I accept blame for Liverpool's mess

A seemingly never-ending phase of bad fortune has pervaded Liverpool FC this season, and my heart sinks with every new 90th-minute goal against us. It's obviously an indication of the failed strategies of the last few months, and I blame myself completely. The dreams I had, the ways I plotted of how we would get the Premiership back, all have come to nought. But I cannot sit back and let Rafa Benitez take all the stick. It's me, it's me.

My first brainwave
This involved a diary, a pen, and attention to every minor detail. I would note down every talking point of every match Liverpool played, with a separate section for the domestic Cups, European Cups and the very important long-lost buddy -- the Premiership. Goals, yellow cards, red cards, suspensions, injuries -- everything would be recorded, with a few lines of thoughts to go along with the numbers -- and with such intense scrutiny, surely there would follow a reward. If you dissect each detail down to its tiniest molecule, patterns begin to emerge, you begin to see things before they happen, and naturally, but naturally, such devoted study would make the football gods bestow a little bit of happiness on a Liverpool fan such as me. We can all see how this turned out.

My second great idea
Hidden away in the corners of my cupboard so far, have been the Liverpool posters and memorabilia I have collected over the years of my fandom. Well, now I decided, it's time to unleash it all on the world, or at least the walls of my room. It was time to stop living in fear, and display my Red-ness without fear of the posters getting torn or the car-hangings falling down. For wasn't this the football I wanted to see from my team? Attacking, lacking inhibitions, bursting through upon goal relentlessly and putting it away as the scoreboard ticked along. The positive energy, I figured, would find its way to Merseyside easily enough.
Now, with the injured list of probable goalscorers rivalling that of the million near-misses we manage in every match, this has turned out to be another spectacular failure.

And another thing...
Continuing with the positive energy theory, I figured it was time to use a route that had worked like a charm at the beginning of The Season In Which We Almost Had It. I stuck my neck out and wrote a piece for work predicting a Liverpool win over Manchester United on a particular date, and it really did happen, I kid you not. I laughed my evil laugh because I thought that was it, the way to victory, and I poured in the words till they reached their loftiest, their highest, their most confident point of no return. I found it hard to stop, and kept on writing, putting away every setback into the back of my mind, till the minor blips became too large to ignore. Sadly, now we aren't even able to put it across the likes of Stoke and Reading.

But despite all these incredible flops, I'm not going to stop. Someday, someday I will find what it takes to make a winning team. On a recent trip to McLeodganj, I bought a bunch of those coloured flags that Tibetans hang around their houses and places of work. They will be draped all around my Liverpool posters, and they will bring good luck, I just know it.

But in the meantime, I will continue to think of the next course of action...