A Recent History of Liverpool Football Club

by Rick Nash

The past week has sparked an almost-shocked tone of discussion about the existence of schadenfreude in sports, particularly football, consumption. I'd imagine it's because only the half-hearted fans rear their heads towards the end of the season to join in the conversation and are shocked by what they see. "You're all so AWFUL to each other!" they'll say. "These people are your friends! Stop being so mean to them!"

Yes, they're our friends. And yes, we do take pleasure in their pain. And they do the same to us too. That's typically the common bond that makes us friends. It's what we talk about. It's how we relate to each other. Not to be too blunt and sexist, but in stereotypical terms men tend to rip into each other about sports and girls tend to build each other up by talking about how their hair looks amazing (yes, I realise that a lot of men/women don't do one and do the other, but I'm illustrating a point using offensive, lazy stereotypes here...and now you understand it better, so fuck off).

The battle of Man Utd vs Liverpool is about as primal in sports' fans existence as it is for cats to forever be the enemies of mice. It makes no sense. Surely the two can co-exist in peace? I'm sure they could, but if cats and mice didn't beef then we wouldn't have Tom & Jerry or Itchy & Scratchy. Similarly United and Liverpool fans probably wouldn't find football nearly as interesting without this pointless, never-ending feud of 'My Dad would bash your Dad' proportions.

Week 6: Win At All Costs

by Rick Nash

Here's a list of things I've been clinging to, tearfully, since Man Utd's humiliating defeat at Man City last Sunday:

• Jon Jones is still the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, just. 
• Dublin are All-Ireland Champions.
• My NFL and Premier League fantasy teams are finally kicking arse (Aaron Rodgers, Adrian Petersen, LeSean McCoy and Dez Bryant all making up the core of the former...yes, my league absolutely sucks at drafts).
• Speaking of NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles are now revolutionising offence in the league under Chip Kelly and look on course to get back to the playoffs.
• Actually forget that last one.
• I have my health.
• Oh, and United bounced back from their loss with a 1-0 midweek win over Liverpool upon the return of Luis Suarez, continuing Pool's recent, Walter White-like tradition of only meeting devastation when confronted with a possible solution to their ills. Seriously, the people that have brought this once-great club to their knees over the past decade? Rafa Benitez, Fernando Torres, Kenny Dalglish and Luis Suarez...four bonafide 'legends' of the club, like White, talented but ultimately destructive. I guess Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher can serve as Skylar and Marie in this metaphor: well-intentioned but incapable of stopping these monsters, as well as being kind of annoying and - in Marie's case as in Gerrard's - getting on the wrong side of the law on more than one occasion.

This is one of those seasons, though, where I have to take stock in the positives. Because the negatives are alarming. Not only is Lady Luck not on my side, Lady Luck left me at the bar with an empty-wallet, filled with booze that I paid for, laughing in my face for daring to think that I ever had a chance with her. 

I need a pick-me-up. I need a win. Not even a big win, just a win of any kind. As Ian Holloway would put it, "To put it in gentleman's terms if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best." Quite.

This week we're going to go for blunt and easy bets, just to get some money in the kitty and pride restored. This week we're going to win ugly.

Week 5: Head vs Heart

by Rick Nash

I was really, really happy with this week's picks...until I saw the potential winnings. €5 on these tips can earn you a whopping €324. Given my track record of outsmarting the bookies this season, that doesn't seem likely before you even look at the merits of each tip.

But this website lives for the long odds, so let's give it a whirl nonetheless. At worst, there's some well researched, great value, individual tips to behold here. At best, you feel really confident, put €100 on these bets and win €6,480. But please don't do that. If you're going to waste €100, I'd much rather you installed it directly into my bank account so I can turn a profit on this blog one way or another.

This week, a look at Saturday's UFC main event before we go toe-to-toe with the heavyweight clashes to come on this wonderful sporting Sunday ahead.

The Friend Zone

by Rick Nash

Ever get the feeling that the gambling gods don't like you?

Unfortunately, for my bank balance, I'm a needy bastard. The kind of guy who, in spite of the gods' persistent rejection, keeps coming back for more punishment. Recently, said gods have been treating me like a girl deliberately leading a guy on before putting him in the friend zone: luring me into a constant false sense of hope before crushing and humiliating me mercilessly. Then smiling at me the next time I see her like nothing happened, so instead of making the sensible decision and moving onto better life decisions, the chase begins again.

That girl looks nothing like this.

Shades of 1998/99 for United...

by Rick Nash

We thought it would never feel so good again. Maybe it won't. But maybe it might...

Disclaimer: This is a Man Utd-centric column so, if you'd prefer to avoid my gushing, feel free to skip ahead to the picks at the end of the piece.

Sometimes I'll say something while watching sports (or write, in this instance) and think to myself, "Hmm...I wonder if that's true or if the combination of booze and goal-induced enthusiasm has me talking utter shite (again)?"

Last week was one such instance, when I put on paper what I've been saying all season: that this year, as a Man Utd fan, felt to me very much like 1998/99.

Being just 11 at the time, I had gone through brief flings trying to support other teams after the crushing disappointment of Man Utd's league loss to Blackburn in 1994/95 (which ended with the one player who had made me a United fan, Eric Cantona, suspended for attacking a mouthy Wimbledon fan).

Without an active favourite player, I turned to (of all places) Middlesbrough in my quest to find a team that worked for me. This was because, in the summer of 1995, they'd signed a Brazilian wonderkid Juninho. I'd read about the pint-sized sensation in World Soccer magazine, and seen brief clips of him playing for Flamengo on Channel 4's old, all-sports show, 'Trans World Sport', so gave them a shot. That was until Cantona made his glorious return from suspension to see off Liverpool and re-establish himself as 'Le King'. You can't ignore stories like that. Fortunately, we won the double that season so all of the self-inflicted heartbreak of 1995 was forgotten about.

Managing Expectations

by Rick Nash

That was the week that was...

• In Spain, about two-thirds of Real Madrid's members believe that Jose Mourinho is damaging the club. Rivals Barcelona continue to dominate La Liga, this weekend winning the Basque derby in impressive style (4-0 over Espanyol).
• Closer to home, Paul Lambert's time at Villa sunk to a new low with a humiliating semi-final, 1st leg defeat to Bradford in the Capital One Cup.
• Swansea continued to bring Rafa Benitez back down to earth by humbling Chelsea 2-0 - at Stamford Bridge - in the other semi. 
• Meanwhile, in the FA Cup, Newcastle were the highest profile Premier League side upset (by Brighton) in the weekend's opening tie.

Perhaps the one stellar point raised in last week's column (which was otherwise disastrous, picks-wise, with 5-upset bets yielding a grand total of €0) is that this is the year when the 'super manager' actually wouldn't be able to swoop in and save a struggling club. The expected turnaround that Harry Redknapp would bring at QPR appears to have fallen short. Martin O'Neill, previously hailed as THE 'super manager' for a struggling club, isn't having things all his own way at Sunderland. The managers mentioned in the above bullet points all continue to unceremoniously blunder, despite their considerable reputations.

We think that bringing in a big name boss who has done wonders at another club will turn around fortunes when a club is struggling, but in 2012/13, is that still the case?