How to give yourself a heart attack at the age of 23

I wanted nothing more than to wake up this morning, and see a nice, comfortable scoreline in the 4th Round Liverpool vs. Havant and Waterlooville FA Cup tie. 3-0, perhaps. Not too embarrassing for H&W, not too nerve-wracking for the Reds. This might have settled things a bit, and cooled some of the speculation involving Big DIC and THick and Mach 0. It would have made me feel better about our generally tepid play of late.

This is what actually happened.

I woke up, brushed my teeth, got a cup of coffee. Threw on my Torres jersey. Sat down at my desk and opened Soccernet. Saw this:



(telestration added for emphasis)

If I was a betting man, I'd lay down about $50 on at least seven cardiac arrests and one stylized ritual suicides in the Kop. This was bad. This was Iron Eyes Cody shedding a single tear because the White Man trashed his ancestral homeland bad.

How can this happen? I think there are more Liverpool fans who would pay to lick Steven Gerrard's feet than there are Havant and Waterlooville fans total. The cost of their stadium would not even pay our squad for a single week. I'm pretty confident that our WAGs are a lot hotter than theirs. This match is being played at ANFIELD, for Fowler's sake. If we lost this match, it would be like the Miracle on Ice magnified a hundredfold. And we would be the big, bad, forever-loser Reds.

Even though we pulled back to 2-2 about 10 minutes after I started writing this, the fact that we spent 30 minutes of the first half losing to a non-league side may be more humiliating even than the losses at Besiktas and Reading.

On the bright side, it looks like Rafa finally might be giving Babel a chance at striker. And I am sure at least a few of these Havant and Waterlooville part-timers will get a shot at playing in the 3rd or 4th division because of this display. Good for them.

Now, come on lads, it's time to crush these plumbers and salesmen under our boots in the second half!

UPDATE: 4-2, with a hat trick by Yossi! Benayoun. The angst is starting to fade, but after those two fluky goals Villa scored on Monday I still don't feel safe. Against Havant and Freaking Waterlooville. How pathetic is that?