Carra: My Autobiography (37 page)

If there's one match to convince me more than any other of Stevie's right to be seen as Kenny's equal, it's that FA Cup Final against West Ham in 2006. We were poor that day in Cardiff, and had Stevie not thundered in the last-minute equalizer from twentyfive yards there'd have been no complaints about our defeat. He saved us again. He'd done it so often in the past, but to do it on such a stage, when no one else had anything left to give, separates good players from legends.

I had double cause to thank him as I could have felt responsible had we lost.

'I had a dream last night,' my mate Pritch had told me on the morning of the match. 'You're going to score today.'

With my record, I should have known as soon as I was told about this premonition it would be an owngoal. It's rarely mentioned now, but had we not shown that will to win it could have been the lowest point of my career. I gave West Ham their early lead, deflecting a Lionel Scaloni cross into our net. I was grateful it happened early enough in the match for us to cancel it out, although we did it the hard way again, going 2–0 down before we started playing. Even when we were a couple of goals behind, we believed we'd come back and win, which we eventually did on penalties. The captain saved us with two goals in the 3–3 draw, assisted by an inspired performance by Sissoko which is often ignored, and a Cisse goal as important as any on the day. It was like a re-run of Istanbul.

As a club, there's something in our DNA which makes us incapable of accepting defeat. Our rivals call it luck. I've heard Liverpool fans say the same about Manchester United, as no matter how poorly they've played, or how little time they have left in a game, somehow they regularly find a way back. It's not good fortune, it's part of the culture of both clubs. They've got it, and so have we. No matter what the occasion, you've got to sweat it out for the full ninety minutes (or in their case ninetyfive!) to beat us. It happens too much to be coincidental. The shame from our perspective is our inability to apply this neversay-die cup spirit to every League game. United have done that over recent years.

The May homecoming bus ride was becoming a thrillingly annual journey, but after two trophies in two years and a vastly improved League performance we were occupying similar territory to 2002 and facing up to the same old question.

'When are we going to win the League?'

The comparisons between Rafa and Gérard at the same period of their reign couldn't be ignored. Houllier had spent two full seasons assembling his side until we fully understood his philosophy. The same was now true of Rafa, who was adding new faces more gradually but had now fine-tuned the squad and seemed a lot wiser about the intricacies of the English game.

If 2005 was about adding muscle, the next stage was about finding players with the necessary skill, pace and style. These are always the toughest signings in football. Houllier stumbled at this point, now Rafa had to find the players who possessed what I call 'The X Factor'. We were still a methodical rather than extravagant side and would need more to make the most difficult step of all, from title wannabes to winners. Where Manchester United could call upon a Rooney or Ronaldo to create goals from nothing, and Chelsea had Drogba or Lampard regularly bailing them out, as an attacking force we still relied too much on Gerrard. Not for the first time in my Liverpool career, I found myself believing the next three or four signings would determine if we leapt forward or stumbled backwards.

I'm sad to say it was the latter. Craig Bellamy signed from Blackburn and added pace; Dirk Kuyt, a Dutch striker from Feyenoord, provided physical presence; Jermaine Pennant, from Birmingham, and Chilean winger Mark Gonzalez were described as solutions to our lack of speed and skill on the flanks. We didn't seem far off being a title-challenging team, but yet again, when the club needed to make sensational signings, taking us from being a good side to a worldclass one, we weren't competing in the same transfer market as Chelsea and Manchester United. The squad was improved, but not enough. At the same time, worldclass players such as Didi were coming to the end of their time. His departure to Manchester City was especially sad, given his charismatic influence in the dressing room.

The overall consequence was a season more like Rafa's first, where our League form was inconsistent but we excelled in Europe. The 2006–07 campaign highlighted the fact there's no magic formula in football, allowing you to plan years in advance and ensure you get better year upon year. My experiences at Liverpool prove it never works like that. Our best League seasons have arrived in isolation and been followed by changes that didn't work.

