Ian Salmon - They Say Our Days Are Numbered: Liverpools Season of Change

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2016

Pitch Publishing

A2 Yeoman Gate

Yeoman Way

Durrington

BN13 3QZ

www.pitchpublishing.co.uk

Ian Salmon, 2016

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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library

Print ISBN 978-1-78531-193-2

eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-249-6

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STARTING IS difficult. As is ending. The key to any story is knowing which part to relate, telling the most important part of your characters life. Not the whole life, simply the crucial, life-changing part.

What if your character isnt a character, though? What if your character is you? What if youre writing in the present with no idea of where the story will end? Were covering a season here. Covering, roughly, a year in a life, with all the unexpected moments that entails. The end is a long way off and totally unknowable. The beginning, though? Could be here, could be further back. If were honest, its further back, possibly somewhere in 1986. Possibly further back than that.

The other difficulty in starting? Writing involves work. Why work when you could be trawling Twitter, checking whether the world has favourited and RTd the 140 characters that you moulded so carefully, this one linking to a piece by a journalist who advises that the Amazon workers having issues with their employers and the level of physicality and target-setting involved in their work should be glad that they dont work for Jose Mourinho. He then goes on to invest further in his Mourinho love-in, defending Joses public slating of his medical staff after the first game of the season. Hopefully, one of the sub-plots of this year will be the further unravelling of Mourinhos galactic-sized ego. Couldnt happen to a nicer person.

And, yes, this rambling is part of the avoiding starting. Its also emblematic of what youll find in the following pages. If you know any of my work at all, youll know this. Lets indulge my own ego here. You possibly know this already, possibly from The Anfield Wrap to which I contribute, possibly via my theatre work. That will be mentioned as well. Along with family, friends, music and politics. It wont all be football, you know. It cant all be football, footballs part of life, intertwined with everything else that we do. You cant avoid it creeping into everything else any more than you can avoid everything else creeping into it.

Starting then. Since weve established that we dont need to think about how it ends maxim for life right there, kids lets look at other ways to avoid starting. Figure out what music you need in the background. Playing with the iPod wheel, flicking through Spotify, both so much more enjoyable than actually doing anything. Talk Talk, since you were wondering; The Colour Of Spring, the point where theyre still nominally a pop act, before they go all free jazz and become something incredibly other. Thats probably the soundtrack to the rest of the day, which might alter the speed of the writing considerably. Pastoral, bucolic, dream-like. Youll spot the moment when that happens: the sentences will grow longer, more random. Itll be glorious.

Lets start then.

And heres a good place to take a brief aside and acknowledge the whole without whom etc.

The Anfield Wrap, and particularly Neil Atkinson and John Gibbons splendid Make Us Dream, the story of the 2013/2014 seasons almost absolute glory, for the idea that a season review written as it was happening could be valid and compelling.

Sachin Nakrani and Karl Coppacks Were Everywhere, Us (full disclosure, I have a chapter in there) for showing that the personal was the key to the football.

John Graham Davies magnificent play Beating Berlusconi for inspiring me to work in theatre and genuinely changing my life.

And last but not least, our kid, Keith Salmon. His self-published book We Had Dreams and Songs To Sing, which he worked so hard to sell to like-minded fans, for charting the way the game is so much a part of our familys life.

One last thing. One last thing that Im adding here on 24 May with the season ended. Everything that follows is what I thought as it happened. Ive changed nothing, no matter how stupid I might look. And there are moments where Im going to look pretty stupid.

THE START isnt 21 August 2015. The start is July 1986. The two are linked. The dates 5 August and 15 August 2015 as well.

Ive been thinking about 1985/86 a lot over the last couple of days. A special on that season for The Anfield Wrap, they needed somebody old, somebody who could remember that year. Im old. Old enough that I needed to research the season as there was no way that I was trusting to memory on that front.

1985/86 is a weird season. Theres no TV coverage for the first part: the league was demanding more money than the TV companies were willing to pay and, at that point, the TV companies held the power in any deal. Seems absurd now, doesnt it? You realise how long ago 1985 is. You realise how much of your memory is visually based, that much of that memory is reinforced by revisiting events over the years. You dont really remember the video for The Cures Inbetween Days from watching it at the time, you remember it from seeing it repeated and repeated. Liverpools games from 1985/86? Theyre a blur to me. I genuinely dont remember which games I was at. Even after reading up on them, even after watching the footage that is available on YouTube, I dont remember much.

I do remember two games, though. I remember two games and I know one thing.

I remember Liverpool winning at Goodison. I vividly recall Kenny Dalglish scoring in the first minute. I remember the vantage point that I watched that goal from, to the right of the pitch, close to Dalglish as he ran. The problem is, that doesnt work, theres no way that I could be there. It was a 52,000 sell-out away game (even if away in this case is a walk across Stanley Park and closer to my home, both then and now though thirty years and four houses separate us than Anfield is) and my remembered view is somewhere among the Everton fans. Perhaps Ive imagined this, though Ive no idea how Id invent a whole new camera angle for it. Perhaps I had a ticket through a friend. Perhaps it was a dream.

I remember the FA Cup Final, the all-Merseyside FA Cup Final. Travelled down, and back, with an Evertonian friend. Didnt get a pint all day. Remember being very calm when we were behind. The first half lasted for about five minutes. Ive never seen forty-five minutes pass so quickly. Remember falling backwards down the Wembley steps, holding on to our mate, Fleety, screaming: Weve done the fucking double. Still didnt get a pint all day.