In the hotel’s cosy bar, a converted barn, with his iPod plugged into a set of speakers he went around the room asking each member of staff to pick their favourite song. He seemed to have everyone’s on his Nano, and enjoyed singing along. I never thought he’d have any Mansun when he asked for mine, but amazingly, he was a fan of Chester’s finest.

The sight of him sitting in an oversized armchair, sharing the staff’s musical tastes with a smile on his face will stay with me for a long time. I never saw him without a smile. There was always a joke to be had when speaking with him. It’s such a terrible, terrible loss to his football family, and of course, his wife and two children.

None of us will know what went through his mind in the final hours, and we all wish we could have been able to say something, do something, so that he would still be here with us today. But it must be the happy times that we shared with Gary that we focus on.

I’m sure everyone connected with Wales will want to do everything possible to take “Gary’s team” to Brazil in 2014.

RIP Gary.

Gary Speed as I saw him through my lens

As with all UEFA club competitions the teams are required to hold a press conference and an open training session for the media to attend 24 hours before the game. This is now becoming the only opportunity to photograph the Reds training, or even a press conference, as the club no longer invite outside media to training sessions or photographers to manager Kenny Dalglish’s pre-match ‘pressers’.

It was good to meet up with some of my friends and colleague who had travelled on the official media trip with Thomas Cook. Whilst I’m here for three nights most of the media are travelling with the team and will only stay for one night, flying back to Liverpool John Lennon Airport immediately after the match. I do envy them that as I have to fly to Gatwick on Friday and then face a lengthy drive back up Britain’s clogged motorways to Liverpool.

As with most European jaunts I like to get public transport rather than just jump into taxies to get around. I’d only just stepped off the number 5 bus from the train station when a black Prius pulled up and the almost unrecognisable face of Alex Morton, a photographer with a London photo agency, emerged from the driver’s window.

Alex gave me a lift up the steep hill to the ground, I showed my press card to a security guard who opened a barrier and waves us through. Not knowing exactly where to go we just followed the small single lane and continued to climb the hill. We eventually emerged onto the pitch.

Now I can certainly say, not since the days of Chelsea’s old Shed End, do you usually park your car on the pitch right behind the goal-line, yet this is where we found ourselves. We briefly considered leaving the car by the corner flag, but with the threat of mis-placed shots from the boots of Christian Poulsen damaging Alex’s hire car it was decided we’d try and find a more ‘formal’ car parking space.

The Estadio Municipal de Braga is a UEFA 4 star stadium and is also extremely unique. It only has two, albeit very large, stand on each side of the pitch. One end is open and looks out over the city whilst the other is a shear rock face that was once the Monte Castro quarry, hence the grounds nickname ‘the Quarry’.

The facilities at the stadium are magnificent. We parked the hybrid Prius underneath the pitch and walked through to a massive press conference room. To put things into perspective, the rooms used for media conferences at Anfield and Melwood are tiny, and for big events we are all packed in like sardines. Even Chelsea, one of the richest clubs in the world, when showing off their record £50m acquisition of a young lad who used to be quite good for us a few seasons back, had to do it in an impossibly tiny room with almost no room for the media to work comfortably.

Braga’s media room was very spacious with a permanent top table on a stage and powerful lights built-in to the ceiling for television. Photographers are banned from using flash guns at Anfield press conferences, but there is no help from TV lighting, so it’s always a pleasure to work in European grounds where they think ahead and put some proper lighting in for press conferences.

The first person from the travelling press pack I saw was my good friend Colin Lane who is Chief Photographger at the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo. Colin greeted me with a massive smile as I arrived the press conference room. It was no surprise to see him here, he loves Portugal and holidays here as much as possible. There was no way one of the other Echo photographers were going to be covering this game!

Last time we were in Portugal together was in Lisbon for the Benfica game and Colin introduced me to the Nata. A sort of custard pastry cake which is a Portuguese speciality. The stadium had a vending machine selling these gorgeous treats so I took the opportunity to have my first Nata of the trip before Kenny’s presser began.

Liverpool put up Raul Meireles along side Kenny Dalglish for the press and he replied to all the questions in Portuguese. There is a massive interest in Meireles in Portugal due to his time playing for FC Porto.

The press conference lasted about half and hour, after which Kenny did some break-outs for radio and national newspapers. We were then given about 20 minutes to shoot the training session in the stadium.

