What an amazing deadline day it turned out to be for us on Monday. Under G &H, past transfer windows seemed to be all about who was leaving and how much money could be raised for interest payments because they certainly didn’t give Rafa much cash to bring anybody in but on Monday we were in the thick of things and it was real edge of the seat stuff that had a little bit of everything and kept us guessing right up to the last minute.

First off I think you’ve got to say that the FSG guys really came through for us with two big money signings and attempts to further strengthen the squad with bids for Adam, Richards and Young turned down. While it’s true that our net outlay was only £1.8 million it’s still good to see that the money from our sales was ploughed straight back into the team and besides this the £22.8 million for Suarez was spent before anybody knew about the Torres situation. Owners need to earn the trust of supporters and it’s even more difficult at our club given our past experiences but I think those guys took a big step forward in that regard and I’m feeling confident that they will make more funds available in the summer.

I can’t say I’m thrilled about all the events of the transfer window but overall I’ve got to say I’m feeling pretty good about how things turned out for us, which is a long way from where I expected us to be a few days ago.

Last Friday I was as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market! In the early part of the day I was delighted to hear we had agreed a fee for Luis Suarez and just as I was getting excited about our new strike partnership, I was stunned with the news that Torres had handed in a transfer request and I felt like someone who had found a fiver and then lost a tenner!

But after mulling it over for awhile I found that I was actually more bothered by the timing of it then the fact that Torres was leaving. I was concerned about whether we would have enough time to get in a replacement, I wasn’t overly concerned about us being able to cope without Torres because, let’s be honest, with the exception of four or five games we’ve been coping without him for almost a year now. Obviously, it’s annoying to see him go back on his word about not signing for another English club by signing for the chavs and then hearing his stomach churning words proclaiming the chavs a bigger club than Liverpool and all of that other crap but we got £50 million and ultimately I believe we will be better off without him.

Torres is high maintenance and with us now having positive new owners, a new manager who has us playing a more entertaining brand of new/old football and an exciting new young strike partnership, I believe he is baggage we can do without. He didn’t appreciate what he had at Liverpool and now he can get stuffed. He has moved from a club with a rich history to a club with a rich owner but a footballer’s career is a relatively short one and one day when the money is in the bank, the champagne bubbles have gone flat and the glimmering medals have lost their lustre, I think he will look back at his decisions and his conduct over the last year with a lot of regret.

As far as Liverpool’s history is concerned he has gone from being a headline to a footnote and he won’t fare much better with the plastic flag waving chav fans either, as the vast majority of them think that Osgood, Harris, Hutchinson and Dixon are a firm of solicitors! I honestly think our dressing room will now be a happier place without him but I did get a little worried when I heard that the deal almost fell through at the last minute, apparently John Terry couldn’t agree personal terms with Torres’s girlfriend! Anyway Nando you enjoy yourself there and we’ll look forward to seeing you real soon.

On a much more positive note, I’m excited about our new strike partnership of Suarez and Carroll. I felt a little sorry for Suarez, because his signing was totally over-shadowed by the Torres situation but perhaps it might be a good thing that he avoided the limelight. I remember him playing for Uruguay at the World Cup and he looked like a very good player, when he used his feet! I never saw him playing for Ajax but his stats are very impressive even for the Dutch league and some people who’s opinions I have a lot of respect for, including Dalglish, say he is a very exciting talent and that’s good enough for me.

I must admit I didn’t see the Andy Carroll signing coming, but it was a very pleasant surprise. At 22, the guy certainly fits the profile the club is aiming for in terms of being in terms of being an exciting young talent. While he is still raw, he is a big powerful lad who is good in the air and good on the ground, scores a good range of goals, has a lot of assists and from what I’ve seen of him he has plenty of energy and gives it everything he has every time he plays. In short he has everything you could want in a young striker and all he needs now is to build his experience and continue to develop. Fortunately for him and for us, he will now be developing his game under the guidance of Kenny Dalglish.

