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BAD SMELL EMANATES FROM USUAL SOURCES
The Guardian 10 April 2005

"A fanzine on sale outside Anfield on Tuesday night carried the headline: 'We Dream of a Team of Jamies', complete with mock photograph of 11 versions of the same doughty defender, all concave of cheek and piercing of eye. 

Carragher has been one of the unsung heroes of the season in England, though not on Merseyside. His consistency, concentration and old-fashioned honesty would make him a candidate for Player of the Year but for having to share the Anfield stage with Steven Gerrard and the excellence of Frank Lampard and John Terry in a Chelsea side challenging for the title. Liverpool's reincarnation of Tommy Smith will not mind missing out on individual honours as long as his team-mates can rise to the occasion as they did against Juventus.

There can be no higher praise for Rafael Ben??tez's patched-up side than to report that, for a stunning first half at least, they really did play like 11 Carraghers. They bit into every tackle, fought for every scrap of territory, and even the lightweight selections in the forward line snapped into action with unsuspected relish and imposed themselves against Juve's supposedly impregnable defence. Needless to say, Anfield lapped it up. The atmosphere was always going to be charged given that the two clubs were meeting for the first time since the fateful 1985 European Cup final. Liverpool supporters were doubtless keen to rescue their reputations and be seen in a kinder light, but it was the fact the players also stood up to be counted that brought out the best in English football.

Here was a team ravaged by injury, missing leading strikers and midfielders and utilising a young goalkeeper making only his third start for the club, refusing to be intimidated by the reputation of Italy's finest. If anyone was intimidated it was Juventus, yet there were only chants of pride and messages of friendship rolling down from the Anfield stands. As this will probably not be the case when Liverpool play the return in Turin this week, it is worth recording that the rapport between players and fans that can be such an uplifting feature of English football was never better demonstrated than at Liverpool onTuesday. It was also appropriate that one of the two fixtures responsible for beginning the drive to all-seater stadiums (it was Liverpool's misfortune to be involved in the other one, too) should also disprove the myth that they are incapable of generating noise and electricity.

Of course it helps if you have songs to sing, to borrow a line from the current Anfield favourite, a reworking of Fields of Athenry that sounds magnificent when everyone in the stadium joins in and claps in unison during the chorus. Even the most hard-bitten and unforgiving Juventus fans must have have been surprised, if not impressed.

While on the subject of songs, it would be beneath Liverpool's dignity by several miles to be caught singing the pathetic ditty about German bombers being shot down by the 'RAF from England' (sic) (sick) that was heard at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday for the Bayern game and is bound to be enthusiastically bellowed by the 'Eng-ur-land' tendency at next year's World Cup. The correspondent who complained to this newspaper of an overwhelming stench of hypocrisy and insincerity at Anfield (because the club did not do enough to apologise 20 years ago) could at least give Liverpool credit for that, although some people are clearly determined never to be satisfied or pacified. For what it's worth, this observer was inclined to agree with Uefa's deputy chief executive. 'There was not a hint of trouble in the stadium,' Markus Studer said. 'It was a very successful night for European football.'

It was also an important night for English football, so recently dragged through the gutter again by the misbehaviour of Newcastle United players. Hands up all those who had to suppress a smirk when they heard that two of Graeme Souness's players had transferred fight-club rules from the training ground to the pitch. Hmm, thought so. Whether two team-mates scrapping during a match really constitutes the most disgraceful sight ever seen on a football pitch is a moot point anyway. What about some of Steve McManaman's displays since leaving Real Madrid? Roy Keane's tackle on Alf Inge Haaland? Jos?? Mourinho's synchronised divers at Porto, or Michael Ballack's shameless tumble on Wednesday? Surely some of our game's censorious sermonisers need to get out more.

You don't even have to walk very far around Newcastle to hear the opinion that far worse than Lee Bowyer and Keiron Dyer's antics against Villa was the insipid performance and nonchalant body language of Nicky Butt, whose negligible contribution to the game saw him dropped to the bench for Thursday's Uefa Cup tie against Sporting Lisbon.

By fighting each other rather than the opposition, Bowyer and Dyer have just become the latest in a list of prominent Newcastle personalties made rich by the most loyal fans in the country, but none the less willing to abuse that loyalty. Freddie Shepherd described Bowyer's behaviour as indefensible, disgraceful, astonishing and unbelievable, but he knows, as all Newcastle knows, that these are just words. All four of them could equally be applied to Shepherd's own actions over the years, and if there was a stench of hypocrisy and insincerity to be found anywhere in England last week it was in the Newcastle programme for the Sporting tie.

At least, like Liverpool, Newcastle won the game and gave themselves a chance in the second leg. There were no mock-ups of a team of Shearers on sale outside the ground, because for Newcastle supporters that would be too stark a reminder of how sub-standard some of the support acts are. The Toon are not looking for role models, they want heroes. All they ask, and it does not seem a lot, is 11 players who feel the same way about the shirt as they do. What do they get? Bowyer. Dyer. Robert. Kluivert. Babayaro. If Butt wants to avoid being listed with the wasters and the wantaways, he needs to learn a lesson from his manager and at least look as if he cares about winning and losing. Newcastle fans respond to heart. The players might not respond as well as Liverpool's, but it would be a start. "