Unusually we were allowed access right to the touchline. At many stadiums we are stuck in the stands quite far from the players. The main focus was Andy Carroll. This was the very first time the media had been given the chance to see the £35m man training with the Reds. Also in the squad were youngsters John Flanagan and Emmanuel Gomis Mendy, and we also had four goalkeepers. The injured Martin Kelly watched the training from the dug-out.

After our allocated time it was back to the press room to select and edit the images and get them sent out to the club web site and national newspapers. There was free wifi at the ground and that made our job so much easier. One of the major headaches doing this job is when there is no internet connection or a flaky 3G service. So long as we can move our images quickly we are generally happy.

I shared a taxi with Carl Markham from Press Association back to the town and found a rather nice restaurant for dinner where we proceeded to put the footballing world to rights. The Liverpool FC press officers and stadium manager were also eating at the same restaurant, so it must have been a good place!

Liverpool's Portuguese midfielder Raul Meireles photographed at the club's Melwood Training Ground

Last week I had one of those increasingly rare things: a commission from a national newspaper.

The Sunday Times had arranged a chat with Liverpool’s Portugese midfielder Raul Mirealas and asked me to go down to Melwood to take a couple of portraits to accompany Duncan Castle’s article.

Commissions from newspapers are as rare as hens’ teeth these days, but even rarer is the opportunity to sit down with a Premier League player for a photo-shoot.

Football clubs control their media output very tightly these days, and now they have affiliations with big photo agencies they are increasingly limiting access for the photographer from ‘outside’ media.

Raul was very amenable. He arrived after training for the interview dressed in a black and white striped tee-shirt, worn and ripped drainpipe jeans and a pair of converse boots. He has a hispter look going on, which is even more emphasised when he wears large black rimmed spectacles. On this occasion he wasn’t wearing his goggles.

The look is topped off with some of the most amazing tattoos I’ve ever seen on a football player. Forget your David Beckham angel wings which have been much copied and become a cliche. Raul sports full colour images of women and flowers, almost in a Alphonse Mucha style, on his arms, back and neck. There so many words inked into his skin I’ve read shorter books!

I spent around five minutes with Raul in the booting area at Melwood. There are two walls which both provide a different sort of background. A concrete wall painted bright red and a wooden panelled wall which the light falls off nicely. Strangely the corridor containing all the players’ boots on the wall was deemed off limits, which was a shame as it would a provided an interesting background for a portrait.

The set up for these pictures was kept simple, one off camera flash fired through a brolly, and a few shots with a ring flash. Just as well I kept it simple judging by the look on the press officer’s face when I say i wanted to set up some lights. The Nikon SB-900 was fired from a commander unit on the camera.

We were due to start at noon, but it was closer to 2pm when I finally sat Raul down for the portraits. By this time shafts of sunlight had crept into the atrium and sneaked into the bottom of my shots. Without anywhere else to set up there wasn’t much I could do about it.

There was a bit of confusion on the night of our victory over Sparta Praha. The UEFA fixtures page had us away first, two editorial articles on UEFA.com had us at home first. I couldn’t get any official confirmation that night and by the time Liverpoolfc.tv had announced we were to play away first all the EasyJet flights to Porto on the Wednesday were gone.

So it was that I found myself heading to Braga ridiculously early.

The first thing you notice when you land in Porto is that there has been major investment in infrastructure over the years. The airport is a modern, spacious and welcoming place, in complete contrast to the dysfunctional and untidy mess that is ‘London’ Gatwick.

On leaving the airport there was an electric tram to glide the passengers into the city centre. It always amazes me that almost every European city I visit has a tram system that makes getting around effortless, yet Liverpool City Council managed to botch up our plans for a tram network which is badly needed. I found myself contemplating that Liverpool is still lightyears behind other modern European cities when it comes to public transport.

The second thing that strikes you about Portugal is how cheap it is. €2 to ride into town on a modern electric tram. And €2.65 to travel by train from Porto to Braga. Considering that Liverpool to Manchester, a shorter distance, costs around £13 it was a welcome surprise.

Tuesday night was spent in an almost deserted Braga town centre. I managed to find a small bar showing the Barcelona Arsenal match and settled in for the night with a sandwich and coffees. Why is it the coffee in Spain and Portugal tastes so much better than in the UK?

