Well I don’t know about anyone else but I’m absolutely fed up with the way things are going for us at the moment, but on the plus side I’ve at least got a nice competition prize from the good people at Modern Canvas Art to give away at the end of this blog.

I’m beginning to think that after Rafa had the courage to stand up and speak the truth about Slur Alex the serial referee abuser earlier this year, the manc boss went out and bought a voodoo doll of him from Anderson’s mother and he’s been sticking pins into its arse ever since, because there’s no doubt that this season we’ve taken it up the shitter more times than Ronaldo!

There is an awful lot of bullshit floating about at the moment to explain our current woes on the pitch, with Rafa Benitez as ever being painted as the main culprit. People are free to believe this crap if they want to, I really couldn’t care less, but for my money the real root of our problems began at the end of last season.

After the terrific football we played in the latter half of last season the one thing just about every Liverpool fan agreed on was that we needed to build on our strong finish by strengthening our squad during the summer. But instead of adding more quality to the squad the boss was only given enough funds to replace the players that left, Johnson for Arby, Hercules for Hyypia and Aquaman for Alonso.

I don’t know what went on behind closed doors at Anfield during the summer but I suspect it might have been pretty similar to something that happened at Celtic a few years ago. Back then Moaning O’Neill was their manager and Celtic had just won the league and cup double and had a great run in Europe but when he went to the board for transfer funds in the summer he was refused any on the basis that the squad he already had, had just enjoyed one of the most successful seasons in recent memory, so why spend any more money? The result of this decision was that Celtic struggled the following season and it wasn’t long after that before O’Neill walked away.

Obviously I could be wrong about this but I could easily imagine some of the clowns on our board taking a similar view at the end of our last campaign. In the second half of last season we were playing the best football in the country and finished with a record amount of points, just a whisker away from taking the title. The common belief was that had Torres and Gerrard been available for us more often we would have won it, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the suits at our club took a similarly stupid view as the Celtic board did a few years ago and refused to spend any more money.

Anyway I don’t want to open another debate about our scumbag owners as I’m sure everyone is very well aware at this stage that they are a cancer that could kill our club if they aren’t shifted soon, but I’d rather focus on the football for the moment. My point is that for whatever the reason, the failure to properly invest in the squad back then has come back to haunt us big time.

When we assessed the strength of our first team squad at the beginning of the season, I think we all pretty much agreed that the one thing we just couldn’t afford was too many injuries but unfortunately that’s exactly what happened. Obviously all teams have to contend with injuries but of the top teams, in fact even perhaps among the top 10 teams in the Premiership, we are the least well equipped to deal with them.

I honestly believe we will eventually see that when we are able to field our strongest side, we will be capable of beating any team home or away and will once again be playing some great football. But unfortunately outside of our first 11 we only have maybe 4 or 5 players who are capable of coming into the side almost seamlessly and doing a good job in certain areas. Outside of those 15 or 16 players there is a huge gap in experience and quality among the rest of the players in our squad. So basically I see us as having one of the strongest teams but one of the weakest squads.

The media love nothing better than to fill the airwaves and back pages full of stories putting the boot into our manager and the team, the knee-jerk element among our supporters seem to like nothing better than a Liverpool defeat so that they can ring up radio phone-ins and type their moronic little opinions on various internet forums and there is also a few of our ex-players who seem to earn a living these days shitting all over the club. But you can take all of their moronic opinions, turn them sideways and shove them straight up their arses because just about everything that has gone wrong for us this season can be traced back to our crippling injury list, they just don’t have the intelligence to see it.

Whether it be our uncertainty in defence, lack of creativity in midfield or our failure to take our chances and see teams off, everything comes back to the unbelievable bad run of injuries we have suffered. No matter how you cut it, the cold hard fact at the end of the day is that you just can’t play consistent football and get consistent results without having a consistent selection of your best players available. The boss can only build the best squad he can with the funds made available to him and I believe that with the constraints he is currently operating under, he is doing the best job he can.

Criticism of the manager is as usual way over the top and I’m sure he is as frustrated with the way things have panned out as the rest of us but I honestly can’t think of anything that he could have done differently in the circumstances. Saturday’s game was another perfect example of the desperate misfortune we’ve been having with injuries this season. The international break gave us a couple weeks to get some of our players back to fitness and to prepare for the game but fate once again had other plans.

Rafa had decided he was going with a back four of Johnson, Carra, Dagger, Insua and no doubt prepared the team accordingly but Glenda picked up a calf injury on the day of the game and everything had to be changed once again. I’m sure the boss would have preferred a straight swap in that position but with Martin Kelly injured and Degan suspended, Carra had to be moved to right instead and this one move perhaps negatively affected us in three areas.

Firstly our first choice right back is out, secondly we have to move our first choice centre back out of the middle of defence to replace him and thirdly, for all of his defensive qualities, Carra gives us very little in attack and as an important part of our game plan is having two attacking full-backs, when Carra plays on the right we are like a bird flying on one wing.

But under the circumstances the boss put out the strongest team available and then after 5 minutes Dagger gets stretchered off with a head injury and 10 minutes later Babel joins him on the sidelines with a busted ankle, it’s just unbelievable! Yet another of our games turns into the Battle of Wounded Knee, we’ve got so many comings and goings on our injury list that I hear our treatment room has been fitted with a revolving door!

I think you’ve got to give credit to the team for showing such character after all the disruption and they deserved to have won the game in my opinion but unfortunately we had to settle for a point. So another two points dropped but I don’t see how the manager can be blamed. Our title hopes have all but diminished at this stage but it’s far too cold out for me to go jumping naked off my roof top, so all I can really do is continue to get behind the team and hope for a bit of better fortune in the games to come.

Tomorrow evening we chase the impossible dream as we play Debrecen in Hungary with our Champions League hopes hanging by a thread. Obviously we need to win our game but we also need Lyon to do us a favour by avoiding defeat against Ford Cortina in Florence to give us any hope of qualifying for the next stage. If Lyon could manage to do that it would set up a massive final group game between us and the Italians at a packed out Anfield but to be honest, the way Lady Luck is treating us at the moment I’m not feeling too confident. I reckon we’ll beat Debrecen by a couple of goals but as for Lyon, I guess we’ll just have to hope for the best.

Anyway to cheer us all up I’ve got a competition prize to give away. I actually meant to use this prize for our game against the biggest team in Manchester but I got caught up in Ireland’s World Cup exit thanks to the Hand of Henry so we’ll use it for this game instead.

This prize comes to us from the good people at Modern Canvas Art . As you can see on this blog, if I’ve managed to insert the pictures correctly, they have produced two fine canvases of our own Captain Fantastic, Steven Gerrard and the winner will get a 75cm x 50cm print of the one of their choice. This prize is a little bit different from the ones we usually do but I think it would look great on somebody’s bedroom wall or perhaps it might make an ideal Christmas present.

The guys over there have generously donated this prize to us so check out their great site for unbeatable canvas art prints and pop art paintingsfor your wall.

As ever the competition is open to everyone in whatever part of the world they call home. We’ll stick with the usual format as it’s the fairest and most transparent way I can think of running a competition. So as we’ve done before, predict the minute of the first goal in tomorrow night’s game and also include your predicted final score and Liverpool goal scorers in the event of a tie-break. If the game finishes 0-0 I’ll keep the prize and use it for our next game. You can have as many guesses as you want ahead of the game but only your last one will count. The best of luck to you all.

Keep the Faith

Other than the usual invented stories in the press there’s not much happening on The Reds front at the moment so I thought I’d take this opportunity to get something off my chest. A weekend without a Liverpool game is always a bit dull, but in the circumstances I was happy to put up with it if it means we’ll get a few of our injured players back before the action resumes again next week.

I filled my weekend by being among the 74,000 people at Croke Park on Saturday to cheer on Ireland in the first leg of their World Cup play-off game against France, which we unfortunately lost 1-0. Results-wise there’s no doubt the Irish manager Giovanni Trapattoni has done very well for us since taking over from the disastrous reign of Steve Staunton.

We came through our qualifying group unbeaten, in fact our loss on Saturday was the first competitive defeat we’ve suffered since he took charge. That said, the boringly sterile and ultra defensive tactics he employs has made watching the Irish team these days about as entertaining as watching a dog licking his own testicles!

The Irish team now face an uphill battle to qualify for the finals and I wish them all the best in the second leg in Paris on Wednesday, but as I left the ground on Saturday evening I made up my mind that I will not be spending any more of my time and money going to watch anymore Ireland games while Trapattoni is in charge of the team. There’s no doubt the guy has a managerial record that demands respect but his anti-football tactics are bloody awful to behold and have become just too much for me to endure, so I’m done with it.

As I thought about that on the way home from the game I began to get a strange sense of déjà vu and then it occurred to me that a few years ago I was thinking more or less exactly the same way about Gerrard Houllier. Back then I had just started out writing a few articles here and there for a couple of different Liverpool websites and most of them contained pretty much the same message which was that I wanted the manager out.

I don’t want to be too hard on Houllier because I genuinely think he just wasn’t the same after his heart operation and needed to be replaced. This was about two seasons before the guy was actually sacked so I got a bit of stick at the time from some Liverpool fans for a few of the articles I wrote calling for the manager’s head. He was very successful in his first couple of years at the club but then he had his health problems and things started to go downhill from there.