It took a record breaking £35 million transfer fee for us to sign Carroll but that’s not the players fault. I just want to see him do his stuff on the pitch and I’ll let the accountants worry about the price tag. The fact that Suarez and Carroll are coming in at the same time might actually help them both. If only one of them signed for a big fee they would have to endure all the pressure that it can bring but with both of them there the burden is halved. Unfortunately we won’t be seeing Carroll in action for a couple of weeks due to his thigh injury but I believe we’ve got the clearance through in time for Little Luis to play in our game against Stoke tonight so it will be interesting to get a first look at him.

I don’t like playing against Stoke. They play to their strengths and I don’t have a problem with that but it’s very boring to watch. All this long ball stuff, playing for throw-ins and the constant delay’s while there guy wipes the ball down with a towel and the big wind up to the throw-in just does my head in because it stops the game from flowing which is of course the idea but I don’t like to watch it. It will be interesting to see how Dalglish will set us up to deal with them and hopefully we can impose our game on them. Anyway, I’m feeling positive at the moment so I’ll put my money on a 2-0 win for The Reds and hopefully Suarez can nick one of them to make it a perfect evening.

Overall I feel good about the way things are going for us on and off the pitch at the moment. I think a lot of the work being done at the moment won’t fully pay off until next season but you can see we’ve started to make real progress since King Kenny took over. I expect we’ll lose a game or two here and there but if we keep working away and can stay around the Europa League places, do a bit more strengthening in the summer in defence and in the wide areas, we’ll be in great shape for the next campaign. The future’s bright, the future’s Red!

Keep the Faith

Super performance and a great result for The Reds over Wolves at the weekend. The return of Dalglish has been quite literally like a second coming and on another biblical note, if we were to go back in time a couple of weeks and believed the spin we were hearing from our then manager Roy Hodgson and his media cronies, then surely what we are now witnessing is the greatest return from the dead since Lazarus!

But we all knew we were being fed a phony line by those clowns and the football we have played in the short time since Kenny’s return has exposed the myths that those guys were peddling and left them all with a lot of egg on their faces. Anyone who thought that managers were becoming less important in the modern game should have a good look at what’s going on at Liverpool these days and think again.

Hodgson often bemoaned the fact that we had inherited a poor squad of players which must have done wonders for the confidence in our dressing room. One of the reasons he put forward for our poor performances was that the squad wasn’t his, which conveniently overlooked the fact that when we lost against the likes of Newcastle and Blackburn etc, they had recently appointed managers in charge with squads that could hardly be considered their own and yet they seemed to have little trouble it making the best of things and getting a performance from their team. It’s hard to believe that Kenny is dealing with the same group of players. Unlike Hodgson, he hasn’t yet had the opportunity to make any signings but he is making the best of the squad he has and, publicly at least, telling the players they are good enough and they just need to believe in themselves. Compared to the confidence sapping statements of the previous manager, this must be like music to the ears of our players and I think we can see the effect it is having on the performances.

Another old chestnut from Hodgson and his cronies that we heard endlessly during his six months in charge was that he needed more time to get his ideas over to the players, another lame excuse that we’ve seen exposed since Dalglish took over. After barely a week in charge and a couple of training sessions it was evident that Kenny was having no trouble getting his ideas over to the players. There were a lot of positives for us to take from our 1-0 cup defeat at the Theatre of Prawns, even more in our 2-1 defeat at Blackpool, our first half display against our wee neighbours was some of the best football we’ve played for a very long time and this culminated in our terrific performance in demolishing Wolves at the weekend which stands in stark contrast to our dreadful display when they beat us at Anfield just a few weeks ago.

I know Hodgson is gone now and I wish him well because I genuinely think he did what might be considered his best in a job where he was clearly out of his depth but I just find it slightly annoying that I am still seeing little suggestions in the media here and there that he was unfairly treated and wasn’t given a proper chance. The job of a Liverpool manager these days seems to be three-pronged if you want to be successful, you’ve got to manage the players, you’ve got to manage the supporters and you’ve got to manage the media.

