Scroungers.

Liverpool turned a £42 million pound profit last year. The year before it was an eye watering (and world record) £125 million pounds. 

Liverpool is a global institution. Such is modern football's obsession with balance sheets that outstripping Manchester United on the bottom line is seen as confirmation that they're the superior club, despite not yet having won a league, where for many years, the bonuses paid out for Champions League entry made it effectively into a four team division. 

The geographical and cultural identity of Liverpool is arguably its key asset. Their long period of dominance (built on passing it around and then back to the keeper, till the opposition falls asleep) started in the mid 1960s when Liverpool was the a global arts epicenter and continued through the 70s and 80s wherein Liverpool became better know for its militancy and working class activism, making them the favourite team for many who wanted a distant but passionate identity to adopt. 

If you watch any history of football of the period and play 'have a shot when someone says something sentimental' then you'll be hammered by the time you get to the mid 80s. Doubtless you'll witness a player opining something along the lines of 

"In the city, things were tough, people were up against but we have them a sense of identity and pride. In the week the city was a hard place but come Saturday, 3pm they were the best team in the world" 

I've made that quote up but just imagine Thompson, Toshack or Lawrenson saying it. It's exactly what they say.  In every YouTube video ripped from 'Liverpool - a club like no other - the VHS' - again I've made up the title but that's exactly what they're all called.

Bill 'Shanks' Shankly (a man so revered by the club that they banned him from the premises and forced him to go to Everton's training ground to seek company in his old age) was a first class source of hyperbolic rhetoric. 

Shit pseudo philosophical Football t-shirt makers have been thanking him ever since. He said...

"The socialism I believe in, is everyone, working together and sharing the rewards...it's how I see football, it's how I see life" 

... and he's got a point. At least he had. When he uttered those words, the idea didn't seem completely absurd. No one got too rich from football, even up until the early 90s. Whilst the days of top flight players getting the trams to work, mixing with the mill workers and miners, the shipyard riveters and dockers had gone, most players were rewarded with a Barrat home and a new MK2 Escort for their deeds on the pitch. Even the elite earned little more than the more well to do fans in the decent seats. 

Football might not have been a truly "socialist concept" but it was at least not the polar opposite. 

I know Shankly was referring to the teamwork inherent in success. The attitude of the team as as a metaphor for society. Like Clough he saw football as played according to a moral code. He didn't see cheating to gain advantage or brutal spoiling as within the spirit of the game (though he did give a home to Tommy Smith for years, and the club went on to feature Souness and McMahon kicking and gouging with the best of them) 

What, I wonder, would Shankly have made of the announcement that Liverpool have sought to put some of their none playing staff on furlough?

I can only imagine the furious justification of the armchair fans, stung by the poison of criticism. Hurt that their beloved global corporate body (this week's values are sponsored by STANDARD LIFE) are being criticised by a press that they never tire of complaining doesn't give them 'enough credit' as if you win the title to fill pages of a newspaper or to prove Gary Neville wrong.

It's easy, to call this writing bitterness or an attempt to bait. Let me admit this. The thing I dislike most about Klopp is his likable quality. Yes, he has the air of the most irritating man to ever end up next door to on a holiday as he'd be so relentlessly positive and effervescent and would invite you round for a barbecue and say something cringeworthy like 'guys, let's set some ground rules here... the ground rules are... let's have fun! Anyone object? I didn't think so!!!' As you nursed a hangover in the morning a red, sweaty and loud Jürgen would appear all showered after a jog and try and coerce you into eating probiotic yoghurt and prunes cos he'd only actually drunk two lite beers. He'd also walk around your family nearly naked all day for no reason. I also can't shake the feeling he probably starts every morning by saying "Du bist ein toller Kerl, Jürgen" to himself in the mirror. 

I admire in no small way, the reaction of the club to Hillsborough and the humanity that was brought out by that horrendous event. I admire the club for supporting the families in the immediate aftermath and for the subsequent thirty years. 

I admit that this current team is very good at football and in the climate of Global Superstars Soccer Sensation Sky Sport Exclusive access it's kind of refreshing to see a couple of kids and an ex Queens Park player doing better than players who cost £50milliom. 

I admit all of that and more. 

What I can't shake, is the uncomfortable fact that this is the most financially successful Premier League team of recent years, and it's using tax payers money to pay its staff. 

It's action in line with Richard Branson and his ilk. It's taking money, just because it's there and just because if they don't, they might lose a competitive advantage or have to pay smaller dividends to their died in the wool Scouse bank rollers from the US of A. 

It's an action that should have us collectively realising that for all the self aggrandisement and the self important "We are Liverpool: this means more" bilge they spout, for every time a commentator reverently goes quiet so we can hear 'the Kop choir' like no one else sings at football matches and for every bit of marketing that piggy backs on the identity of the city, lingering drone shots of red glazed brick terraces and working class kids kicking a ball on the street, there is nothing behind it other than a cold-hearted business that cares only about winning. 

It shows that they're nothing more than Chelsea in a different kit.  Let's say it again: They're accessing tax payers money to support their global multi-million pound business. 

Let me clear. I don't mind tax. I'm happy when a gran gets to go on a bus or a kid gets a meal. I like giving my money to public projects. It's grand to have hospitals and roads and libraries and even football clubs. Greenock Morton in crisis? Where do I sign? Give them my kidney. 

All of that said, I do not regard Liverpool as a project in need of my funds or a business that needs my assistance. We should be absolutely clear, in a small but symbolically significant way, Liverpool are contributing to the debt that will doubtless be used to justify public spending cuts and take the bus away from the gran and the meal out of the kids mouth. We should be absolutely in no doubt that they DO NOT NEED TO DO THIS. Accrington Stanley probably do. 

Even their ex-players agree.

It isn't a revelation to see modern football as a vacuum of morality. It's time to stop pretending Liverpool live outside of this and recognise that for all their charisma, they're just the same as all the rest. 

I think that will hurt Liverpool fans more than anyone else. 'You'll Never Walk Alone' was a football standard before it became associated with Liverpool. At times however,  it seemed fitting that a club, who seemed to have its community at its heart, should base its identity around a song that extols togetherness and support of your fellow man, through the rough and the smooth. 

Liverpool's actions in accessing a government fund for wages they can easily afford show that they very much let others walk alone and it sure as hell is raining right now.

It was probably too much to ask that our richest led by example and only took what they needed.

It is the very people the club mythologises in its public image (think of those advertising shots we mentioned above - consider those who live in the glazed red brick terraces in the shadow of the stands, the kids who kick the scuffed ball around in slow motion) who will suffer the most. No amount of trophies will change that economic truth. 

Either Liverpool have made it plain who they really are or it shows that the finances of football are spectacularly fragile and we're on the brink of a spectacular collapse. If Liverpool can't afford a few weeks, then all of our teams are, to put it simply - fucked. 

Wash yer hands

UTMP