As a Liverpool fan there are two words that make my neck hairs stand straight up. The first one is “Istanbul” (no explanation is needed). The other word is “2001″.

In my last post I wrote about the manager situation at Anfield. And with current developments, it could be tempting to write another piece on that subject. (I can not believe the amount of Liverpool fans who are rooting for Mourinho to take over. Have they forgot what that man said about our football club only a few years a go? The contempt he treated Liverpool fans with at the 2005 Leauge cup final? Mourinho was massively booed at the 2005 CL semi final, and in the following matches we faced Chelsea. And now these people want him as our manager? What next? Salman Rushdie as president of Iran?)

But enough about current plights, and ramblings about who shall and shall not be manager at Anfield come August 2008.

Let us instead go down Memory Lane - a pleasant walk for any Liverpool fan.

No, I am not going to write about St. Etienne, the glory of Rome in 84, or the above mentioned Istanbul.

Let us talk about 2000/2001.

My favourite year!

As a football fan my year goes from August to July, not from January to December. At the start of the year (in august 2000 in other words), I enrolled at Liverpool John Moores University - where I was supposed to study journalism for three years. (Instead I ended up spending the vast majority of those three years in the pub - a lot of the time in company with this site’s editor!)

The reason John Moores University was my preferred top choice at Uni was not the incredible stature that particular University has as a journalism school, it had of course all to do with my love or Liverpool Football Club

As I am not born and bred on Merseyside (yes, I’m one of those pesky out of towners), this was my chance to follow the Red Men on a regular basis - not for one whole season, but for three.

Let us make a jump in space and time again. This time to the period preceding my enrolment at John Moores. Back to  the time I was still slaving at school here back home in Norway, passing time chasing after pretty blonde little things in skirts, watching footie on the telly, and reading everything I could get my hands on when it came to English football. Fanzines, match day programmes and books. A lot of books. (No wonder I was the teacher’s pet in my English class, as a teenager I had probably read more English than she has in her entire life)

My favourite footie book is called “My Favourite Year”. Published by the When Saturday Comes magazines, and edited by Nick Hornby. It is a collection of 13 tales by 13 famous football fans and writers, where they all describe their favourite season.

Inspired by that, I will now go trough the highlights of my favourite year. A year that saw me jump up and down with John Aldridge, share an elevator ride with Ron Atkinson, stamp on Frank Stapleton’s coat and last but certainly not least, saw me witness Liverpool win three cup finals.

The first memorable match of the 2000-2001 season was the Merseyside derby at Anfield. This early in the season, I still had not sorted out my press accreditation.

Yes, I freelanced my self trough my favourite year. I paid for my football by writing about the football I saw. Genious! On one occasion I covered a Walsall - Barnet FA Cup game at the Bescott stadium, when I suddenly noticed I had been standing the entire first half with muddy shoes on the coat hung over the seat in front of me. That coat belonged to Frank Stapleton! Finally, pay back time for that 1985 FA Cup semi final loss against the Mancs!

The only way I got hold of a ticket for that derby game was by buying of a tout. Something I hate doing, and something I have only done once ever since.

To my nightmare, someone was sitting in my seat when I finally entered Anfield five minutes after kick off.

A bluenose!

 I feared that I had bought a fake ticket. But after wandering aimlessly around the Annie Road End for the first few minutes, I simply hoped for the best and asked a steward for help. Thank God, that bluenose was sitting in the wrong seat. My ticket was the real deal after all.

The game can be summed up in two words: “Nick” and “Barmby”.

The winger had just joined from the dark side. And I will never ever forget that wall of sound when he, of all people, headed home for Liverpool’s first goal.

Kevin Campbell equalised, but Liverpool were easy winners against a piss poor Everton side in the end.

Another memory from that game is a fresh faced Steven Gerrard, at right back, tackling left winger Idan Tal so hard that the Israeli literally flew of the pitch and landed in the stands!

I can still remember standing among the Liverpool fans on the Sheil Road Circular bus going back in to town after the game, singing “He’s red, he’s white, We bought him from the shite. Nick Barmby, Nick Barmby…”

Outside it was pissing down (that autumn had the most rain recorded in history), inside it was all sunshine.

On a more curious note from that autumn, I remember swapping scarves with a drunk Czech, who looked and smelled like he had drunk all the Cains in Liverpool, in the Albert before the game against Slovan Liberec (A more bizarre experience was probably watching Bernard Diomede playing in that same game. My God, how did that impostor of a professional footballer ever win the World Cup!)

But it was in the spring that the 2000-2001 season really picked up the pace.

