The Feeling Inside....

It’s that time of the year again (when I say ‘year’, I mean football year, not the bloody financial or 'traditional' calendar year) when I begin to tire....and generally become a miserable sod…. I was thinking about it the other day, chatting with the lads in the boozer about why I get like this every April and May?

So... what were our conclusions... well, we came up with a fair few:

• The long winter?



• The weather still being shite when the days are getting longer?



• The fact that we'd just been to watch Charlton vs QPR on a shite day and too be honest, in a shite game?



• The end of the football season?



• No England in the Euros? Fuck Off, I’m Scouse.
  

No, it wasn't any of the reasons above (although I'm adamant I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, however, the lads generally laugh at me and I'm usually accused of being a shithouse) instead I put it down to the fact that It's Champions League Knock-Out Time.... and we're not talking the round of 16 or the quarter-finals.... specifically its Champions League Semi-Final Time.... It’s that time in April and May when the 4 best teams in Europe are pitted together by the UEFA machine.....

It’s that time of the year where football isn’t fun, where it becomes more than just a game…. It’s the time of the year that it’s for keeps. No second chances, just two legs of football separating you from progression to European greatness, or relegation to European mediocrity.

But this still doesn’t explain everything, surely that alone can’t make me miserable and tired? SO I kept thinking, what is different? What is it? And when I thought about it, I did think that this year is a little different, this year is the first year since 2004 that I decided not to follow Liverpool throughout Europe; the first year since 2004 that I wasn’t getting up at 4am and flying to random locations via half a dozen other locations to save a few quid; that I wasn’t sleeping on the floor of Schipol Airport; that I wasn’t blagging my way into executive lounges to shower and change....and it got me thinking.... "do I miss it?"

The answer was simple. Of course I fucking do.

Who was I kidding.... last year, I travelled over 80,000 miles, travelling to and from Australia (where I was working on a temporary assignment) to watch the Kings of Europe… Arriving in Manchester direct from Oz, only to go and jump on the pikey air from Liverpool two hours later, landing in a random field in Southern France to watch us play Bordeaux.... or touching down in Barcelona at the same time as dozen other flights on from all over the UK, all full of reds, ready to take the Nou Camp (and we fucking well did)…or congregating at Trafalgar Square in the sun with hundreds, if not thousands of other reds wanting to watch Stamford bridge fall down…

So I was getting closer and closer to solving my riddle….

Commuting from Australia to watch Liverpool in Europe was certainly a way to drain my energy and this coupled with the fact that “it was just that time of the year again” could certainly have been the reason last year….

But what about this year and the years before? Well, looking at the years before, there were a few key things that stuck out in my mind: Gerrard vs Olympiakos, the nerves….. Luis Garcia’s wonder strike against Juve, and then having to go to the Stad Adelphi to play Juve with our ‘history’ these were again, not just matches, they were more than that. They were what stood between Liverpool Football Club and regaining its position as the Kings of Europe.

Closer we edge to answering all my questions… but we are still left with this year to answer for, and I think I have hinted at it above. This is the first year I’ve decided to give Europe a miss, and boy do I miss it. I still have ‘that’ feeling when it comes to the Semi-Finals, the arse twitching, the excitement, the buzz, so it cant be the fact that I’ve fallen out with football, that is making me miserable, but what I do think it is, is the fact that I’m not attending ‘church’ regularly…. It’s the feeling that somehow I am letting myself down…letting my granddad (who proclaimed me a red) down and letting the team down that’s getting to me.

So going 360 on myself, I’ve worked out that if I go the match, I’m tired and miserable when it comes to the big games and If I don’t go the match, I’m equally tired and miserable….. One thing is for sure…. I know I’d rather be tired and miserable having watched the reds in Europe than not….

I’d best get my passport renewed for next season, or the wife will divorce me!