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

Damn, this freezing weather is doing my head in. It’s colder than a penguin’s bollock’s over here at the moment and there’s so much pure white on the streets, I think Jermaine Pennant’s Dad must have got out on parole! A lot of sporting events have been cancelled in this part of the world due to the weather and I’m not sure if our game against Spurs will go ahead this weekend. Mind you, given the shite form we’ve been in for most of the season a postponement might be regarded as one of our better results!

Watching the half-arsed efforts of our team in recent months has been so painful at times, it’s been almost the footballing equivalent of having your nipples pierced with a knitting needle! Our FA Cup tie at Reading last Saturday was another perfect example. Sure, there are legitimate arguments we could make about match fitness tiredness and all that other stuff, but those excuses are beginning to ring a bit hollow.

As far as I’m concerned there really is no excuse for a Liverpool team to perform so poorly because at the end of the day you don’t need fitness or form to show character and a little bit of desire. Our CL exit and stuttering league form has made the FA Cup one of our main targets this season but it seemed to me that some of our players last week just couldn’t be arsed, I’ve had bowel movements with more spine!

You couldn’t really argue with the team the manager put out, it should certainly have been strong enough to get the job done but once again some of our players just didn’t perform on the day and in the end we were lucky to get away with a replay. Aurelio was so non-existent that I wasn’t sure if he was playing for a new contract or auditioning for the role of the invisible man.

Insua also didn’t have one of his better games but in fairness to him he got precious little cover from his more experienced colleague ahead of him. Reina, as ever, was great, Carra screamed like a madman and Skrtel played like one at times but together they kept us in it. Kuyt and Gerrard combined for our equalising goal and looked interested for about 10 minutes after that but in the second half they joined Aurelio on the MIA list. Torres ran his little cotton socks off and at least showed a desire that seemed sadly lacking in some of his team-mates. Eggnog partnered Torres in attack. I thought I better put that line in there in case some of you didn’t notice.

I was surprised to hear some fans being critical of Darby and Lucas because I thought they were two of our better performers on the day. Darby did well in the circumstances. It’s always difficult for a young player taking their first steps into the first team but it’s even tougher when the team is playing as badly as we are at the moment. If he hoofed the ball upfield a few times it’s understandable. As a young relatively inexperienced defender his first duty is to defend, the attacking side of things will develop as he gains confidence and experience just as it has done for Insua.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised to hear Lucas being criticised as he seems to be destined to remain a scapegoat in some people’s eyes but I thought he was our best player last week. We were outnumbered in midfield but he battled away almost single-handedly at times. I think the problem that Lucas has is that, subconsciously or otherwise, some people continually make comparisons between him and the likes of Gerrard, Masch and Alonso, and as these are three of the best players in the world in their relative positions there are few players who could live up to such comparisons, least of all a young midfielder who is still developing.

You’ve got to judge each player on their own merits and to be critical of Lucas because he doesn’t pose the attacking threat of Gerrard, the passing ability of Alonso or the battling qualities of Masch at his best, is extremely unfair. However, what I will say about the lad is that while at this stage of his young career he may be behind these guys in the areas I have mentioned, he could certainly teach all three of them a thing or two about consistency.

In my opinion, Lucas, Reina and Benny Onion have been our most consistent performers this season. While it’s true that our campaign has been pretty crap so far, I think our situation would be an awful lot worse right now if it weren’t for these three guy’s and Lucas for his part deserves a lot of credit in my book.

Woo hoo, while I’ve been writing this I just got the news that our game has been postponed. That’s a nice result for us and continues our fantastic unbeaten start to 2010! When the game gets rescheduled I fancy us to beat them 5-0 with goals from Rodriguez, Heskey, Van Nostril-hair, Cheryl Cole and Handy Henry.

So now that we don’t have a game we can focus on the transfer window and I’ve been doing some calculations here at Kopblog HQ. Like the other 109% of the population over here, my mathematics isn’t the greatest but with our £4.5 million sale of Dossena and the possibly imminent sale of Voronin, I reckon this will give the boss a total of £4.500, 001, a packet of Opal Fruits and a fun-size Snickers bar to play with in this January transfer window so far.