Like the supporters, I didn't disagree with the quality of the recruits at the time, although after being linked for so long with names of the calibre of Seville's Brazilian wide man Daniel Alves I could understand the sense of anti-climax. You ask yourself each summer on the first day of preseason, are these the signings that will make us as good as we need to be? Would these lads get in the United, Chelsea or Arsenal side? Will our rivals be gutted we signed them? Too often, it seemed, the answer was no. We were pursuing four or five bargains; what we needed was one or two top-of-the-range players.

Bellamy was a particularly controversial purchase. He was seen as a 'bad egg', but he seemed misunderstood to me. I got on brilliantly with him and could see how driven he was and how much he loved his football. His problems seemed to stem from being too intense, as well as from a refusal to compromise when it came to speaking his mind. If he didn't understand or agree with a decision in training, he'd question it. Rafa's style of management was unsuited to him.

It did lead to some funny moments, though.

After his arrival, we were in the players' lounge when he spotted one of the lads' girlfriends. His eyes were virtually popping out as he asked who she was with.

'That's Xabi's bird,' he was told.

Xabi came into the dressing room the following morning and Bellamy couldn't stop himself.

'Tell you what, Xabi,' he said in his cheeky Welsh accent, 'you're punching well above your weight there, mate.'

The lads were laughing, although I'm not entirely sure Xabi knew what he meant.

Bellamy's high and low at Anfield arrived in the same week, when after putting us on the front pages for using a golf club in a fight with John Arne Riise, he scored the equalizer and created the winner in the game we'd been away 'bonding' for, in Barcelona. I was lucky enough to be back on Merseyside when the 'incident' at our Spanish getaway occurred. 'You won't believe what the fuck's gone on here,' was the alert I was given by Steven Gerrard. What can you say? A drunken night out went too far. The fact Bellamy and Riise scored the goals in the Nou Camp, and Craig celebrated it by practising his golf swing on the pitch, demonstrated how mischievous and funny I thought he was. 'Whatever anyone says about me, I played for the club I support, scored and made the winning goal against Barcelona in the Nou Camp, and scored in front of The Kop. No one will ever be able to take that away from me,' Bellamy said prior to his sale to West Ham. Can't argue with that.

Not everyone was upset he left though, especially the poor youth team player who isn't blessed in the good looks department, who was nicknamed 'Gorgeous' for the duration of Bellamy's stay.

With Bellamy sold after a year and players such as Gonzalez moved on after minimal impact, the only conclusion was the 2006 signings didn't work. The Premiership table confirmed this as we finished twenty-one points behind Manchester United. I'm not blaming the new players for our disappointing League performance, though. The circumstances at the start of that season undoubtedly played a part in our failure to take the step forward we expected.

Post World Cup, the effects of our twelve-month season caught up with us. It was no coincidence all our internationals started the season slowly and our worst results and performances came at the same time. I was as guilty as any of underperforming during this period, to the point where I began genuinely to fear if I'd gone past my peak. I'd heard so many stories after previous World Cups and European Championships about the fatigue players suffered the following season. If I'm brutally honest, I'd often brushed such comments off as a tame excuse. Only after I suffered the same syndrome did I fully appreciate how debilitating it felt. It was a strange sensation. I'd jump for a header and literally find it difficult to pull my legs off the ground. I'd run for a tackle and feel a yard slower. There was no sharpness in my game, and it was becoming a struggle to get through ninety minutes without feeling tired.

As I'm such a worrier, there were plenty of sleepless nights to endure at the start of that season, especially after my nightmare performance in the Goodison derby in September, when we were hammered 3–0. I genuinely feared I was finished. 'Is this what happens when your body can't handle the top level any more?' I asked myself. I was questioning if, in football terms, I was 'gone'. It happens to every player eventually, and although I wasn't expecting to fall victim at the age of twenty-eight, maybe this was it.