Obviously I had some sympathy for the guy but to me the club comes first and it was very clear to me that we were going nowhere fast and needed to make a fresh start with a new manager. The strange thing is that if you go back even further to the Souness era we were in exactly the same position, another manager, another heart op, another basket case!

I wasn’t doing any writing back in those days but I can assure you I wanted Souness out every bit as much as I wanted rid of Houllier and again I felt that way about two seasons before he was actually given the boot. I wasn’t unique on either occasion because at both times I remember most of my Liverpool supporting friends felt more or less the same way and in the comments section of this blog I‘ll be interested to read what the opinions were of other fans who were around when these guys were in charge.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I’m fed up and completely pissed off with the constant abuse the media, a few ex-players and a minority of knee jerk morons who claim to be supporters of the club have thrown at our manager. On a number of occasions over the past couple of months I’ve seen our boss being put in a position where he has to defend his managerial record because of mischief-making articles and reports generated in the media by people who aren’t fit to lace the man’s boots.

Statistics are twisted, match reports are negatively slanted, his tactics are constantly picked apart, his spending record is always over-inflated, the players he has bought and sold constantly questioned and on top of all of that he is also branded by some as a cold hearted individual with extremely poor man-management skills. It seems that from the very first day he arrived at Anfield he has had a target painted on his head and now that we’ve endured a poor run of results, due in no small to our side being decimated by injuries, this media witch hunt has escalated to unbelievable levels.

The media has never done our club any favours but these days it seems to be even worse. In the past there seemed to be a few little unwritten laws in the media that no longer seem to apply, or at least not when it comes to our club. I remember not so long ago you would often hear the expression that it wasn’t fair to rush to judgement on a manager until he could get his full side on the pitch. The last time Rafa Benitez had his full side on the pitch was during the latter half of last season and we played the best football in the country and scored goals for fun. However this season he has never really had his strongest side available but that hasn’t stopped anyone from putting the boot in.

Injuries is another thing that was treated a little more fairly in the past. You would think with so many ex-players and managers working in the media these days that there would be a little more understanding about injuries but that doesn’t seem to have stopped anyone from sparing the horsewhip on Rafa Benitez. To be fair our boss hasn’t really used injuries as an excuse for our bad run of form but he shouldn’t have to because it should be obvious to people who should know better.

For example, our defence have conceded some uncharacteristic goals this season and the “experts” once again rush to criticise the manager’s zonal defensive system despite the fact that this same system had led to us having one of the best defences in the country in past seasons. Our system has proven itself countless times in the past and you would think that if even one of these media clowns had even half a brain it might have occurred to them that the reason for our uncertainty in defence is far more likely to be down to the fact that we’ve hardly been able to field the same back four in consecutive games so far this season.

In midfield the “experts” have also had plenty to say about the loss of Xabi Alonso and seem to overlook the fact that the player wanted to leave and there was little the manager could do about it. Obviously the departure of a player of Alonso’s quality is going to be a loss but this has been compounded by the fact that his replacement has been injured for longer than expected and Steven Gerrard has been unfit or injured for almost all of the season so far, as has Torres upfront.

You would think that a football person would realise this and hold off passing judgement until we have Aquaman and Gerrard available, but again there seems to be no allowances made when it comes to Rafa Benitez. Besides this you just know that if Aquaman isn’t an immediate success the boss will get hammered in the media, and if he is a success they will say that he got lucky! Sometimes it seems the guy just can’t win.

However, despite their best, or worst, efforts there is still that one inevitable question that cannot be avoided no matter how much they try. If this man was half as bad as they try to paint him, then why is it that he still retains the support of the vast majority of Liverpool fans? It is our opinions that are by far the most important and relevant because at the end of the day it is we who are the real experts when it comes to our team and our manager.

We are the ones who watch every second of every game. We carefully watch every player, every pass, every shot, every tackle and we weigh up every decision the manager makes both on and off the pitch. Most of us treat the media with the disdain they deserve and are capable of judging things for ourselves and based on this the vast majority of us still very much support the boss.

It must be a little annoying for those media clowns that all of their skulduggery hasn’t managed to break the faith of the people that matter the most and so they try to dismiss our support for the boss as some kind of misguided blind loyalty. Which is why I mentioned Gerrard Houllier and Greame Souness at the beginning of this blog, because there seems to be this misconception about Liverpool fans when it comes to loyalty.

Proper Liverpool fans are fiercely loyal to the club and this far outweighs any loyalty they may feel towards a manager or a player. At the end of the day these are people who will come and go but we are here for life and the club will go on forever.

Our loyalty is to the club not to any individual and if there comes a day when we appear to be going nowhere under Rafa Benitez, I can assure you that I and many other Liverpool fans will turn on him just as quickly as we turned on Houllier and Souness. That may seem harsh to some but that’s football and if you’re looking for sympathy you’ll find it in the dictionary somewhere between shit and syphilis!

My support for our boss actually has nothing to do with loyalty and everything to do with common sense. I believe that at this dark era in the club’s history he is the one shining light and we are blessed to have him in charge. When you look at the real facts and assess the body of work he has done since he’s been at the club, it’s clear that he has done a remarkable job under very difficult circumstances.

I don’t think there is another manager who could achieve success at our club under our current constraints, but Benitez just might. For me he is the greatest Liverpool manager never to have won the title and if we could just get a little bit of luck on the injury front and he got a little bit more support from the board, he would be well equipped to put that right.

As far as his relationship with the Liverpool supporters I think it basically comes down to this, either the vast majority of our fans are blindly loyal or we have a small vocal minority who are blindly stupid. I’ll get off my soap box now and leave you to figure that one out for yourself.

Apologies once again for the gap between blogs but despite being still unemployed, I’ve been as busy as one-armed paperboy recently. Hopefully I’ll be able to up the blog count from here on in and keep your eye out for a fresh blog I’ll be posting as early as I can on Friday because I’ve managed to blag a great and slightly more unusual competition prize which strangely has the same monetary value as Andriy Voronin, 40 quid! As is always the case with our Kopblog competitions, the prize is available for delivery worldwide and is open to all, so don’t miss it.

Keep the Faith

Well it’s been another difficult week for Reds fans but I’m not really down in the dumps about things, in fact for some strange reason I’m feeling slightly upbeat. There are times when you take so many hits that you just become numb to them and there’s no doubt we’ve put up with more than our fair over the last few weeks but I honestly think that we are starting to come out at the other side of our troubles now and the only way is up for us from here on in.

Obviously I was disappointed with our result in Lyon in midweek but there were some positives for us in the display and if you ignore all the media bullshit, as I do, and judge the game on its own merits then I think you would have to say a big well done to Rafa Benitez. I have no doubts that if we played Lyon with a full strength side, or even a nearly full strength side, we would make mince meat of them but when you travel to the home of the French Champions with half your side missing and a number of your available players not fully fit, they become a much trickier proposition.

That said, I think it was pretty clear that Rafa and Sammy Lee etc did a great job preparing the team, such as it was. We were the better side on night by a long way in my opinion and had at least several great opportunities to get the goals our performance deserved. Perhaps it should also be said that if we used the same simplistic logic that was used to criticise the gaffer’s substitutions at Fulham, then surely he also deserves some praise for making what should have been a match-winning change when Babel came on and scored a thunderbolt.

We should definitely have won the game from there but a straightforward ball into our box managed to turn our defence into the Keystone cops and Lyon once again got another late goal and a result they must certainly didn’t deserve. It was extremely frustrating to say the least but in fairness to the boss I think you would have to say his game plan was spot on and he sent the team on to the pitch well prepared but he can’t score the goals for them nor can he do the defending.

Had we been played off the park by Lyon even with half a team, then I might have been inclined to take a different view but as things turned out I find it difficult to find much fault with the boss. That said, no-one is above criticism and as a football supporter I can usually find something to moan about and there were a couple of things that bothered me about our team last Wednesday.

As I see it we’ve got two big problems when it comes to our current injury list. Firstly half of our team is injured and secondly Voronin isn’t! I just couldn’t understand what in the name of Shanks this bloke was doing in our starting line-up? Many years I gave up on my dream of playing for The Reds but when I see this clown on the pitch it makes me think that maybe I’m still in with a shout! The guy is about as much use as a glass hammer and he should be dropped, preferably from a very large building, but if not that then certainly from the squad.

I can understand why Rafa took a chance on him initially because when you don’t have much cash and an experienced international player with a decent record becomes available on a free transfer, it’s worth the risk. However it didn’t work out and the boss recognises that which is why he sent him out on loan last season and tried to offload him in the summer but even with the injuries we have at the moment I can’t see a reason to play him.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that technically the boss had a good look at the situation ahead of the game and obviously thought that Voronin was the best one suited to the game plan he had in mind but as I don’t have gaffers information at my disposal, I tend to look at things a bit more simplistically and for me Eggnog should certainly have been the one to start the game.