With this “massive” war chest of cash we could easily afford Lionel Messi’s toe nail clippings, David Villa’s left testicle or possibly even the nasal fluid of Kaka but while these things might come in handy if we were to install some kind of cloning device at Melwood, they probably wouldn’t enhance our chances of climbing back into the top 4 and perhaps picking up a bit of silverware this season.

So it looks as if Rafa will once again have to do a bit of bargain hunting in the January sales with whatever loose change the board allow him to spend, if our squad is to get any much-needed strengthening during this window. Our possible signing of Maxi Rodriguez seems to be getting closer all the time and if we do finally manage to bring him in it will be a very good start by the boss.

Rodriguez may not have been in the Atletico team recently but he is an experienced top quality player with the added bonus that he knows all about playing with Torres and is a good friend and international team mate of Mascherano. The challenge of moving to the Premiership and gaining a place in Argentina’s World Cup squad might help him to reproduce his best form and if he can do that, he could be a very nice asset for us in the remainder of the season.

Even with Johnson out for a month, I think we should have enough cover in defence but as I’ve said in previous blogs, we really need to bring in another striker. It’s great that Torres seems to have regained his fitness but with the battering he seems to take in every game we play these days, it might only be a matter of time before he’s injured again and we badly need more cover.

As usual plenty of names have been linked with us in the press but most likely there isn’t a grain of truth in any of them. Personally, if are planning to bring in another striker I would prefer to see us going for experience rather than potential. We have a number of promising young players in the first team squad who we all hope will develop into stars in the future but another experienced player might be just what we need right now, even if it’s only on a short-term basis.

I don’t normally suggest names but I was reading today about Eidur Gudjohnsen looking for a move back to England. I always liked that guy and according to reports he could be available from Monaco for a mere £1.5 million. He’s 31 now but considering our lack of funds and the fact that he knows all about the Premiership and wouldn’t need any time to adapt, someone like him could be ideal for us. But no doubt Rafa has his own targets and it will be interesting to see what develops in the coming weeks.

Keep the Faith

More bloody after shave and yet more bloody socks! I know Christmas is the time of year when we celebrate the birth of Santa but sometimes I think it might have been created as some kind of cunning plan by the sock manufacturers of the world.

Christmas has never been a particularly happy time of year for me. Maybe this is down to the fact that when I was a kid my Dad used to go out into our back yard and fire his shotgun in the air on Christmas Eve and then come in and tell us Santa was dead! Somehow the festive period never had the same appeal to me after that, but this year has been a bit better than most.

Outside of the fact that I will most probably need to grow another one or two new feet to have any hope of getting through my increasingly large collection of socks, I am thankfully a man of simple needs and all I really wanted this Christmas was a couple of Liverpool wins to give me something to smile about, and these were duly delivered.

While our display against Wolves was alright it wasn’t the kind of performance that had me thinking we’d turned any corners, but with a couple of goals and a clean sheet it was certainly a step in the right direction. I was a little worried ahead of our game at Villa Park but our performance, while still a long way from our best, was a lot more convincing and I was delighted when Torres’s clinical finish in injury time nicked us the points.

Reina was excellent for us once again. Some say he is “arguably” the best keeper in the Premiership but I don’t see any argument about it, he is definitely the best in my opinion and I wouldn’t swap him for any other goalkeeper in the world. We gave away too many chances at the back but Carra and Agger are growing more solid as a partnership at the centre of our defence. Insua seems to be getting better all the time and his crossing has certainly improved in recent games and Johnson did alright but sometimes I think he’s a little too casual in possession.

