Well after a long summer we are finally here on the eve of kicking off another Premier League season and while I’m really looking forward to the football, I’m still as confused as a hungry baby in a topless bar and I haven’t got a Scooby Doo what to expect from the campaign ahead.

Off the field things are still as clear as mud. They are apparently interested parties in taking over the club but it’s proving to be a slow process. Now I know about as much about the financial side of the game as Wayne Rooney knows about personal hygiene but appears likely that any takeover of the club won’t now happen until closer to the October deadline when the circumstances will be more favourable for the bidders.

The bid by Kenny Huang seems to be the one with the most momentum and while I can’t say if he’s the best man or has the best finances, I think it’s safe to say that he certainly has the best PR people. He seems to have been painted as the white knight among our bidders but promises of no club debt, a new stadium and all the top players we can eat is something we’ve all heard before and whoever does take over the club will need to quickly start backing their words up with actions if they are to win over the Liverpool fans.

One of the things I found interesting about the Huang bid is that at one stage it was being reported that an investment group representing Chinese government was one of his backers which led to some people expressing concerns about their human rights record. Now don’t get me wrong, human rights is something we should all be concerned about and I don’t have a problem with that, in fact some of my best friends are humans! But I just find it interesting that when we talk to American or Middle Eastern investors, their shabby human right records is never mentioned as a concern. It seems Kenny Huang isn’t the only one with good PR people!

Anyway back to the football and once again the Premier Leagues fixture computer has shown that its anti-Liverpool virus is alive, well and shitting all over us. We start our league campaign against Arsenal at Anfield tomorrow followed by a trip to Middle-Eastlands to face the biggest club in Manchester, then a game against West Brom followed by a trip to bogey side Birmingham and then a trip to the Theatre of Illusions to face the mancs.

It’s a bit of a nightmare start and our preparations have been far from ideal. With the way things worked out with the World Cup over the summer, the manager began our pre season training with only 3 or 4 senior players and a squad full of youngsters to work with. In recent weeks more of our senior pro’s returned but we still have several first team players who returned so late that they haven’t had a chance to get a pre-season game under their belts.

I know it can be said that it is the same for other teams but as ever with Liverpool, our situation is a bit worse than others because we’ve got a new manager still in a “getting to know you” phase and trying to impart his playing philosophy to the players. Even with all of his experience in the game, it’s going to be tough for Roy Hodgson and he could have done with a couple of softer fixtures for the team to find its feet but as things stand he’s going to have to hit the ground running.

One of the big problems with the staggered way that our players arrived back for pre season training is that we now have a squad of players with varying levels of fitness and the manager will need to get the balance right. As far as I know the only way to deal with this is to rotate the side from game to game so I would expect to see a bit of chopping and changing in our early fixtures. However, on the plus side our Europa League games may actually help us in these circumstances in terms of us giving some players a run-out and getting their fitness up to speed.

Earlier I described our early run of fixtures as a bit of a nightmare but of course this will be all determined by results and if we bang in a few wins it would be a dream start. It all begins with our game against Arsenal tomorrow and to be honest, I’m really not too sure what to expect. The main reason for my confusion is because at this stage I’m really not sure who is going to be in the team or even how we are going to play.

In defence, Reina will no doubt return with Glenda, Carra, Dagger and perhaps Aurelio making up our back four. Insua may play at left back but the fact that we’ve already tried to sell him twice would seem to indicate that he’s probably not in our future plans and may yet be on his way before the end of the transfer window. Another player who might well be in with a chance of starting is Martin Kelly, a fine young versatile player who can play anywhere along the back four and I’m expecting this to be his breakthrough season.

We can also be sure that Gerrard and Cole will start but other than that it’s hard to say who else will be starting the game for us but I’ll give you my best guess. Firstly, I wouldn’t want Masch in the team or even in the squad for the game, his head has already left the club and it’s only a question of us getting enough of a transfer fee for his body to join it so I don’t see why we should get him match fit for somebody else and I would prefer for us to stick with the players who are fully committed to being with us this season.

