Beef Bagel

There’s something of an exhibition match feel to our last game of the season. Neither us nor the ‘pudlians have anything to play for short of pride but both sides will be looking to finish their campaigns with a bang for themselves as well as the fans. Both sides will be a snapshot of what is to come next season with established and emerged favoured personnel the skeleton around which unwanted and unsustainable flesh will drop away. And with the summer sunshine colouring the grass that most beautiful of lime greens it’ll will have all the feel of a kind of ferocious pre-season friendly.

I expect to see a full-blooded encounter, the like of which we haven’t witnessed since February. Liverpool have only lost four times this season and there’s no way that Keano and the boys will fancy a lap of honour after another home loss. Most of all though, the reason to be there, the reason that brings a lump to my throat as I write this, is to see Dimitar The Great up close and in our colours for the very last time.

It’s hard to tell what he’ll do on the day but my fantasy is that he’ll sense the occasion as well and play like the Dimi we know just one last time, for us, for the fans and I pray in my heart that the only song to be heard as the Lilywhite army walks about at the end with their thanks to us is the beautiful operatic tune of La Donne e Mobile that we’ve come to use for “Dimitar Berbatov!”

I want him to feel our thanks and our pleasure at having been fortunate enough to witness a truly gifted player of the game.

Now, that’s going to be a lot easier if we haven’t just capitulated to Stevie G & Co. in flap of Bulgarian arms and a series of penetrating shrugs. Beating Liverpool at home would represent a worthy scalp at the end of this difficult campaign. On the surface and in the papers our season has been about winning the League Cup. Not so. That was incidental. It was about beating the Big Four. We’ve beaten half of them so far. We were inches away from scalping United and victory against the Red Machine would represent a very near full house. We have to know we can beat these teams before we can ever hope to knock one off its perch.

You know what, that’s all I’m going to say today. Not because I’ve no time or there’s no transfers or quotes or rumours to talk about but because that’s what my focus is ahead of Sunday and I imagine that’s all the players are thinking about too. Let’s beat Liverpool. Let’s have some good to feel about over the summer. Let’s lay down our marker for the next time around.

I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a good day on Sunday and however it turns out I want to enjoy my last game of football for a very long time.

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Bagel News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.