Certainly it puts today's match against Manchester City into perspective – to call this Super Sunday seems like the most ludicrous understatement of the magnitude of this event, in which approximately one in 13 people on the planet will be supporting the home team alone.
There was a time when most of us would have viewed Brendan's figure of 553 million as another of those disturbing indicators that his vision was not informed by the most rigorous hold on reality. But seeing as how he was talking after Liverpool had just beaten Spurs 4-0 to go top of the Barclays Premier League with seven matches to go, we were now living in a different time, in which none of that mattered.
As one of the 553 million, I am acutely aware that Brendan's team has won nothing yet. But to be on top of the league at this late stage is wondrous in itself, and worthy of the deepest investigation by all who are concerned with the nature of man and management.
They're bringing Alex Ferguson to Harvard now, to tell them how he did it, and yet in an odd way there is not much to be learned from a man who is so singular, whose achievements are so monstrous. In a recent feature in the Times Educational Supplement, Ferguson spoke movingly about an old schoolteacher, a woman who had beaten the young Fergie with a belt on many occasions and who had, in fact, left that very belt to him in her will. He had placed the instrument of torture on the wall in his office, to remind him fondly of her, and all she had done for him. That was his Harvard, and it is hard to see how the Ivy League equivalent, even with all its resources, could ever compete.
Indeed, so elusive are the qualities of good management, it can seem completely ridiculous to be trying to teach them at all.
For example, Brendan Rodgers has shown a weakness for what sounds chillingly like corporate bullshit. For the 553 million of us who had suffered so much, to have to listen to the manager talking about "performance objectives", to hear him actually using the term "going forward" in our presence, was deeply upsetting.
And yes, everything that was said about Brendan's fondness for that drivel was true, and didn't stop being true just because he's got better, and the team has got better. Likewise, there is the minor distraction that he bought several players who turned out to be useless, that he wanted to sell Henderson and Skrtl, who have been excellent, that he had accepted that the great Suarez was going to leave, until the owner John Henry made a stand, and that he had apparently dallied over the signing of the exceptional Sturridge.
Certainly it puts today's match against Manchester City into perspective – to call this Super Sunday seems like the most ludicrous understatement of the magnitude of this event, in which approximately one in 13 people on the planet will be supporting the home team alone.
There was a time when most of us would have viewed Brendan's figure of 553 million as another of those disturbing indicators that his vision was not informed by the most rigorous hold on reality. But seeing as how he was talking after Liverpool had just beaten Spurs 4-0 to go top of the Barclays Premier League with seven matches to go, we were now living in a different time, in which none of that mattered.
As one of the 553 million, I am acutely aware that Brendan's team has won nothing yet. But to be on top of the league at this late stage is wondrous in itself, and worthy of the deepest investigation by all who are concerned with the nature of man and management.
They're bringing Alex Ferguson to Harvard now, to tell them how he did it, and yet in an odd way there is not much to be learned from a man who is so singular, whose achievements are so monstrous. In a recent feature in the Times Educational Supplement, Ferguson spoke movingly about an old schoolteacher, a woman who had beaten the young Fergie with a belt on many occasions and who had, in fact, left that very belt to him in her will. He had placed the instrument of torture on the wall in his office, to remind him fondly of her, and all she had done for him. That was his Harvard, and it is hard to see how the Ivy League equivalent, even with all its resources, could ever compete.
Indeed, so elusive are the qualities of good management, it can seem completely ridiculous to be trying to teach them at all.
For example, Brendan Rodgers has shown a weakness for what sounds chillingly like corporate bullshit. For the 553 million of us who had suffered so much, to have to listen to the manager talking about "performance objectives", to hear him actually using the term "going forward" in our presence, was deeply upsetting.
And yes, everything that was said about Brendan's fondness for that drivel was true, and didn't stop being true just because he's got better, and the team has got better. Likewise, there is the minor distraction that he bought several players who turned out to be useless, that he wanted to sell Henderson and Skrtl, who have been excellent, that he had accepted that the great Suarez was going to leave, until the owner John Henry made a stand, and that he had apparently dallied over the signing of the exceptional Sturridge.
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