Despite what some other people have said, I think Poulsen is a very good signing for us. He is a hugely experienced defensive, tough tackling midfield player who has played in all the big leagues around Europe as well as having nearly 80 caps at international level. Besides that, he’s comfortable in possession, is a decent passer of the ball and scores an odd goal here and there.

I don’t know why some people are so critical of him. He played 50 games for Juventus over two seasons so he wasn’t exactly the failure there that some people have made him out to be. While it’s true he has been known to have a bit of a nasty streak at times, I consider that a plus point because sometimes I think we are a little too nice and could use a little extra aggression at times.

I’m also a fan of Lucas who I think is getting better all the time and I’m happy to have him and Poulsen competing for a place alongside Gerrard in the centre of midfield. I think I’d lean more towards Lucas starting tomorrow and maybe let Poulsen make his full debut alongside the very promising young Shelvey in our Europa League game on Thursday.

The rest of the team really depends on the fitness of Torres. If he is anywhere near fit I would definitely play him even if it’s only for an hour. Because the sooner the better he gets his match fitness back and starts linking up with the likes of Cole and if he gets through the game we can rest him on Thursday and give him over a week to recover before we play at Man City where he’ll be a lot more effective for us with a game under his belt. So if he plays we can play Jovanovic on the left and Maxi or Dirk on the right, that would be my guess at our team.

However if he doesn’t play it looks like we will have to use Eggnog instead and that changes everything. I actually have a lot of sympathy for Eggnog. Let’s not forget that the lad is still only 21 and a promising young striker in his own right but when Torres is injured or unavailable he is expected to come in and fill the boots of the best striker in the world and then comes in for criticism when he can’t live up to those unrealistic expectations.

If he has to play tomorrow, he could be put into the side as a straight swap in the Torres role but in those circumstances I would prefer it if we switched to a more traditional 4-4-2 formation. We could switch Cole on to the left and let Jovanovic or Kuyt go upfront to give Eggnog some back up in attack. I just don’t think the lad is developed enough or experienced enough to play the lone striker role effectively and funds permitting, bringing in another striker must surely be a priority for the manager before the transfer window closes.

As for the result, I am obviously hoping for a big performance and a good result but this is one of those games where we will really have to maintain our concentration for the full 90 minutes because Arsenal are well capable of pouncing on any lapse on our part. So this one could really go either way but I’m hoping we can get our campaign off to a strong start and build up a bit of momentum so my money’s on a 2-1 win for The Reds and then ring the changes for our Europa League game against Trabzonspor on Thursday. So fingers crossed and C’MON YOU REDS!!

Keep the Faith

Before focusing on our own problems I feel it is my duty as a fully paid up member of the sad, pathetic little man society to open up this blog by simply saying HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! 3-0 and they screwed it up, the mancs are dumped out of the CL and I’ve just had a great time taking the piss out of the manc fans down in my local! The face on Ferguson at the end was priceless! I also really enjoyed watching Barca and the brilliant Messi exposing the Arsenal myth yesterday and giving them a football lesson that they won’t soon forget.

In fact I think it’s fair to say I’ve been watching and enjoying a lot of football recently, except for ours. We’ve got so many problems on and off the pitch at the moment and there’s so much moaning and other crap going on that it’s hard to just sit back and enjoy the simple pleasure of watching your team play football.

In regards to our current position, as ever I’m keeping the faith but I’ve got to admit that it’s looking increasingly likely that we won’t be finishing in the top four this season. I haven’t totally abandoned all hope but our draw at Birmingham was a real hammer blow to our chances and we are running out of games to make up the ground.

I’m confident the teams ahead of us will drop points in their remaining games but given the inconsistency of our form throughout the season, I’m not overly confident in our abilities to take advantage and finish this horrible season with five straight wins. We are certainly capable of it and Shanks knows it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve beaten the odds but our team hasn’t been firing on all cylinders for the entire season and it’s difficult to see them starting now. That said, I will continue to keep my fingers crossed and sacrifice a few more chickens just in case!