In my opinion Rafa Benitez succeeded at two out of three of these but it was his poor relationship with the media more so than the 7th place finish that ultimately led to his undoing and you only have to remember back to Martin Broughton’s response to some angered Liverpool fans who confronted him about Rafa’s dismissal when he told them “clearly the media don’t agree with you.” , but that’s another blog! Roy Hodgson had plenty of friends in the media but alienated himself from the players and the supporters with his stupid comments and incredibly dull and boring tactics.

But in Dalglish I believe we have a man who is a master of the game, the supporters idolize him, the players are inspired by him and he is brilliant at dealing with the media, as could be seen in the awesome way he dealt with the question about transfers on Sly Sports after the match on Saturday, which was an absolute classic in my opinion. He is very comfortable dealing with the media and actually seems to use it as a tool to reinforce his messages and instill confidence to the players and the supporters. Ok, so I know that it’s still early days but I’m delighted that he’s here and I think he’s done a brilliant job so far and made a great choice in bringing in Steve Clarke to work alongside him.

I don’t think any of us would argue that our squad is strong enough at the moment but it is certainly strong enough for us to be doing much better then we were doing under Hodgson. Winning the league or perhaps even finishing in the top four might have always been beyond us but I think we should have been certainly good enough to be around the top six. Thankfully we seem to be moving in the right direction now that Dalglish is in charge and we are playing some good football which the players seem to be enjoying and so am I.

Just before Christmas is the time when I usually start to make my plans to get over for a few games, but this year I didn’t bother. These are hard times for us all and I wasn’t about to waste any of my hard earned cash travelling over to watch Liverpool playing Hodgson’s style of shite football. But what a difference there’s been since Kenny arrived. Now I’m looking forward to our games again and I want to get over to as many as I can. The attendance figures were dropping dramatically under Roy (understandably in my opinion) but I bet they’ll be getting back to normal again soon and that’s sure to please the NESV guys.

I think Kenny and Co will milk every drop they can get from the current players but while performances are improving we still badly need some reinforcements. Our NESV owners did well in moving fairly quickly in removing Hodgson and appointing Dalglish but this January window is another test for them ahead of the even bigger test to come in the summer and these are also big tests for Damian Comolli. How much money the owners will put in and whether Comolli can secure the signings the manager wants is the big question that will be occupying our minds for the rest of this month.

There have been interesting names linked with us including a vampire and a member of the Adams Family but our valuations seem a long way off and whether these things can be resolved in the next week remains to be seen. But if we come out of yet another transfer window and once again haven’t signed some decent attacking support for Torres I will be very disappointed. Obviously we want to strengthen the side for the remainder of this season but even more importantly we need to integrate some new faces into the team in preparation for next season when a return to the top four will surely be a minimum expectation.

Anyway, I’m happy to say we’ve got a game on Wednesday against Fulham at Anfield and I’m looking forward to it as I am all of our games since Kenny’s return. Our form has been getting better with each game and with Gerrard returning from suspension and desperate to play, we should be even stronger. There are no easy games home or away in the Premiership anymore and Fulham will be a stubborn opponent for us but I can’t see past a Liverpool win and I’ll put my money on a goal for each of the new faces I expect to see at the club by the end of this window, so a 3-0 Reds win and the Legend continues!

Keep the Faith

“It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.” That famous opening line from Charles Dickens, A Tale of two Cities was beaten into me at school and as we approach the end of another frustrating year it has popped into my mind as a very good description of what we Liverpool fans have had to endure in 2010.

It is the best of times in terms of it being a year that saw us finally get rid of Hicks and Gillett, the club’s two former parasitic owners who were bleeding the club dry and pushing us towards extinction, but it is also the worst of times in terms of what we have seen on the pitch over these past 12 months. The year began with Rafa’s failed attempts to turn around a poor, injury-ravaged start to the previous campaign and the media with perhaps the assistance of one or two of our own players ensured that he would never see another one so we had to say goodbye to the man who made us believe again.

