Liverpool FC Forum

[GRAHAM01]

i have to say ( and i am big enough and ugly enough to say so ) i was one of the one

right... so you were the only one... 

yes i was that one 

[Mark 23]

More young players should look to him for guidence, a couple more Carra like characters would do the game a world of good

[Dundalk]

Jamie Carragher: no excuses if Liverpool do not win the title

A voracious reader of sports books, as well as the author of his own bestselling memoir, Jamie Carragher recently delved into The Winner Within, by Pat Riley, the legendary basketball coach of LA Lakers fame. It is, the blurb tells us, a book about “motivation, selfishness, teamwork, complacency, winning and choking”. A self-help manual for sealing championships, applicable to the West Coast of England or the United States. Whatever your impression of Carragher, this is typical of the man; immersed in his work, seeking out knowledge, a self-improver who stumbled across Riley’s book simply by scouring Amazon.com in search of inspiration.

Searching for The Winner Within has helped Carragher to renew his focus on the title, but, as Liverpool have faltered this month, it has been pertinent to ask whether everyone else at Anfield has their eyes on the prize, or whether they are looking in the wrong place.

The manager has been playing politics with the board, the owners have been trying to sell up to Kuwaitis, the captain has been in court on a charge of assault and the team have slipped off the Barclays Premier League summit. Then there was the attack by Rafael Benítez on Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, that caught everyone, not least the Liverpool players, by surprise with its intensity and its scope. “The first I knew, I had a text telling me to turn on Sky Sports,” Carragher said. “What can I say? The manager had things he wanted to get off his chest.”

As points were subsequently dropped against Stoke City and Everton, the impression hardened that Liverpool had slipped off course, tossed around in United’s wake, with Benítez not exactly a reassuring hand on the tiller. Carragher scoffs at the idea that Liverpool are rattled, succumbing to the sort of psychological warfare that Ferguson loves to turn on title rivals. “The dressing-room’s full of foreign lads who wouldn’t know what mind games are,” he said. “They don’t read the papers.”

But he does accept that, as Liverpool seek to end a 19-year wait for the title, they should not be making life any harder than it already is in trying to usurp United. If he has a plea, it is that everyone at Anfield buys into what Riley calls “The Innocent Climb”, the first step to successful team-building — “when a team comes together unselfishly . . . and can feel the power surging, so internal rivalries, turf wars and selfish behaviour patterns are set aside”.

Or, in Carragher-speak: “It’s just a few months, a great chance to win the league and we don’t want to look back with regrets. We all have our own issues, contract negotiations or whatever, but you just have to make sure it doesn’t distract from the job at hand. We’re still involved in the FA Cup, the Champions League and well placed in the Premiership. We can’t let the off-field stuff get in the way of things.

“[Winning 5-1 away to] Newcastle was only three games ago and people were saying that was the best they’d seen anyone play this season. So I don’t see this as a wobble.

“Perhaps there’s an edge. There is pressure on us anyway going for our first title. The supporters want it so much, but just because we draw one game at home, people are asking, ‘Have we blown the league?’ There are 16, 17 games left, that’s an age, and there’s nothing in it. We’ve lost four points in two games. It happens. Fergie said himself, teams will drop points. And now Man U are in the Carling Cup final, that’s another league game for them to rearrange, so they’ve got a lot on their plate.”

There is no chance of Carragher losing his focus; quite the opposite. He thinks about football on his way into work, on his way home and as he poses for the photographer against a backdrop of Liverpool’s jagged skyline. “Just like New York,” he said, with playful deprecation.

He dwells so much on the game that his intensity began to trouble him and he turned to Bill Beswick, the sports psychologist, to find out how to switch off. Now Carragher tries to set aside an hour every day when football is not a preoccupation.

“If football isn’t going right, it affects my whole life,” the defender, 30, admitted. “If I’ve made a mistake, had a bad game, it kills me for days. Driving to work, I’ll be thinking, ‘Gotta do better next game, gotta do better.’ I get wrapped up in it.

“That’s going to make it difficult when I’m a manager. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, about how it might affect my family. I think about football all the time. With the championship, mostly I think what a party it would be. Being a local lad, you are so desperate to give people what they crave. You think back to the Istanbul celebrations [which followed the 2005 Champions League final] and know it’ll be even better. It’s the chance to share something special.”

