Well I guess as a Liverpool fan I should be feeling pretty happy right now but the truth is I’ve got mixed emotions at the moment. On the pitch, things are starting to come together for us at long last but off the pitch things are as frustrating as ever and have once again left me feeling as confused as a hungry baby in a topless bar!
Yet another transfer window has come and gone without the manager being given the necessary backing to add some much needed extra strength to the squad. I suppose that shouldn’t be much of a surprise given what’s gone on before but given the teams current position, a couple of decent quality new faces coming in would have given everyone an extra lift and improved our chances of climbing back into the top four and having a good go at the Europa League.
But once again the club’s balance sheet has taken precedence over the team sheet and this seems to have become standard practice at Anfield since the club became saddled with our two lying American owners. For the most part, Rafa Benitez has always really been in a position where he has had to sell players to buy players but he almost always managed to make a profit from his sales and through this method he has been able to gradually upgrade the side over time.
However recent evidence suggests he can no longer even count on the money he makes through player sales to strengthen the side. During last January’s transfer window we sold Robbie Keane back to Spurs for somewhere between £12 and £15 million. The question we all had back then was who would be brought in to replace him but we soon found out the answer to that question was no one!
When you consider how close we came to winning the league last season it is tempting to think that had we used that cash to bring in a quality replacement last January, it might well have helped us to get those extra few points we needed to win it. Still, we hoped that the money from the Keane sale would turn up during last summer’s transfer window to help the boss really strengthen the squad and build on what we had achieved in the last campaign.
Instead of this more players were sold on at a profit and a chunk of that profit along with the money from the Keane sale disappeared, presumably into other areas, and certainly wasn’t put back into the team. And this past January has been more of the same with almost £7 million coming in through player sales and just £1.5 million being spent on our one signing Maxi Rodriguez.
Now considering all of that it seems to me that our club has become unique in the history of football. Throughout all the years going back as far as the foundation of the game, the board of every club existed to provide funds to support the team but at our club these days it seems the reverse is true and it appears that it is the team that is being used to provide funds to prop up the board and it’s a bloody disgrace!
After our game against Bolton on Saturday Tom Hicks, on one of his rare visits to Anfield, was kept inside the ground by security for his own safety for a couple of hours as a few hundred Liverpool supporters protested outside of the ground. These supporters should be heroes to us all and they let Hicks know exactly what they thought of him and his partner and they both should count themselves lucky that these people simply want them to leave, because if it were up to me I’d be pushing to have the pair of them publicly flogged as well!
Anyway, at least football-wise things are going well and we seem to be moving in the right direction. We conceded too many soft goals this season and they have cost us dearly so Rafa has clearly decided to go back to basics and focus on making us hard to beat again and it seems to be doing the trick. Our 2-0 win over Bolton at the weekend means we’ve gone six league games unbeaten and have kept five clean sheets.
Defensively this is a world away from our early season form and obviously a lot of credit must go to Pepe and the rest of the defence as well as Masch and Lucas but I must say I’ve been really impressed by Kyrgiakos. This guy has really taken me by surprise and I think he has been superb in our last three games. 
He’s been almost like Sami Hyypia with a bit more pace. To be honest I think the guy is a bit of a thug who almost seems to intimidate the opposing forwards which I think is great, and I’d pay good money to see him take on Drogba. But besides all of that, he seems to be a really good defender and a much better player than I thought.
Dagger is fit again and it won’t be long before Carra can move back into the centre of our defence so Rafa will have some tough decisions to make, but on current form I would definitely like to see Hercules stay in the side particularly in our upcoming game against our wee neighbours.
But while we have been defensively strong, our attack is still not firing on all cylinders and that isn’t too surprising given the fact that most of our creative department is either injured or finding their way back to fitness. Torres, Benny Onion and Glenda are big losses to us on the attacking front and to a lesser extent I think Dagger is also a bit of a loss to us in an attacking sense because of the way he carries the ball into the opponents half instead of hoofing it upfield like the rest of our centre backs.
Of the players we have got available, Aquilani is getting better with each game but he still needs time, as does Maxi. Riera has done well since returning from injury but I still think there’s more to come from him and then we come to StevieG. Form-wise and injury-wise, this has been a difficult season for the skipper. He has hit bad patches of form before in his career but I think this season has probably been his worse spell in a Liverpool shirt. It seems like every time he’s looked like he might be getting back to form, he’s picked up an injury and we have most definitely missed him.