Of course the big talking point from our game at the weekend was the substitution of Fernando Torres. It was clear over the course of his time on the pitch that the guy was feeling the effects of the battering he took at Benfica and definitely wasn’t at his best so I can’t say I was particularly surprised by that he was subbed but I was a bit surprised at the timing of it. I just thought that as he had already been on for 65 minutes why not give him another 10 and stick someone up alongside him?

Actually, and I know this may seem like sacrilege to some people, but having watched his performance in the game I don’t think he should have started for us at all. Given his physical condition it may have worked out better for us to have him on the bench and then bring him on for the last 30 minutes against a tiring defence, instead of starting him against a fresh one.

I would imagine that seeing Torres coming on for the last half hour of the game might have had a slightly demoralising effect on the Birmingham defence and might have also given our players a bit of a lift to push on and take the points. But of course it’s always easy to suggest such things with the benefit of hindsight.

The fact is Rafa put out a side to win the game and while clearly not at our best we still really should have taken the points. If we hadn’t had a brain-fart in defence Birmingham wouldn’t have equalised or if Eggnog had managed to put away one of the chances that came his way we wouldn’t even be having this debate and to me these are more genuine reasons why we didn’t take the points then any substitution made by the boss.

I certainly don’t always agree with the managers decisions but I believe that regardless of reputations, egos or even popularity, he makes his decisions based purely on what he feels is in the best interests of the team and that’s good enough for me. I know other fans have different opinions and they are entitled to them but in my opinion this season has been a bit of a freak where everything that can go wrong, did go wrong for us and if we are to ever get back to the top, this is the man is the best bet to take us there.

Anyway, over the past week we lost a game we should have drawn and we drew a game we should have won and I felt a little sorry for our players. In our two games over the last seven days there were perhaps several individual performances that I would regard as being below par but from an overall team perspective I thought everyone worked very hard and deserved a better reward for their efforts.

Last week’s game in Benfica was particularly frustrating because I believe we were stitched up by some of the most bizarre officiating I think I have ever seen, I’m all for equal opportunities but blind referees is taking things a bit too far in my opinion. For the first 25 minutes or so everything seemed fine. We got an early goal that I thought had a large hint of offside about it but it was allowed to stand and it was clear from early on that Torres had been targeted for some harsh treatment from their defenders but the referee took appropriate action and booked both of their centre-backs after barely a quarter of the game had been played.

But around the time of the Babel sending off and the Benfica fans started launching their rockets and turning the pitch into downtown Baghdad, the officials seemed to change their tune. From that point on not a single 50/50 decision went our way and our players seemed to be pulled up for minor infractions while their players were consistently allowed to get away with major ones.

The two previously booked centre-backs continued to kick the shit out of Torres but no action was taken and I lost count of the amount of fouls committed by their Dutch midfielder among others. The second goal we scored seemed far more legit then our first one but was ruled out for offside and of the two penalties they were awarded, one was questionable and the other was an absolute joke!

I’m not sure if the officials got intimidated by the atmosphere, decided to have a quick lobotomy with their half-time cuppa or there were other forces at work but there’s no doubt that collectively they made some very strange decisions on the night. However on a more positive note, if you’ve got to lose an away leg in Europe then a 2-1 score-line is about the best you can get and we’ve still got a pretty decent chance of progressing.

Given our current position in the league, it looks like if we are to salvage anything from this dreadful season it’s got to be Benfica or bust! We are obviously extremely well capable of finishing this tie off particularly at Anfield but it’s just a question of which Liverpool turns up on the night. If it’s the side that recently so easily disposed of Sunderland, we’ll be fine but anything less than that and it could be a long night.

But the signs are good. Anfield is sold out and should be rocking, the players are well aware that this could well be for all the marbles and I suspect that at least some of them will be feeling a bit of injustice after the first leg and should be very well focused. We could all probably hazard a very good guess at most of our starting line-up but the big question is what is going to happen at left-back.