There’s no presumption in that statement, just a tantalising thought of what it would mean to end the years of yearning. Liverpool may have given itself a facelift for the European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008, but, as statements of civic pride go, nothing could top one of the football clubs — and let’s be honest, that means the Red one — being crowned kings of England. The party would be led by Carragher, now the most ardent Red but a 12-year-old fanatical Evertonian the last time that Liverpool lifted the title.

As Liverpool prepare to face Everton tomorrow in the FA Cup fourth round, the second derby in less than a week after Monday night’s Premier League draw, today marks the tenth anniversary of the moment that Carragher’s allegiances to the Blue side were severed for ever. Walking into his local pub, The Chaucer, despairing at an injury-time FA Cup fourth-round defeat by Manchester United, Carragher walked into mocking laughter from his Evertonian mates where he had expected sympathy.

Split loyalties had already caused problems, like the time he was on a bus with the Liverpool reserve team and cheered the announcement on radio of an Everton goal. The sound a decade ago of his mates laughing at his, and Liverpool’s, expense forced him into an urgent appraisal. From that moment, when he listened to the scores coming over the airwaves, it was with no affection for Everton.

The tale is told with vividness in Carragher’s autobiography, which was the bestselling sports book of 2008 and this week hit 150,000 sales. Carragher is stunned by its continuing success. “I’m not exactly Michael Owen or Steven Gerrard,” he said. “I remember getting 25 free ones for my mates and family and worrying that I should be selling them to get up the sales.”

At a time when players are being traded like Panini stickers, his appeal is not just as a one-club stalwart but as a footballer who has made the very best of himself. “Perhaps the man on the street, with the money that’s in the game, they see players like myself, Gary Neville, and see that it means more to us than players who earned a lot more money and weren’t as good as us,” he said.

The respectful mention of Neville may appal the Kop, but Carragher is hugely admiring of United, including Ferguson. He is not about to bleat about an imbalance of wealth, particularly now that Liverpool have three £20 million-plus players. “United have got that edge on us financially,” Carragher said. “[Nemanja] Vidic is a classic case. He had a buyout clause of four or five million. We met that but United came along and paid seven or eight. But we can’t make excuses given the money we’ve spent.”

Strong enough to have set the pace in this domestic season, Carragher accepts that should Liverpool finish behind United, it may simply be because their rivals are better equipped. Their concern must be to focus on the job in hand rather than side-issues. To do their all and hope for the best.

His acceptance of Liverpool’s position might have been taken straight out of Riley. The coach writes, citing General Custer at Little Bighorn, that choking “results from failing to understand or accept the reality of your competitive position versus an opponent”. As it stands, the reality of Liverpool’s position is that they are narrowly behind United on goal difference — and still searching for The Winner Within.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol....734.ece

[Effes]

The fear that drives Mr Liverpool
Jamie Carragher explains how he is driven by feelings of insecurity about his place in the Liverpool team

Paul Hayward
The Guardian, Saturday 24 January 2009
Article history

As an avid student of football, Jamie Carragher has read every line except one. "There's one thing I've never seen in a paper. Jamie Carragher linked with this or that club," he says. "I'd never want to leave. It would kill me, break my heart."

Carra, or Mr Liverpool, as the club's website calls him, exists in his own no-go zone of fidelity to the great institution he has represented 555 times. The whole game knows it, so rival talent-snatchers never punch his number. His red shirt has become a second skin. But there is a hidden dimension to his deep sense of belonging. Torment, self-reproach, a daily churn of fear.

Carragher lives in terror of being denied the kind of exhilarating test that awaits him in tomorrow's FA Cup fourth-round tie against Everton: the second of the week's Merseyside derbies, following Monday's 1–1 Premier League draw at Anfield.

Holding his place in the starting XI is one daily obsession. Another is his ­inability to forgive himself when he commits defensive errors. The best measure of his extreme and often painful sense of duty is that he pulled out of presenting a prize at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in the city last month because he was too ashamed to show his face after his own goal in the 2–2 draw with Hull.

"I couldn't get out of the house, couldn't look at anyone," he recalls. "I said: 'I'm so sorry, I just can't go there. I can't put on a front, I feel so bad, I can't go on the telly in front of everyone.'

"My dad thinks there's something wrong with me. He said: 'What are you talking about?'

"I was thinking: 'Let me get another game out of the way.' The next one [after the Hull match] was Arsenal. I just needed to get to that and do all right so [the own-goal game] wasn't my last one. You're counting the days, thinking hurry up, hurry up. Longest weekend of my life."

