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From when I was a nipper⊠can still remember running onto the pitch and patting him on his back - ironic thing, it was my Dad that threw me over the Kop wall, with an instruction to go and do it.
Not sure who ended up with the biggest smile on our face on the walk home afterwards :0)
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Since everyoneâs so bored, perhaps I can start a little fight here:
Can anyone help me understand what exactly was Robbie Keane supposed to be good at? Every time I see his name mentioned in connection with Liverpool, there are always people defending him and blaming Rafa for wasting a good player, but Keane was absolutely shite when he was here, and not any better after, judging by his numbers after leaving us.
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He was good at running around and looking busy. He was also âgoodâ at forward rolls, but that is something we normally stop praising when they reach an age of 7 years old.
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He was also good at eating rolls, the fat fuck.
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He was a decent enough goalscorer. His stats prove that. He wasnât suited to Liverpool and that was unfortunate at the time.
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NĂșñez is getting slaughtered for putting up similar number of goals per 90 (once you exclude penalties since NĂșñez doesnât take them).
.48, .34, .41, .51, .49, .40 for his first spell at Spurs, compared to .48, .48, .46 for NĂșñez.
Including assists into that only makes Keane look worse. As an aside, NĂșñez is somehow on .65 goal contributions per 90 in the league this season, which feels⊠wrong.
Keane also pretty much peaked before us, when he was 25/26. He left us when he was 28, and he only got another 52 games for Spurs before moving to LA at 31.
I didnt say he was brilliant?
Decent, and in time Darwin will be described as decent. Never excellent.
Robbie Keane might have been a decent striker for us on the more withdrawn 9 role that we eventually used with Firmino but he no replacement for Torres.
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Never really understood the criticism of Rafa for not playing him in his natural position, as if he was going to oust Torres or Gerrard.
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He was brought to either play with Torres as a second striker (when we had to break down teams more and more), be Torresâ backup and Rafa also used him a little bit on the sides, but that was more in pre-season (Kuyt was better in that wider role).
We were often in the search for such a forward in Rafaâs last seasons, Jovetic wouldâve been viewed as the same type of second striker who can do multiple roles.
Thing is, we already had the Gerrard & Torres understanding going on since around spring of 2008 (I think Inter at home might have been the first time Kuyt got shifted to the right and Gerrard behind Torres). Behind, Mascherano and Alonso were settled.
Keane struggled (sometimes itâs more than just positions and roles), but the funny thing is that he started picking up some form just as the rumours started he would go back to Spurs in January.
We can only discuss and debate eternally, Rafaâs argument was better to sell him that January for a smaller loss than the one it might have been the following summer. I think a difference of about ÂŁ5-6m. Which today might sound as not much, but back then, with already some issues happening with the owners, Rafa thought ahead.
Fact remains though, we were also the victims of a lack of strength in depth in forward positions in some key moments later on that season. A season with a lot of draws (11 in the league), that ultimately cost us the title. I remember Boro away just days after the Madrid victory, we had a team with Skrtel at RB, El Zhar, Kuyt and Babel as forwards. Not good enough.
I personally wouldâve probably opted to keep Keane for the rest of the season (similar to how I understand why we rejected Saudi for Nunez this January), because we had the best chance for the title in a long time.
Going a bit deeper also, as much as Gerrardâs and Torrresâ partnership was good, I always felt that combination overall in the team had itâs expiry date (sooner than people thought). No wonder that it didnât last long. That was Rafaâs best team, but the unfortunate thing was that as we were becoming better, we also won zero trophies between 2006 and 2010 (obviously until 2012).
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I honestly doubt that. We dropped all of 7 points in the 15 league games after he left. 1-1 with City, 2-0 loss at Middlesbrough, and 4-4 against Arsenal. In contrast, with him, we dropped 21 points in 23 league games with 9 draws and 1 loss.
Of that, Iâd say that the Arsenal one is less likely to have been because we didnât score enough.
In the other competitions, we lost to Everton the day after he left, so perhaps there is an argument there. In the Champions League, we lost 1-3 to Chelsea at home and drew 4-4 away, so again, Iâm not quite sure it was the attack that let us down there.
In tomorrowâs episodeâŠgiven the opportunities, Martin Kelly would have been an okayish defender.
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Poor manâs Gary Gillespie.
To be fair, the original question was a sincere one, because I just donât understand what Keane ever brought to the table that he would get cited as the reason why people donât like Rafa or why selling him cost us the title.
Our form with and without him was worlds apart in a way that doesnât look good for him.