Voronin has no future as a Liverpool player and will certainly be offloaded in January or as soon as we can find some team desperate enough to take him, but Eggnog is a young lad who certainly does have a future at the club and surely it would be more beneficial to us in the long run to give him a start whenever possible. Unfortunately our best chance of the game against Lyon fell to Voronin and he failed to stick it in the net when it seemed harder to miss.

Some people may say this was due to him being low on confidence but I think it was simply down to the fact that he is complete shite. Compare his miserable effort to the cool composure Eggnog showed when he scored against the mancs a couple of weeks ago and it’s clear to see why I would much rather have the Egg man in the team ahead of the Davy Crockett wannabe.

The other thing that bothered me a bit on the night was that Aquilani wasn’t given some time on the pitch. If he was fit enough to be on the bench then he must have been fit enough to play and I was surprised he wasn’t brought on for 10 or 15 minutes. That said, I thought Masch and Lucas had very solid games for us in the centre of midfield and I wouldn’t have been keen to see either of them brought off, so I’m not sure where he would have slotted in.

So as you can see, while I will always claim my right as a football supporter to have a moan from time to time, I can’t promise that my moans will always be logical! All I know is I would have liked to see Aquaman on the pitch but hopefully we’ll get a chance to see him in action tomorrow.

In terms of our future in the CL, we now have to hope that Lyon can do us a favour against Ford Cortina. Despite the fact that they have already qualified for the next stage, I actually think that Lyon will give it a go because they will now want to ensure they win the group. If they can get at least a draw and we beat the goulash munchers it will set up one hell of a final game so we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed. Obviously it will be very disappointing if we end up in the Europa League but if that turns out to be the case it might at least give us the chance to blood some of our youngsters in European competition and we’ll make the most of it.

Which brings me to our game against Birmingham at Anfield tomorrow evening. I’m not normally a big fan of us playing our “weekend” game on Monday evening but given our current situation the extra time we’ve had has turned to be a bit of a bonus and it looks like we’ll have a few more players available. I’m also not a big fan of international breaks but I’m very happy that we’ve now got one coming up that should allow us to get most of our players back to fitness before the league resumes again in two weeks time.

This game is extremely important. We’ve had such a miserable time recently but if we can go into this break on the back of a win, it will give everyone a much needed boost and put a much different complexion on things. Maybe I should know better after all of the crap we’ve had to endure over the last two decades but I’m still an optimist and I still think we’re in with a shout this season. I know a lot of pundits have already written us off but most of those guys are complete morons who know as much about the game as a hedgehog knows about crossing the road!

While it’s true that we’ve had a very bad run recently, people should remember that we’ve also been hit by the worse injury crisis I’ve ever seen at the club and while it’s not for the want of trying on the managers part, we just don’t have a strong enough squad to cope with so many absences. Given our recent run of results our position is obviously far from ideal but while we may be down, we are by no means out of things.

Ironically, the injuries we’ve had mean that some of our main players such as Gerrard, Aquaman, Johnson and Dagger etc, have had little or no football and will be coming back into our side reasonably fresh while some of our rivals may now be having some fitness and injury doubts surrounding some of their main men. It looks likely that by the time this international break is over we should finally have our best 15 or 16 players available and fresh enough for us to make a strong push between now and the end of the year.

So it’s obviously vital that we keep ourselves in touch by taking three points against Birmingham tomorrow. It won’t be easy, they have been a bit of a bogey side for us in the past and they’ve made a decent start to the season but we should have a stronger side available and I’m always confident about our chances at Anfield.

There are still some question marks about the fitness of Torres and to be honest if he’s not 100% I wouldn’t mind us starting with him on the bench. Let’s see how we get on for an hour without him and if we need him bring him on for the last 30 minutes when their defence is tiring or if we happen to be winning by a couple of goals don’t bring him on at all and let him put his feet up. Whatever the case may be, I’m predicting a moral boosting 2-0 win for The Reds and hopefully the media vultures will get off Rafa’s back for a little while and turn their attentions elsewhere.

Keep the Faith

Apologies for the gap between blogs but in an ironic twist of fate my dear old laptop, perhaps in an act of solidarity with the Liverpool squad, has been sidelined with a mysterious virus. As I don’t have the technical knowledge or experience to fully understand how my machine contracted this virus, I think I’ll just follow the example of the many other similarly ignorant people I’ve been hearing from lately and blame it all on Rafa Benitez.

A week is a very long time in football and there’s certainly been a few chances while I was away. It’s hard to believe that little more than a week ago we were all as happy as a priest at an altar boy convention and full of confidence after our terrific team performance and victory over the bastard mancs. We followed that match with a midweek Carling Cup defeat at the Emigrants stadium and while it was disappointing to lose, I still enjoyed the game despite the annoying coverage by Sly Sports.

I don’t have a problem with the Gooners or their partially sighted manager but it seems like every time their games are covered by the SS, the commentators are contractually obliged to use terms such as “terrific”, “superb”, “stunning” and “exhilarating” etc, any time they string 2 or 3 passes together and I find it extremely irritating.

While they didn’t receive anything like the same praise, I thought our understandably weakened side played some equally good football at times and deserved to at least have taken the game to extra time. In fact we might have even won if Voronin had been as creative for us as he had been for them! But despite the loss there were still plenty of positives in the performance and things were still looking good for us until everything went tits up at Fulham a few days later.

It was very appropriate that our game at Craven Cottage took place on Halloween because it turned out to be a real horror show. Just about anything that can go wrong, did go wrong for us before, during and after the game. I’m beginning to think that God, the beardy guy upstairs not our Robbie, has got a touch of Alzheimer’s because he seems to have forgotten we exist!

I mean it’s just incredible that at a time when we looked to have gotten our season back on track with an impressive victory over the mancs, our already thin squad of available players gets hit with a bout of Rooney flu or some other such mysterious virus and is decimated even further. And you just know that you are totally out of luck when the camp gets hit with a virus and bloody Voronin doesn’t even catch it. Our injury list is now so long that it’s beginning to read like Harry Kewell’s autobiography!

In the circumstances Rafa travelled to the Cottage with whatever players he had available but when I saw the squad it reminded me of one of those Liverpool selections you would expect to see in a pre-season game and I was worried. That said, I thought the team started the game well and were in control of things for the first 30 minutes or so and had we scored during that period it might have been a different story. But of course Fulham somehow managed to take the lead totally against the run of play with their first meaningful attack, helped in no small part by some criminally slack defending on our part.

Thankfully Torres got us back level before half-time with a great strike and in the early part of the second half we again took control before the game turned into a total farce thanks to a combination of more bad luck, more bad defending and a referee who is clearly depriving some poor village of its idiot! Degan gets a straight red for a challenge that hardly even merited a free-kick and Carra gets a straight red for what was at best a yellow card offence.

It’s just unbelievable that we should finish with nine men in a game where there was hardly a bad challenge committed by either side but while we are all understandably pissed off with the moronic referee, let’s not forget that there were another three officials there as well and I’m not sure what the hell those guys are supposed to be doing? Technology plays such a big part in all aspects of our lives these days and surely it’s about time they introduced some of it into football. People will have all the usual arguments for and against it but at the end of the day I’d much rather have artificial intelligence than natural stupidity!

Anyway, despite losing 3-1 the big highlight of the day was hearing our magnificent supporters singing YNWA at the end of the game. We have more than a few knee-jerkers following the team these days that can really get on your tits but let’s not forget that the vast majority of our fans around the world are just like those supporters at Fulham and it’s makes you damn proud to be one of them.

Since the game there has been the usual pissing and moaning with Rafa as usual being the main target of people’s abuse. I honestly don’t know what more the guy can do when he only has half a team available but some people still throw about ridiculous accusations such as the ludicrous claim that he is prioritising the CL over the league. This seems to have arisen because of the substitutions of Torres and Benny Onion but I really fail to see the argument.

Benny looked clearly burned out at the time of his substitution and I’m pretty certain that had circumstances been different and we had one or two other players available on Saturday, Torres would have been on the bench and maybe come on for the last 15 minutes or so. As it worked out he ended up playing for more than an hour and got us a goal. I think some people forget that sometimes a manager has to make his substitutions based on medical as well as football reasons at times.

The fact of the matter is that Torres is only playing with the benefits of injections at the moment and as anyone who has endured such things can tell you, injections only mask a problem they don’t cure it and the longer you play there’s a very real possibility you might end up doing far more damage to the injury. I’m sure the boss would have liked nothing better than to leave Torres on the pitch for the full 90 minutes at the weekend but if he was stupid enough to ignore his medical staffs advice, we might well have ended up losing the player for a couple of months. It seems that sometimes our boss is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t!

I know that when things aren’t going well we all like to play the blame game and have interesting debates blaming the owners, the manager, the players or the price of carrots etc. But I think the majority of our current problems are down to our crippling injury list and we’ve just got to hope that things improve on that front as soon as possible. Sometimes you’ve just got to throw your arms out, shrug your shoulders and just get behind the team and hope for the best.

Tonight we head to Lyon for a must-win CL game with a big chunk of our squad missing. Even knowing the players that have travelled over for the game it’s impossible for us to guess what our starting eleven will be because we just don’t know how many of them will be fit enough to start. While our midfield is likely to be Kuyt, Masch, Lucas and Benny (I think), I’m not sure what our defence is going to be or even our attack so I can’t say too much about this game.