In midfield, Lucas was steady but he seems to feel a little extra responsibility when Masch isn’t beside him and was a little too hasty at times with his challenges. Gerrard looked close to his best at last. Benny Onion and Kuyt did alright in the wide areas but both of them looked a bit weary at times and Torres while still not at his best, is always dangerous as he proved with his goal and hopefully that will help to lift him for the games ahead. So overall, this was the best 90 minutes we’ve seen from the team in quite awhile but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Aquaman was able to start in both games and while he isn’t yet as influential for us as I’m sure he’s going to be in the not too distant future, I think that’s perfectly understandable at this stage so I found it incredible when I read a piece of crap by Oliver Holt in the Daily Manure a couple of days ago already branding him a flop. A shite article by Holt is certainly nothing new, let’s face it the guy is most definitely no stranger to Knobville, but even for him this was an all-time low.

I mean surely any idiot would know that Aquilani had been out injured for about seven months and that at the moment he is in the early stages of not only regaining his match fitness and confidence but also trying to adapt to the Premiership. And yet this moron brands him a flop after he’s only played 202 minutes of football! It’s just unbelievable, but I guess that’s what passes for journalism in the gutter press these days.

Anyway our focus now turns to the FA Cup and our game away at Reading later today. This competition has a lot more significance to us now that we are out of the title picture and the CL so at the very least we need a decent run in the cup. Reading recently sacked their manager and currently sit in 20th place in the Championship but we cannot dare take them for granted.

With an eight day gap between this and our next league game I don’t think Rafa will need or want to make too many changes to the side so I would expect to see most of our big guns starting the game. Johnson is apparently going to be out for at least a month after picking up an injury at Villa so we’ll obviously need to make a change there and as we are trying to nurse Torres along it’s possible he might start on the bench but other than that I would expect the same team that started for us on Tuesday.

These type of cup games, particularly away from home, are always quite tough and I don’t expect that this one will be any different. One of the big negatives in our play this season has been how slow we’ve been at getting the ball from back to front. Too often we’ve allowed teams too much time to regroup at the back before working the ball towards their penalty area. Maybe it’s a lack of vision among some of our players but we seem to almost over pass the ball at times.

Our passing needs to be a lot crisper and our play a little more direct, in my opinion. These things will no doubt develop as we build up our confidence and momentum but if we can show some improvement in these areas against Reading today it would certainly increase our chances, if not this could turn out to be a hard slog. Either way I’m expecting a victory and it would be great if we did it in style but as long as we get ourselves through to the next round, I don’t really care how we do it.

In other matters, the January transfer window is now opening and I feel we simply must make some moves in the market. Our squad badly needed more strengthening over the summer but our moronic owners are far more interested in balance sheets than team sheets and they didn’t release enough funds. Now it is high time for them to realise that we must speculate to accumulate, but I won’t be holding my breath waiting for it to happen.

If they had half a brain between them you would think they would weigh up the financial benefits a top four finish, an FA Cup win or even a Europa Cup win would bring us and be on the phone to the boss asking him what he needs. But I’ve learned to never underestimate the greed and stupidity of these two clowns so I expect that any signings we may make during this window will be down to the managers wheeling and dealing.

No matter how the boss manages to do it, we badly need to bring in at least a couple of new faces in the attacking/midfield area of the team. As usual lots of names have been linked with us in the press but the one that seems to be gathering a lot of momentum at the moment is Maxi Rodriguez. I’m not sure how much truth there is in these rumours but a player of his quality and experience that can play on either wing would certainly be a very welcome addition to our ranks.

But even if we do manage to sign him, we still need to sign another decent striker. Eggnog is still only an apprentice and Kuyt just isn’t prolific enough, we need another option. We are relying far too heavily on Torres and Gerrard to get the majority of our goals so finding someone else who can weigh in with a few must surely be a priority.

It won’t be easy to find such a player in the bargain basements that our manager is forced to shop in but there must be somebody out there who fits the bill and can do a job for us even if it’s only on a short term basis. This is the time for our scouting department to really earn their corn and it should be interesting to see how things develop over the next month.

Happy New Year and Keep the Faith

Christ, it’s depressing being a Reds fan at the moment. Lately it seems like every time we hit rock bottom someone hands us a shovel and we just keep on digging. It’s getting to the stage where I’m beginning to wonder if the real Liverpool are ever going to stand up to be counted?

