Glory Of The Football Manager System

February 5th. Monday night. Anfield.

The bus turned onto Anfield Road at six-fifteen and the noise found us before the stadium did. Not the organised, rehearsed noise of a matchday crowd filing through turnstiles.

The noise of a city that had been waiting for this fixture since the draw was made, the noise of forty-three thousand Liverpool supporters who remembered what Danny Walsh had done to them the last time he visited, and who had spent nine months planning the response.

I sat in the front seat and looked through the windscreen and saw the floodlights first. The four pylons, rising above the rooftops of the terraced houses, the light spilling into the February darkness, the glow turning the low clouds orange.

Then the stadium itself. The new Main Stand, expanded, enormous, the red brick and the glass and the steel, the ground that Bill Shankly built and that Jürgen Klopp had turned into the most hostile venue in European football.

The last time I was here, I was twenty-seven years old. An interim manager with five matches to save a football club. Nobody believed in me. Carragher had predicted a thrashing. The pundits had laughed. And I had stood in the tunnel, beside Jürgen Klopp, and felt the weight of the ”This Is Anfield” sign above my head, and I had thought: this is where dreams come to die.

Then we won three-two. Wan-Bissaka pocketed Mané. Eze ran into my arms. Benteke scored the winner. And the dream didn’t die. The dream started.

Nine months later. The bus pulled into the car park. The Netflix cameras were rolling. Tomás was in the aisle, filming the players’ faces through the seats.

Sakho, eyes closed, headphones on. Konaté, staring through the window at the floodlights with the wide-eyed focus of an eighteen-year-old who had never been to Anfield and who was processing the magnitude of what he was seeing.

Neves, scrolling his phone, his face neutral, his mind already on the match. Zaha, who had been here nine months ago, who had set up the equaliser, who had run the channels behind Milner, looking at the ground with the expression of a man who knew what was coming and who was not afraid of it.

Kovačić, beside Neves, was watching the crowd through the glass. The Croatian had played at the San Siro, at the Bernabéu, and at the Allianz Arena. He had experienced the noise of eighty thousand people singing in Milan. He had heard the Bernabéu whistle its own players. He had stood in stadiums where the architecture itself was designed to intimidate.

”This is different,” he said to Neves, quietly.

”Different how?”

”The other stadiums are loud because they’re big. This one is loud because it means something.”

Eze was three rows back. He had been here before. He had come off the bench at the age of eighteen and changed the match with a through ball that split the Liverpool defence and sent Benteke through on goal.

He had sprinted past the celebrating players and thrown himself into Danny Walsh’s arms on the touchline, and the photograph of that embrace had been on the front page of every sports section in England the following morning.

He was looking at his phone. I could see the screen from the front of the bus. He was looking at the photograph. The photograph of himself, nineteen years old, airborne, Danny Walsh catching him, the Anfield pitch beneath them, the away end behind them, the moment that had started everything for both of them.

He put the phone away. He looked up. He caught my eye. And he nodded. The nod that said: I remember. I’m ready. Let’s do it again.

`[Starting XI: Liverpool (A). PL Matchday 26. Monday Night Football. Pope; Wan-Bissaka, Konaté, Sakho, Chilwell; Neves, Kovačić; Navas, Rodríguez, Zaha; Benteke. Bench: Hennessey, Dann, Digne, Milivojević, Kirby, Townsend, Blake.]`

The tunnel at Anfield was narrow and bright, the walls close, the ceiling low. The ”This Is Anfield” sign hung above the entrance to the pitch, the red letters on the white background, the words that every visiting player saw and that most visiting players touched for luck and that Bill Shankly had placed there to remind opponents that they were entering a place where ordinary rules did not apply.

I did not touch it. I had not touched it the first time. I would not touch it now. The sign was Liverpool’s. The match was mine.

Klopp was waiting. He saw me. He crossed the tunnel in three strides, his long coat open, his glasses slightly askew, his face carrying the manic, joyful, intensely competitive energy that defined his tenure at Anfield. He shook my hand with both of his, the grip enormous, the warmth genuine.

”Danny Walsh,” he said, his accent making my name sound like a German film title. ”You are back. And you are second in the league. When you were here last time, you were twenty-third.”

”I was twenty-seventh, Jürgen. You can be honest.”

He laughed. The Klopp laugh, which was louder than most people’s shouts and which made the tunnel vibrate. ”I like you, Danny. I liked you when you beat me. I like you more now that you are proving it was not a fluke.”

”It wasn’t a fluke.”

”No. It wasn’t. And tonight will not be easy for either of us.”

He was right. It would not be easy. Because Liverpool in February 2018 were not the Liverpool of April 2017. They had signed Mohamed Salah in the summer, and the Egyptian had scored twenty-three goals already, his pace and movement and finishing making him the most dangerous forward in the Premier League.

They had signed Virgil van Dijk in January, the Dutch centre-back arriving from Southampton for seventy-five million pounds, the most expensive defender in history, his presence transforming Liverpool’s backline from a vulnerability into a fortress.

Robertson at left-back, Alexander-Arnold at right-back, the full-backs who would become the best in the world within twelve months. Firmino, the false nine whose pressing was as lethal as his finishing.

Mané, who remembered Wan-Bissaka from nine months ago and who had spent the summer learning how to play without the ball being taken from him every time he received it.

And Klopp. The manager who had built the most intense pressing system in English football. The gegenpressing that suffocated opponents, that turned turnovers into goals, that made Anfield feel like a machine designed to convert noise into victory.

But Danny Walsh’s system was not gegenpressing. Danny Walsh’s system was adaptation. The difference was fundamental. Klopp’s Liverpool pressed in the same way every match, the triggers fixed, the patterns rehearsed, the intensity constant.

Palace pressed differently depending on the opponent, the score, the minute, the state of the match. The system adapted. The identity remained. And the identity said: we are not afraid of your press, because we have one of our own, and ours changes shape.

The teams walked out. The Kop was a wall of red. Forty-three thousand voices singing ”You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the anthem rising from the stand behind the goal and rolling across the pitch and hitting the away end, where two thousand Palace fans were standing with scarves raised, singing their own songs, their voices lost in the enormity of the sound but their presence visible and defiant and real.

In the Kop, a banner had been hung before kick-off. It read: ”WALSH CAME ONCE. HE WON’T WIN TWICE.”

I saw it from the touchline. I said nothing.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.