However I do know that there is no shortage of character and fighting spirit in our team and I think they will need every ounce of it tonight if they are to get a result. I’m just hoping that the lads will dig in and hopefully catch these guys on the break because their defence doesn’t look the best. So with hope in my heart I’m predicting a nail-biting 2-1 win for The Reds and no more bloody injuries!

Keep the Faith

Our 2-0 victory against the mancs was one hell of a belated birthday present and I enjoyed it immensely. To be honest beating the mancs was actually number 2 on my birthday wish-list but as a naked Uma Thurman didn’t turn up at my front door with a can of whipped cream, I’ll happily settle for us hammering the mancs instead. You have to be very careful with birthday wishes, a friend of mine once wished that his knob would touch the floor and a couple of seconds later his legs fell off!

I was damn proud of our players on Sunday and it’s always a good sign of a great performance when you hear so many names being mentioned as our man of the match. Among the Liverpool fans I’ve talked to since the game I’ve heard Carra, Dagger, Masch, Lucas, Benny Onion and Torres all being mentioned as our best player on the day. If it were up to me I’d give it to Carra for his fine performance as he returned to his rock-like best but there could be arguments made for them all and it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day.

The other players in the team also played very well. Reina didn’t actually have a lot to do but he dealt very well with anything that came his way and I loved the way he sprinted the length of the pitch to celebrate Eggnog’s goal. It was a good tactic to play Aurelio on the left of midfield ahead of Insua. The young left back has been terrific for us overall this season but in recent games he’s been caught out a few times. That’s to be expected as it’s still a learning curve for the lad but playing Fabulous in front of him against the mancs gave him that extra bit of protection and I thought they both worked very well together on the left.

It was understandable that Glen Johnson didn’t push forward as much as he normally would. Against the 9 and 10 men defences we sometimes face we need him to give us extra width but against the bigger sides we don’t want him to take too many chances and I thought he got it just about right on Sunday and had a good solid game.

Kuyt worked as hard as ever but I have to admit I was a little pissed off that he didn’t take on the chance that came his way ahead of our first goal, electing to play a difficult pass instead, but other than that he was great. I was also delighted to see Eggnog coolly finish the chance that came his way to seal the points. The lad still needs work but he definitely has the makings of a good striker and that goal in the Kop End will certainly do his confidence a world of good.

At the end of the game the score-board may have read 2-0 but the truth was we murdered the mancs all over the pitch. Without Gerrard, Aquaman or Riera in the squad, from the first whistle to the last our players worked extremely hard to ensure the mancs never got a foot-hold in the game and they were terrific. Even though Torres was only about 75% fit he terrorised the manc centre-backs throughout and the speed, strength and finishing power he displayed to score the opening goal was magnificent.

At the end of the game I was particularly delighted for the boss after all the stick he’s had to put up with recently. I bet there were quite a number of media hacks and one or two ex-players who would have been genuinely disappointed that they’ve had their witch-hunt interrupted, at least for the time being. Rafa has taken all of the flak for our recent bad form and I think that was extremely unfair. Even among some of our own fans it amazes me how some people talk about the likes of Gerrard and Torres etc when we win but when we lose they only want to talk about the manager.

Obviously he is not above criticism and as the boss of the team he has to take a certain amount of responsibility when they are not playing well. However when we see the team playing as well as they did on Sunday it shows what they are capable of and makes it even more evident that a number of our players have been under-performing in other games.

There are a few of our players who have probably gotten off a little lightly as the boss has taken all of the stick for our bad form but I think there should be a collective responsibility, we win as a team, we lose as a team. Anyway, hopefully our poor form is now behind us and we can build on our weekend display in next week’s game away at Fulham or else we’ll be back where we started.

But before we get to that game we’ve got the small matter of our trip to the Emigrants stadium tonight in the Carling Cup. While this game is hardly the most vital of the ones we’ve got coming up, I think it’s important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, our position in both the league and CL leaves us with little room to experiment and tonight’s game will be the last opportunity for awhile to give some of our fringe players a run-out.

There are perhaps one or two players in our squad that ideally maybe most of us would be quite happy never to see in a Liverpool shirt again but if we get a bad run of injuries we might need them at some stage so it’s important to give them some time on the pitch while we have the chance. Besides this it also gives us the chance to continue to blood one or two of our younger players and, if reports are correct, maybe even give Aquaman his first few minutes of first team action.

It’s always tough travelling to the Gooners at the best of times but it will be particularly tough going there with a weakened side even if we will be playing their version of a weakened team. But it would be nice if we could somehow dig out a victory both from a confidence point of view and because if we could get through this round, a trip to Wembley would start to appear on the horizon.

It’s unfortunate that Martin Kelly won’t be fit for this one as this would have been an ideal game for us to have another look at him but Hercules and Dossena are fit again and should start. I expect our defence will be Cavalieri, Degan, Skrtel, Hercules and Dossena. Our midfield is tougher to guess but it could be Babel, Spearing, Lucas and Aurelio across the middle with Eggnog and Davy Crockett upfront.

I think that would be a decent starting eleven and we could always back it up with some of our stronger players on the bench. To be honest I’m more hoping than expecting a win in this one but I’m looking forward to the game and my optimistic prediction is lots of goals and us pinching it 3-2 in extra time.

On a final note, I’ve got one of those “Liverpool Bouncing Back” t-shirts that was mentioned on the last blog to give away as a competition prize on the next blog so keep an eye out for it.

Keep the Faith

I’ve just recovered from my birthday celebrations on Thursday. At 44, my birthday cakes are starting to become a major fire hazard but I prefer to count my age in European Cups that way it’s only five! I had hoped Liverpool would send me an early birthday present with a victory on Tuesday but that didn’t happen so now I’m hoping they will send me a belated gift with a victory tomorrow instead.

As we go into our game with the second biggest team in Manchester tomorrow, I don’t think we could possibly be in worse shape. We are on a run of four straight defeats and, for the most part, we have played pretty poorly in those games so our confidence is at a low ebb and we’ve got so many injuries that our team bus would qualify for a disabled sticker! Besides all that, our attack has lost its free-scoring touch, our midfield has been about as creative as a Brussels sprout and our defence has been penetrated more often than Kathy Price!

As ever, the British sports media are having a great time putting the boot in to us. After losing four games in a row we can hardly expect to receive much positive press but even so the over the top coverage has been bang out of order and the way they are hounding our boss is a total disgrace. Over the past week it’s seemed like every publication from Hello magazine to Rubber Duck Weekly has had an article about Rafa Benitez’s managerial record and they all seem to be competing with each other to see which of them can show him in the most unfavourable light possible.

Such manipulated crap seems to be commonplace these days. However I notice there seems to be a common thread in a lot of this stuff that I find particularly annoying and it’s when they try to legitimise what they are saying by inserting sentences such as, Liverpool fans are saying this or Liverpool fans are thinking that or Liverpool fans are feeling this way or the other etc. As if these people would have even have the remotest clue what we are about or even care. All we are to them is a cheap headline. The best journalism is supposed to be thought-provoking but most of the articles I read about our club are just plain provoking and should be treated with the disdain they deserve.

Anyway back to the football side of things and I think the only good thing that can be said about our last four games is that they are behind us now and tomorrow is another day. We were unlucky on Tuesday. Benny Onion managed to put us in front in the first half but had we taken our chances we could have been easily 3-0 up at half-time. In the second half we had several other good opportunities to extend our lead but didn’t take them and eventually got caught with 2 late goals.

Martin Kelly was the big plus point for us on the night. The lad had a great game and looks like he will provide us would some good cover for Glen Johnson should the need arise. It was just a shame he picked up an injury before the end but hopefully he’ll be available for another run-out next week against Arsenal in the Carling Cup. The rest of our side were in the ok range which may not seem great but it was a bit of an improvement on what we’ve seen from them recently.

Looking ahead to our game tomorrow, to be honest I just don’t know what to expect. We can’t even be sure of what side the boss will be able to put out as a number of our lads will be having late fitness tests ahead of the game. Recent reports are suggesting that Johnson and Torres will make it but Gerrard won’t and that being the case we could probably expect a starting eleven of Reina, Johnson, Carra, Dagger, Insua, Benny, Masch, Scapegoat, Aurelio, Kuyt and Torres. Skrtel might start instead of Dagger and Babel might feature on the left instead of Fabio but other than that I don’t see that we have any other options.

As for us playing the mancs at this particular time there are two completely opposite ways of looking at it. On the one hand it could be said that this is just the kind of game we need right now as our players and fans alike will be well up for it and a victory would put us right back on track again. On the other hand it could be said that this game couldn’t have come at a worse time as our confidence is low and some of our main players will either be unavailable or won’t be 100%. I guess we won’t really know which is the case until Alex Fungushead allows the referee to blow the final whistle tomorrow.

Another thing that might work in our favour is the Michael Owen factor. He is sure to receive a hot reception from The Kop tomorrow and if he starts for the mancs there will be a lot of Liverpool fans keen to let him know exactly what they think of him. That might increase the intensity and ensure our fans stay in full voice throughout the game which can only have an uplifting effect on our team.