From the stands it was always evident that Carragher drives himself harder than just about any front-rank Premier League player. An abiding image is of him jackknifed with cramp in the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul but rising again to thwart Milanese attackers.

This demonic intensity stems, you soon learn, from a reservoir of insecurity. A major reason for his retirement from the international game, he admits, is that he thought staying behind to train at Liverpool would give him an edge of freshness over the club's other centre-halves when they returned from trips.

An inspiring presence and perhaps English football's best model of self-improvement, Carragher can watch the January transfer frenzy knowing it will never impinge on him, unless Liverpool buy a defender and Steven Gerrard's fellow talis man has to fight off another threat.

The Rafael Benítez years have afforded him greater security, but only retirement will fully spring him from his wheel of fire. "A couple of times when they kept buying players in my position I'd be thinking there was no reward for giving it all in training every day. Obviously you're still getting paid – but there's no recognition. Sometimes I think: 'There's another one gone, who's coming in next?' I see some of my own team-mates as challenges. Another one who's come to take my place.

"Sometimes I can't wait till I've finished, in a way, so my head's not worrying about my place. Because I think about football all the time. Even now, you might say: 'You're one of the main players at Liver pool,' but I still worry badly about my place in the team. That's why I don't miss many games. I could never miss a game when I wasn't quite 100%."

A few words of reassurance about the high rank he occupies in the game's affections bounce off him, because he has conditioned himself to struggle, to fight, to renew his vows to the club with every kick. More than Gerrard, even, he is the high priest of the Anfield dressing room, and is sufficiently confident in his own judgment to say: "I see players linked with Liverpool and I think: 'He's , him.'"

With his encyclopedic knowledge and his love of comedy and pranks, ­Carragher, who hits 31 on Wednesday, is not solely definable by his masochistic streak, but his devotion to the cause of ending Liver pool's 19-year wait for a league title is a good antidote to the hostility aimed at modern footballers for supposedly earning way too much.

As Carragher showed the way to an interview room at Liverpool's Melwood training complex, Benítez hobbled across the foyer calling to him: "English lessons?"

"Yeah, English lessons," the Bootle boy responded, conceding the joke. ­Perhaps the most Scouse of recent Liverpool legends, Carragher is also the most curious, thoughtful and unassuming.

To the neutral he's an automatic Liverpool selection. But not in his own head. "I've probably had that under Rafa but I've still had that doubt in the back of my mind. And it's mad really. At the start of this season we had [Martin] Skrtel doing really well and [Daniel] Agger coming back and I had fans coming up to me and saying: 'Do you think you'll play next season?' or 'You might play full-back.'

"You just have to say: 'Oh, we'll see what happens.' I'm thinking: 'You cheeky .' But you can't say anything. It's as if they forget everything you've done.

"Football's so important to me. If I wasn't playing it would just destroy me. I'd always tape every Liverpool game and watch it when I got home, looking for my mistakes. Then I'd think – what am I doing that for?"

Asked why she kept on writing novels, the author Fay Weldon replied: "To make amends for the last one." That workaholic's self-defence leapt to mind when Carragher confided: "Sometimes I do think: 'Am I good enough to play in a team that wins the title?' I think about that all the time. But then I look at other teams who've won it – no disrespect to them – and think: 'He's won two or three leagues, and he wouldn't get in our team, or he'd only just about get in.'"

Liverpool have won all the cups since 1990 but no league championship. Mr. Ferguson's suggestion that they would "get nervous" if they maintained their current elevated position was an arrow fired at Liverpool's craving for a first Premier League crown.

"Will we get nervous? I haven't got a clue," Carragher says disarmingly. "I'm not going to put an act on and say no, because I've never been there. It's only January. It's embarrassing, really, that I've only been in this position once, with Gérard Houllier [in 2002, when Liverpool finished second]. I'd be made up if every league game mattered. Even being involved in the mind games is a good thing. We've always been on the outside looking in, something we're not proud of.

"I was an Evertonian as a kid, but I've never hated Man United. I've always had respect for them. They're a proper club, like us, and they should have respect for us as well. Man United aren't blasé or big-headed. I think Chelsea are, or have been in the past, a little bit. At Man United, there isn't a player who you think: 'God, I hate him.' They're all good lads, aren't they? Hopefully we come across like that. We're clubs from working-class areas."

There is a duty, he thinks, for Liverpool to contest the title race every season. "We don't want it to be how it was under Houllier, when we challenged once and then completely fell away. We want to be fighting for the title every single season. We might not win it, but we're there. That's the minimum. Not fighting for fourth. We can't have that. Everyone's got the belief now, thinking: 'We can do this.' I wouldn't feel fulfilled if we didn't win the league. There'd always be this thing nagging at me."