There then followed an “extensive” worldwide search of Fulham to find his successor and once again the media with perhaps the assistance of one or two of our own players more than played their part in saddling us with Roy Hodgson. Under normal circumstances there is usually at least a little bit of excitement among supporters when a new manager comes in but Hodgson’s arrival at Anfield was greeted with almost universal indifference among Liverpool supporters. The media tried to talk the guy up with their usual mix of spin and bullshit but we’ve taken so much crap from the media over the years, most of us have become totally immune from their influence and developed minds of our own.

I’m not sure what options the club had at the time but no matter what they were, it’s really hard to think of a more mundane appointment than Roy Hodgson. Perhaps, with the ownership situation and courtroom battles ahead, they felt Hodgson would be a safe pair of hands to steady the ship while things were sorted out in the boardroom but whatever the reasons, it’s turned out to be an absolute disaster and undoubtedly the worst managerial appointment in the history of the club.

I think we all realised from the beginning that this guy didn’t have the credentials to manage the club but we tried to support him and hoped that maybe he would rise to the occasion. However it quickly became apparent that he was totally out of his depth and about as trustworthy as an Irish banker. Last night’s 1-0 home defeat against bottom club Wolves was the latest in an increasingly long line of embarrassments since he took charge of the side and a perfect example of the mind-numbingly dull tactics and complete stupidity that have become all too familiar to us over the past six months.

I don’t have any coaching badges, I was a boy scout for two years and never even got a poxy merit badge, but Shankly once said “football is a simple game over complicated by idiots”, and I don’t think there has ever been a better description of football so it’s the way I’ve always tried to view the game as a fan. Take the situation with Steven Gerrard last night. While he was out injured we had Meireles and Lucas developing an understanding and doing well in the centre of midfield. We also had Maxi doing well on the left side and Kuyt getting stuck in on the right. Maybe not a brilliant midfield but it had balance and it looked like it would get better if allowed to develop over a few games. But then Gerrard becomes available again and Hodgson throws him into the side like a hand grenade!

He played him in the centre of midfield, moved Meireles to the right, Kuyt to the left and dropped Maxi. The result was chaos that totally unbalanced the side. Kuyt kept coming inside which meant we had no width on the left except for Konchesky, which definitely meant we had no width on the left! Gerrard and Meireles seemed to be switching positions throughout the game and at times seemed confused about where they were supposed to be playing and Lucas was left back peddling trying to plug the gaps as best he could. Surely it would have been far simpler and more sensible to leave the midfield in place and let Gerrard take Eggnog’s place instead of disrupting half the side to accommodate him.

There are times when you can blame players for not performing but our problems on Wednesday and in many of our other games this season have, in my opinion, been mainly caused by bad management or at the very least bad judgement by the manager. If the team is set up correctly and doesn’t perform then you can perhaps look at the players but when the team is poorly set up, as it was on Wednesday and in other games, then you’ve got to look at the manager. Hopefully we will be active in the forthcoming transfer window but bringing in new players will not compensate for having a manager who is about as much use as a chocolate teapot clearly isn’t up to the job either on or off the pitch.

Much has been made of the crowd reaction on Wednesday the chants for “Dalglish” and “Hodgson for England” etc. I’ve never heard the Kop chanting such things towards our own manager before but on the other hand I don’t think I have ever seen such an inept display by a Liverpool team at Anfield before either so I think the crowd were perfectly right to vent their frustration and Hodgson only has himself to blame. Afterwards he made the situation even worse by hitting out at the crowd and has since tried to row back from his comments but it’s too late for that, I think he burned his bridges with the fans a long time ago and I have no sympathy for him.

His comments after the game were all over the net and in the media but his condescending remarks towards Liverpool supporters, known as the most knowledgeable fans in the game, go back much further than that. As I recall, he referred to the fans protest against Hicks and Gillett “a distraction” and in various other interviews he has said that Liverpool fans expect the side to win every single game or it’s a disaster, he’s also said on a number of occasions that we have unrealistic expectations and recently said that we are expecting someone to come in with a magic wand etc. Comments such as these make it sound as if he regards us as a bunch of kneejerk morons who don’t know our football and our opinions are unimportant. It makes you wonder if this guy has ever even met a Liverpool fan.

