now. And a rapid descent into administration is probably the best we can hope for. I despair.

Media Fun

So Jim Boardman, an apparently “respected” Liverpool supporter and commentator, has enjoyed a brief correspondence with the Chairman of Liverpool Football Club. This article is being reposted with almost first-strike speed all over the interweb to support a claim that LFC is being run by the media. A fatuous claim that is being given credence by a significant number of angry but unthinking supporters.

To be clear, Broughton doesn’t say that he fired Rafael Benitez Maudes because of the media. He merely says that the media seems to disagree with Jim’s opinion on the firing. See? I note your opinion doesn’t seem to be shared by the media. To which the appropriate response should have been: I note that the Champions of Italy and Europe seem to disagree.

So please, read a little more carefully and ask yourself, what have I learned here today?

This is what I’ve learned:

As Chairman of Liverpool FC, Broughton will act as the boss whenever it suits him while continuing to shun day-to-day responsibility whenever it suits him.

As a proudly unofficial and independent commentator, Jim Boardman is every inch as bad as the red top media.

First, he misinterprets something that is genuinely simple to understand. Then he uses that presumably deliberate misunderstanding (though he could just be stupid) to build his argument and grab your attention. He legitimizes his argument by paying lip service to a number of popular and undeniable issues and then he moves crassly onto the the real point of his story: Kenny Dalglish.

Boardman criticises the club and its “senior sources” for the way they manipulate the press. He slates the ex-players who criticise the club in the media but then excludes some unnamed “good players” who he believes don’t have axes to grind. And then he argues that all these ex-players parroting their opinions for money in the media should be believed when they call unaminously  for Kenny Dalglish to take charge.

Why, I wonder, does Jim Boardman seem happy to be media-savvy on every issue but one? Why is he incapable of considering the possibility that a substantial number of ex-players and football writers known here as the Friends Of Kenny have been mobilised to support the removal of Rafa and the nomination of Dalglish? I can think of at lease one obvious answer.

So, to summarise:

• Liverpool FC is not being managed by the media
• Liverpool FC has and will continue to use the media to support its agenda
• The media have and will continue to use Liverpool FC to supports its own agendas
• Other interested parties may also be using the media and vice versa
• Even independent and unofficial commentators are part of the media. They’re just not making as much money as they’d like to
• Too many people like to be told what to think. It stops them having to think for themselves
• You should all send me your contact details because I have a substantial fortune in Nigerian oil money and I need your help getting it out of the country

96 reasons

And it still hurts with every heartbeat.

Ex-Liverpool FC manager Rafa Benitez donates £96,000 to Hillsborough Family Support Group

If they don’t believe us now, will they ever believe us?

Italian Madness

Rafael Benitez agrees to become Inter Milan coach

You’d think the European Champions would have known better. Thank God we had Martin Broughton, Christian Purslow and Kenny Dalglish on our side.

I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Either way, I wish Rafa every possible success at Inter. And I think I’m going to throw up.

Unionise

The first thing that needs to be said is hate’s all very well, but hatred must be organised if dreams are to be realised. And anger is no substitute for disciplined rebellion. To unionise is to organise.

Unfortunately I have little faith in the self-appointed Liverpool Supporters “Union”, the Spirit Of Shankly. For one thing, I hate the arrogance and presumption that goes with their adoption of that name. For another, people I know and trust who know the Spirit Of Shankly consider them  a combination of a handful of self-serving “committee members” backed up by a bunch of “sheep” and “brainwashed lemmings”.

However, right now they’re all we have. So we need to get involved. Because we can talk of riots and petrol bombs and revolutions all day long but if we fail to organise we’ll waste our lives on protest songs. So join the Union, and make it YOUR Union. And task the leadership with taking bold and direct action. Boycott. Picket. Strike. Riot.

If the Union fails to deliver a full-on boycott and picket of the opening home game of the season, then they have a corpse in their mouth.

