Did anyone else find it odd to hear the words 'Fowler's onto it down the left', on the radio last night, and know that it was a Liverpool player?
I had to pinch myself every time his name came up. It was a very strange experience. I had some very strange feelings mixing around in my head last night, including a lot of retrospective stuff about the excitement at school when one lad said there was this amazing young striker at Anfield called Fowler, and he was soon going to break through into the first team.
And then that debut, and then all those goals.
It was these feelings from ten years ago and more that I remembered last night, listening to the cheeky wee ball of pooe turn it on for the kop, not the uncertainty of the Houllier saga, the injuries, the lost form, the premature dissolution.
Strange to be thirteen or fourteen again, just for twenty minutes or so.
And was it my imagination, or did he do more in about twenty minutes last night than he's done in the last few years? (Barring the recent hatrick of course.) Getting to the dead ball line, getting the crosses in, and putting the ball in the back of the net, I thought he had a very accomplished little debut, and looked better last night, even in a cameo, than I've seen him for a long long time.
I just get the impression that, in a symbiotic kind of way, Fowler is twice the player for Liverpool, even this Fowler, even this Liverpool, than he ever could be for any other team.
God is back, and no matter how dilapidated, he's still Robbie Fowler.