Like football supporters of all clubs we do have a kneejerk section of fans but 90% of us are pretty far-minded and most certainly do know our football. For the record, I don’t expect the team to win every single game but I do expect us to win most and at least put in a decent performance in the ones that we lose. My expectations are that a team that finished second two seasons ago and 7th last season with a crippling injury list for most of the campaign should at least be capable of challenging for a top four position with a largely fully fit squad and not be sitting three points off the relegation zone, I don’t think that’s unreasonable! And I don’t expect a manager to arrive with a magic wand but I would like a man in charge who knows what he’s doing, respects the fans and can take the club forward playing a decent brand of football because we certainly haven’t got that at the moment!

So my number one wish for 2011 is that we get a new manager in as soon as possible. Hodgson might make it at a smaller club but he knows as much about being a Liverpool manager as a hedgehog knows about crossing the road and if he was a dog he would have been taken out behind the barn and put out of his misery a long time ago! As for who should come in, I don’t really know. The romantic in me would like to see King Kenny back in charge until at least the end of the season but he’s probably been out of the game too long. I don’t think a Rafa return would be on the cards either. I doubt he’d be happy working with Comolli and his relationship with some of the players might make it difficult. One of his big problems last season was that there were too many personalities in our dressing room, and most of them belonged to Steven Gerrard!

So maybe a fresh start with somebody new would be best for all concerned. There have been a few interesting names mentioned but one man I would hate to see in charge is Moaning O’Neill. He is another media darling who will be sure to be pushed forward by his press buddies if the position becomes available but I think he would be just as bad as Hodgson. Ironically the only British manager I would have any interest in seeing taking over at Anfield would be Owen Coyle, the manager of our next opponents Bolton. I think he is doing a great job at Bolton and if we were looking for a bright young footballing manager, he would certainly be an interesting choice, although I think it’s more likely we would go for someone a bit more established such as the much touted Rijkaard.

But I suppose its pointless speculating about it until the NESV guys bite the bullet and get rid of this waster Hodgson before he does even more damage. Anyway I’m off now to celebrate the New Year with my old friend Stella so a Happy New Year to you all and I suggest you go out tonight and consume large quantities of alcohol because I’ve just looked at our upcoming fixtures and I think we’re all going to need it!

Keep the Faith

Man, it’s colder than a penguins bollocks over here at the moment. We’ve been getting a lot of snow recently; in fact there’s been so much pure white powder everywhere it’s been like Christmas at the Collymore’s! I’ve just recovered consciousness after our 0-0 snorefest against Utrecht in the Europa League on Wednesday. I wasn’t going to watch the game but as I’d already washed my hair, didn’t have any paint to watch drying and at this time of year I’ve no grass to watch growing, I decided to have a look and immediately fell into a coma.

Our performances this season have, for the most part, been as flat as a witch’s tit but while our displays may not win any prizes for entertainment, it’s quite possible that Roy Hodgson’s tactics may provide science with a big step forward in its search to find a cure for insomnia! I’ve been supporting Liverpool for over 40 years now and I thought I’d seen everything but I can honestly that in all that time I have never felt such a total lack of enthusiasm and complete boredom with the team that I am experiencing right now.

There is more life in a tramps vest than there is in almost all of our performances these days and I really couldn’t be arsed anymore. The way a team plays is often a reflection of the man they have in charge. For example, the mancs tend to a bit stubborn and dogged, the Arse have an artistic flair, Spurs are a bit cocky in their play, Everton play pig ugly football and our football is predictable and mind numbingly dull, just like our manager.

In Wednesday’s game there was nothing at stake as we’d already won our group and qualified for the next stage regardless of the result. Surely this was an ideal opportunity to take the shackles off, let the players play some football and build up some confidence for the games ahead but even in those circumstances all we got was yet more complete and utter shite! Allowing under 16’s into the ground free, teasing them by having Torres on the bench and then not playing him and subjecting them to such complete crap on the pitch most surely rate as some form of child abuse and I think Uncle Woy should be brought up on charges.

