So … yeah … I’ve been a tad incommunicado here on this blog where I said I’d be chronicling my nascent Liverpool fandom. I’ll share with you some of the reasons why because I like to hold myself accountable:
I spent December wrapping up the fall semester and grading dozens of submissions from students in my undergraduate journalism class and two master’s of fine arts classes. When I completed that task, I revised three syllabi and three sets of online course modules for the spring 2024 semesters for three courses.
Additionally, there was the whole Christmas holiday prep — buying presents for the family and spending hours wrapping, planning the menus for two holiday dinners, cooking/baking, cleaning the house, and squeezing in a mid-December trip to visit my daughter Abbey and her boyfriend Anthony in their Bronx apartment.
In addition to helping my senior citizen father with his weekly medicine, paying his bills, and taking him to his medical appointments, I had meetings for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (where I’m a member of the local chapter’s Board of Trustees, as well as an MS Activist, which means I lobby state and federal officials for bills which help those with chronic illnesses). I also did some more research for my work-in-progress about a Massachusetts Millennial minister, and, this is my low-key announcement, started working with a publisher to prep my second novel for a February 2025 publication date.
So … yeah … maybe taking on this British football project was a tad too ambitious. I realized early in December that I just would not have the opportunity to pull together blog posts for each game I watched. And I did watch all but one Liverpool game since I last blogged about the Reds. (I missed the Dec. 6, 2023 game against Sheffield United — which Liverpool won 1-nil — because there were too many people logged onto our streaming account. We’ve remedied the situation by purchasing our Liverpool-fan son Jonah an online streaming subscription for Christmas.) I watched eight games during December and one on New Year’s Day in my Boston area home, in our family’s Cape Cod place, en route to and in church, at Sean’s Bar & Kitchen in New York City, and at an in-law’s house during a holiday event. I took notes while watching most of these contests, but lost the ones I jotted on a Sean’s Bar & Kitchen napkin.
The Reds have compiled an impressive record during the past 10 games, winning seven, tying two, and losing one, the Europa group league game vs USG, which my Chelsea-fan son told me didn’t matter because Liverpool was advancing out of group play anyway, so I’d say they had a good December, in spite of my blogging lapse.
While I’ll post some highlights from my notes below, one question has been haunting me over the over-packed month of December: How can fans possibly keep up with all these games? Do they watch all of these games or some of them?
I, for example, don’t watch every Boston Red Sox game, given that they have 162 of them a season, and I still call myself a fan. I think I’ve been unduly influenced by my Chelsea-fan son who’s of the mind that only real fans watch every football game. (Yes, he’s employed.) I now realize that it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to blog about every game, and that’s okay. I’ll still watch as many as I can, taking notes when I can, and posting as I can.
As a British football newbie, I still find all these concurrent tournaments — EFL, Europa, never mind players leaving to play for their national teams’ continental football tournaments (like Mo Salah leaving Liverpool to participate in the Africa Cup of Nations for much of January) — befuddling. I’m unaccustomed to trying to balance all of the competitions in my mind. I think following just the Premier League would be simpler, but my Chelsea-mad son has strongly implied that would be very “plastic” of me. And, God knows, I don’t wanna be plastic.
Sunday, Dec. 3, Liverpool 4 – Fulham 3
I watched this contest from bed, with my yappy dog Tedy sidled up next to me beneath the purplish-red blanket my great grandmother knitted for my husband Scott and me many decades ago. (My Chelsea-fan son got custody of the big TV in the family room because Chelsea was playing simultaneously.) Liverpool’s wildly talented goalkeeper Alisson Becker was out due to an injury and the back-up goaltender, Caoimhim Kelleher, didn’t fill me with confidence. At. All. Neither did the 20th-minute own-goal by Trent Alexander-Arnold. The weather was so cold in the UK that viewers could see the players’ breath as they exhaled while manager Jurgen Klopp had a scarf pulled up over his mouth. (Maybe it was to prevent people from hearing him scream.) My concerns started to lift after Alexis Mac Allister netted his first goal of the season in what commentators called “an unbelievable strike” and “a special, special goal” whose “technique was impeccable.”