It was an interesting match, ruined by the referee’s sending off of Robin van Persie for time-wasting. He kicked the ball towards goal after being flagged offside. The referee decided he had heard the whistle and was kicking the ball away to irritate and delay Barca. With the aggregate scores at 2-3 and Arsenal set to knock out the Catalans I can imagine that is what RvP was doing. However, I also know from experience that the Camp Nou is a cauldron of noise and it’s possible he didn’t hear the whistle. Either way it was a stupid decision from the referee as he can quite easily add on the time at the end.

Wednesday morning was a chance to see Braga in day light, and it’s a lovely little town. A UFEA Europa League tour truck was busy setting up in the main square but there wasn’t a single Liverpool fan to be seen all morning. On my walk back to my hotel I spotted a café bar with the walls draped with ‘half-n-half’ scarves from Braga’s previous European fixtures.

Braga have played a few big names here down the years and we certainly cannot take them lightly tomorrow night. News had just come through that Steven Gerrard wouldn’t be travelling with the squad to Portugal. I surmise that Poulsen or Cole might get a start. Not my idea midfield replacements for our legendary captain, but it’s all we’ve got.

So now I am preparing for the press conference and training at the stadium later tonight. It will be the first time I’ve been to the Estadio Municipal de Braga, a unique European ground with one end of the ground solid rock. Looking forward to seeing it.

Comedian's John Bishop & James Corden

Liverpool comedian John Bishop managed to find the net more times than his footballing heroes at Upton Park on Sunday.

Bishop and fellow entertainer James Corden (the fat bloke from BBC’s Gavin & Stacey) were allowed onto the pitch at West Ham United’s ground for a kick-around following Liverpool FC’s embarrasing 3-1 defeat to the Hammers, who were bottom of the Premier League before kick-off.

The ball found itself in the back of the net from the boot of Bishop with greater ease than the disappointing performance of the Liverpool team minutes earlier.

John stopped for a quick photo with the rotund Corden, a life-long West Ham supporter, before strutting his stuff on the pitch. The Liverpool-born comedian is quite a decent footballer and had previously played for Merseyside non-League side Southport. His brother Eddie  also played for Tranmere Rovers.

The pair were in London filming a new series of A League of Their Own which is hosted by the hefty Corden.

For more pictures check out our on-line gallery.

http://www.photoshelter.com/swf/CSlideShow.swf?feedSRC=http%3A//archive.propaganda-photo.com/gallery/110227-John-Bishop-James-Corden/G0000CB_kuWKWS8w%3Ffeed%3Djson<!–
110227 John Bishop & James Corden – Images by David Rawcliffe

The red and black painting of Dalglish, from a famous photograph of the legendary number seven looking over his shoulder, first showed up on a derelict site opposite the club’s Melwood Training Ground on Wednesday February 15. Only a few days later it has been destroyed, possibly by jealous rival supporters.

Painted by 19-year-old Liverpool student artist David Cain the image reflected the stencilled style of acclaimed British street artist Banksy.

Speaking to the Liverpool Echo Cain said; “I chose the Melwood site because I thought it would be the ideal location to show my appreciation towards Kenny for getting us back up the table and being a legend.

“I wanted the image to resemble the flags that get waved around the Kop at Anfield with the iconic image. It took me about five minutes to do it, starting from unfolding the stencil.”

Kenny's Banksy tribute defaced

Courtesy of Apple

Mobile radio chips are so small now they can fit in a watch, and with Apple patenting technology that would remove the need for a physical SIM card, then the hardware needed to make a phone call is only going to get smaller.

There would be no point replicating the whole iPhone experience in a size smaller than the current form. In fact there are even hints that the next iPhone will feature a larger four inch screen. However, a basic phone could easily be operated using the iPod Nano’s tiny screen, especially if contacts were managed via iTunes or a MobileMe sync.

I can imagine Apple demoing such a device by not having phone numbers for contacts at all, instead just photographs. Imagine scrolling through your phone book contacts just like you do when scrolling through album covers. Tap on a photo of your friend to initiate a call. Perhaps the iPhone Nano would only operate with headphones. This would be aimed squarely as basic device – an iPod that can make calls, I don’t envisage an App Store ecosystem for such a device.

Update: The New York Time are now reporting that sources close to Apple are saying the company will not be releasing a smaller iPhone any time soon. Their information is from an unnamed source who claims to have been briefed on Apple’s future iPhone plans.

The report goes on to say that making a smaller iPhone would be problematic for developers and would fragment the platform in a similar way to the myriad of devices and sizes for Android phones. Developers would be forced to re-write their applications for new screen sizes and it would be difficult for the user to operate.

