Dear Liverpool,
Please don’t hurt me.
Please don’t hurt me, Liverpool. If I’ve ever said anything to offend you—and I’m not saying you’re sensitive, Liverpool!—or if I’ve ever done anything that might make you want to tear my head off my neck, replace it with a weathervane, and dump my corpse in a lightning storm, then Liverpool, please, allow me to take this opportunity to offer a complete and unreserved apology. Have mercy, Liverpool. I beg you. Have mercy on me.
Liverpool, I know that I once called your manager a “gerbil.” Your manager is not a gerbil, Liverpool. Okay, your manager is kind of a gerbil. Nevertheless, I—
Liverpool! Wait! Please put that door back on its hinges! Don’t—don’t hoist that piano over your head with one hand, Liverpool! Don’t throw that piano through the window, Liverpool! Stop advancing on me, Liverpool! Stop sssssssadfkjlnhmshjrahg———
Yours affectionately,
Brian
Read More: Aston Villa, Liverpool, The Occasional Match Summary
by Brian Phillips · March 22, 2009
you & brad friedel both, buddy
Barca.
lol
The Barcelona comparison just doesn’t hold. It’s joyful, what Barcelona’s doing. They make a 6-0 win feel like a celebration. It’s a carnival. You have the sense that some basic meridian of positivity is strengthened every time they score.
Liverpool have mowed down the champions of Spain, the champions of England and Europe, and the most promising team in the Premier League 14-1 in three matches, and you get the feeling they’re still out there stalking the next ten goals. It’s like the football version of Aguirre, the Wrath of God. They’re pressing on into the jungle until they’ve carved out their empire, and they don’t care who dies along the way.
I’d give anything to see them play each other right now, of course.
Liverpool with Nino Torres is the epiphany of the high press English style of play – it is like the full court press in basketball, only you don’t get ejected for slide tackles.
Also Rafa Benitez is a hamster, not a gerbil! I suggest some species sensitivity training – hamsters get really offended when people confuse them with gerbils (and vice versa)
I’m pretty sure some Manchester United fans said this last week, but Villa didn’t play badly for at least most of the first half*. Villa had some good chances denied by Reina; however Liverpool were just not only better, but seemed almost blessed by some capricious god or goddess of football (seriously, Reira’s goal reminded me of some of the better Cantona goals).
*I’m a Villa fan, and I was calling for Gerrard and Torres to come out after 60 minutes, lest they get hurt.
Yup, couldn’t have given five goals to a better club. Now Liverpool, if you’ll just let my grandmother go, we can end this peacefully…
A Liverpool demolition does not compare to a Barca one – Liverpool are a sleeping grizzly that has been prodded repeatedly by a stick (wielded by Stoke?) driving them into an all consuming, thundering rage as compared to Barcelona’s nimble butterfly.
This rolling boulder of form seems oddly like a view into Mascherano’s head after his performance against Madrid. A great steam-powered beast that will scatter all before it until it crashes into some team bus parked at Anfield.
Liverpool is a pack of wolves led forward by Gerrard but Mascherano snarls while patrolling the rear.
Barcelona is a carnival in which Xavi plays the part of wandering clown, his face covered in white paint, and he smiles as he soaks your face with water from a plastic flower in his breast pocket. Messi relentlessly pummels his mallet at the gophers’ heads while Henry effortlessly tosses darts.
Puyol tames the lions shirtless and barehanded
The lions accept him because they have the same barber.
Pepe Reina likes to catch small animals and tie firecrackers to their tails. Sometimes he’ll settle for kicking the ball far up field.
I was so mad Rafa Marquez cut his hair – if anything he should have let it grow, stopped tying it back, and then recruited the bassist and drummer from the Ramones to play left and right back respectively.