In terms of us competing for the league title this season, this game may be all or nothing. A win would leave us four points behind the mancs and well in the race but a defeat would give them a ten point lead on us and even at this early stage of the campaign it would be very hard to see us bridging that kind of gap. So I think if we lose this game we will need to focus on ensuring we finish in the top four and putting ourselves in a position to take advantage of any slip-ups by the teams ahead of us.

While it’s true we haven’t played well recently, I think it’s also true to say that we’ve also had about as much luck as a one-armed trapeze artist with an itchy arse! Usually in these games if there is any luck going it usually goes to the mancs so if Lady Luck were to smile on us for a change and throw us a break tomorrow, I would gladly accept it.

If we were playing with any kind of form at the moment I would be confident about our chances but the way we’ve been playing lately I just don’t know what to expect and that makes me a little nervous. I’m just hoping we can dig out a win by any means necessary and get our season back on track. It would be great if we put on a good performance but the most important thing is to win and I really don’t care how we do it so my money’s on us keeping the vultures at bay with a nervy 2-1 win. Fingers crossed!

Keep the Faith

Well after much research I have discovered that the last big fat beach ball to score a goal in the Premier League was Micky Quinn! Still you’ve gotta laugh eh? Ok so maybe that’s just my sick sense of humour but the truth is, beach ball or no beach ball and whether the goal was legal or illegal, Sunderland were the better side on the day and they deserved the points.

Our performance was so poor overall that it merited nothing but defeat. Given the injuries and condition of the players in our squad after the international break, I think the eleven we started with was probably the best we had available but even allowing for that you would have expected a lot more from the players we had out there and I’m sure the boss was just as disappointed with the display as we were.

On the plus side it was great to see Dagger back, Carra made some good interceptions and looks to be on the way back to his best, Skrtel was solid and Johnson did well but the rest of the team rated somewhere between below average and pure shite. At the moment Aurelio is way below par and miles behind Insua in terms of being our first choice left back. He was crap again on Saturday and his delivery from set-plays, normally one of his big strong points, was consistently as poor as I’ve ever seen from him, in fact I think you’d see a better delivery from a blind postman!

Kuyt and Benny Onion never really got into the game, in central midfield Lucas and Spearing were about as much use as a windscreen wiper on a goat’s arse and Babel wasted yet another opportunity to impress. Clearly we’ve had better days but it’s sad to say that on Saturday when it came to wearing our club badge with pride, most of our team were outshone by the beach ball!

I can’t really fault the boss for the eleven he put out on the pitch and I think he had every right to expect more from them but I was a little disappointed with the substitutions he made. In the past we’ve come back from far worst situations than the one we faced at the Stadium of Shite, but in those games there were always signs that we were starting to take control and the comeback was on but there was none of that on Saturday and I was hoping that in the circumstances he might try a more radical approach from the bench.

Before going on to my extremely wise suggestions, let me just clarify my credentials by saying that I haven’t managed a team since my brother accidently sat on and crushed my Subbuteo set many years ago and as for coaching badges, I was a boy scout for a couple of years and never even got a poxy merit badge! While it’s true that I have watched a massive amount of football over the years, I have also watched a massive amount of movies, but that doesn’t mean I could direct one! But unlike some people at least I am aware of my limitations.

Anyway, after about 55 minutes of the game I was thinking about our possible substitute options and the fact that our side didn’t so much need a tweak as a thump. So in the circumstances, I thought we might try moving Carra to right-back and pushing Johnson up to the right side of midfield to let him focus on attacking and remove most of his defensive responsibilities.

In central midfield I thought Masch might have been better replacing Lucas rather than Spearing. This would have saved Lucas’s legs and also given Spearing the confidence of playing the full 90 minutes. Spearing wasn’t playing too well but he has a good shot on him and if he was told to push forward for the rest of the game something might have broken for him on the edge of the box. Finally, I thought Riera might have been worth a go on the left against the tiring Sunderland defence and Benny could have been pushed upfront alongside Eggnog or Davy Crockett.

Those changes may not have made a blind bit of difference on the day but it seemed to me that we just weren’t creating anything of note and bringing on a defensive midfielder and two forwards wasn’t going to change that significantly. That’s my little gripe and I throw it in there mainly as a discussion point but also to show that while I still very much support our gaffer, I don’t think he or anybody else is above a little bit of criticism from time to time.

Of course any defeat is painful but these days I must say that I find the completely over the top reaction to any loss by some of our less intellectually endowed “supporters”, the media and any ex-player trying to make a name for themselves, to be infinitely more painful than the defeat itself. I don’t really want to get involved in that stuff once again or to comment too much on the handbags I’ve read on the last blog but while I’ve already confessed I may not be an expert on such things, I fail to see how hanging our manager up by his testicles is going to improve our chances of winning the league?

Some people say that our team isn’t good enough to seriously challenge for the title but wasn’t it our team that was playing the best football in the country and scoring goals for fun just a few months ago? Wasn’t this the same team that finished the season with its highest ever points total, a total that would have won the title in many previous seasons? And pardon my confusion but haven’t we got the same manager now that we had then?

The only difference between our side now and the one we had then is we don’t have Alonso anymore and there’s no doubt he is a loss but good though he was, I think his departure has been vastly over-played by the media. Let’s not forget that many of the clowns in the media who now bang on about Alonso barely ever gave him a mention when he was with us. To them we were a two-man team and it’s amazing just how much praise they are now prepared to heap on Xabi after he’s gone when they had very little to spare for him while he was at Anfield, but of course to do so would have been against their apparent agenda.

But do people seriously think all of the great football we played a few months ago was down to Xabi? He certainly played his part and I am by no means trying to down play the service he gave the club but he wanted to leave and he is gone now so end of story. While we may not have Alonso anymore, we have added Glen Johnson to last season’s side and he is a definite improvement for us on the right and we’ve also yet to see Aquaman in action. I think when it all comes together we will have a great side, my only fear is that it comes together too late for us, but that remains to be seen.

I’ve always had my doubts about the depth of our squad and this is as true this season as it was in all the seasons before. I think we saw again on Saturday that when the boss has to dig down into the squad there is a definite lack of quality. But I’m not sure what people expect Rafa to do about it when in a summer where he has made a significant profit on his transfer dealings he still had to go on bended knee to our owners and was refused £6 million to sign Michael Turner from Hull and had to settle instead for a mere £2 million to bring in a 30 year old Greek international for some badly needed defensive cover.

That should tell anyone with even half a brain where the real problem at our club lies. But of course there are quite a few small people with big mouths out there who claim to be “supporters” and yet every time we hit a bumpy patch and their support is needed the most, they scream for the managers head. To those people, the opinions of the vast majority of their fellow Liverpool supporters who still very much support the boss and what he is trying to achieve, are dismissed as some kind of misguided blind loyalty.

In past blogs I have laid out many reasons why our gaffer has my total support and I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so again. As the old saying goes, there are none so blind as those who will not see, so I would be just wasting my time. However as I am such a kind-hearted bollocks, if there are any such people reading this blog I’ll give you a little mental test (don’t worry you can ask a grown-up to help) that might help you understand just some of the reason why my and other peoples support for our boss has little to do with blind loyalty and everything to do with common sense.

Firstly, I think we can all agree that Rafa inherited a pretty poor squad when he took the job. At the beginning of this season only Carra and Gerrard remain from that original squad, so for those of you watching in black and white, that means that with the exception of those two players an entire first team squad has been rebuilt in the 5 years he has been here.

Now what you need to do is consider the list of players he has brought in, in his time here and take away all of the free, cut price and compromise signings he has been forced to make and just focus on the first choice signings he has been able to make. When you have that number divide it by the five seasons he’s been with us and when you get your answer ask yourself these three questions:

1. What other top manager could achieve what Rafa Benitez has achieved with such limited resources?
2. What other top manager would be bothered?
3. How in the name of Shanks, has he been able to keep us firmly in the top four, been able to mount even a remote challenge for the title and how could we possibly be the current number one ranked side in Europe?

Nuff said!

As far as our chances in the league this season are concerned, there’s no doubt we’ve made a bad start but I’m still sticking with the opinion I expressed on this blog at the start of the season, as I did in the seasons before. Which is that I’ve always viewed the league as a race of three stages. The first stage is to keep yourself within striking distance of the top by Christmas, the second stage is to be at or near the top by Easter and the last stage is the final run in. Despite our less than encouraging start, our goal for the first stage of this race is still well within our reach and there is no towels been thrown in at Kopblog HQ.

But our focus now turns to the Champions League tomorrow and the more points we drop in the league, the more important the CL becomes to our season. I don’t know too much about Lyons other than the fact that they make nice tea-bags and cakes but I know we badly need to beat them tomorrow night at Anfield. A victory would obviously improve our standing in the group but would also give our confidence a much needed lift ahead of our game against the mancs next weekend.

Reports say Gerrard will be back in the side for this one but Torres won’t be back until the weekend. This is excellent news for us overall because in this particular game I think Gerrard is the most important one for us to have available and let’s keep a “hopefully” fully fit Torres as a nice little surprise for the mancs. It will also be good to have Insua back in at left back.

