Hero Of The Week: Dirk Kuyt

Do I need to elaborate on the significance of yesterday's FA Cup victory over our bitter rivals, Manchester United? Rhetorical questions aside, the week that's just passed was arguably the most important Liverpool Football Club has experienced on the pitch in the last two and a half years.

The confirmation of our first visit to Wembley since 1996 has already been discussed (see previous post). The second installment was complete yesterday, with a visit from the other team from Manchester. The 'only' team, accordingly to some.

Admittedly, we were second best on the day. Or so the statistics confirm. However it was once said that statistics aren't everything. Yesterday's result was indicative of that.

Over the years in this fixture, I've seen Manchester United perform the way we did yesterday, yet still come away with a result. Not yesterday. Statistics are a wonderful thing, but ultimately there's only one aspect that presents the cold hard facts in football. The score. That's where we prevailed.

Enter Dirk Kuyt. The man for the big occasion. The man who netted the winning goal.

Although it's largely been a disappointing season for the Dutch maestro, he has a history of turning it around on the back of below par performances. Yesterday, he proved it once again. You can't keep a good man down. 

Aside from yesterday's heroics, Dirk Kuyt is the ultimate clubman. A player who runs himself into the ground. A player who posseses sheer determination. Every team wants one. Needs one. A player whose tireless work rate stems from his working class roots. A player who never gives in, always putting his hand up when the game's there to be won. A player who would run through a brick wall and come out the other side still smiling. That's Dirk Kuyt.

Dirk Kuyt is like the unfashionable girlfriend who doesn't stand out from the crowd. The girlfriend who's just 'there'. Only when she's gone you realise just how much you've lost. Dirk Kuyt's more than just part of the furniture. His mentality is the patchwork of Liverpool Football Club. The lifeblood. He'll leave us one day, but the memories he's given us will remain forever. Dirk Kuyt; the model pro. Dirk Kuyt; the warrior. Dirk Kuyt; my hero.

SK.

We're Going to Wembley!

Congratulations to Liverpool Football Club. Triumph over the 'new' big boys, Manchester City! Our first domestic Cup Final since 2005/2006, thanks to goals from Steven Gerrard and Craig Bellamy. The game on the night finished 2-2, however it was Steven Gerrard's first leg away goal that proved decisive, swinging the tie in our favour by the solitary goal. 

It was heart attack material at times, with City showing their class, but in the end it was a well deserved victory over the two legs. Craig Bellamy (pictured above) proved to be the difference, continuing his renaissance at the club with a man of the match performance. We're glad you're on our side, top man!

Fist pumps and a 'get ins' aplenty.


SK.

Hero of the Week: Lane Pryce

So it begins; the first installment into the heroics from those who tickle my fancy. Welcome to Hero of the Week. I’m hoping it will be weekly, however it depends on how compelled I am to follow the process. Week one (contains spoilers):

Mad Men. You hear the title and instantly you think of Don Draper; or to be more precise, Dick Whitman. A sharp tongued chain smoker with an alcohol problem, not to mention a roving eye that more often than not results in fondling’s with the opposite sex.

Mad Men consists of many heroes and heroines. Moving away from Big Don and his simmering sociopathic tendencies, my hero is cut from a different cloth (despite being momentarily roped into Draper’s games).

Lane Pryce. Yes, the chap whose vocabulary consists of brilliance such as “tallyho” and “calm yourself”.

Yes, the highbrow, chin stroking Englishmen who is originally installed by Sterling Cooper’s British parent company to oversee finances and expenditure. A job he conducted to the highest ability, according to his contemporaries. The same contemporaries who plotted to sell the agency behind the backs of original outright owners, Roger Sterling and Bert Cooper, to mega agency McCann Erickson. Confused yet? It gets better.

Suddenly realising that he'd become expendable, Pryce spearheaded a breakaway group that formed a brand new agency. An agency consisting of heavyweights, Roger Sterling, Bert Cooper and Don Draper, just to name a few.

Not only did they form a new agency; they took a hefty book of clients that jeopardized their now former partners’ sale. Although that particular deal eventually went through, it was a less attractive proposal due to accounts pilfered by Lane Pryce and Co.

"I feel like I just went to my own funeral. I didn't like the eulogy," was probably the most telling quote from Pryce, unleashing this pearl in the midst of severing ties with his once British cohorts.

Perceived as the perpetual downtrodden yes man, Lane Pryce’s incredible business coo and timely growth of testicular fortitude turned over a new chapter for his trans-Atlantic cousins. Sterling and Cooper no longer sold their souls, merely re-inventing the wheel, albeit out of the depths of their own pockets, with some kickbacks from Pryce; now a partner thanks to Sterling and Cooper, who recognised the importance of Pryce's backhand tactics during the sale process.

Although at times a peripheral figure in the quartet, Pryce’s business acumen continues to keep the agency afloat from financial disaster. Just.  

SK.

Happy New Year!

Okay, so it's a belated gesture, but it's the thought that counts, I guess.

Please accept my apology for the lack of content around these parts recently. I was in the UK over December and early January on holiday, so reality has got a stranglehold over me at the moment (not the jet lag, surprisingly).

I promise to post more in the coming days/weeks. It'll probably consist of more random things as apposed to music music music. Broadening my horizons etc. and before you ask; no, it's NOT a new year's resolution.

SK.