Rafa could justifiably have dropped me, but I owe him a lot for sticking by me during this dip. There were a lot of us in the same situation, so the manager assured us it was only a temporary problem. That didn't help us in our instantly aborted title bid, though. Any prosect of a challenge was gone after ten games following defeats to Everton, Bolton, Chelsea and Manchester United.

At times like that, the burden of responsibility Stevie and I felt to carry the team through difficult periods was too much. We've benefited from this reputation for much of our careers, and it's a duty we relish most of the time. I like being seen as dependable in that way. It's meant, if things have gone well, we've often been the ones to get most of the credit as the local lads always giving their all. The flip side is if results go wrong fans and teammates have tended to look to us to get everyone going again. When I was struggling I needed others to step in and help me out, but that hasn't always happened. The best sides will have no passengers; equally they'll be able to accommodate a loss in form of one or two key players. Too often during my time at Liverpool it's seemed if Stevie and I hit a bad patch there's no one else to step up to the mark to cover for us.

As usual, and much to my relief, all our performances vastly improved and we rallied in the second half of the season. By then we were well off the pace in pursuit of Chelsea and United. The echoes with how Houllier's time had gone were unavoidable, but whereas the supporters lost faith quickly in Gérard, Rafa's ongoing European success meant he was still regarded as a messiah on The Kop.

Rafa won the hearts and minds of the fans much quicker than Gérard thanks to Istanbul. The speed of progress in his first two seasons meant the disappointments in the League in year three were not seen in such negative terms. Our progress through the Champions League, overcoming Barcelona and Chelsea once more, would always prove an impressive distraction to those critical of our domestic form. You don't get so much stick for losing away at Newcastle if you win in Barcelona a week later. These were pivotal, defining moments in our season, and Rafa always got it right. The portfolio of epic European victories was growing year upon year. It was an obvious conclusion we'd become a club more suited to the Champions League than the Premiership.

I'm not saying that's intentional, and it's not just the players or manager who have caused this. Go to Anfield on a Saturday at three p.m. when we're playing Wigan or Aston Villa, then go back three days later to watch us play Barcelona or Chelsea. It's like a different venue. The fans are up for it much more, the noise level is astounding, and the intensity generates a vibe that rarely fails to inspire us to play to our fullest potential. As a side we've been accused of failing to reproduce our European form in the League, but the allegation is fairer applied to the whole club. If most English sides had to endure the Anfield European atmosphere, we'd probably blow them away. All of us must take responsibility for that. It's up to us as players to get the crowd going as much as it's up to The Kop to perform every week. There seems to be a different mindset on and off the pitch. The Kop has had twenty years heading to League games with a feeling of trepidation having seen us struggle so often, yet the same supporters possess this supreme confidence and self-belief whenever they watch us in Europe, based largely on Rafa's recent success.

We also benefit from our knowledge of the European game. Never has a 1–0 home defeat been celebrated like that against Barcelona in the 2007 knockout stage. Because we had those two away goals in the Nou Camp, we could afford to lose. Perhaps fans at other clubs would have demanded we attack and finish Barca off, but The Kop has always been more understanding of the tactical side of the game. At that time, Barcelona had one of the most exciting attacking line-ups in the world. As a trio, Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto'o could destroy you, but we kept them largely at bay. Frank Rijkaard's side were European champions when we knocked them out. On its own this would have been a victory to rank alongside the Anfield greats, but during this particular era it had almost become expected as we claimed another historic scalp.

The same was true of Chelsea in the repeat of our 2005 semifinal. We knew Jose Mourinho and his players would be determined to get revenge, but playing the second leg at Anfield was crucial again. Mourinho hadn't seemed to learn his lesson with his pre-match comments, diminishing our achievements and ensuring a hostile reaction. 'He's the funniest thing to come out of London since Del Boy and Rodney,' I told the press on the eve of the match, and the line was plastered over the front of the
Echo
as Chelsea arrived.