Just for a little while last week, things started to look a bit brighter. Although we made hard work of it, we got a deserved win against Wigan in midweek and then on Friday we got a pretty decent draw in the Europa League. All that was then needed to send us all into Christmas with a smile on our faces was for the team to travel to the home of the Premierships bottom club and bring home three points, but clearly that was too much to ask for.

I’ve searched long and hard to find the correct words to adequately describe our performance at the weekend and after much deliberation I think the words “complete shite” pretty much covers it. We are in such a fragile position at the moment and such a dreadful display was really the last thing we needed right now. Some may blame the manager and some may blame the players, but as far as I’m concerned they all deserve a great big kick in the arse after that pathetic effort.

Sure the referee was a complete moron and did us no favours. The guy gave out so many cards, I thought he was being sponsored by Hallmark but that’s just a convenient red herring. Incompetent referees are fairly commonplace these days and it’s something you just have to deal with. Of course their decisions can have a big impact on a game but they don’t prevent you from passing the ball to somebody in the same coloured shirt, creating opportunities and getting a few shots on target etc.

In my opinion the seeds of our own destruction were sown before there was even a ball kicked in the game. I’m a supporter of the boss and in many previous blogs I’ve laid out my reasons but I’ve also said in many previous blogs that there are times when he totally does my head in, and Saturday was most definitely one of those occasions.

It’s always very easy to give a hind-sighted opinion after a game has finished, people like Aunty Gray have made a career out of it, but I suspect that any thinking Red who saw our team sheet ahead of the game would have been very worried and rightly so. Portsmouth were on the bottom of the table for a very good reason and yet we went seeking a badly needed win with a team loaded with defensive players.

Seven of the ten outfield players we started are defensive players. Our only three truly offensive players were Torres who isn’t fully fit and yet had to lead the line alone with little or no support, Gerrard who hasn’t been able to find his form as yet and seems to have left his fighting spirit in that infamous nightclub and Kuyt who seems to have been abducted by aliens a couple of months ago and been replaced with a head-less chicken.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m a fully paid up member of the Dirk Kuyt Appreciation Society but even I’m surprised and how undroppable he seems to be. I’m sure he’ll bounce back to form again as he’s done in the past, but in the meantime isn’t it time he was dropped/rested for awhile?

I’m sure the gaffer had his reasons for selecting this team but for the life of me I can’t see it. I watched the game with three mates of mine and when we saw the team sheet we were all of the opinion, as I’m sure many Reds fans were, that it was a team that would get a lot of possession but would struggle to penetrate and unfortunately that’s pretty much the way it turned out. I don’t want to be too harsh on the boss as he’s taking enough stick everywhere else but I just think he got his team wrong on this occasion.

If there were no other choices then you just have to accept it and move on but in my opinion we did have a number of better options that we could have used. Dossena was the most obvious eyesore on our team sheet. Now I don’t have an axe to grind with the guy, he’s a grafter for sure and it can’t be easy for him having to play the game with his waist size displayed on the back of his shirt, but starting with him on the left wing seemed a bit bizarre to say the least.

On the bench we had Benny Onion, Aurelio and the returning Babel and perhaps each of them had a certain amount of fitness issues but surely we could have got 90 minutes with a combination of any two of those three that would have been more effective then even a fully fit Dossena. Personally I’d start with Benny even if he were only 75% fit because he’s been worth his weight in gold for us over the last year or so. I’m not sure how much a few ounces of gold is worth these days but whatever it is he’s definitely worth it.

The other thing that bothered me about our team was that we were playing against the bottom side in the league with only one upfront. Torres was battered for most of the game by the Pompey defence who seemed to be given a free pass by the referee. I thought he would have benefitted greatly from having somebody up there with him, not just as a partner but also as a decoy. No doubt had we gone that way the undroppable Dirk would have been given the job but I would have liked to see Eggnog because he’s in confident mood at the moment and scoring goals.