Because it’s time to sac up. This is All or Nothing. You can’t go into this half-heartedly like the idiots who want the “Yanks Out” but are committed to supporting managers like Hughes, Redknapp, or O’Neill and waste their time arguing about which one would be better. Better? FFS. Accepting any of  them into our club might not be the actual ultimate betrayal, but I really can’t think of anything worse.

Except for falling for the fiddles and cakes being offered around by the Kenny Dalglish Fan Club. More on this tomorrow.

Shirty

It’s nice to see that people are thinking about manufacturing and distributing an alternative to the official Liverpool FC shirt. Done properly, it could be a very effective way of communicating Jihad. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of people with no idea what is required.

Obviously anything that takes money away from the establishment and upsets their business partners is in itself a good thing.

But really? What’s the point of making a wonderfully subtle parody that will be all but indistinguishable from the real kit when seen en masse on TV? We need to take ownership of the brand and subvert it. Not bow down before it.

Some people are whining that “their kids want a kit”. I’m a parent, here’s a tip. Stop treating your kids like idiots. Tell them the truth. Tell them they aren’t getting a kit because the people who profit from them are murdering the football club it represents. Your kids are smarter than you. They’ll understand and they’ll pass the message on to their friends. Buy them something else instead. Buy them the Alterno-Kit. Or a Red Jihad tee shirt. Or whatever. Just use your fucking imagination and sac up.

Personally, of course, I wouldn’t bother with an Alterno-Kit. I’d design and market a cheap and cheerful tee shirt with a strong and powerful symbolic branding. Something everyone can afford, and everyone will recognise. The goal should be to fill Anfield with a huge and hugely visible opposition. Nothing else will do. Anything else is self-indulgence.

Curious

Apparently the man deemed not good enough for Liverpool by football brains as astute as Christian Purslow and Jamie Redknapp is topping the list to take charge at the current Champions of Europe.

It’s a funny old game.

Brand new, you’re retro

The true value of LFC is not the stadium, the players, the TV deals, or even the trophies. It’s the brand and the global recognition and competitive business advantage that goes with it.

Yes, these other elements contribute to the overall brand. This Is Anfield. Fernando Torres. Steven Gerrard. They’re all brands in their own right. But above all else, the brand is three little letters – LFC, And the value of that brand to its owners and their partners in crime is the income it can generate for them. It’s entirely possible and largely accurate to say that effectively managing brand value is the only true responsibility of the CEO.

So if we assume that the goal of Hicks and Gillette is to exploit the LFC brand to the full for their own advantage through any combination of entirely legitimate asset-stripping and perhaps an eventual sale at profit then we can also assume that the brand is the only thing that really matters to them. Because the brand is the bottom-line.

Our job as Mujahideen therefore is complex and challenging.

We are actually a vital part of the brand. It wouldn’t exist without us. The Twelfth Man. The Kop. The Murderers. The Victims Of Hillsborough. More than anything else, in a weird circle-of-life way, the supporters of Liverpool FC are both its core brand and its core customer base. The affinity we feel for the brand is the brand. We are the tradition and unique selling point of Liverpool FC. We’re the reason people all over the world want to be part of the Liverpool family, to be part of our “brand community”. We are Anfield.

With the help and leadership of a few good men, we created the brand that is Liverpool FC. But we’ve allowed a few bad or incompetent men to steal it from us and treat us like chattels. They see us not as partners, but as marketing collateral and as blindly loyal consumers with nowhere else to go.

Well, no more. It’s time for us to say No. (And say it loud)

We created it. Let’s take it over.

By controlling the brand, we can control the agenda. Once we’ve reasserted our ownership of our brand and made it clear to the world that we own the one thing that truly drives this business, only then can we drive the money-lenders out of our temple and hope to rebuild through an alliance with acceptable and worthy business partners.

We don’t own the media. We can’t control what they say or how they spin the truth to serve their own agenda. But we can reveal their dishonesty and duplicity by the way we manage our brand.