Insua is suspended for the game, and as the lad has been having a tough time of it lately that might be no bad thing, and Aurelio is as ever injured so we don’t have any obvious cover for the position. I had it in my mind that Rafa may try going with three centre-backs as he’s done occasionally in the past, but after I heard him strangely revealing in today’s press conference that the team have been working on this formation in training. I’m wondering if he’s playing a game of bluff or double bluff?

Our other options would be for Carra to play that side as he’s done in the past or preferably Dagger who played as a left-back earlier in his career. Riera also played as a left-back when he was at Man City but surely that clown will never again be allowed to wear a red shirt. Of all of our available options I think the three centre-back formation is the best way to go but the fact that Rafa mentioned it today is making me think that maybe he’s got something else in mind, or maybe I’m just reading too much into it.

In any case I’m looking forward to the game and with Benfica being so dangerous on the attack, it could turn out to be a real nail-biter. This week’s CL results means ourselves and Fulham are the only two English sides left in Europe so I’m hoping we hang in there as long as possible and maybe even win it so that I can torment some of my manc supporting buddies during the summer with my well rehearsed Kings of Europe routine. Anyway my money’s on a hard fought 3-1 win for us tomorrow and on to the semis!

Keep the Faith

When it comes to football I agree with that old Boomtown Rats song, I don’t like Mondays. It’s bad enough playing our European game on Thursday, but playing our “weekend” league game on Monday in the same week is about as un-natural to me as monogamy seems to be at Stamford Bridge!

It took me a long time to get used to the idea of Sunday games and while I came around to it eventually, I’ve never liked us playing on Mondays and I never will. I don’t know what our record is like playing at the beginning of the week, probably not that great, but I’ve never been too bothered by statistics, 67.5% of them are rubbish anyway!

Other that the fact that Monday would be my seventh choice as a day of the week for us to play a game, there are also more practical reasons why I dislike it. The way I see it, a team playing on Monday has that little bit of extra pressure on them regardless of the circumstance. If your rivals all win over the weekend, then your under pressure to keep up with them and if they lose your under pressure to take advantage.

As it happens on this occasion none of our more immediate rivals played in the league over the weekend but we are still under a bit of pressure to make this game count. It just seems crazy to me that we have to play this game three days ahead of our Europa League game on Thursday and then we have to do exactly the same thing again next week, with our game away to the mancs following three days later, so an extra day could have made all the difference to us right now.

Everton and Hull played earlier today and while I accept that watching both of these teams is about as entertaining as watching a dog licking his testicles, neither of them have any midweek games to worry about, so you would think it would have made more sense to have them playing on Monday. But of course, in the game these days common sense is about as rare as a Stan Collymore brain cell, so we’ve just got to get on with it.

We’ve got 10 league games left this season and we’ve really got to be aiming to win them all if we are to be successful in our “glorious” battle for fourth place and a chance to pay off our owners interest payments for another year! We travel to Wigan tomorrow and while they may currently be in 16th place in the table, they are dangerous opponents and we’ll really need to be on our game to get out of there with three points.

I like their manager Roberto Martinez. He was one of the few pundits on Sly Sports that I had any respect for and he is building up a decent reputation as a manager. Unlike our last opponent Fat Sham Allardyce, a man with a mouth so big there’s a real danger that one day he might swallow his own head, Martinez encourages his teams to play football and given his resources I applaud him for that.

I have watched Wigan a number of times this season and if I was to make one negative observation about them it would be that sometimes the football their manager wants them to play is perhaps a little bit beyond the abilities of some of their players. But nevertheless they keep plugging away and while a lot of games haven’t gone their way, they have had some very good results, most notably a 3-1 victory over the chavs.

So these guys are no mugs and we will need to be on our toes because they are well capable of catching us out. Team-wise, I’m not sure how Glenda is doing in terms of fitness but we are running out of games and it would be nice to see him starting in this one if possible, with Carra and Agger in the middle and Insua on the left. If this one is a bit too early for Glenda to start then no doubt Paddy the Greek can come in for the injured Skrtel and Carra or Masch can cover us on the right.