Dagger’s already had three games in a week so I don’t think the boss will risk that back injury of his by pushing him into another one, so I think he’ll be on the bench and our back four will be Johnson, Skrtel, Carra and Insua. As ever, the question marks will be over our central midfield pairing. Most likely I think Rafa will go with Benny, Masch, Lucas and Riera, with Gerrard playing behind Kuyt but personally I’d like to see Gerrard start in central midfield and either play Benny behind Kuyt or partner Deadly Dirk with Eggnog, or that beach ball!

No matter which variation he uses, I think the Anfield crowd will be well up for this game and hopefully use it give their voices a work-out ahead of the manc game at the weekend. I think having the crowd and supporters in general behind you when you’ve hit a bad patch is very important for the team, but obviously there are some people who don’t seem to realise that. In any case, I don’t think this will be an easy game but with the crowd behind them I think the boys will be lifted enough to come away with a 2-0 win.

Keep the Faith (or piss off)

As I’ve said on this blog many times in the past, when it comes to international football I’m very definitely in the club before country camp. I am by no mean against players playing for their countries but I just wish the various international associations and most particularly international managers who should know better, would have a bit more respect for the clubs that they are borrowing players from. That said, I also think the players themselves need to stand up and take some responsibility.

If recent reports are correct it appears that at least three of our most senior players, Gerrard, Torres and Kuyt, all went on international duty carrying knocks and yet each of them started for their countries in unimportant games which were either friendlies or had no consequence. At such a critical stage of Liverpool’s season, I wouldn’t be entirely happy with them playing in such games if they were fully fit but playing in them when they are carrying injuries is beyond ridiculous.

I think we’ve every right to be extremely pissed off with their international managers for playing them in the first place but I don’t think the players themselves should be let off the hook either. I don’t like having a pop at our own players but it bugs me that three of our most senior pro’s who are very well aware of our current precarious situation in both the Premiership and the Champions League, haven’t got the wherewithal or the bollocks to tell their international managers that they are not 100% and don’t want to risk aggravating their injuries by playing in a friendly or meaningless game.

If they were playing in an important qualifier you could perhaps understand them taking a risk but in the games they played in their participation was unnecessary and quite frankly stupid. Or if they were on the fringe of things internationally, like Ryan Babel or Lucas for instance, again you could perhaps understand that they would have a desire to grab every opportunity to cement their place in their countries World Cup squad. But these are three firmly established international players who have nothing to prove and, if fit, all of them will most definitely be off to South Africa this summer.

But whatever the justification all three played last weekend and all of them did further damage to their injuries by doing so, and with such a big three game week ahead of us we might well be left counting the cost. It’s looking increasingly unlikely that Gerrard will be available for our game at Sunderland on Saturday and with Masch and Lucas not returning from their international games in South America until Friday, Rafa may be forced to take a gamble in the centre of midfield with Spearing and Aurelio perhaps coming into the reckoning.

I’m not sure about the extent of the injuries that Gerrard, Kuyt and Torres are carrying but you can be damn sure that all three will not be at their best at a time when we badly need them to be and I just hope they can show the same desire to play for us when it really matters as they do for their countries when it doesn’t!

We also had more bad news on the international front with the news that Hercules has picked up a serious injury which may rule him out for several months but hopefully it’s not as bad as that. The one positive we got from this international break was the fact that Dagger came through two full games for Denmark. As he has just come back from a long injury lay-off and hasn’t played any first team football for us yet, I know Rafa wasn’t happy about him being called up but now that he’s got those two games under his belt he will be a lot closer in terms of match fitness and should be ready to play some part for us in the week ahead.

In other matters, I was surprised to hear that Prince is trying to buy a 50% stake in our club. I can’t say I’ve ever been much of a fan of the pint-sized pop star but if it means that we get rid of at least one of our lying American owners, I can assure I will be dancing like its 1999!

Anyway on to our game this weekend at the Stadium of Shite and given the condition of some of our players after the international break, this is going to be a tough one and has the potential to be a real banana skin for us. In recent days I’ve been chatting with Colin Randall who runs the excellent Sunderland fans website Salut! He had some interesting questions for me and I think my answers pretty much sums up my thoughts on the game and various other things, so I’ve included them below as my match preview.

1. Disappointing Champions League game for you, mostly good in the league until that defeat at Chelsea. Are the alarm bells (in the press) premature, and what are your priorities this season?

Obviously losing both games was a big disappointment but it’s early days yet. I’m still confident we’ll qualify from our Champions League group and as for the league, it’s more competitive than ever this season and it looks like a lot of teams are going to drop points so we’ve just got to hang in there and take it one game at a time.

The alarm bells in the press are always premature. The opinions expressed in the media seem to change on a week to week, game to game basis. For example, Chelsea made a perfect start to the season until they lost against Wigan and then suddenly the media seemed to be going out of their way to raise question marks about their manager. Then they beat us 2-0 and suddenly they are red-hot favourites again, at least for the moment! It’s incredible how these clowns in the media constantly change their tune and even more incredible how some fans allow them to form their opinions.

It used to be said that today’s headlines are tomorrows fish and chips wrappers, but these days I’ve far too much respect for my fish and chips to wrap them up in that shite!

Our priorities are the same this season as they are every season, Premiership, Champions League, FA Cup, Carling Cup.

2 If Torres and Gerrard fell under the same bus, how much trouble would Liverpool be in?

This is another one of those media myths. Torres and Gerrard are our best two players and obviously if we lost them both it would be a big blow to us, but couldn’t you say the same for every team if you took out their two best players? Last season we beat both Chelsea and Man United without Gerrard and Torres in our starting line-ups. In fact, because of various injuries, the dynamic duo only started together in 20 games for us last season and yet we finished second with our highest ever points tally in the league and were a little unlucky to be knocked out in the quarter-finals of the of the Champions League. Obviously had they been available to start together more often for us we could have been a lot more successful last term but on the other hand our results in a season when they weren’t available together anywhere near as much as we would have liked, I think shows that we have a pretty decent team even without them.

3 Does being as much a global brand as a down-to-earth football club bother you?

No. Liverpool have always been one of the big names in world football for as long as I’ve been around so I’m well used to it and don’t really give it a lot of thought. Of course there are pro’s and con’s to everything but in terms of the money it brings into the club directly and indirectly, I think there are far more pro’s then con’s in this instance.

4 What about the club’s ownership.? How do you see that panning out, and does the prospect of another wealthy proprietor fill you with excitement or dread?

Our American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett have been a complete and utter disaster and the sooner they piss off the better. It’s difficult to be brief on a subject that I could write a book about but suffice to say, it’s very clear we were sold down the river by the previous club Chairman David Moores and Chief Exec Rick Parry when they did business with this pair of cowboy’s.

They had spent many month’s arranging the hand-over of the club to the Dubai Investment Consortium but at the eleventh hour these two American businessmen turned up and in a matter of days the DIC deal was scrapped and the cowboys were in charge. They said this was in the best interests of the club but the facts strongly suggest it was in the best interests of themselves. Our former Chairman received millions more for his shares then he would have received from DIC and was also given a Lifetime Presidency of the club, our Chief Exec reportedly received somewhere in the region of £500,000 as a bonus payment for concluding the deal.

As for our American owners, in fairness to them it has to be said that they only lie when their lips move! All we’ve had from them from the moment they arrived is just one lie after another and we are fed up with it and want them out. For example, in relation to our new stadium they said there would be a spade within 60 days of them taking over, about three and a half years later we are still waiting. They said that the club would not be saddled with the debt they had generated to buy it, a few months later the club was saddled with that very same debt. They said the manager had their total support, a few months later they were having secret meetings with Jurgen Klinnsman about possibly taking over at Anfield. They said, and have recently restated, that the manager would be given a healthy transfer budget. This is something that is often mis-reported in the British media but the very easily checked facts show that in the time they have been in charge the boss has spent just over £100 million but has recovered £80 million of that in player sales. That may still seem a lot to some teams but for a team that is meant to be seriously challenging to be the best in England not to mention Europe, a £20 million net spend is pretty much chicken feed.

Sorry to have gone on longer then I intended on this question but as you can probably tell, it is something we Liverpool fans feel passionately about. I would personally be excited if we were taken over by any other “wealthy proprietor” because basically they couldn’t possibly be any worse than the two lying morons we have in charge at the moment.

5 Greatest three Liverpool moments for you, and greatest three players?

Two of my three greatest Liverpool moments are the 1978 European Cup final which we won 1-0 against FC Bruges at Wembley to become the first British side to retain the trophy and the first all Merseyside final at Wembley which was in the Milk Cup (League Cup) in 83 (I think), it finished 0-0 but we won it in the replay 1-0 at Maine Road. We’ve certainly been in better finals over the years but I was at both of those games and will never forget the experience. However, it will probably be no surprise that I think our greatest moment came in that fantastic Champions League final in Istanbul in 2005 when we came back from being 3-0 down to AC Milan at half-time to win it on penalties, absolutely amazing!

My three greatest Liverpool players, 1. Kenny Dalglish, 2. John Barnes, 3. Steven Gerrard.