England – the circus, the tribalism – no longer nags at him, and though he warms to the martinet Fabio Capello there is no hope of him returning to claim an international jersey. In his startlingly forthright autobiography, he called some England fans "clueless" and wrote of the "sinister edge" to international fixtures.

"I got a bit of criticism for criticising the fans. But about a month later everyone criticised them for booing Ashley Cole. I think I was just the first one to say it. I was just asking: 'What is going on here?' Booing Owen Hargreaves or Peter Crouch on to the pitch, not off it. On to the pitch. I just think it's all club rivalries. With the small clubs maybe it's their chance to go to Europe and say: 'These we're watching on Match of the Day are on a hundred grand a week, we're going to show them.' What happened to Steve McClaren in Andorra, we can't have that. Having said that, in tournaments England fans were the best.

"I look at foreign football and I've always said to the lads: 'Imagine playing for him [Capello]. He just wins.' Wherever he goes, the team wins. He looks the part. He just looks the bollox. If you look at McClaren, he doesn't quite look the part. Not playing was the final nail. But to be totally honest it was my Liverpool career. It was me worrying again, thinking that when the other Liverpool centre-halves go away I'll still be here, and I'll be fresher.

"Even as a kid, I've always said it: England was this thing in London. I was jumping round the room in '86 or 1990 when Lineker scored, but it was never that feeling you get in your stomach, like if Everton lost to Liverpool in an FA Cup final, thinking: 'Oh my God, how can I go on?'"

His memoirs are a perfect gauge of his intelligence: "I read everyone's books and I always knew the way I wanted to do mine. If I'm reading a book by a footballer I don't want to read about games, how he scored or played well. People want to read what you thought, not what happened.

"If you're going to do it, just do it, and stand or fall by your thoughts, your beliefs." He even gives you the perfect epitaph.

Jamie Carragher on ...

Kaka ...

"If I were a Man City fan I'd rather buy four or five players for that money. I think Man City need to become a top-six club first.

Maybe what Everton are now. If you read what Mark Hughes is trying to do, it looks like the right way. Maybe they're trying to jump too many levels at once. That's what football is: you want it now. You don't want to wait, do you?"

His favourite Liverpool side ...

"The strongest team I've played in before this one is a team that didn't win anything – the 2002 side that finished second to Arsenal. It's all about winning trophies really. It doesn't matter whether this team's better than this or that one. If we don't win anything this year, people will say Rafa's best moment has been Istanbul – but that team wasn't that good"

Life in the Merseyside pressure cooker ...

"Because you know everyone, you're permanently getting text messages from family and fans, and if you lose you feel you've let everyone down. You just see how it affects everyone. I was wondering, If I played for another club – I'd never want to do that – whether it would be a lot easier after a defeat. Aston Villa or Tottenham, say. If you didn't know everyone"

Derby games …

"Football's that big now and in your face with Sky and the press and everything: it all just gets brought up a level. Football's just got that big with everyone winding everyone else up the whole time. Take Sky Sports News. Everything's bang, bang, bang. I've been an Everton fan myself, and it winds you up when the other club's more successful and challenging for honours. I've been there, I know"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport....hayward

[NANNY RED]

I love reading anything by him or listening to him because you know it from the heart.

Laughed me head of at the bit were players are being linked to Liverpool , Hes him

[lakes10]

I dont use the word Legend much (as some of you know but when it comes to Carragher he is a true Liverpool Legend.

One day Liverpool Manager?

[KennyisGod....still]

Quite possibly the best example in the PL for what people wanna call a role model. Does his job, little fuss, passionate about his team/career/game and probly cant even spell 'quit'. I picked his book up for my hols last year and read it in bout 3 days - honest appraisal of his life, and no punches pulled. Was a damn good read, no b/s about how much he should be paid, or what he should be due. Spent most of his career in the shadow of SG but I believe true fans know his worth, and appreciate his efforts.

Quite like the idea of Carra as manager one day, but one thing'd worry me..... how would he cope with players with less commitment and conviction when he's the boss pickin the side? Imagine a team of his kind, managed by him, for supporters that demand nothin less!! Awesome!

[we all dream...]

The man is a legend.

A credit to Liverpool F.C. to Football, to the city and its people.