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Shortly after joining LFC, his house with his wife in attendance, was robbed by masked raiders, and they scared the shit out of her⊠After something like that happening, it is fair to say his mind was never going to be settling into a team, or City, they both wanted away from, ASAP
I used to just think he was a bit crap⊠but given the circumstances, maybe I was a tad unfair to judge him that way.
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I understand that, but it doesnât explain why he was crap after leaving usâŠ
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Oh Okay⊠He was never the same again :0)
Red or Dead review â Peter Mullan never walks alone as Liverpool FC hero Bill Shankly
Story by Chris Wiegand
Bated breath ⊠Peter Mullan as Bill Shankly in Red or Dead at Liverpoolâs Royal Court
In 2016, an adaptation of David Peaceâs The Damned United was staged in Leeds and Derby where its pugnacious subject, Brian Clough, is still viewed as villain and hero respectively. Peaceâs next football novel was Red or Dead, a 700-page opus about Liverpool FCâs eternally beloved manager Bill Shankly. It is similarly adapted on home turf: the Royal Court has laid out the red carpet, serving Shanks pies and Shanks pints, honouring the man who transformed the club.
The Damned United had a cast of 11 and was bulked out with human-size Subbuteo-style mannequins. Red or Dead assembles a whopping 52-strong ensemble who almost continuously fill the stage, adapter and director Phillip Breen evidently taking his cue from the anthem Youâll Never Walk Alone. In the lead role is film and TV star Peter Mullan, finally returning to the stage in a casting coup that gains resonance from a career as entwined with socialism as Shanklyâs.
There are no spotlit soliloquies: Shankly is consistently accompanied by players, boot-room staff, board members or by his wife, Ness (Allison McKenzie), who is given more prominence than in the novel and beautifully sings Robert Burnsâs poetry. Mostly it is the fans, so often sidelined in footballing dramas, who flock around him.
Peaceâs novel is punctuated with poetic match reports, accompanied by a precise record of the thousands in attendance. It is an inspired move, then, to use a community company who switch from narrators to chorus to Kopites. They hang on Shanklyâs words: when he calls chairman Tom Williams (Les Dennis, measuring out fatigue and frustration) to accept the job, leaving his post at Huddersfield in 1959, the ensemble draw close with pricked ears and bated breath. The play captures the sense of a life lived in the public eye, each move scrutinised.
Emphasising the all-consuming nature of the job, Max Jonesâs spare set design serves as the Shanklysâ home, Anfieldâs dressing rooms and boardroom, the training ground and occasionally the pitch â though match action is usually described not choreographed. After all, how could it compete with strikes such as Kenny Dalglishâs 1978 European cup winner â a clip of which is projected across the set to cheers from the audience. Peaceâs novel finds Shankly returning to the kitchen table, strategising with cutlery â here those utensils are also used to recreate a match, ending with a knife stabbed in a block of butter.
Peaceâs sentences are short. Short and repetitive. Repetitive and maddening at first. Maddening but with a momentum from the repetition. A momentum that is methodical. Itâs representative of day-to-day training, game-by-game slog, the drive and stamina of Shankly. It becomes incantatory in the manner of Peaceâs Red Riding quartet. But sharing the lines across a huge cast gives them colour and lightness, emphasising Shanklyâs collectivism encapsulated by his belief that Liverpool was Liverpoolâs best player, not one individual. Chants merge with pop songs, including Jhanaica van Mook singing as Cilla Black, and a group rendition of the Beatlesâ She Loves You that bleeds into a match commentary, âyeah! yeah! yeah!â becoming a cry on the Kop.
In a fittingly unshowy performance, often still amid a whirl of movement, Mullan captures the managerâs rapid patter, warmth and no-nonsense approach, his voice switching from assertion to whisper in lines like âFirst is first, second is nowhere.â Some of Shanklyâs witticisms donât have the space to land, and while his Desert Island Discs appearance is recreated to sketch in some backstory, you miss his extended meeting of minds with Harold Wilson from the novel (although various political upheavals are pithily recorded). This Shankly can be inscrutable and the second half, which finds comedy in his inability to fully retire, needs a touch more tragedy. Still, it establishes a quietness that contrasts with the frantic first half. A coda deftly reflects on how fans have been priced out of the game
The cast take on multiple roles including Kevin Keegan (Matthew Devlin in a fright wig), Brian Clough (a preening Paul Duckworth) and Ian St John (George Jones, capturing the playerâs sense of betrayal when dropped). Dickon Tyrrell is excellent as Bob Paisley, Shanklyâs deferential yet triumphant successor. Admirably ambitious, Breenâs production is both inspired and inspiring, told with the quick humour, community spirit and full force of the Kop.
- At the Royal Court, Liverpool, until 19 April
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