Steve Jobs has criticised Google’s Android for this; “We think Android is very, very fragmented and getting more fragmented by the day,” Mr. Jobs told financial analysts in October. “We think this is a huge strength of our approach compared to Google’s.”

This would be the case if you were to make a smaller iPhone with a full iOS operating system that could run today’s apps, but I believe an iPhone nano would be a completely new category and would only make calls. This would fit in with Apple’s recent track-record. They said they would never enter the Net Book market, claiming the devices just weren’t good enough. Instead they created a whole new device when they launched the iPad.

Gareth Bales misses a penalty in Moscow

An interesting statistic from the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa that caught my eye was that the lowest FIFA ranked European team to qualify was Denmark.

The UEFA confederation is arguably the toughest and most competitive of all the continental groups and as such is the most difficult to qualify from. Denmark, ranked 36th in the current FIFA rankings, are the lowest placed European side at the tournament.

This puts a few things into perspective for those who have criticised Wales’ record in the last qualifying campaign.

Firstly, put aside the fact that in Wales’ group were Germany (6th) and Russia (11th) – two super powers of international football. So qualification from the group was almost an impossibility.

Also forget that Wales missed a penalty in Russia and could, with a touch more fortune, have come away from games in Moenchengladbach and Moscow with victories.

Finally let’s skip over the retirement of many senior players, the disastrous run of injuries to key players and the blooding of very young players forced upon manager John Toshack as a result, throughout the season.

What I am looking at specifically is simply the fact that in world rankings only two teams lower placed than Wales (77th) have qualified. Apart from the host nation, South Africa (83rd), who qualified without playing any competitive matches, North Korea (105th) who came out of the AFC confederation, arguably a much weaker group of nations than UEFA and New Zealand (78th, one place lower than Wales) from the OFC confederation consisting of nations such as Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands and the Solomon Islands.

Out of the home nations, only England qualified.

So the lowest FIFA ranked European team is Denmark, currently 21st in UEFA’s charts. Wales’ UEFA ranking is 38th. That means there are 16 other European nations above Wales who also failed to qualify.

Given these stats I find it hard to understand some of the criticism that has been placed at the feet of Toshack by the pundits.

Even with a fully fit squad, even if players such as Ryan Giggs, Jason Koumas, Gary Speed or even Robbie Savage had not withdrawn their services, do any of the pundits believe Wales could have toppled Germany or Russia in this campaign?

Wales currently have a team full of very talented youthful players, many now with 20-odd caps already under their belt. Players such as Joe Ledley, Aaron Ramsey, Gareth Bale and Jack Collison are the future of Wales. And due to the exodus of senior players over the last two years younger players are being given an opportunity ahead of time. Simon Church (8 caps, 1 goal), Joe Allen (2 caps), Andy King (3 caps) and Sam Vokes (16 caps, 2 goals) have all played senior games.

The future looks bright for Wales, and they go into the qualifying campaign for Euro 2012 against England, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Montenegro with genuine belief that they can qualify.

FIFA Rankings
UEFA Rankings
Wales’ A Team

Apple will introduce the next version of its operating system for the hugely successful iPhone tomorrow. The announcement, mainly targeted at developers, is designed to showcase version 3.0 of the phone’s operating system and is rumoured to introduce new features such as copy & paste, push notifications and MMS.

I certainly expect Copy & Paste – a feature that was shockingly omitted from the OS at launch – and I can also see some form of push notification for apps or allowing certain apps to run in the background. Another rumour which I would hope is true is tethering, or basically using the phone as an internet modem for your laptop or computer via bluetooth or cable.

A lot of the rumour sites have been predicting an Apple netbook or tablet for some time, and have been buoyed by reports of Apple ordering 10″ screens from Taiwan touchscreen specialist Wintek, who currently supply the iPhone’s touchscreen. I don’t expect Apple to go down the netbook route, but rather introduce a whole new product which would basically resemble a large iPhone, and I think version 3.0 of the iPhone OS is key to this.

I just cannot see Apple making a computer that won’t be able to run iMovie, iPhoto or the full Mac OS X at usable speeds. Currently the raft of netbooks on the market would choke and die if you threw iMovie at them. Apple have consistently  stated they would not enter the netbook market and don’t want to make ‘inferior’ products. Tim Cook, the acting CEO whilst Steve Jobs is away, said: ”It’s a category we watch, we’ve got some ideas here, but right now we think the products are inferior and will not provide an experience to customers they’re happy with.”