6 A West Ham fan site took a pop at your fans recently, saying they were like doormice - or words to that effect - when your clubs met. Complete nonsense or a hint of truth?

You obviously read the same article that I did, but perhaps you didn’t read through all of the responses. One pissed off West Ham fan took a pop at our fans but in fairness quite a few other West Ham fans responded and said he was talking complete crap and some even questioned if he was at the game. They all said the atmosphere at the game was terrific and the Liverpool fans were great.

Maybe I’m being an old fart but I don’t think the atmosphere at all games is not as good as it used to be. I think most fans of a certain age would say the same about their teams support these days, but on our day I think we would give any other teams fans a run for their money when it comes to getting behind our team.

7 Sunderland. Any thoughts on us, and were you quite please, sympathetic or uninterested when Newcastle went down?

Sunderland seem to be doing great since Steve Bruce took over. I would have feared for you if Roy Keane had stayed any longer. It seemed he had taken you as far as he was able to and you would have only went in one direction had he stayed in charge, particularly if Dwight Yorkes recent revelations about him are true. Bruce is a much steadier hand and as a manager he is definitely a class above his former team mate. The progress of your side is there for all to see and things are definitely looking up at the Stadium of Light.

As for Newcastle, I don’t have any particular axe to grind with them as I try not to mock the afflicted, but from a football point of view I was glad to see them going down because of all the ridiculous goings on there in recent times.

8 Name this season’s top four, in order . If Man City not there, why not?

1. Liverpool (that’s the dream anyway!)
2. Man Utd
3. Chelsea ( I think they will be badly affected when the African Nations gets going in January)
4. Man City - They’ve already spent a lot building a strong squad and apparently they will be spending a lot more in January. They also have the advantage of not having any midweek European games to worry about. Besides this I think Arsenal have rode their luck a bit in terms of finishing in the top four and while they are capable of playing some great football on their day, I just don’t think they will be strong enough this time.

9 And the bottom three? If we aren’t in your (either!) list, where do you think we’ll end up?

I think Portsmouth will definitely go down but other than that it’s difficult to say but I’ll go for Birmingham and Wolves to join them.

10 Tell us what you really think of Man United. Is the rivalry more intense than between you and Everton?

Our rivalry with our ” wee” neighbours Everton is intense but off the pitch there is still a lot of friendliness there. There is a bit more nastiness to the rivalry that has crept in, in recent years but I’ve got friends I’ve grown up with who are Evertonians and I still occasionally go to games with some of them and we have a great time.

As for the mancs, I can’t stand them. I can’t stand their manager, their players, their supporters or the manc obsessed media. Put it this way, when the mancs play Everton I always cheer for the Toffees and I think that answers your question.

11 Will you be at the Stadium of Light for our game? If not, how will you keep tabs? What will be the score?

No I won’t be there unfortunately but I will catch the game on TV or online and I’ll put my money on a hard fought 2-1 win for The Reds!

12 The Eduardo question. Last second of last game of season, A win and Liverpool are champions. A blatant dive by Gerrard wins a penalty - and the three points/ Do you take it gladly, take it guiltily or feel so ashamed you almost wish United had won the title?

I hate players diving regardless of whether it’s my team or another and I think every football fan would say the same. Thankfully, unlike some teams I could mention, Liverpool aren’t reknowned for having players who will take a dive but I have seen it happen over the years and I was never happy about it.

However to answer your question honestly, if it meant we won the title again after all these years I think first and foremost I would be on the piss for about a fortnight celebrating to give it too much thought initially. But once things settled down I would imagine I would try to justify it in my own mind by thinking about the amount of times we’d be cheated by divers and no doubt I would also think of how many points the mancs and the chavs had accumulated in their title winning years on the back of dives by the likes of Ronaldo and Drogba etc. I’m sure I would also argue furiously that our title wasn’t won on that one moment but in the many other moments of the many other games that preceded it.

There are always ways to justify things if you try hard enough but there’s no doubt that if we won the title in such a fashion it would feel a bit tainted and would definitely leave a sour taste in the mouth.

On a final note, many congrats to our buddy Puchong Red who told us on the last blog that he had become a father for the first time (although I know of at least one sheep that tells a different story!). I’m not sure if it’s a boy or a child but all the very best mate.

Keep the Faith

Well, I’ve spent the last few days avoiding anything football-related but I guess it’s time to get stuck in again. I watched our game at the Bridge on my TV at home last Sunday but once the second goal went in I just switched it off immediately. I was in no mood to hear all of the usual clap-trap that was sure to follow our defeat so I decided to give it a miss for awhile. I was tempted to climb naked on to the roof and throw myself off, but I live in a bungalow and the last time I tried that it ended up a bit messy when I landed in next door’s dust bin with an old stick of celery stuck in a place where God never intended it to go!

The game itself reminded me of one of those encounters we used to have with the chavs a couple of years ago which basically amounted to us getting all the possession and them getting all the goals! Masch had one of his better games but unfortunately got caught in possession for their first goal and I thought Carra also had one of his better games recently but really should have done better for their second.

But it was one of those performances where it is hard to be too critical of any individuals. For us I thought the stand out player was Skrtel and while Masch received some praise for playing a lot better then he has done recently, I actually thought Lucas played better and deserved more of a mention. Overall the team worked hard and were the better side up to the chavs scoring. The thing I found most frustrating about the game was that despite having the edge in possession and control, we never really threatened their goal enough especially as they had Hilarious between the posts.

I had hoped that we might bang in a few more long range efforts and float a few more crosses into the danger area to put him under as much pressure as possible but we didn’t do nearly enough of that. Not having their first choice keeper between the sticks was a potential weakness that we didn’t do enough to expose in my opinion and in the end the guy had a pretty comfortable game.

I mentioned in the last blog that Steven Gerrard’s position could prove to be the key factor for us on the day and from early on in the game it was clear that he wasn’t going to be having the kind of influence in the attacking area that we needed. Torres and Gerrard are a great partnership in attack for us in most games but as I mentioned last time, in the bigger games I think there’s a strong argument to play Gerrard in the middle and give Torres another partner upfront.

Against the better sides Gerrard is too easily picked up in the advanced central midfield role and ends up playing too deep. Added to that on Sunday we also had Riera and Kuyt playing as much defensively as in attack and so we ended up with the most lethal striker in the world having little support and little to work with.

I just think that in such games we would be better off playing Gerrard in the middle alongside Lucas or Masch and sticking Benny or Kuyt up top with Torres. This would give the opposition more to worry about and sometimes the best form of defence is attack. We reverted to something similar to this after the chavs scored but by then it proved to be too late and while I accept hindsight is a wonderful thing, I would have liked to see us starting the game with the set-up that we finished with.

Obviously the loss is a big disappointment as in general has been our start to the season but while we may be down we are by no means out. I still believe our job now is to be in a decent challenging position by Christmas and take it from there. Things change so quickly in football these days with the media writing teams off and on almost on a weekly basis.

The chavs are a perfect recent example of this. They had made a perfect start to the season before losing against Wigan a couple of weeks ago and suddenly the media were raising all kinds of question marks about Lancelotti. Then they beat us on Sunday and suddenly they are red hot favourites for the title! It’s incredible how the bullshit these clowns put out there can completely change on a game to game basis but what’s even more incredible is the amount of people who buy into this nonsense and allow their opinions to be formed by these morons.

I’m not a great believer in stats because they can be twisted to suit any argument and can bring hope or despair depending on how you choose to read them. Some say we have the same points total now that the mancs had at the same stage last season and they went on to win the title, while others will point out that we have played four decent sides so far this season and lost against them all etc, etc, etc.

It’s all a lot of meaningless crap as far as I’m concerned. The only stat that really matters is the league table and the fact that no matter how you slice it we’ve got to get our act together quickly and start rattling off a few wins. Going into an international break on the back of a loss sucks big time but we’ve got some big games ahead of us when the players get back and it’s time for them to ante up and start consistently performing at the level we know that they are capable of.

In other matters, as my head was buried in the sand for a few days I only recently read about that bullshit George Gillett is supposed to have spouted to a member of the SOS group. It’s incredible how such a little fart like him can generate such a large amount of complete and utter shite. Honestly it makes me laugh how both this clown and Hicks go on about the progress they are supposedly making in reducing the club’s debt when it was them that created the vast majority of the debt in the first place. The mess is very much of their own making, so do they really expect us to pat them on the back for cleaning some of it up?

These pair of clowns continually insult our intelligence with this garbage and it’s pathetic that they think any of us would be stupid enough to believe a single word they say. They may be experts in the business world but despite being the owners of the club for almost several years now it’s pretty damn clear that what they know about Liverpool Football Club and its supporters would fit in the crack of my arse!

For him to say that Rafa was given £20+ million plus the money generated through players sales over the summer to spend on players and improving contracts etc, is clearly a blatant lie. No matter how you calculate it the figures don’t even remotely add up but there again their figures never do, perhaps they think we can’t count!

Another thing they constantly come out with is that we are supposedly in less debt per “dollar” then any other Premiership club but so what? All that says to me as a football fan is that other clubs have backed their managers more than they’ve backed ours. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the best way to reduce your debt is to reduce your spending and that’s exactly what these guys have been doing.

