Are You There, John W. Henry?

I wonder if Americans understand football as much as they seem to understand the fine words of a manager who has proved himself one of the slickest prevaricators in the league. Every bad performance is case of 'bad luck' and every crazy managerial decision has a back story to match anything written by another High Princess of Unbelievable Fairytale Bullsoup, Dame Barbara Cartland.

There has to be some reason why Brendan Rodgers is still holding onto his job. Perhaps John W. Henry's attention is elsewhere. Maybe Rodgers has Henry's box set of 'Breaking Bad' and Henry just can't sack him until Rodgers returns it. Up to this year, football usually made sense. Everything about Liverpool at the moment makes absolutely no sense. Won't somebody please educate me and explain the deep underlying structure in this disorganised chaos?

I'm not too sure how much longer this can go on. For Liverpool to lose 3-0 to Manchester United would always be a low point of the season. However, to lose 3-0 to this United team demonstrates the depth of the crisis at Liverpool. I genuinely don't believe it's the players who should take the blame for what's happened. Individually there are some solid players. They work hard but too often seem to lack a system beyond an ineffective tap-it-tap-it-lose-it-to-a-proper-challenge. Even the summer buys don't look as bad as the media portray them, though what Emre Can has to do to get a game must involve dark arts because scoring one goal against Chelsea seemed to mark the end of Brendan's patience with the poor lad. Even the much scorned Mario Balotelli was Liverpool's best player (again) when he came on. He can be petulant, do crazy things and believe in his own hype, but you can also see why managers have persisted with him in the past. He genuinely looks a world class player. If he could just get rid of the petulant little tugs, his game would almost without criticism given he's playing in a system that doesn't suit his game.

What seemed to make a difference were the tactics. One team underplayed but the team selection and tactics made sense. The other team worked hard and made chances but they were continually undermined by odd decisions coming from the sideline. Taking off Moreno, one of Liverpool's best players, to put Lazar Marković in a position where he couldn't attack the back four with the penetration of last week's cameo... Did that seem like a rational thing to do? Perhaps somebody with a better understanding of football can educate me as to why we'd start the game without a proper striker. Why would you refuse to sub Joe Allen whose game is simply not what it was when he looked undroppable for a period a year or so ago? Even more baffling was replacing Adam Lallana, who despite carrying an injury, was head, shoulders and cracked ribs above every other Liverpool player in that first half.

However, Rodgers makes decisions which, even to my limited football knowledge, make about much sense as firing Rafa Benitez during the Hicks / Gillett period, when he was the one man trying to defend the club from those unscrupulous b******s and paid a price for telling the fans too much about what was going on inside the club.

Is this what football has become? A sport where good men are made to suffer for one bad season whilst coping with devious owners yet a preening peacocks with great new teeth can never seem to do wrong? When is somebody finally going to call the Emperor on his new clothes? Please, John W. Henry. Sack Rodgers. If you need a new boxset of 'Breaking Bad', I'll buy one for you myself in the New Year sales.

John W Henry: The Cartoon Strip – Episode 4

My latest comic strip for Red All Over The Land, currently being handed out around Anfield ahead of this afternoon's match against Fulham. This one was rushed to hit a deadline. Also not sure how many of these I'll do. This morning's news that BT have bought all the rights to the Champion's League makes me even more disenchanted with football. It might just be easier to stop watching it entirely. I have books, films, writing and cartooning to keep me busy. Football was another luxury I could easily cut from my life. I suppose it's another glowing success for our market economy...

John W Henry: The Cartoon Strip

The second cartoon strip about Liverpool owner, John W Henry I've drawn for the Liverpool FC fanzine, Red All Over The Land.

Friday's Manchester United Cartoon

The First Manchester United Cartoon of the Season

Bend The Rules For Beckham

I’m not a David Beckham fan. Put me in a room full of people who aren’t Beckham fans and I’d quickly make plenty of enemies among the majority who think my opinions too extreme. In many respects, Beckham represents the turn towards self-indulgence this country has seen over twenty years, where the body has become the place where consumer products battle for prominence. From the prevalence of tattoos to the feminisation of male culture, from a world in which style wins over substance, to the worshipping of the shallowest celebrities: all roads seem to lead to Beckham. Even at what he does best, he embodies the showy but not particularly effective side of football.

Yet to leave him out of the Olympic squad seems morally wrong, especially when that place is given to a player who allegedly refused to be on the stand-by list for the England squad. Beckham never ruled himself out of playing for England, flying ridiculous distances to appear. As captain, one sensed that it meant something to him beyond the increased marketing possibilities. He worked so tirelessly for the country to win the Olympics (though, here again, I’m pretty indifferent to the whole bloody spectacle that it seems strange to be arguing that winning it was a virtue) that do deny him the chance to play for his country, one last time, seems ridiculously petty.

Yet this country has become so obsessed by winning that we seem to have forgotten greater qualities, such a loyalty, friendship, common human decency. Robert Preston was just on the news saying that the failure at Barclays is down to customers not realising that there had been a change in corporate culture: that the banks started to screw us over in the name of profit because they’d forgotten that they were actually meant to serve the interests of the customer.

Who really gives a stuff if we win a gold for football at the Olympics? Let Beckham play and show that we cherish something greater than winning, greater the Mammon… That itself would be a victory, though a victory that in a way stands in the way of everything that Beckham has cherished, promoted and exemplified over the last two decades.

No cartoon, as yet, today. I’ve been busy animating and drawing a cartoon which might actually earn me a couple of bob. But then again, it might not.

Roman Abramovich Buys The Art World's Most Flawed Masterpiece

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I know... Not come out as well as I'd hoped. Surprisingly difficult to produce a parody of Edvard Munch with your fourth attempt at using watercolours. Bloody stuff gets everywhere. You should see the state of my carpet...

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