Fury Over Carragher's Cole Comments Exposes Football's Stupid Club

A Liverpool column. More or less. And not just in the here and now

FOOTBALL THROWS UP the most stupid arguments. Even more than politics, it offers a quick route to making a judgement on someone’s personality.

So, when Jamie Carragher made a perfectly reasonable argument about Cole Palmer, suggesting no player in the Premier League has been better than the Chelsea striker in the past 18 months, you can assess the responses and make decisions on those who react.

Let’s grade some reactions.

Reply: “What about Salah?” This is an individual who’s basically alright but can get a bit obsessed. Yes, go for a bevvy with them but be prepared for flat spells in the conversation when their love of a football team becomes unbearable. Not for them, for you.

Reply: “Carra’s a dirty blue who’s got an Everton tattoo.” We’ve gone up a notch. Avoid in the alehouse. They’ll turn swivel-eyed at the drop of a hat.

Reply: “Carragher’s a racist!” Whoa… Back away slowly and head for the exit. Anyone who can make a leap of logic like this needs to be ignored, interred or, in the worse case, be given a kick in the goolies. Which Carra might do if you call him a racist to his face. How the hell did we get to a place like this?

Of course, the correct answer is to recognise Carragher’s credentials, understand that he’s got a level of knowledge and expertise that fans can only dream about and apply the opinions/arseholes equation before respectfully disagreeing. Or ignoring.

Cole has been exceptional in a side that has often looked dysfunctional. Salah has been among the best players in the league for more than half a decade. These things can both be true. Praising one player does not imply disrespect to another.

Liverpool fans have to be better than this. After all, we’re not Arsenal.

The individuals shouting “racist” at Carragher should put their energy into something else. Like highlighting and confronting real racism.

Who’s the greatest? There’s no argument

As all online arguments do, the discourse moved on quickly and sucked other subjects and people into it. This time about whether Salah is greater than Kenny Dalglish. Again, the stupid squad came out.

For me, the Egyptian makes the top five of Liverpool players I’ve seen. In no particular order, they’re Dalglish, Salah, Graeme Souness, John Barnes and Steven Gerrard.

Dalglish is the greatest figure in the club’s history. But that’s a different argument to the best player, although it needs to be taken into account when assessing his on-field career.

He was a master on the ball and Salah reminds me of the Scot when the 32-year-old wriggle-dribbles through congested penalty areas. Dalglish’s passing was sublime but Salah is no slouch when it comes to setting up goals.

When it comes to medals, the 73-year-old is way ahead. Had he reached his peak in the Manchester City era, Kenny would likely have ended up with a smaller haul (or moved on to a club where he could fill his trophy room).

But what sets Dalglish apart is something else. His first job as player-manager was to attend a memorial for the dead of Heysel. He was entrusted with leading a club whose reputation was destroyed by the horror of Brussels in 1985. His response was to lead the team to the Double for the first time in history.

What sort of man do you have to be to achieve something beyond the feats of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley? He was still a player during 1985-86, too, scoring the goal that sealed the title.

And then came Hillsborough. The impact of the unlawful killings on the man was profound. Yet he barely wavered in the battle for justice.

Greatest player in Liverpool history? Yeah, it’s Dalglish.

Salah can join the queue behind him.

Generation game makes no sense

It is hard to judge the relative strengths of players over generations. Not because the sport has changed, as lazy logic tells us, but there is a break-off point where there is not enough archive film available on which to make a determination.

There’s plenty of video of Dalglish around. But only those who saw him know how good Tom Finney was.

I use the Preston Plumber as an example because Shankly loved him. When we used to go to Anfield for autographs in early 1970s summer holidays, we could always get the manager to stay and chat to us by invoking Finney, Shanks’s team-mate at Preston North End.

“Can’t talk today boys,” Shankly would say. “I’ve got to be somewhere.”

“Just before you go, Bill,” one of us would ask. “How good is George Best.”

“Great player,” the Scot would say. “Brilliant player.”

Then came the killer moment.

“Is he better than Finney?”

Shankly would stop. “Tommy was special.” A thousand-yard stare would come into his eyes. “No one was better than Tommy.”

Us selfish little bastards had the great man for at least another half-hour. Whatever he was planning to do could wait. We imagined Finney through Shankly’s words, slicing through contemporary defences.

The bottom line? The great players of any generation would be great players now. They’d adapt to the changes in preparation, fitness, nutrition and technique. They’d love playing on modern surfaces with balls that don’t act like a lump of concrete. They’d love the protection from referees who’d stop defenders cutting them in half. They’d conform with modern standards. Maradona wouldn’t be a little fat bastard who’d pig out on drugs, food and alcohol.

OK, I may have gone too far with Diego. He’d still be a fat, drugged and boozy, brilliant little bastard.

Souness once said to me, “The question isn’t whether we could play today. It’s whether these players could cope in our time.”

It doesn’t matter. Each generation sees the game their way. Enjoy it for what it is. Salah’s wonderful. In 40 years’ time today’s kids will be boring their grandchildren about how great he was. And he is.

Some things best left unseen

Wall-to-wall TV coverage is great in some ways but rubbish in others.

One of my fondest memories is the epic, four-game FA Cup semi-final clash with Arsenal in 1980. It started at Hillsborough with a 0-0 draw and ended at Coventry’s Highfield Road with a 1-0 victory to the Gunners. In between there were two 1-1 draws at Villa Park.

In the second replay, Alan Sunderland scored in the first minute and Liverpool battered the Gunners for the rest of the game but could not score.

The Holte End was split down the middle and, as the match ticked into injury time, the tension built to a climax. Then the ball came into the penalty area in front of the vast terrace. There was Dalglish waiting for it and Pat Jennings between the Liverpool player and the goal.

This was a showdown of epic proportions. The Northern Irish goalkeeper had hands like shovels and was quick off his line. Dalglish had to wait until the ball came down – sometimes, when retelling the story, he waited until it bounced up – and then he swung a leg and his foot connected about shoulder height.

By now Jennings was horizontal, flying towards the striker like a pouncing cheetah. You heard the slap of boot on ball from way back in the Holte and then that gorgeous swishing of net. We exploded. Next to us, a matter of metres away, the Arsenal fans were silent.

That’s how I remembered it from the night. For years I waxed lyrical about the goal, framing it like a gunfight. I never saw footage of it. People who were in the ground with me concurred with my retelling of the strike.

And then along came YouTube. Oh, the joy!

Until I watched it. There’s a bit of head tennis, Ray Kennedy nods it down into the six-yard box and Dalglish shoots over Jennings’s body from close range.

Not a showdown. Not an epic moment. Just a scruffy goal.

I wish I’d never seen it again.

How many of my early football memories have been elevated and enhanced by imagination?

Television’s unforgiving, unflinching eye means everybody sees everything. It’s great in so many ways. But I still mourn the passing of folklore.

• Far Foreign Land, a book about Istanbul and Liverpool’s supporter culture, is available here £10 UK, £15 Europe, £18 Rest Of World. All including postage. Get it in time for the 20th anniversary year