Martian invasion to follow at 7:00.
Stories from the Times and the Daily Mail that Rafa Benitez is worried the higher-ups won't reject a "silly money bid" for the Spanish striker, as well as the necessity to meet the new financial qualifying guidelines for the Champions League. Which is three years away, but still, PANIC!!!
It's not like we're in uncharted territory here--Martin over at the Arsenal Offside wrote a piece about the football media that would be fit to run in said media, only if the media weren't completely full of shit. It's like they have a group retreat at the beginning of the season run by Michael Bay and Glenn Beck, in which they identify different mad libs involving the literary equivalent of explosions, asinine headlines, and elaborate conspiracy theories. Make tin foil caps. Mix and match topics. Sprinkle a dash of cliché. Voilà! Headline.
Take the Times piece, for instance. Rafael Benitez fears club may sell Fernando Torres. Supporting evidence:
In September, Benitez said Torres was “not for sale at any price” but Liverpool’s continuing financial impasse appears to have altered his stance. Benitez is still confident of keeping Torres — and his captain, Steven Gerrard — even if Liverpool fail to finish in the top four, but when pressed on whether an extraordinary offer, such as a £100m bid for Torres, would be rejected automatically he said “we would have conversations if we had to decide about this”. This contrasts with his answer when the same question was put to him in November, when Benitez said: “It won’t happen, I’d quit.”
So the italicized portion, in which Benitez states that "conversations" would occur if a club offered £100 million for Torres, rationally leads a yellow-hued headline. Without any sort of specification about what type of "conversation" would be had, or with whom this conversation would be. Or if that statement is actually a threat that he would strangle someone if they felt they "had to decide about this." Or whether or not this conversation would take place on the moon, or in the lost city of Atlantis. Which, incidentally, may have been found.
Anyway, what's the point? There isn't one. It's a non-story, as so many are, especially during the transfer window. I want to punch myself in the face for half the stuff I've written about in the last week, whether or not it's come true. It is fact that financially, Liverpool are in a precarious situation. They desperately need to turn things around in the front office, or eventually there will need to be "conversations" about either selling the club or players. There's a world of possibilities, but there's little point in advertising hypotheticals in size 75 font, other than attracting poor, emotionally vulnerable saps like me.
But now it looks like the club and its supporters are doing most of the work for the press. Word from the Telegraph that Junior Hicks apparently emailed a fan and told them to "go to hell." If Hicks Jr. actually did this, clearly he lost his cool/was drunk (email sent at 4:00am?) and needs to do some 'splaining. But the Spirit of Shankly has taken it as evidence of "behavior unbecoming a director of Liverpool Football Club." Next they'll de-friend each other on Facebook. Followed by a Twitter rant. Will they talk at the mixer? Find out on MTVUK's, "The Mersey." Directed by Michael Bay.
So is this 550 words of self-soothing nonsense? Absolutely. But it's four degrees outside. New bottle of whiskey. No game tomorrow.