I watched the second half while driving to church through a cold, gray rain, then while sitting in a back pew, leaning my phone against a hymnal, resting atop the red velvet seat cushion, and plugged into the portable orange charger that I’ve had since the 2010s. At one point, I fumbled the phone, caused a racket, accidentally took a screenshot while catching the device before it fell to the painted-wood floor. Fearful I’d make a further spectacle of myself, I carefully laid the iPhone down flat on the cushion and tried to focus on Rev. Laurel’s sermon about slowing down one’s life and tried not to laugh at the preposterous irony of that message which I knew I needed to heed. I did, however, catch a glimpse of Wataro Endo’s goal that could be seen from space which tied the game, 3-3, but I didn’t see Alexander-Arnold redeem himself from the earlier own-goal by scoring the tie-breaker because I was listening to the church’s music director singing, “There’s Light After the Dark.”
Saturday, Dec. 9 — Liverpool 2 – Crystal Palace 1
My alarm went off at 7:15 a.m. and I had plenty of time to fire up the coffee maker and be sitting in front of the TV in time for kick off. However, the USA live-stream in our Cape Cod place repeated froze, prompting me to refresh it repeatedly, often at inopportune moments. At least it didn’t freeze during a stupendous save which demonstrated why Becker’s a top Prem goaltender. Throughout the game, the announcers seemed to be a tad more sarcastic than most of the folks I’ve heard call other Prem games (“If a sweet wrapper [blew across] the pitch, they’d [Palace] tackle that too.” “Suddenly Liverpool love VAR.”) In the 55th-minute of this game, there was a bizarre penalty kick awarded to Crystal Palace … minutes after a play occurred, after VAR folks scoured video to see if Liverpool’s Jarell Quansah fouled a Palace player. The announcers were quite salty about this “extraordinary” decision on the part of the officials: “This is the age we live in. They looked and looked and looked.” From this, I learned that officials can allow play to continue while still reviewing a play that occurred minutes before, as opposed to doing what we do here in America: halt the play until a decision can be rendered. A milestone match achievement: Salah sunk his 200th goal for the Reds.
Thursday, Dec. 14 – UEFA Europa League Group E, Union Saint-Gilloise 2 – Liverpool 1
I was engrossed in my MFA students’ final essays when my phone reminded me that this game was about to start, with Kelleher (God help us) in the goal again. As I watched a slew of players whose names I’d never heard take to the pitch, I texted my family group chat to ask what the hell was going on and who the hell was this guy Conor Bradley. That’s when I was informed that since Liverpool was already advancing to the next phase of the Europa League competition, a lot of underused players would be featured and that the stars would get a rest. When I received that text, to be honest, my interest waned as did my note-taking.
Sunday, Dec. 17 – Liverpool 0 — Manchester United 0
Since I woke up with ferocious MS fatigue paired with a migraine, I didn’t venture to church on this morning and missed the Christmas/winter solstice pageant which I’d wanted to see. I would not be multi-tasking or juggling a cell phone in church today. The extra time in bed helped my migraine ease a bit and enabled me to go down to our family room in time for the kick-off.
The most remarkable notations I wrote in my spiral notebook from this disappointing nil-nil contest were that: 1) the announcers went silent for an unusually long stretch at around the 40th minute to the point where I wondered if something had happened to them 2) the announcers said the 57,000+ crowd was the biggest crowd at Anfield since 1949 3) Liverpool had a ton of first-half corner kicks which went nowhere 4) Scott learned that Taylor Swift’s plane had been spotted leaving New Jersey and heading to Rhode Island, so, we assumed, the megastar could see her American football-playing boyfriend play the Patriots in Foxborough, Mass. 5) after I said I wanted to see Endo get another goal like he did against Fulham, Scott said, “He’s not a shooter,” like my comment was idiotic and ill-informed. However, in the 77th minute Endo executed ferocious shot on goal which was, sadly, blocked. I shouted, “Ha ha! Fuck you!” playfully of course, after which, I accused Scott of being a mansplainer.
Wednesday, Dec. 20 – EFL Cup (Quarterfinal), Liverpool 5 – West Ham 1
This is the game I watched in Sean’s Bar & Kitchen in New York City after Scott, our daughter Abbey, her boyfriend Anthony, and I went to the Christmas market in Bryant Park and then enjoyed a late lunch at this Liverpool-themed bar while we watched the EFL quarterfinal game. I have these lovely pics (above) from watching the game, however, as I mentioned earlier, I lost my notes-on-a-napkin. Luckily, it was a blow-out. A serious blow-out where the Reds had possession for 67% of the game. So I got to go see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, with its five miles of lights, with a bounce in my step.