Liverpool were making great strides under Gerard Houllier, but even before Christmas - despite a Danny Murphy winner at Old Trafford - it was evident that we were never ever going to catch Man United and Arsenal in the league. In fact, keeping Leeds United and Ipswich at bay was going to be more than difficult (Leeds! Ipswich!!)

However, we where doing brilliantly in all three cup competitions. Chelsea (with a late goal from the returning Robbie Fowler), Stoke (8-0, Tim!), Fulham (then outside the Premier League) and a mauling of Crystal Palace at Anfield put us in the final of the League Cup. Rotherham, Leeds (who back then was rather good) and Joe Royle’s Man City were put to the sword in the FA Cup.

By February The Kop had a new ditty to sing. “Tell me ma, me ma, to put the champagne on ice. We’re going to Cardiff twice”

The first trip with Barnes’ coaches from Lime Street to the Welsh capital was made in February, as Sander Westerveld’s heroics gave us the trophy and a memorable and happy coach ride back home (I can remember a snow ball fight at a service station in the Midlands somewhere. The only time I have ever seen snow in England).

But The Millennium Stadium was not the only destination we had in sight. Looming on the horizon was also the Westfalen stadion in Dortmund. After being in the doldrums when it came to European football after the UEFA ban, Liverpool fans where finally getting a regular fix of our preferred drug: European glory.

Today the UEFA cup is viewed as nothing more than a distraction by most clubs. But in 2000-2001 it was the source of rebirth and new hopes for Liverpool FC. And also, have there ever been a UEFA cup with such quality as in 2000-2001?

We knocked Fabio Capello’s Roma out in February, thanks to a fantastic Michael Owen in the Stadio Olympico, and thanks to a fantastic Kop who scared the beejeesus out of a Spanish ref at Anfield.

Remember this was at a time when Serie A, quite rightly, was regarded as the by far best league in the world. And later that year Roma won the league title.

In the next round we beat a very good FC Porto side comfortably - two years before the same Porto side won the UEFA Cup, three years before the same FC Porto side won the Champions Leauge.

In the semi FC Barcelona awaited.

Roma, Porto, Barca… Arguably we defeated tougher opposition our way to the 2001 UEFA cup triumph, than when we won the Champions League in 2005.

The day after Liverpool had beaten Wycombe at Villa Park to qualify for the FA Cup final, I travelled up to Anfield and queued for seven - yes 7 - hours to get my hands on a ticket for the semi final against Barca at Anfield. Finally reaching that ticket office window was like sex! (And very much like the first time I had sex, I went straight home and slept for ten hours afterwards! I was knackered)

A funny story: I was in that line with my mates Declan and Dermott. When they phoned me up they day before, to arrange where and when we should meet up, my Spanish flat mate Eduardo answered. His grasp of the English language was pretty much at the same level as the current England manager has now. When Declan asked “Is that you Eric?”, Eduardo answered “I don’t know!”

Those seven hours queuing around Anfield on a cold Monday morning was well worth it tough.

Gary McAllister netted from the spot (that penalty would have hit me full on in the face had it not been for the Anfield Road End net).

Oh joy! Oh jubilation!

After 16 Liverpool had finally a European final to play.

But before that, there were matters to address in the league. Yes, Man United and Arsenal were light years ahead in the league.

But there was still a lucrative Champions League spot to play for. George Burley’s Ipswich had, as most people expected, ran out of steam. Leeds was the main challenger (only three English teams qualified back then).

It was a major blow when goals from Rio Ferdinand and Lee Bowyer gave the Yorkshire outfit a undeserved win at Anfield on Good Friday.

On Easter Monday Liverpool quite simply had to win. If not, that first ever Champions League entrance was at least another year away.

The oposition? Everton at Goodison.

In my 70-80 or so games watching Liverpool live, I have been lucky to experience many memorable moments, and I have seen many more from in front of a television set. But of all my Liverpool experiences, my favourite ever memory is the 3-2 win at Goodison in April 2001. Yes, it even beats Istanbul!

It was a thrilling game. Heskey scored. “In for a week, out for a month, Duncan is a tampon” Ferguson equalised. Babbel scored. Then Biscan was sent off by the truly awful Jeff Winter. Then Everton got the mother of all soft penalties (Yes mister Moyes, Everton got a soft penalty in a derby match). That hippo David Unsworth levelled.

Oh no!

We could forget it now.

Another year in the UEFA Cup awaited. Slovan Liberec and Dundee United rather than Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.

But then. Three minutes into injury time Liverpool won a free kick 44 yards out. Gary McAllister floated the ball into the box. Sami Hyypia rose like some 14 year old school boy’s cock in a strip bar. The flying Fin met the ball perfectly. It was going in! Yes!