To a certain extent you can understand that clubs who generate a bigger income through the larger capacity of their stadiums or through the extremely deep pockets of their wealthy owners, would have more money for their managers to spend then we do. However, what’s far more difficult to explain is how, particularly in the years since these two morons have been in charge of our club, we’ve been outspent by the likes of Spurs, Villa, Sunderland and even Newcastle among others.

These are sides that we should be ahead of in terms of spending but while our boss has had a certain amount to spend, he clearly hasn’t had enough. They say these other clubs are now spending more because of the increased revenue coming into the game from television etc, but we also get this money and yet our spending has largely remained the same as it was under our previous owners.

Figures, just like the stats I mentioned earlier, can be twisted to read anything you want them to. So while the owners can say they’ve given our gaffer a certain amount of money to spend, the fact of the matter is that our spending in relation to our income has actually decreased in the time that these two lying morons have been in charge. The rest of the money has been used to pay interest payments on a loan the club has been saddled with just so we can have the pleasure of their company.

Which is I found it very amusing when Gillett and the new Chief Exec recently called for fans to stop their protesting because it might put off potential investors, hasn’t anybody told them that, that’s the whole bleedin point! I mean why should any of us be interested in helping them attract new investors to pump in more money in to pay off a debt we never should have been lumbered with, that was taken out by two people we want even less?

Liverpool fans are no mugs and if they thought that at least some of this money would be used to strengthen the team sheet rather than the balance sheet, then I think they would be a lot more accommodating but as things stand that’s never going to happen. Reds supporters are sick of being lied to by these cowboys and as the old saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

Anyway on a final note, I was sorry to hear that Liverpool Legend John Barnes and his assistant Jason McAteer have been sacked by Tranmere Rovers. Granted they only managed three wins from 14 games but it hardly seems enough time for them to get their idea’s across. I have a lot of sympathy for Barnes as it seems he was expected to do the job with one arm tied behind his back.

Apparently most of the assurances he was given before taking up the reins there were reneged upon and the transfer budget he was promised was dramatically slashed. Finally the owners used him as a scapegoat to cover their own shortcomings and to appease a section of dissatisfied fans. Hmmm, sound familiar?

Keep the Faith

Supporting Liverpool doesn’t half do my head in at times. On Saturday the team were taming tigers but by Tuesday they had turned into a bunch of kittens. It’s enough to try the patience of a saint and as we saw by the reaction of Rafa Benitez to our defeat in Florence, that’s exactly what it did.

Everything seemed so different on Saturday evening after we had just picked up another three points and scored a bag full of goals against Hull. A superb hat-trick by Torres, a couple of badly needed goals for Babel and a terrific shot/cross by StevieG gave us the points with plenty to spare. However, it’s strange that at a time when our attack is the most potent in the Premiership our normally watertight defence has sprung more leaks than a hedgehog’s condom!

Whether these things are related or just coincidence I’m not quite sure but it is a concern that needs to be sorted out. Even though we were in dominant mood against Hull we still couldn’t manage to keep a clean sheet and conceded yet another sloppy goal.

When your banging away the goals at the rate that we’ve been doing lately then it’s not too much of a problem if you let in an odd one here and there but with the big games we have coming up sometimes one goal or even just one chance can be the deciding factor. I’m normally quite optimistic about such things but I have to admit it is starting to worry me. I know Rafa and the players are aware of it and are working hard to rectify things but I’m a bit concerned that we haven’t really seen any real sign of progress as yet, as we saw again on Tuesday.

Our performance in the first half of our CL game against Ford Cortina was absolutely dreadful and easily the worst half of football I’ve seen from a Liverpool side in years. You could go through almost every individual in the team but the fact is we were second best all over the pitch and quite frankly I found our display in those first 45 minutes to be a little embarrassing.

With all due respects to the Italians, they have a decent side but we played so awful in that first half we made them look like world-beaters. We clearly improved in the second period but our inept display at the start of the game left us with too much to do. While we could say there were some question marks over both of their goals and a penalty we should have had, the fact is we deserved to lose. It’s always a good sign when a team can get a win or even salvage a draw when playing badly but there are limits and when you play as badly as we did you deserve nothing but defeat.

Of the eleven players who started the game you could probably excuse Torres because he had nothing to work with and Reina did well to keep the score down, but all of the others well deserved the rocket that Rafa reportedly gave them at half-time. When I saw our starting line-up ahead of the game I actually thought Aurelio would be playing on the left with Gerrard and Lucas in the middle, Benny on the right and Kuyt and Torres upfront but with players performing as poorly as they did on the night I don’t think it would have made much difference what system we used.

Needless to say after the game I was feeling as depressed as a turkey on Christmas Eve but now that I’ve had a little time to think about it, I’m beginning to wonder if it might prove to be a timely kick in the arse for the team at just the right time. I don’t really care too much about the result in midweek, our position is recoverable and I would still very much fancy our chances of qualifying from the group, it was the performance that was worrying especially as it came ahead of our upcoming Premiership clash with the chavs.

However, one of the few positives on the night was the reaction of Rafa Benitez. We rarely if ever see much emotion from the boss but he was clearly furious with the teams display. Unlike other managers, he didn’t try to make lame excuses and made it clear what he thought of the team’s half-arsed display.

There’s no doubt the boss was pissed off by the defeat but he’s a very clever man and I’m sure he will use it to make sure the players don’t lose the lesson. And since the game it’s been noticeable that we have also heard several of the players expressing their disappointment and how anxious they are to bounce back from the defeat, which is all very positive ahead of Sunday’s game.

My original hope was that we would get some kind of a win in Florence and head to the Bridge in confident mood but if this defeat means the players will now travel there feeling they have a point to prove, then that’s even better and the irony is that it might turn out that Ford Cortina have done us a favour. Whatever happens in Sunday’s game I seriously doubt our team will be lacking in motivation or determination and that might just make the difference.

October is a tough month for us and if we can start it with a win at the home of the free plastic flag wavers it will be a huge boost. Even at this early stage of the season a defeat would be a blow, a draw would be ok but a win would be priceless. Last season we showed how capable we are at beating these teams in their own back yard and we are just as capable of doing the same this season if we get our act together on the day. There’s no doubt it will be a tough game for us but it will be just as tough for them.

The chavs don’t seem to be playing much different under Lancelotti then they have under their other managers so we should know what to expect and I don’t think Rafa will be making too many tactical changes from what worked for us in the past.

It’s great that Agger has made a recovery from his injury but I don’t think he’s going to be fit enough yet to be thrown into this one so I would expect Carra and Skrtel to continue together at centre back and obviously Johnson will continue on the right. I think our left-back will depend on the current fitness of Aurelio. I don’t have a problem with Insua but in a game where a free-kick or a well delivered cross could make all the difference I think Fabio’s left foot might well give him the edge and the gaffer will play him if he fell’s he’s up to it.

Last season the boss played Kuyt and Riera on the flanks to keep the chavs full-backs pinned back as much as possible and I think he will do the same again this time, and obviously Torres will be leading the line upfront. But for me the all-important area will be what we’ll do in the middle of the park. If Masch is fit and he has his head together then this will be an ideal game for him and he should be a certain starter. The smart money would be on us starting with our usual triangle of Masch alongside Lucas with Gerrard ahead of them and hopefully linking with Torres.

I’m pretty sure that’s the team we’ll start with but you can never be certain with Rafa because he doesn’t pick his teams based on reputations or past performances, he picks who he thinks is the best equipped to do a job for him on the day. As I’ve already said, I think the side above is what he’ll go with but if he were to make an adjustment it might well be in the central area.

The problem for me is getting Steven Gerrard into the best position for him to have an influence on the game. StevieG and Torres are a terrific attacking partnership on their day but against the likes of the chavs and the mancs etc, there have been a lot of times when Gerrard has drifted in and out of the game. It seems to me that against the likes of these sides he can sometimes get sucked into the midfield battle and so doesn’t have as much of an effect for us in attack.

If the captain doesn’t get up to support Torres often enough our attack will be seriously blunted and it’s likely that Fernando will spend the entire game being kicked from pillar to post by John Teary and Co. I know it’s probably more likely that if the game is panning out like that the boss will change things from the bench but I think there is a possibility, admittedly perhaps a slight one, that he might just start with Gerrard in the middle alongside Masch and have Kuyt or Benny supporting Torres.

Obviously our defence will need to rediscover the solidity that has so far eluded them this season but if we are to leave the Bridge with three points then we will have to have Gerrard involved as much as possible and we will need to get support to Torres. Another key factor is that we will need a strong referee. Someone who will be aware not just of the antics of Drogba, but also Teary and the rest of the chav defence.

I’m sure Rafa has his tactical plans well in place by now and I just hope the players can deliver. If our defeat in Florence is the price we pay for a victory on Sunday, I will gladly accept the charges. I’m always too nervous and edgy to really enjoy these games and I know I’ll be the same on Sunday but I’m looking forward to it just the same. It’s a game that could really go either way and I may need to sacrifice a few chickens to ensure we get the right result but my money’s on us sneaking away from there with a nerve-wrecking 2-1 win and really upsetting all of the media hacks who love to write us off.

Keep the Faith