So basically, given the options we had available, I think we would have been far better off going with a midfield of Benny, Masch, Gerrard and Aurelio with Torres and Noggin the Nog upfront, and had Kuyt, Skrtel, Babel, Pacheco and Lucas on the bench which would have enabled us to open it up or lock it down depending on how the game was going. For me this would have given us a much better balance between defence and attack, and posed a much bigger threat to Pompey.

However, that’s just my opinion and as the old saying goes, opinions are like Allardyces. It’s always easy to play musical players and second guess the managers decisions but it’s worth keeping in mind that he’s the only one with all of the facts and, with the exception of Mick McCarthy, I’ve never seen a manager who sends a team out to lose so we must assume he had a game plan in mind that clearly didn’t work out.

Which brings me to the far more worrying aspect about our display at the weekend and that was the lack of real spirit shown by the side. Portsmouth showed far more desire on the day, while most of our players had so little life they could have been mistaken for the cast of East Enders. I heard Hansen say afterwards that as he watched our players leaving the pitch, only Carra, Reina, Gerrard and Torres looked to be really disappointed about the result and if that’s the case we could be in far more trouble then we realised.

A lack of form, fitness or even confidence can be fixed eventually, but a lack of heart is far more difficult to repair. The problems we’ve endured since the start of the season cannot be undone, we are where we are and it’s where we go from here that’s important. It’s high time for our team to suck it up and stand up to be counted but if they can’t even muster the heart and desire to do that, then we might as well just pack it in now.

Rafa Benitez has done some great work for us under difficult circumstances and with precious little support from the boardroom, but from a playing perspective this could be his most difficult challenge to date. Saturday’s performance will have been as unacceptable to him as it was to us but he must find a way to turn things around quickly and there are several of our players who need to take a long hard look at themselves, but perhaps now is not the time to get into that.

Anyway, it’s almost time for the big fat man dressed in red and white to climb down our chimneys, and it’s nice to see Jan Molby keeping himself busy (sorry I couldn’t resist). My Christmas hasn’t got off to the best of starts. We’ve got some visitors coming to stay with us over the festive period and I’ve been looking everywhere for a big turkey but everywhere is sold out, apparently Mark Hughes bought them all!

Hopefully we’ll get some belated Christmas cheer on Boxing Day with a confidence boosting win over Wolves. Given our current fragile state it won’t be easy and you can bet they won’t be resting any of their top players against us but you’ve got to fancy us at Anfield and I’m banking on a win of any description.

Merry Christmas and as ever, Keep the Faith

Well I’ve got to admit I’m feeling quite down at the moment and wondering when the hell this bloody awful run we’ve been having will ever come to an end. Like any real Liverpool fan, every loss or bad result we suffer is like a knife to my heart but yesterday’s defeat against the Arse was particularly hard to take because it gave me a really disappointing end to what should have been a perfect weekend.

Because we will not be able to see them over the festive period, on Friday morning my wife and I flew over to London for a Christmas visit to our young Niece and two young Nephews and we had a brilliant time. On Friday evening we brought them ice skating to a great outdoor rink outside the British museum. On Saturday we went to see the stage version of Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang in Oxford which was terrific and on Sunday we sat down to a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.

With such a hectic schedule, I hardly had time to scratch myself but I did manage to catch Saturday’s football results and was thinking that everything was now in place for Liverpool to put the cherry on the cake of my perfect weekend with a nice little home win against the Gunners, but unfortunately once again this season we showed our uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!

Because I committed the cardinal sin of leaving my missus to book our flights, I was travelling home while the game was taking place! All I’ve seen is some short highlights of the major incidents and read a couple of match reports, so I can’t really comment on individual performances but from an overall context it seems that we had the game in our hands but we blew it.

While we still have several players trying to recover their match fitness it appears that, on paper at least, we did start the game with what could be considered our strongest eleven. From the reports I’ve read it seems that we did dominate the first half and should have been 2 or 3 up at half-time.