I just can’t take anymore of this clown Hodgson, the guy is so old most of his memories are in black and white! It’s not so much old in terms of years, I mean I’m no spring chicken myself anymore in fact I’m so old I can remember back to a time when the Simpsons were funny and I’m so out of touch that I thought a Wiki Leak was some kind of bed-wetting problem! It’s just the football and the “tactics” Hodgson employs seems to me to be old, dull and boring, a bit like the Christmas TV listings!

It’s not just boring, it’s also predictable and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the direction we are going in under Hodgson. We are 17 games into the season and we have won 6 games, lost 7 and points-wise we are closer to the relegation zone then we are to the top four, with a goal difference of minus 1. We’ve got a defence full of snowmen who melt when the heat is on them, we’ve got a midfield with all the width of an anorexic banana and we’ve got an attack who couldn’t find the goal with a bloody Sat Nav!

Forget all the double-talk and bullshit excuses, this is the reality of life under Roy and there will be no miraculous turnaround in the second half of the season. My prediction for the rest of the season, I bet is the same as most Liverpool fans. We will win some games and we will continue to lose some games and we will hover somewhere around the top ten, with a couple of good signings in January we might even be lucky enough to sneak into one of the Europa League qualifying spots. The mancs will put us out of the FA Cup and in the Europa League we will get to the quarters or semis. And when we get to the end of the campaign Roy will tell us all that none of the team’s problems are down to him, we should be grateful for what we have and be thankful that he is here to guide us in our journey towards mediocrity. Congratulations Roy, in less than half a season you’ve managed to turn Liverpool into Fulham!

Speaking of Fulham, we’ve got them at Anfield this weekend in what’s sure to be yet another “riveting” encounter. We should win but we might draw or even lose, I don’t really give a crap anymore. As far as I’m concerned, our future begins when Hodgson goes and until then we will just stagnate and drift along going nowhere. I’d much rather count sheep then watch them, so wake me up in May!

Keep the Faith

They say a week is a long time in football and that’s certainly the case when it comes to Liverpool these days. The weekend before last our all round team performance in our deserved 2-0 home victory over the chavs left me with a grin so wide I was like a man with two arses but a week later and it’s back to business as usual and back to feeling as depressed as a squirrel with a nut allergy!

In the last blog I did mention that I had a sneaky feeling we might get a result against the chavs. The reason for this was partly because Gerrard and Torres seemed to be starting to look interested and getting back to form but my main reason was because we would be playing in a big game in front of a full house at Anfield and the players would have no shortage of motivation to perform. After taking such a convincing 2-0 lead in the first half, I had hoped that at half-time the manager might just tell the players to do more of the same in the second half but we came out and reverted back to this deep defending crap and almost paid the price but overall it was a good performance and a great result, so no complaints.

Once the celebratation of our victory over the chavs had died down I was struck by the frightening realisation that we would next be facing the proverbial wet Wednesday in Wigan and we would have to rely on the motivational powers of Roy Hodgson to lift the players, a man who only opens his mouth to change feet!

Still, I was hoping that we might carry a bit of confidence into the game after our chav victory and in fairness that’s exactly what we did and it lasted almost exactly 10 minutes! They were a very good ten minutes in which we saw a great Gerrard/Torres combo for the opening goal but sadly games these days tend to last for at least 90 minutes and for 80 of those minutes we were pretty dreadful and were lucky to escape with a draw. It seems one of the worst mistakes a Liverpool team under Roy Hodgson can make is to score first because when we do we seem to stop playing.

Mind you it doesn’t always just take a goal for us to stop playing, Roy has made us into a versatile side and sometimes we can stop playing even without one as we did at Stoke on Saturday. We’ve had so many bad performances this season that it’s hard to pick out the worst but our “performance” at the weekend must certainly rank as a contender for the most dreadful. I’m almost embarassed to talk about tactics, but tactically it did seem to me to be almost a carbon copy of the “tactical” plan the manager used at Goodison a few weeks ago which everyone could clearly see was hopeless apart from our Roy who thought we played well that day.

