The Dismal Science
Economic laws are usually as dreary and dispiriting as they sound. Gresham’s Law (bad money drives out good) is a rehash of there being no such thing as a free lunch. Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’ reminds us that true bargains are rare to nonexistent as the law of supply & demand conspire to force us to pay what things are actually worth.
But the Law of Diminishing Returns is re-assuring: it allows us to scoff at those who blow fifteen hundred quid on a Brunello di Montalcino Riserva Soldera 2001, confident they are not getting thirty times the pleasure that can be had from an Il Poggione from the same appellation & vintage. Do try this at home if you don’t believe me…
Or knowing that the thirty-grand somebody I know has blown on his hi-fi won’t bring back the visceral thrill of hearing Springsteen’s ‘No Surrender’ blast out from the three-inch kitchen radio speaker in the student flat above the Highgate brothel in 1984. (This is the same student flat inhabited by the current Labour leader if there are any devotees of Sir Keir and heard his admission on Desert Island Discs reading this…)
Sadly, a rainy Saturday in Merseyside in August 2021 shows that Diminishing Returns applies to the Premiership as £450 million of talent assembled by Liverpool proved just too much for the £80 million or so (itself, a not inconsiderable sum…) Burnley has spent on their squad. Nearly six times the investment saw 100% of the spoils going deservedly to a team that was simply slightly better in all the critical areas.
I had a good feeling about this match as I should not have got a ticket in the first place. Like other London Clarets, I was niggled by the new club owners’ decision to not allow supporters clubs a ticket allocation so clicked around the site to find out I needed to be a season ticket holder to buy Away tickets. I tried to buy one anyway and got rejected. Working in the field of technology, but management development rather than doing the hard work of building things myself, I’m painfully aware that websites rarely work exactly as intended. So I ferreted around the site, clicking here and there, trying various options, until the site announced I could not buy two tickets. So I tried to buy one. I could so I did. Not exactly cyber-vandalism but probably some infraction of the terms of use. Could this be an omen?
The weekend had started well, checking into a pub on the outskirts of Ormskirk and sipping pre-dinner beers in the later afternoon sun, my companion eyed the car park warily where his slightly bling but de-badged M-series BMW was parked.
“Think we’ll take mine for dinner, leave it and get a cab back” he suggested “Safer there than here…”
‘There’ is Moor Hall, in nearby Aughton and according to one booking website (as of last week), now the best restaurant in the UK. With two Michelin stars, all accounts are uniformly gushing but it’s that Law again. Is it really worth the extra expense when the immaculately converted ‘Barn’ is part of the same set-up? For once, I decided to allow to my parsimonious instincts to rule and as I was making the reservation, plumped for the ‘budget’ option. But as one of my Burnley-born relatives is prone to remark: “it’s all relative…”
Seated amongst the gleaming glass and bleached wood, it’s about as far away from the shell-suited, bubble-permed thievery for which the region is unjustly famed as it’s possible to get. There’s an almost Californian sheen about the place as we sip white wine and cassis and nibble on some minimalist snacky bits.
Precise, light dishes feature such as 60 Day aged grass-fed Shorthorn beef tartare, tarragon and crispy potato vie for attention with cured Isle of Mull scallop, Carlingford oyster, cucumber and Granny Smith apple. Mains continue in the same vein with a saddle of Herdwick lamb, alliums (no, me neither…), peas and girolle mushrooms and a perfect piece of Cornish line caught Sea Bass with fennel, charred lettuce and shellfish sauce.
The same lightness of touch applies to deserts to the point that the honey parfait, ginger cake, gooseberry and oxalis didn’t really taste of much which isn’t really the point of desert. What else? Oh yes, there’s also a small selection of perfectly pleasant but not terribly exciting wines by the glass and some pretty fancy Armagnacs and two Calvados to choose from.
All in all, if you’re a wealthy scouser and made it out of the hinterland to live in this privileged little enclave of West Lancashire, it’s a quite lovely place to spend a Friday night. But this level of competence and comfort is at the unmemorable end of the scale and carries a price tag of a smidgeon over £120 each. Even making allowances for a superfluous pre-WWII Armagnac for Mr. Bling and a budget Calvados for me, my instinct tells me there’s better value to be had in this area with more research.
But it’s down to earth with a thump the next day: grey skies and incessant drizzle as I fight my way to Anfield through London-like traffic. I’m not sure what I was expecting of the ground given its mythical status: something between the Coliseum & the Taj Mahal probably. Predictably, it’s a bit of a disappointment as it’s just another modernised football stadium. But the minor shock was the atmosphere or almost total lack of it.
Later, Match of the Day made much of how wonderful it was to hear The Kop in full voice once more but I barely noticed them other than a dignified and well-choreographed tribute to the 97th victim of Hillsborough. The overall sense was that this is a group of supporters who expect their team to win more than they lose and win they did.
Early signs were promising with McNeill showing a new menace and muscularity in his approach that must have attracted the eyes of the Top 6 clubs by now. It’s a miracle Burnley has hung onto him and he was the only white-shirted player out there that could have held his own in a red shirt.
The sense was Burnley were throwing everything they had in an early onslaught with the hope of a quick breakthrough followed by an attritional slog to get something of the spoils. But Liverpool stood back, waited patiently and treated the first quarter of the half as a warm-up exercise while everything clicked gently into place.
The passing suddenly got sharper, the long ball distribution became inch-perfect rather than yard-perfect and the movement off the ball assumed a silky viscosity. And then, a momentary lapse in concentration after a move of surgical precision had Ben Mee holding his head in his hands as Jota nipped in front of him to glance the ball past a stationary Pope.
Burnley tried in vain to up the tempo but Liverpool just were not interested and played out the half on tick-over. Even after the two disallowed goals, the afternoon’s result seemed pre-ordained and a second move of lightening brilliance, sublime technique and deadly finish from Mane sealed the deal.
Yards of column inches have been dedicated to Mo Salah but he really needs to be seen to be believed. Even with my negligible knowledge of the games’ finer points, he really is an outlier. That odd shuffling, industrious run coupled with the 360-degree awareness of everything going on around him is disarming. But combine that with perfect, instinctive ball control and the ability to see the simple, obvious-with-hindsight, deadly pass makes it worth the price of admission, even if your team gets elegantly stuffed as a consequence.
Even playing out of their skins with the almighty on their side, the nagging suspicion was whatever Burnley could conjure up and no matter how hard they worked, it would never be enough. But the team acquitted themselves well with their commitment never in doubt. They played, played up and played the game but just like the characters in Sir Henry Newbolts’ ode to schoolboy soldiers, they never really stood a chance.
In response, there was a chivalry in Liverpool’s approach: they did enough to win convincingly but without wishing to humiliate valiant opponents. As we filed out of the stadium I chatted amiably with a couple of home fans and we wished each other well. It was a long walk back to the car. The sun tried to break through the gloom and life didn’t seem so bad after all.
The Barn @ Moor Hall, Prescot Road, Aughton, Lancashire L39 6RT www.thebarn.moorhall.com; enquiries@moor-hall.com; 01695 572 511. Three-course dinner for two including three glasses of wine each and ‘digestifs’ was £237.50 including service. Sensible drinking would have taken this down to £200 or thereabouts.