…but no. Everton’s otherwise ordinary goalkeeper Paul Gerrard delivered a stunning save. All the Liverpool fans could not believe it!

We were all still holding our heads in disbelief when late substitute Gregory Vignal (remember him?) won another free kick in almost the exact same position.

Everybody expected another long ball into the box from McAllister. But Gary Macca had other ideas. Instead he placed the ball perfectly in the diving Gerrard’s bottom corner.

To this day I will never ever forget the sounds around me, as I sat here in the Goodison Park press box.

First total and stunned silence. Then an almighty roar from the travelling Kop on the other side of the pitch. Then the fump-fump-fump sound as 30.000 Everton fans simultaneously rose from their seats and headed for the exits. Then the sound of my own voice going “Aaaaaaargh” and out drowning the fella in front of me who was also jumping up and down letting out primal screams. That fella was John Aldridge, commentating on the game for the local radio.

If football brings me nothing but disappointment and hurt in the next 50 years, I would gladly take it and suffer it just to experience just two second of that feeling I had as Gary McAllister curled that ball into the Everton net on Easter Monday 2001.

Of course there was more curling and more scoring from McAllister in the following weeks.

When we entered the last week of the 2000-2001 season, Liverpool had three cup finals in eight days.

Arsenal in the FA Cup on Saturday the 12th, Alaves in the UEFA Cup on Wednesday the 16th and Charlton in the league on Sunday the 20th. A win at The Valley, and qualification for the Champions League was dead certain.

I can still remember the fantastic vision of the Millennium stadium bathed in glorious sunshine, as I made my way up the gantry for the 2001 FA Cup final. Due to a shortage of tickets in the writer’s press box, my paper at the time had managed to get me a press pass alongside the TV and radio commentators. The view was spectacular!

As I watched Arsenal totally outplay Liverpool and take the lead 1-0, I was sat squeezed in between the commentators of Norwegian channel TV2 and David Ginola commentating for some French channel.

Before I went down to Cardiff, my Arsenal supporting friends (I have got a few) reminded me that this was the fourth time Liverpool and Arsenal met in a cup final. In 1950 Arsenal had won thanks to goals from Lewis. In 1971 they had won thanks to goals from Graham and George, and in 1987 they had won thanks to goals from Nicholas. “And now, we have Henry” they said.

“But yes, we have Owen” I answered.

I could also have pointed out that when Liverpool meet Arsenal in FA cup finals, the team that wears gold and blue win.

Well, you all know what happened. Michael Owen, dressed in gold and blue, turned the game on its head. (Try to write a play about that, Mr. Hornby!)

One down, two to go.

I was not able to get a ticket for the UEFA final in Dortmund (Maybe Luke can write about that one?)

So the final was watched in the student’s union in the Haigh building on Mount Pleasant in Liverpool. Everything went fine. Babbel scored, Gerrard scored. We were cruising.

But then the ale pressed on. I had to go to the toilet. Alonso (no, not Xabi) pulled one back while I was out taking a leak. Gary Macca, in the form of his life, restored the two goal advantage.

Just after the restart I went to the toilet again. When I came back Moerno had scored - not once, but twice! Fuck!

Fowler netted, and with another couple of bottles of Becks (£1,45 a piece, if I remember correctly) necked, I decided to sneak out for another quick leak (I know, I know).

When I came back, Yordi Cruyff, of all people, had made it 4-4!

Extra time came. I was drunk now, all I can remember is standing with my legs crossed, desperately trying not to think about my undersized blather. Oh, and some unfortunate chap called Geli slicing a Gary Macca free kick into his own net.

Two down, one to go.

Next up Charlton. Once again, I had not been able to get a ticket. I can remember watching the game in the pub. I can remember Liverpool having a highly uncomfortable first half, and then Fowler scored with an over head kick, and we cruised to 4-0 and Champions Leauge qualification.

Three down, mission completed.

A couple of days later 300.000 people (Everton, the people’s club my ass!) turned up in the streets of Liverpool to watch an open top bus parade that had, as one banner proclaimed, more cups than a bra factory.

In the end it was the right decision to let Gerard Houllier go. At the end Liverpool was going backwards under him. But we should not forget that after many barren years, he gave us belief, pride and trophies. Liverpool would never have won in Istanbul, had it not been for the big game experience Gerrard, Carragher et al built up under Houllier.

I always felt that Gerrard Houllier came in, and still does, for unwarranted criticism. Yes, he had his faults, and it was right to let him go in the end, but he certainly gave us some glorious moments - while almost ending up paying with his life, least we forget.

But for me, he first and foremost gave me my favourite year!

What about you? Do you have a favourite year, or any favourite football experiences?