I imagine that Gerrard will play behind Torres once again in our attack but our midfield is a lot trickier to call. With most of our injured players now available again, Rafa finally has a lot of options to choose from in midfield and it will be interesting to see how he will use them. The only player I’m pretty sure about him starting with is Rodriguez.

Maxi is getting better with each game and he was particularly good in our last game against Blackburn Kingston Rovers. So that plus the fact that he is ineligible to play in our Europa League games, I think means he will be pretty certain to start tomorrow. The likelihood is that Kuyt will play on the other flank but Benny Onion must also be a serious contender with Riera as an outside bet and no doubt Babel will be on the bench.

But it is the centre of our midfield that has left me as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market. With so much often unfair negative criticism being thrown at the boss this season, I’ve normally tried to focus on the positives in this blog which is why I’ve avoided delving too deeply into the situation with Aquilani. It’s possible to make both positive and negative arguments about the player but to be perfectly honest I just haven’t got a Scooby Doo what’s going on with this guy and I’m beginning to wonder why we signed him? Obviously we’ve been getting results without him so I’m not going to complain too much but I’m just confused about his role.

Potentially he is too good a player and he cost us far too big a chunk of our meagre transfer budget last summer for him to be merely used as a back-up. I don’t think any of us can truly judge at this stage whether he is good enough because he simply hasn’t been given enough time on the pitch. There have been some games where I could perhaps understand him not being in the team but equally there have been other games where I’ve felt sure he’d be given a run-out and he wasn’t even brought on from the bench.

Some may say that we’ll see the best of him next season but we didn’t pay £15-£18 million for a player for next season so if he has something to offer the side we need to be seeing some of it now and we’ll hopefully build on it next season. But if he couldn’t get a regular place in the side when we had so many injuries it seems even less likely now that we don’t.

We’ve now got five games coming up with just three days between each of them bar one, so Rafa is no doubt going to have to dig into the squad as much as possible and surely Aquilani must start in at least a couple of them. If not, I think we’ll just have to conclude that the boss just doesn’t think he’s good enough.

The reason I bring this up now is because I think Aquaman might be a useful player for us to have on the pitch against Wigan tomorrow because they play a more open game that might well suit a player of his ability. But we’ll see what happens because each time I’ve expected him to play in the past, he hasn’t and tomorrow will probably be no exception.

Anyway, picking up the win tomorrow is the most important thing and I think Wigan may give us a few problems to deal with but I’ll put my money on us taking the points with a 2-1 win.

Keep the Faith

I must admit I was not only very happy but also very relieved to see us get past Unirea and move into the last 16 of the Europa League. I would normally be very confident about our chances against this kind of opposition but ahead of the game I began to feel a little uneasy because it had all the potential to be yet another one of those great big banana skins that we have a tendency to slip on.

In the first leg at Anfield we managed to keep a clean sheet and give ourselves a one goal lead, which wasn’t as much as we would have hoped for but it was better than a slap in the face with a wet fish. Given the fact that Unirea would have to come out of their ultra defensive shell in the second leg there would hopefully be more space for us to exploit so I was confident we would progress.

But on the other hand I was also aware that these guys had been unbeaten in their home games in the CL so they were no mugs and when I saw the state of the pitch ahead of the game, I was really starting to get worried. For the first 20 minutes of the game my worst fears were justified as our defence turned into the Keystone Cops and we allowed them to level the tie with a very soft equaliser.

However, their goal seemed to act as an alarm call and just as I was about to ring the Samaritans, our guys finally woke from their slumber and started to play. In the end it turned out to be a comfortable victory for us and while our overall performance may not have been exactly vintage Reds, the manner in which we recovered from our shaky start, took control and saw out the game, certainly was.

