At the
start of this season I had one target in mind - to see Liverpool improve. Long
gone are the years where every season began with fanciful dreams of
unprecedented glory. Age, experience, and the last few painful seasons had
coloured my thinking to a level where I dared not raise my expectation levels
to even a European place. To my mind, it seemed like the mentality throughout
our support had re-adjusted itself to a similar idea. I read countless blogs,
listened to podcasts, went on forums, even had some good old fashioned face to
face conversations with friends and it seemed something was different. Although
our rivals delight in our, previously unabashed optimism it seemed to me that a
sea-change had occurred and the consensus was that expectations for the season
ahead needed to be realistic.
Suddenly
the only cries of “this is going to be our year” were lowly taunts from those
who have loved reveling in our dashed hopes in years gone by. Unfortunately
for them, their taunts though fell on deaf ears as the Red faithful remained
focused on our most important target for the season ahead – Improvement.
Wouldn't
you know it though, just when we decide to get real, they go and alter our
reality!
Even with
a huge slice of the season remaining I think its clear that the improvement we
have craved has been displayed... and then some! The swashbuckling displays
against Spurs, Bitters and Gooners stand up as the incredible examples of how
far we have come. The improvement we wanted didn't only come, it came so thick
and so fast that its left us right in the mix with an actual, realistic chance
of lifting the big one with 12 games to go.
“its
the hope that kills you”
It’s been
a heck of a season but its caused us some difficulty in re-adjusting our ambitions.
There are those captious souls who simply refuse to get their hopes up. There
are many eternal optimists who have already raised hopes so high, if a fall
were to come they may not survive (maybe slight bit of hyperbole there). The
majority, to my mind, are like myself and caught in the middle trying to find
the balance between hope and expectations. The scars from previous travails
have given us a reluctance, but we must recognise there is no harm in hoping so
long as you accept the reality of what actually marks out success for the
season.
Success
is what we wanted at the start of the season. Success is improvement. We can
hope that this improvement could include us winning a league title, we can
dream of Stevie lifting that trophy above his head in May. We can dream. As
long as we understand that that is not the only marker for success we can
dream. 12 games to go who knows what can happen. One thing I do know is I’m happy
with how the season has gone so far. I will be ecstatic if we do finally manage
to win no.19. Either way though I’ll be happy with improvement. And sure, if we
don't win it in the end, Next year will be our year J
This article was originally published on www.tomkinstimes.com as a subscribers only piece.
Twitter: @barrymeehan7