Saturday, Dec. 23 – Liverpool 1 – Arsenal 1
The crazy-making, overly-packed grocery store – at which I was shopping for ingredients to make Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners, as well as for desserts and cookies I still planned to bake – delayed me in getting home in time to watch the game. I thought I had enough time to dash into the store and dash out. Throw in the fact that the grocery store didn’t have any more wrapping paper (yet they had EASTER displays!), which forced me to stop at a second store, and I wasn’t able to sit down and watch Liverpool until the start of the second half, when it was and where it remained 1-1. I’d intended to try to stream the game on my phone, but I couldn’t manage it with my over-filled shopping carriage and the volume of stressed-out people whose spirits didn’t seem lifted by the cheery music and festive decorations.
My Liverpool-fan son Jonah, my Chelsea-fan son, and Scott helped unload and put away all the groceries when I returned. The fact that I missed the first half when Liverpool was playing the team at the top of the Prem baffled my younger son (and if Liverpool won they’d go to the top of the chart, as they call it in the UK), however he’s never had to host major food-centered holidays, nor had he ever been expected to bake. (Days later, NBC reported that this game – with 1.96 million viewers was the “most-watched Premier League match in US history.”) The most animated minute of this game in my family room occurred in the 73rd minute, when everyone in my family room screamed and our dog Tedy barked wildly without knowing why: Salah passed to Alexander-Arnold whose shot hit the post and then, in spite of having five players to Arsenal’s two in front of Arsenal’s goal, Liverpool didn’t score. My notes: “so much red [in front of the Arsenal goal] that it looked like a hemorrhage.”
“Now there’s going to be all of these memes,” Jonah lamented.
Tuesday, Dec. 26 – Liverpool 2 – Burnley 0
The original starting-five members of my family were sat down in the family room the day after Christmas (get me, I’m using British slang with sat down, sounding like someone from an Ed Sheeran song), me sporting my new Liverpool sweatshirt the Chelsea-mad son gave me. In fact, he gave all four of us Liverpool gear for Christmas, the big softie. It wasn’t long after Liverpool took to the pitch wearing those ugly bright green and white kits that Jonah nicknamed their “Minecraft uniforms,” when Darwin Nunez landed the first of Liverpool’s two goals. In spite of an early goal, play throughout the Boxing Day game seemed sluggish, Abbey observed, while loudly complaining that Nunez was frequently offside.
For me, watching this with my soccer-fan family and listening to their commentary was the best part of this game. Gems like these from my son Jonah: 1) Referring to Virgil van Dijk, Jonah said, “He tackled him with his aura” after a Burnley player fell for seemingly no reason after VVD ran by. 2) After Joe Gomez made an unsuccessful shot on goal, Jonah predicted that announcers would say Gomez has never had a Premier League goal. Five seconds later, they said just that. Jonah smiled broadly.
Thursday, Jan. 1 – Liverpool 4 – Newcastle 2
Due to super-busy and sometimes unpredictable schedules, my husband’s family has celebrated Hanukkah with a New Year’s Day brunch for decades, usually at my sister-in-law’s house. Scott and I brought the homemade latkes and a French toast bake (for which we rose early in the morning in order to make fresh), along with our gifts for the annual Yankee Swap, which can get weirdly competitive. I tried not to obviously keep checking the time as I knew the Liverpool game started at 3 p.m., but, when my phone gave me a 10-minute warning before kick-off, Jonah, Abbey, and I found a place to sit and streamed it on our phones. We relocated to the rec room where my sister-in-law’s husband put the game on for us, but wound up leaving before the first half ended. While driving home, I had to turn my phone screen-down because Scott — who was at the wheel — couldn’t resist looking at it even though the audio was playing through the car’s speakers. The two of us wound up having to listen to the game, while Abbey, in the backseat, was able to watch and listen because she wasn’t trying to watch a game while driving. I didn’t take notes during this particular match because, honestly, I was exhausted.
Now that the new year is here and the rush of all-things-holiday have concluded, I’m hoping to get back to quasi-regular blogging about my adventures with British soccer, including addressing the many questions I have about the Premier League and Liverpool, including, why does Liverpool play the Boston song “Dirty Water” at Anfield after they win?
Meredith OBrien 