He came through for our youth system and has spent all of his career at the club and I think because of this sometimes we are all a little guilty of taking him for granted but he is a massively important player for us, more important even then Torres. We have shown plenty of times in the past that we are capable of winning games without him, but it’s a damn sight easier with him.
Gerrard is a real difference maker for us and if he can get his fitness and form back it will dramatically increase our chances of achieving what remains of our goals this season, without him it will be a lot tougher and I think that’s the way Rafa sees it as well. After our disappointing 0-0 draw at Wolves some people gave the boss a bit of stick for playing Gerrard for the full 90 minutes and not playing Aquilani but I’m sure that had we drawn or even lost to Wolves with Aquaman in the side, many of these same people would have also given the boss just as much stick for not playing Gerrard, sometimes it’s seems like he can’t win!
The fact of the matter is that whatever you might think about Benitez, I think we can all agree that he is knows all there is to know about the fitness of players, he’s almost obsessive about it. He will have known exactly where Gerrard was in terms of physical and match fitness ahead of the Wolves game. As it turned out Gerrard didn’t play very well against Wolves and he also didn’t play well in the first half against Bolton but in the second half he started to play like his old self again.
I know he would have been helped by the fact that Bolton took off the guy who was man-marking him but even before that guy went off Gerrard was starting to play with more confidence and having a bigger influence on the game. So the net result is the captain will now be raring to go in the Merseyside Derby this weekend and in the other big games we have coming up this month and that is thanks to some good management by the boss.
Had he not gotten the 90 minutes against Wolves under his belt, he wouldn’t have been as ready for our big game at the weekend as he is now and we are going to need him at his best against Everton. So maybe some people should hold off on their caustic criticisms of the boss and his decisions every time a result goes against us and accept the fact that he might know just a little bit more about the game than they do.
The fact of the matter is that the only thing that was disappointing about our game against Wolves was the result. Had we snuck in a goal and took the points, nobody would care about the performance and there would be no criticism of any of the boss’s decisions etc, and that’s one of the things that really bugs me about these people who only seem to come out of the woodwork to spout their shite when we lose or don’t get the result we’re looking for.
I think if you’ve got a valid point to make about the manager, a player or the team in general, that point should stand up whether we win or lose, not just when we lose. It would also help if many of these opinions weren’t so stupid and illogical. I heard a typical example on the radio after the Wolves game as some clown phoned in and moaned about Rafa not playing the same side that beat Spurs the previous weekend and then in his next breath he said, “ and what the hell was he thinking playing Lucas and Mascherano together in the centre of midfield.”
Obviously he had failed to notice or remember that Lucas and Masch had played together in the side that beat Spurs the previous weekend, the very same side he was complaining about Rafa not playing in the first place. But that and similar such rubbish is the kind of crap we seem to hear these days after every bad result and it’s extremely annoying to say the least. I’m not sure what these so called “supporters” are seeking to achieve with all of their piss and vinegar but it seems to me it’s not just our American owners who are set on ruining our club and I wish the whole bleeding lot of them would piss off.
Anyway, on to our game against our wee neighbours at the weekend and I’ll keep this short because I’ve already gone on long enough. Fitness permitting, I think Rafa will go with the same side that beat Bolton on Saturday although he might be tempted to throw Dagger back into the side.
As I mentioned early, Hercules has been playing very well at the centre of our defence and so has Skrtel but Dagger is a lot better at playing the ball than the both of them and in a tight game, as this is sure to be, having an extra player on the pitch who can pick out a pass might just make a difference and may see him getting a start. The other selection dilemma for the boss will be deciding between Lucas and Aquilani.
If we were playing away at Goodison I’d be certain he would go with Lucas but the fact this game is at Anfield means he might just decide to stick with Aquaman who is improving all the time. He did very well to get that header to Kuyt for our first goal against Bolton, just as he also did well to assist Kuyt for the first goal against Spurs. So it will be interesting to see which way the boss will go with this one but I suspect if we are going to try to outplay them it will be Aquaman but if we going to try to outfight them it will be Lucas, who is a terrific battler for us in midfield.
Overall this is obviously going to be a really tough game. Everton are in a bit of form at the moment and we’re not doing too badly either. I suspect the bookies might be favouring a draw but my money’s on us nicking the points with a hard fought 2-1 win.
Keep the Faith

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