Possible new Apple device

But a much larger iPhone-like device, with a more powerful processor and bigger screen, could do all of the things the netbooks are doing, but without the overhead of trying to run Windows. Most people use their netbooks for email and web browsing, something the iPhone does rather well, but also something that would benefit hugely from a big screen.

It would be a perfect product for education. Imagine a 10″ touchscreen device that can act as a book reader, such as the Amazon Kindle, allowing students to carry hundreds of text books in electronic, searchable format. A device that can record audio from lectures, whilst at the same time making notes with a much larger keyboard, and a device that can deliver web pages as fast and fluid as a laptop via WiFi and 3G.

Tomorrow we’ll certainly find out what Apple has in store for the iPhone over the next 12 months, but maybe they might surprise us all and announce  a whole new product. 24-hours to wait…

I’d anticipated this fixture with trepidation. After our 4-0 mauling of Real Madrid earlier in the week, I watched Man Utd beat Inter Milan with two fortuitously timed goals just after kick-off and half time. Internazionale hit the wood-work and left a bevy of gilt edged chances to a donkey called  Ibrahimovic. With a half-decent striker Inter would have put United to the sword. All I could think after that games was that this year United have the luck on their side.

Fernando Torres beats Vidic on his way to scoring the equaliser.

So, after the obligatory penalty, gifted by the referee, handed Ronaldo the opening the goal, I didn’t expect us to come back into this game. That was until Fernando Torres started to tear the United defence to shreds. When Martin Skrtel lofted a long ball forward Nemaja Vidic casually began to chase it back to his own goal, appearing to have all the time in the world. But Torres was on his shoulder in a second, won the ball as Vidic panicked, and went on to slot a Fowler-esque world class finish past Edwin Van der Sar.

We've won it five times... Torres celebrates at Old Trafford

The celebration matched the quality of the finish, El Niño running past the United fans holding up five fingers to remind the Old Trafford crowd of Liverpool’s European dominance.

The second goal arrived from a very unlikely source, a penalty for an away team! Steven Gerrard was hacked down by Patrice Eva on the corner of the penalty area. A nailed on, stone-wall penalty. But this being Old Trafford I immediately wondered what referee Alan Wiley’s excuse would be for not awarding the penalty. Instead he defied Fergie’s “rules for referee’s at Old Trafford” and pointed to the spot. Gerrard made no mistake and celebrated by giving the steady-cam a snog… for me that was the picture of the season, but none of the photographers in that corner, myself included, were able to capture it as lineman and TV assistant blocked our views.

Steven Gerrard celebrates scoring the second against Man Utd.

From that point on Liverpool were magnificent and didn’t let United into the game. United manager Alex Ferguson threw on Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, two of the most talented, decorated and experienced players of their generation, to little effect. In the second half Liverpool netted a third with a world-class free-kick from Fabio Aurelio before Andrea Dossena scored on the 90th minute. Old Trafford was already half-empty by this point. This was his second goal in successive matches, after netting the fourth against Real Madrid.

It was a very sweet victory, as any is at that ground, but to demolish them when they had seemed so untouchable for weeks, was extra special. This was a team unbeaten at home, unbeaten in 16 consecutive Premier League games, with the best defensive record in the League, who had just won the League Cup, knock-out the Italian champions, lifted the World Club Cup, and were reigning European and Premier League champions.

Needless to say the national newspapers and Murdoch‘s Sky television downplayed Liverpool’s victory.

Liverpool are still four points off United in the race for the title, and United have a game in hand, so the advantage still lies at Old Trafford. If anything, this victory, and the fact we’ve done the double over United and Chelsea, yet are still third, highlights the fact that we have thrown the title challenge away ourselves with six home draws. We could quite easily have visited Old Trafford with a 10-point lead, the title practically in the bag. No-one can put their finger on the reason why we can thrash Real Madrid and Man Utd so convicingly, yet struggle with the likes of Stoke and Hull City at fortress Anfield. Liverpool are now the only English team unbeaten at home this season, yet we’ve dropped 12 points at L4, to teams that United and Chelsea whip without breaking a sweat. If United go on to win the Premier League this season, it is these games we will look back on with regret.

At least the remainder of the season is guaranteed to be exciting…

Over 240 images from this match are now on our editorial archive and also the official Liverpool FC web site have posted a selection; Photo special: United 1-4 LFC, whilst your there don’t forget to read Paul Tomkins’ excellent column; Four Days in Heaven.