It's been a strange week here on the Liverpool Offside---there's not been a whole lot of actual news since Saturday's draw with Stoke, but there's been an influx of folks whose keyboards were custom-made by Nigel Tufnel and have a vendetta against either Kenny Dalglish, people talking sense, or chickens, and often times there's been a frightening combination of the three. So to say we're looking forward to Saturday is a bit of an understatement, at least so long as the weekend doesn't involve three at the back and the wrong personnel and chicken leg Dal...oh god.
* On the business end of the things the club re-confirmed their new kit sponsorship deal with Warrior Sports, an American-based company that's typically associated with manufacturing hockey and lacrosse gear. An initial announcement was made back in April regarding the club's record deal, which makes another announcement doubly important. Or not actually that important.
But things started to get strange this week, with adidas CEO Herbert Hainer commenting that "the gap between their performance on the field and what the number should be is not in balance. Then we said, ‘Okay we will not do it. That’s the end of the story.’" Which is a nicely polished and perfectly snarky thing to say that, despite the objective reality that Liverpool have struggled mightily on the pitch, essentially ignores the clout that Liverpool still carries as a brand, as well as the success of the partnership between the two parties.
With Liverpool deciding to reannounce their announcement of the Warrior deal, though, the news cycle started to eat itself, as Ian Ayre and Warrior executives talked about how powerful the club's global brand is and others shouted about how Liverpool are so bad right now they can't hold onto a kit sponsorship even when another one that's more lucrative was sealed a little less than a year ago. So as usual, we learn nothing about anything other than the fact that everything's the same as it was before and entirely different, and Liverpool's loss is Liverpool's gain.
* In other, more serious off-pitch news, the drive to get the necessary number of signatures for Anne Williams' petition had hit full throttle by yesterday afternoon with the deadline looming, and with over 100,000 signatures in total and a stunning 65,000+ in the final 48 hours, the threshold's been met.
"Thank you everyone, honestly, from the bottom of my heart for signing and supporting me. It's been 23 years of living with lies and I cannot go away until I get justice for Kevin. I just can't believe it. The way it was going down last night and then came the support. It's the last day today and I wasn't sure when they were going to stop the petition, whether it was twelve o'clock this morning or twelve o'clock tonight because it doesn't say - it's been nerve-wracking. We got there. I just cannot believe it.
"I have been lied to from the outset and I cannot live with these lies. If he got a new inquest it would change the cause of death and it's in the interest of justice that he does because I cannot live anymore with the lies.Also, this will help all the other 95 families as well. Kevin died at 4 o'clock and he was save-able."
I cannot, and would prefer not to even try to, imagine the impact of losing a child so young, and I'm further at a loss to understand what it must have been like to struggle for over two more decades with the idea that he could have been saved. There's likely countless stories that are similar to Mrs. Williams', all of which underline the importance of the proceedings earlier in the fall. And in a week where so many seemed so miserable, it's nice to see a collective effort in search of something that would be immeasurably positive for the Williams family. Now we'll just hope things move forward from here and the MP's throw their support fully behind her efforts.
* Rounding things off, there's a few heres and theres more immediately relevant to the football, most of which emerged from Dalglish's pre-Bolton presser:
---The manager spoke of his happiness at the progress of Sebastian Coates, who started his first league match against Stoke on Saturday and was one of the top performers on a day that saw few really stand out. And aside from the few moments of madness and a so-so display against Oldham, there's little to be disappointed in, with the young Uruguayan even proving to be unusually nimble and composed for his size.
---Dalglish also sort of but not really commented on the club's interest in Joao Teixeira, stating that "there might be something about that." So, right, there might be something about it.
---Lastly, Owen Coyle invited mega-trolling by saying that he expects Andy Carroll to come good at some point, which he clearly doesn't understand is something you JUST DON'T SAY. The Sky Sports comment board is suspiciously quiet right now, but I'd expect ours to explode shortly with an orgy of caps-locked misspellings and rants about the need for non-poultry to be in charge at Liverpool. Yeah, go Andy.
That's it for today's collection of somethings, and if anything else pseudo-happens ahead of tomorrow we'll be sure to get something posted. So we will be there, or we will be not there.