I saw Torres’s early chance and could only think that had he been closer to the peak of his powers he would most definitely have put it away, and as for the penalty incident with Gerrard, well from what I’ve seen of it all I can say is that if that’s wasn’t a penalty then I just don’t know what a penalty is anymore. But at least Deadly Dirk did manage to put us in front and as we would be playing into the Kop End in the second half we still looked a good bet to take the points.

However our confidence is extremely fragile at the moment and when we unluckily conceded an OG early in the second period, by all accounts it just drained away. Things got even worse for us when we eventually fell behind to a wonder goal from Arse-shaving and unfortunately we never really recovered from that. Johnson was at the centre of both of these incidents and while I can’t comment on his overall performance, I am a fan of his and regard him as one of our top players and I just hope this doesn’t affect him too much in the games ahead.

In the end it was another disappointing result which will no doubt bring even more flak for the boss but under the circumstances I don’t see what else he can be expected to do. If I was to have one complaint about him it’s that I wish he would be a little more guarded with his comments when he’s talking to the British media as he used to be in the past.

It’s never easy when those bastards twist what you say and take everything out of context but I must admit I winced when earlier in the week I heard him say words to the effect that our season begins against Arsenal. The game already had enough pressure on it and I know that he would want to appear confident in the face of that pressure, but a statement like that only increased the heat and left himself open to more ridicule if the result went against us, as it did.

But that’s really just a minor point, in the overall scheme of things all he can do is try to get our big players back on the pitch and build up their match fitness and confidence as best he can, which is what he’s in the process of doing. If our squad wasn’t strong enough to cope with the unbelievable run of injuries we’ve suffered since the season began then the main fault for that certainly doesn’t lay at his door.

It makes me laugh when I hear plastic fans and so-called “experts” talking about our lack of options in the absence of the likes of Torres and Gerrard etc almost as if it’s some kind of revelation to the rest of us. I mean do these morons actually believe that a man of the considerable intelligence and experience of Rafa Benitez isn’t aware of these things? We are a club with champagne ambitions but we give our manager a lemonade transfer budget and expect him to perform miracles.

To a certain extent that’s exactly what he has been doing since he got here and I shudder to think where we’d be now without him, but he doesn’t have an endless supply of rabbits in his hat. If he’d had enough backing to bring in the first choice players he’s had on his list over the years, I believe we might well have had a couple of titles in the bag by now and perhaps even another Champions League.

Without the type of funding needed to match our ambitions, he’s been forced to mainly make compromise signings. Some have worked, some haven’t but have usually been sold on at a profit. The lack of serious funds has made the task of turning our fortunes around into a long term project, which is frustrating for all of us but it is the only way it is going to happen with the current owners in charge.

Time has been needed, and still is, to gradually upgrade the side and develop all of the talented youngsters we’ve assembled in the Academy and the reserves. We are now well down the road of this process and to abandon it now would, in my opinion, be madness and set us back years. Shanks knows it’s frustrating but we need be a bit more patient and, as ever, keep the faith.

As things stand at the moment we are in a false position in the league but I think things are set to change. Just about everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong for us this season so far. Outside of our obvious incredibly bad luck with injuries, we’ve had wonder goals, last minute goals and even beach ball goals all going in against us. As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, we’ve also had a number of clear penalties denied to us by incompetent officials and while our defence, for the most part, hasn’t been playing at its best level so far, it has to be said that it seems like every single lapse has been punished severely and we just haven’t had a single break.

But there’s nothing we can do about all of that now and on the plus side we’ve at least got almost all of our main players back again. As disappointing as the result was at the weekend, the players should all be a lot closer now in terms of match fitness and this will bring results and confidence in the games ahead. We cannot take anything for granted given the type of luck we’ve had this season but we now start a little run of fixtures that should see us build a bit of momentum and climb the table.

It all starts with our home game against Wigan on Wednesday. Under normal circumstances this type of game would be ideal for us but given the current fragile state of confidence of our side it could be a bit nervy. However, I’ve got to think we’ve now got enough of our big players available to deliver a result and my money’s on a confidence boosting 2-0 win, by any means necessary.

Keep the Faith