The most important part of the brand experience is match day. We don’t own Anfield, but we can control the streets around it. We don’t own the TV channels, but we can control what their cameras can see.

We don’t own Liverpool FC’s relationship with its partners, investors, and sponsors but we can massively influence the value of those relationships.

We need a clear mission – to reclaim our brand.

We need a new identity. Something that clearly and visually distinguishes the true LFC from the business that is owned and operated by Hicks, Gillette, Purslow, Broughton, Dalglish and Whoever.

I’ve argued elsewhere for a red star on a blue background. But that doesn’t matter. I also like words like Jihad and Mujahideen, and hate the name Sons Of Shankly. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that someone takes the lead and does it RIGHT.

Give us a single simple effective visual brand.

Give us an effective distribution that allows us to subscribe to that brand on a global basis.

Take control of the streets around Anfield. Fill the ground with our brand. Take the message to the world — it’s no longer hip, cool, or appropriate to wear the red shirt, the corporate crest, or the Standard Chartered logo.

And then take that message to the sponsors. Show them that they are in partnership with an irrelevant business, not a vibrant meaningful brand. Tell them we will be happy to re-engage with them once the cancer has been cut out, but warn them that until then we are at war.

Jihad

In Islam, Jihad is a duty. The word literally means a struggle, a striving, or a great effort and its primary connotation – the Greater Jihad – is the struggle to maintain faith. The Lesser Jihad, its second connotation, is the struggle – military or otherwise – against oppression and tyranny. Jihad, therefore, can be interpreted as a defensive war,a just war.

What could be more appropriate today?

Something we love has been under attack for several years. In removing Rafael Benitez Maudes from the battlefield, our enemies have dealt us a severe and savage blow. It is time for us to engage in Jihad.

Let us strive to keep faith with our traditions. Let us struggle to protect our community. And let us declare our own defensive war. Our just war against the tyrants who oppress us.

Today let us all become Mujahideen

Credo

It’s a matter of belief. Arguments can be made on many sides and most of them will be valid to a point but in the end it’s all about belief. And this is what I believe.

Rafael Benitez Maudes is a great man, and a gentleman.

This great man gave me the greatest night of my life when he took Liverpool FC to Istanbul and somehow contrived to deliver a miracle. This gentleman has shown little other than immense dignity and dry humour in the way that he’s continually confronted the sea of unholy troubles that has finally swept him away. And Rafael Benitez Maudes deserves my respect, gratitude, and love.

So he’s getting it. Unconditionally.

It’s the Liverpool Way.

I’m not going to argue about the sale of Xabi Alonso or the purchases of Robbie Keane and Alberto Aquilani. I’m not going to relive the triumphs over Real Madrid, Inter Milan, and Barcelona. Or Chelsea, Manchester United, and Everton. And I’m not going to debate David Moores, Rick Parry, Stadler, Waldorf, Hicks, or Gillette.

I’m just going to put this out there: Rafa Benitez loved Liverpool FC. He gave us everything he had to give and he still wasn’t finished. He was ready to carry on. He’s been betrayed. We’ve been betrayed. And this should not be forgiven, forgotten, or allowed to go unpunished.

There’s a cancer that has eaten away the heart, guts, and soul of Liverpool FC. Through the collaboration of the banks and its former custodians, our club is now in the hands of charlatans and snakes. And for reasons of pride, lust, greed, and envy they’re being aided and abetted by great ex-players, by current players convinced of their own greatness, and by a number of once respected supporters who have chosen to lie down with the dogs. And snakes.

As far as I’m concerned, this is no longer my club. It’s an evil, farcical business masquerading under a false flag. It’s not something I can love anymore. In fact, it’s everything I was brought up to despise. Perhaps I should have seen and said this before but for me, from the moment these evil fuckers published their smug, glib, and utterly dishonest statement about the leaving of Liverpool by its one remaining great defender, Liverpool FC became my enemy.

And I do not believe for one moment that it can be saved from within, or by compromise, or by Kenny Dalglish. I believe it can only be saved by jihad.