Liverpool’s seizure of power is the philosophy behind legendary manager Bill Shankly’s latest betrayal

A mural on the wall of the terrace at the end of Anfield’s red-brick Sybil Street reflects perhaps the best of Liverpool’s image as a people’s club. It shows Trent Alexander-Arnold next to the words, ‘I’m just a normal Liverpool guy whose dream just came true’.

The creation also recognizes the work of the food banks that Alexander-Arnold has fervently supported and it is this kind of link to the soul and struggles of a working class community that many Liverpool fans believe is what makes their club different. It helps that Anfield is at the beating heart of just such a place.

“One thing seems different about Liverpool compared to other teams,” writes one of the creators of Redmen TV’s YouTube channel, to which nearly half a million people subscribe. ‘It is that people buy themselves into the culture of the fan base. So many out of town fans are helping the same goals we defend as Liverpool fans. ‘

The sense that Liverpool has a socialist core naturally goes back to Bill Shankly.

“The socialism I believe in … is that everyone works for each other, everyone helps each other, and everyone gets a share of the rewards at the end of the day,” Shankly once said.

The club’s former CEO, Peter Moore, said in an interview with El Pais last year that ‘when we talk about the business questions, we wonder,’ What would Shankly have done? What would Bill have said in this situation? ”

Christ Almighty. No. Don’t do this’, would have been his answer, when it comes to the final move of Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the American owners of Liverpool.

That is the move, spearheaded by FSG’s John W Henry and Manchester United’s Joel Glazer, but rejected by the Premier League yesterday, to anchor top clubs’ decision-making power and a much greater share of income in the Big Six. .

In the world that Project Big Picture wanted, the richest had to get four times as much basic income as the parties in the lowest echelons of the league. There would have been more TV revenue for Liverpool, with clubs allowed to sell eight matches on their own platform, to the detriment of smaller clubs, for which the collective broadcast agreement would yield less.

No more Leicester, Wolves and Everton hammering at the elite’s door. The reward was to make more money for lower league clubs, although Premier League clubs big and small would have to compete for it.

Glazer, who bleeds United dry as he rules the ghastly decline, is an easy target. But the fact that FSG has not sucked out Liverpool’s dividends should not disguise a pattern of decision-making that points to gripping, predatory capitalism, not the socialism the club claims to represent.

It has been four years since they had withdrawn a new £ 77 best price match ticket, with Henry apologizing for the ‘suffering’ caused. It was last year that they attempted (unsuccessfully) to use the town’s name as a trademark, probably at the expense of many independent traders.

The name “belongs to the city of Liverpool and its people,” declared supporter group Spirit of Shankly, which bears the Scots name for very good reason.

This year, Liverpool tried to claim taxpayer-funded leave money despite a profit of £ 42 million. Another turnaround. More hasty apologies. History teaches us that no club will forever maintain a socialist or capitalist ethos. No club has the right to suggest that it is on a higher moral level than the rest. Identities are fluid. They shift, according to who is in charge.

Gavin Buckland’s brilliant book about Everton’s title-winning team from the 1960s, Money Can’t Buy Us Love, reveals how that club was ruthless, driven by entrepreneur John Moores. But 40 years later, Everton is the People’s Club, with a community scheme that forced Liverpool to catch up.

The city of Liverpool itself has not always been socialist. It was conservative and unionist until the 1970s. Yet FSG’s drive to wrest control from the collective and anchor it in the hands of the richest few against all that represents Liverpool FC in front of millions of fans. Jurgen Klopp was described by France Football as the ‘working class hero’ of Liverpool a few years ago.

Last week, there was a video of him singing John Lennon’s Imagine in his office, on the occasion of what would have been the singer’s 80th birthday.

So Klopp might be interested to know that when Shankly’s time came to appear on Desert Island Discs, the book he chose to take as a castaway was James Back’s The Life of Robert Burns. Burns was “an early socialist,” Shankly noted.

He didn’t think God had made people wrong. He felt that everyone should share in the work and the rewards. ‘