Just got back home from an Anfield Stadium Tour with Aklams coaches. Not my type of thing but I went with my 10 yr old granddaughter who is Liverpool ( and City) mad. Double decker bus from Beverley and surprisingly it only picked up a couple of dozen passengers en -route, mostly from East Hull and four in Goole, don't know what the trip cost because it was a present.
I've only ever been to Anfield before to see City play so the first time was the League Cup 2nd leg when Lee Bracey got sent off after five minutes, so 15/20 years ago? I didn't enjoy that night either and it was nothing to do with the result, which was to be expected. It was the reality that Hull City are a trillion miles away from the likes of Liverpool, we were that night and I felt the same way today.
We played them in the League Cup when Boothferry Park was at it's worse, half the ground closed off and the rest of it falling to bits, so to walk into Anfield that night was quite sobering, it was a totally different world and we were a trillion miles apart.
Today, I felt the same. Liverpool have extended the stadium and plenty of bricks have been laid since we last went there as equals in the Premier League. The ground and surroundings are quite magnificent, it also seems as though they have bought some land around the stadium and they are building a new club shop which is the size of Asda Kingswood. The actual stadium tour was top class and the many guides were all professional scousers and smart with it, the museum, unbelievable especially the silverware on show.
They were replacing the red plastic seats which had faded in the sun today, thousands of them, and it struck me that they will have spent more on replacement seats then we can spend on players. I bet they took more money today from visitors then we take on a matchday too. One steward told me its not uncommon for fans to spend £1k at a time in the club shop on a matchday. I had a look inside the temporary shop today and it made ours ( or the quality of the stock did) look like the back end of Walton Street car boot sale on a wet Wednesday in February in comparison.
So a sobering day, we cannot sign a player because we cannot be trusted by the FL to pay for them and Liverpool are getting bigger and bigger, and the gap wider and wider so not much has changed since that Tuesday night Second Leg League Cup tie when we went there 6-1 down and scrapping for our lives, penniless at the foot of the football league ladder, twenty odd years ago.