'Being Liverpool' documentary series

[yamiedo]

When is the second episode airing in the US?

[Gibbo]

Tonight I believe

[Pablo]

Tonight. Should be available to download by tomorrow morning.

[destinydude]

Tonight. Should be available to download by tomorrow morning.

Should be up in an hour after it airs, if the rippers are on form but with our result today their mood have already been dampened.

[g.red]

If it was then they sure looked like him

I understood Noel


Would anyone like the Brendan Rodgers Avatar portrait avatar.

[baitman]

Savage is a good looking fella, so no harm in that.

[little dave hedgehog]

"clive"

[Imy]

With a young David Raven in front of him.

[little dave hedgehog]

my work here is done.

[Buzzo]

Rafa was my first choice and TBH I find him slightly creepy but ill back him 100% and if he turns us back into title challengers I wouldn't care if he was David Brent!!!

Cheers

Rach

Yeah that's about where I am with him. I do admire the gusto he seems to be attacking the role of LFC manager with though, and his promotion of the kids (this must have been part of his mandate from FSG though) has been as successful as it was essential.

I just want the series out of the way and us to start winning a few games.

[Yozza]

my work here is done.

You still using MS Paint?

[Shaggy]

[Phoenix07]

If you thought you'd heard criticism about this documentary, think again...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/9561203/Liverpool-advert-reveals-Anfields-delusions-of-grandeur.html

Liverpool advert reveals Anfield's delusions of grandeur

There are two annoying things about Liverpool Football Club. The first is the insistence of their fans and disciples on referring to them at all times as ‘Liverpool Football Club’.

Why do they do this? Perhaps it has something to do with the second, which is the belief of all Liverpool fans that they constitute some sort of chosen people; more special, more noble, more decorated, more triumphant and more tragic, more blessed and more cursed, than any other club. Quite a bold claim for a club who derive their moral credo from a Gerry and the Pacemakers song.

Yet through the on-pitch struggle, the off-pitch trauma and the signing of Julian Dicks, the mythology of Liverpool remains both wildly popular and fascinating, which is why there was still a good deal of anticipation for the documentary Being: Liverpool, which aired on Channel Five on Friday. It promised a more candid and revealing view of life behind the scenes at Anfield than we could ever have hoped for. Unfortunately, it succeeded.

Say you are a celebrity who has endured a chastening few years, in public and in private. Your star is waning, your stock falling. What better way to repair the damage and reinvent your brand than with a televised confessional? This, then, was Liverpool striking out for forgiveness, for absolution, for renewal, in the only way their American owners knew how.

Every frame felt like it had been transcribed from the playbook of a Hollywood publicist, from the celebrity narrator (actor Clive Owen) to the reference to how “storied” the club were, to the superfluous, MTV-inspired colon in the title.

It has been a turbulent few months at Anfield. Staff were fired and staff were hired; players were bought and sold; innumerable boardroom meetings were held to debate the club’s direction. Sadly, we saw none of this. In the absence of any input from Kenny Dalglish, his unspoken presence haunted the programme like a fearful apparition, like Norman Bates’s mother in Psycho. Perhaps the series will conclude with a horrific, chilling scene in which it is revealed that charming, loquacious new manager Brendan Rodgers had been Dalglish in a wig all along.

For the time being, though, we have to assume we will be getting more of the same, which is to say a glamorised hagiography of a former Swansea manager who went on a leadership course one time, and wrote down everything he heard.

Rodgers is the undisputed star of the show. How else to explain the remarkable scene filmed in his house? Grinning from ear to ear as he walks us past the huge black and white print of his face on the wall, Rodgers introduces us to his wife Susan (“very patient”), her brother, teenage daughter Mischa (“she’s just got her GCSE results, they went quite well”) and her teenage boyfriend (“he was a model for Hollister”).

When we were promised a mind-blowing, access-all-areas documentary, being introduced to Rodgers’ daughter’s “special friend” was not quite what we had in mind.

The decision to portray Rodgers as an ideologically pure, sharp-suited Messiah will be a curious one to anyone who remembers his disastrous tenure at Reading. At the very least, he is revealed as a man whose talent for management is at least matched by his talent for management clichés.

“Being the Liverpool manager is a way of life.” “If it’s easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.” “We were brought up not with the silver spoon, but with the silver shovel.” “It’s not just about training players, it’s about educating players. You train dogs.” “The player plus the environment equals the behaviour.” Being: Liverpool? Talking: B------t, more like.

How fascinating might this programme have been had it been made in the era of Shankly or Paisley, when Liverpool Football Club truly were exceptional. But no amount of flattering filters or Hollywood editing could conceal the fact that this is now a club mired in the mundane, no more or less special than any other. The documentary was, in essence, highly stylised artifice, all slogan and no substance; a confessional that confessed very little.

Still, if it was a choice between this and a weepy, hour-long interview with Piers Morgan, they probably just about did the right thing.

[Alex]

Well that article is a big pile of L.O.L

The opening line instantly tells you everything you need to read.

which is to say a glamorised hagiography of a former Swansea manager who went on a leadership course one time, and wrote down everything he heard.

That line above also tells you everything you need to know about the bloke who wrote it.

[Gray]

Haha