Feed the Scousers, and other ditties of note

Was always going to happen, wasn't it - the footy was always going to make an appearance somewhere along the line!

In a day so uneventful that I lost count of the number of times I said to Mrs Ottawacker I was going to have a nap, the Carabao Cup match against Leicester City stood out for its sheer entertainment value.

Unfortunately, I had to turn down the invitation to don the boots - knees, hips, etc. - so Klopp had to turn to youth and talent instead of the regulars. It was quite the spectacle. Having been 2-0 and 3-1 down and suffered the slings and arrows of Leicester CIty's quite egregious timewasting, Liverpool came back to draw 3-3 in the 6th minute of injury time (all that egregious timewasting) and beat Leicester 5-4 on penalties. A great performance from essentially a youth and fringe player team against Leicester's full-strength line-up.

It was made all the sweeter because of the behaviour of Leicester "Tory" CIty's fans. You might have thought that living in one of the most clinically deprived areas of the UK might have bred a form of socialism - or at least resistance and opposition to the mongs currently in charge, but no. Leicester is seemingly not only blue in kit, they are blue in politics.

From the start of the game we were treated to the full range of songs: "Feed the Scousers/ Let them know its Christmas time"; the Steve Gerrard slip song; "there's no foodbanks in Leicester"; the "Sign On, Sign On" chants and many more. It was like listening to a K-Tel Christmas record of Bernard Manning's favourite jokes. Irony, never part of a Tory's armoury at the best of times, went completely missing here. I mean, let's face it: ask any of the world's 7 billion whether they'd prefer to live in Liverpool or Leicester and I think the response would be pretty clear. 

I've never been a huge fan of the "bantz, innit" - it's part of the UK that I do not miss in the slightest. And, as with the Brexit vote, it seems that those who are suffering the most are the ones doing it the most: Leicester, Newcastle, Stoke... Quite dispiriting - and impossible to explain to people from outside of England.

"So, why are they singing "Feed the Scousers?", Mrs. Ottawacker asked as she sat down on the sofa for her weekly 5-minute explanation of the offside rule. "Dunno," I said, "Why are they singing that Gerrard song - wasn't Brendan Rodgers the manager then? Do they think it makes him happy?" "Dunno." 

So to have a dramatic fight-back and then to have the penalty shoot-out at the Leicester end... well, it made it worth keeping awake for.