Once again we sat back defending far too deeply and allowed Stoke to come at us. After 30 minutes of the game a stat came up on the screen that showed Stoke had 75% of the possession, 75 friggin percent! In truth, if Stoke had been a little more clinical in attack we would have been dead and buried by half-time and deservedly so. With the way other results went at the weekend it would have been an excellent time for us to pick up three points but there just seems to be no fire or belief in our team and it’s really hard to watch us struggling so badly.

I’m really trying hard not to be too hard on Hodgson because he seems like a decent enough man and I’ve no doubts he could do a good job at a smaller club somewhere but he is so far out of his depth at Liverpool it’s untrue. I think our performances and results speak for themselves. No doubt there are certain other false flag webshites out there that can make comparisons between our current results and and our results under other managers over the same time period but that’s just a stupid exercise undertaken by ignorant morons trying to look clever.

The truth, as any proper fan knows, is that while results are great they don’t tell the real story, for that you need to look at the performances, results are vanity, performances are sanity. So while our poor results under Hodgson are probably comparable to some poor results we’ve had under other managers, in my nearly 40 years as a supporter I’ve never seen such horrible run of sterile, devoid of all imagination football played by the team. Roy in charge at Liverpool is like the bland leading the bland!

So for me performances are key when it comes to assessing how a manager is doing. I think Liverpool fans are a pretty fair-minded lot overall, we could put up with the defeats and the dropped points if we could see something positive happening on the pitch. If there were some signs of progress, some signs of development or just some signs of bloody life we could be a bit more supportive but there’s been absolutely no positives in our performances and no signs that things will get better anytime soon.

Hodgsons response to our woes also doesn’t augur well as he seems intent on taking the credit for everything and the responsibility for nothing. After our victory over the chavs he talked about the players finally adapting to his ideas and a week later after our defeat at Stoke he talked about it taking time for the players to adapt to what he wanted from them, so it seems to me that what’s he’s saying is that when win it’s down to him but when we lose it’s down to the players.

After our draw at Wigan I also heard him say that he was disappointed in the teams play, the passing wasn’t good and “they” were defending too deep. Notice the use of the word “they” which seems to me to be him once again seperating himself from the teams performance. I know they say there is no i in team but it seems when it comes to our Roy, there is no we either!

The other excuse he often uses is the strength of the squad. At one time he mentioned how our defence is stretched if we have one or two injuries and yet Insua and Ayala were allowed to go on season long loans in the summer. In midfield we also spent last season getting Aquilani fit and then made the absolutely crazy decision to send him out on loan for the season at Juve, where he’s been regularly putting in some fine performances.

Roy also often moans about our lack of options upfront but this was clearly the case when he arrived and yet depite having the time and the funds, he did nothing about it. If he hadn’t sent Insua and Aquilani on loan and wasted money on Koncheskey and Poulsen, he would have had about £10 million to bring in another striker which should surely have been his number one priority when he arrived. So while I think everybody knows we need to strengthen our squad, he seems to have only made things worse.

We could also ask Johnson, Pacheco or Dagger among others about his man-management skills but let’s just say the list of reasons why this guy is totally unsuitable to be our manager continues to grow. Last weekend Hodgson seemed to be a little upset by the Dalglish chants that could be clearly heard at the end of the game but he should be glad that it’s Dalglish’s name that’s been chanted because the alternative would be booing and while I would never condone that, I can certainly understand the fans frustration.

This has gone beyond a joke, the people who appoiinted Hodgson have all gone now and he is a dead man walking who will have to go sooner or later, I just hope for all our sakes it’s sooner. You could say he’s an accident waiting to happen but the truth is he’s an accident that has already happened and we need him out before he does even more damage. Off the pitch we are embarking on a fresh start under new owners and we need to accompany this with a fresh start on the pitch as well. I just can’t get into this bright new tomorrow stuff until the dark, dull present has been sorted out.

I think we’ve got Wet Spam at the weekend but to be honest I couldn’t be arsed anymore. We are playing car crash football under Hodgson, horrible to watch but you can’t stop yourself from having a look. Bring back King Kenny and let us all scream ourselves hoarse like the old days, it would give everyone a lift and who knows what might happen?

Keep the Faith