Of pulling teeth and winning titles: A Liverpool fan's perspective

Can Liverpool finally win the title this season?

Pulling teeth is a term used far too loosely in this day and age. If anything it’s out of date. I had a tooth removed earlier today and I felt, well, nothing! The little discomfort that I feel almost 10 hours later though is not the type of feeling that would encourage me to recommend the procedure to anyone who was looking to kill some time. But is it difficult or unbearably painful? Not really.

If I can describe a feeling on the other end of the spectrum, I would very quickly draw my memory to the recent victory of the Red Men at Craven Cottage the other night. Forget the way I felt, look at the way Stevie G felt when he celebrated his 91st minute penalty?. Anyone who’s anyone could tell you that he believed. Believed with all his heart (and it wasn’t just the adrenalin talking) that we had more than just a chance at this year’s title.

Even before the mauling of the then league leaders, Arsenal, followed so quickly but not so easily by the crucial 3 points against Fulham, a good number of ex-LFC players and tens of thousands of fans were saying that we had a chance. Our forward play this season and especially of late has been nothing short of exceptional.

It’s been some time since we’ve had the chance to witness such fluidity in attack coupled with incisive finishing so consistently. And if we are to pick up our 19th league title, then we would need the entire squad to believe they can do it first. They do believe and we are only four points off the top, almost like the good old days.

I’m not from the generation that had the pleasure of watching Liverpool in the late 70′s and early 80′s so I can’t compare.? Unfortunately, I’m from the generation that has ?believed, almost every season since 1990, that ‘this is our year’! Apart from a season or two, that belief has been fueled by nothing other than pure passion mixed with unfounded optimism. Year after year my hopes would be so high only to have those hopes crushed and ended, many a time even before we’d got to January.

Over the past three to four seasons, ever since 2009 to be precise, I stopped allowing myself to believe that we might have a chance. It worked better that way: no hope, no title, no problem! Those of you who still remember maths from school will know that a negative and a negative equals a positive. I really wasn’t any good at maths, but for once an equation, this equation, was helping me get through.

Like women scorn and refuse to ever love again, I refuse to believe that we will win the title. Not because we’re not good enough or because our squad isn’t big enough, or that it’s mathematically impossible, but because it hurts. It hurts to believe so strongly and then be let down. It hurts to be ridiculed by other fans about that belief. It hurts to come so close and end up with nothing.

I’d rather enjoy the good moments we’re having right now and see where it takes us. Believing Liverpool are going to win the league went out of date for me, a little like saying how pulling teeth is extremely difficult.

I am though willing to toy with the idea if we’re either sitting top with three games to go? or second going in to the final game and we still have a chance. Who knows, maybe I will get to like a different mathematical equation; a positive and a positive equals a positive… I wouldn’t just like it, I would love it! it only has to happen.