Which side can claim the title of being “the people’s club”?

Gone are the glory days of the 70’s and 80’s when Liverpool were England’s most hated team. As the team’s triumphs have waned, the club has slowly transformed itself into a side of the people. Witness Robbie Fowler’s support of the dockers in the 90’s (he owned people’s hearts long before he got hold of their houses), as well as the Reds’ parochial loyalty to a string of mediocre players and managers. Even when the side recently did meet with success in FA cups or the Champions League, it was only after they pleased the masses with improbable last-gasp goals, or impossible fairy-tale comebacks.In spite of all the forces within the English game pushing towards the establishment of a plutocratic “top-four”, my team hasn’t lost the common touch, and kept the door wide open for any number of sides to take away its fourth CL qualifying spot. Hell if it doesn’t encourage the underdog in cup competitions too: gifting Luton Town a lucrative FA Cup replay at Anfield which kept the League One club solvent, and then in the next round offering a sporting chance to non-league Havant and Waterlooville: more aristocratic teams such as Man Utd or Chelsea would have been much more ruthless in dispatching the minnows, and making a duller game for all concerned as a consequence.So with this all in mind, it should come as no surprise that ordinary fans, the people who support Liverpool from far and wide have launched a bid to take over the club. In a bid that is supposed to resemble the member-share scheme at Barcelona (another team with impeccable credentials as Catalonia’s people’s club), the Share Liverpool FC group looks set to raise 500 million pounds to buy the club back from the less-than-popular American owners, Gillette and Hicks. The American duo have lost a lot of credit in the eyes of the common supporter after publically humiliating the manager Benitez by announcing they had come close to replacing him with Jurgen Klinsman, whilst at the same time losing credit in a financial sense, only just managing to refinance their ownership of the club, and lumbering Liverpool with over £100 million in debt in the process.So I’m sure I’m like many other fans who welcome this move, and would love to have the odd £5000 spare which it looks set to cost the average supporter like myself to own a share in the club.That leaves just one question hanging, which team do you think deserves the title “the people’s club”?For me, comrade, the answer is the Reds.

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