If Gerrard wasn't, well, Gerrard then Carragher would have been a fantastic captain and go down in history more than he will already.

He will, I hope, be a fantastic manager for us in the future.

 

[dawson99]

The man is a legend.

A credit to Liverpool F.C. to Football, to the city and its people.

If Gerrard wasn't, well, Gerrard then Carragher would have been a fantastic captain and go down in history more than he will already.

He will, I hope, be a fantastic manager for us in the future.

 

You don't need an armband to be a captain 

[maypaxvobiscum]

Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher has revealed he turned down an invitation from Fabio Capello to return to the England setup.

Carragher, 31, won 34 caps for his country but announced his international retirement in the summer of 2007.

However, with encouragement from club captain Steven Gerrard he initially agreed to meet Capello's assistant Franco Baldini, but changed his mind at the last moment.

Carragher told the Times: "I was supposed to meet Franco Baldini for a chat a year ago and at the last minute I pulled out. It was more out of courtesy that I was going to do it. Stevie had mentioned it to me a couple of times, so I agreed to the meeting, but at the last minute I just didn't want to do it.

"I don't think my situation would change if I got back in the squad. John Terry and Rio Ferdinand are first choice and they are two of the best central defenders in the world.

"Maybe I would have won ten more caps over the last couple of years because Rio and John have missed a few games, but you couldn't ask for a better centre-half pairing than those two going into the World Cup.''

Carragher also said he would rather leave Liverpool than play for them when he is past his best.

"I wouldn't want to get to 34 or 35 with Liverpool and have people thinking, 'He's well gone.''' he added. "So I do think about whether it would be better to go while I'm still at a decent level and play out my days at another club.

"I do worry about maybe playing in big games for Liverpool and perhaps costing the side, and I also think about not playing every week and whether I could do that.

"Over the next year or two I'll probably have a decision to make. I'd love to stay at Liverpool - that's what I want to do - but there are different things that I think about that may compromise that.''

[kazza]

Rafa Benitez has paid tribute to Jamie Carragher ahead of his 600th appearance for Liverpool.

The defender has been with the club for his entire professional career after working his way through the academy and an apprenticeship.

He made his senior debut in January 1997 and will reach another milestone in Saturday's away game against Portsmouth.

Benitez believes such accomplishments will become almost impossible to replicate now the game has gone so global.

He explained: "Maybe someone will do it but it will be very difficult. Now there is too much money around the world in football.

"If you have a good player normally someone will make a good offer and the agents have too much power.

"Modern football is more difficult so 600 games in a top side for a local player is a massive achievement."

Good example
Only eight players have previously reached the appearance milestone for Liverpool and Benitez believes Carragher deserves special praise.

"I think it is amazing. At this time with modern football, to play 600 times for the same team and be a local player is a fantastic achievement," he said.

"He is a very good example for the younger players. He trains 100% in every session and that is good for the mentality of the team.

"Carra has a strong character, passion, he likes to win every game, and that is the type of player you are looking for.

"The last five and a half years have been really good. He was playing as a left-back, right-back and now he has settled down as a centre-back.

"He knows he can help the others and is always talking. That is now one of his main strengths as he can organise the defence.

"He has improved his game and, because he is a centre-back, he has time and he will play for a long time."

***************

As Rafa said, it is an amazing achievement for a player to play 600 matches for his local team. It has become a rare thing indeed and a says alot for his love of Liverpool.

Walk On

[Sir Roger]

I dont know if anyone has mentioned Carras contribution on wednesday which has paved the way for the possibility of an upturn of our fortunes?
What a revelation as a wing back! Marauding down the line beating people, forcing corners, whipping in crosses. Unbelievable!
hes found his new position proving theres life in the old dog yet.
Well done the Bootle ball-bag...

[dawson99]

He looked absolutely done in at the end. He cant put in that performance every week but he gave absolutely everything in that game. Awesome display

[Sir Roger]

He looked absolutely done in at the end. He cant put in that performance every week but he gave absolutely everything in that game. Awesome display

Hes had some terrible stick over the last few months, most of it deserved. But I think he deserves praise for his performance last week.
A true Captains performance

[Ben Patrick]

He looked absolutely done in at the end. He cant put in that performance every week but he gave absolutely everything in that game. Awesome display

Hes had some terrible stick over the last few months, most of it deserved. But I think he deserves praise for his performance last week.
A true Captains performance

Agreed, he was brilliant the other night and led by example.
It was great to see that from him after some difficult times this season.

he is never a wing back though mate.