It was also nice to see us scoring a few goals for a change. This was the first time we had scored three goals in a game since our 6-1 defeat of Hull back in September and the first time we had scored more than one goal in a European game this season. Mascherano doesn’t score many goals but when he does it’s always a treat to watch him celebrate and he certainly deserved it after smashing in that thunderbolt to level the game.

Benny Onion made a welcome return to the starting line-up and did very well to set-up Gerrard for our third and a goal that takes him beyond Alan Shearer as the highest scoring English player in European competition with 33 goals. But more importantly, his injuries this season has meant that this was just his 7th goal of the campaign and that’s not a great total by his standards so hopefully this strike will lead to him finding his scoring touch again in the games ahead.

Sandwiched between those goals was a strike by the man of mystery himself, Ryan Babel. He has been in one of his all too rare patches of good form recently and was one of our best performers on the night. He caused the initial confusion in the Unirea defence that eventually lead to Masch scoring our first goal and scored the second himself with a terrific first touch and finish. This guy just completely does my head in, I’ve been supporting this club of ours since the early 70’s and I’ve never seen us ever have such an enigma as we have in Flyin Ryan.

When I was a kid Subbuteo was the ultimate football game and I would spend many hours flicking those flimsy piece of shit plastic players about. But the kids these days have far more advanced football games on their X-Box’s and Playstations etc, that can do all sorts of amazing stuff. They even have one function that allows you to create a player of your own and load them up with all the attributes you think they would need to make the perfect player.

If such a function were available in the real world and you were able to load up a real person with such attributes, then the chances are what you would end up creating would be very similar to a Ryan Babel. The guy has pace, power and just about everything else you would think would be needed to make it as a top class player. But frustratingly, while all of the ingredients seem to be there, so far he just hasn’t been able to put it all together often enough to really take his game up to the next level.

I’ve written a blog or two about Babel in the past and concluded them by saying that while Babel may have been blessed with many of the skills needed to make it at the top level, he unfortunately wasn’t blessed with a brain to go with them. But while that may seem like a neat answer, I’m no longer convinced that is entirely the case.

In the games against Unirea for example, we saw him in the first leg digging out a good cross while under pressure that lead to our goal and in the second leg we saw him surrounded by burly defenders yet still having the composure to pluck a ball out of the air and calmly sticking it in the net. You can also think back to games like the one against Derby a couple of seasons ago where, with a single well-timed shimmy, he wrong-footed their entire defence and slotted home a great goal.

These glimpses of his ability have been few and far between but they do show that he has good instincts and a certain degree of footballing intelligence. So the guy remains a real puzzle to me. I’m not sure if his problem is a lack of intelligence, a lack of maturity or a lack of heart and sadly it might already be too late for him to make it as a Liverpool player.

Based on his undoubted potential, I’ve always been in favour of us persisting with him and even when there were rumours about us possibly selling him last summer, I still thought we should stick with him just a little longer. I just hated the thought of some other team benefitting from all of the time and money we have spent trying to develop him.

But there comes a time when a player has to start delivering on their potential and I must admit that even my patience with Babel had run out this season. There were reports of Birmingham offering £9 million for him in January and if I didn’t know that this money would have disappeared into the same black hole as the money from the Robbie Keane transfer last year, then I would have been in favour of us cashing in on him.

However now that his hit another little bit of form, I find myself wondering once again that maybe, just maybe this caterpillar is finally about to turn into the butterfly we all know he is capable of becoming. The evidence of the past strongly suggests that this most likely won’t happen but what a huge asset he would be to us if Rafa could somehow finally crack the enigma that is Ryan Babel and get him to deliver to his potential on a consistent basis.

Anyway we’re now in the last 16 and will face Lillet’s in our next monthly cycle in the competition and it’s sure to be an interesting period of our season. The other good news from the Europa League in midweek was seeing our wee neighbours Everton being thumped 3-0 by Sporting Lesbian.

I took some perverse pleasure from that result because I have a few mates who are lifelong Evertonians and I enjoy telling them that even though we are having one of our worst seasons in years, we are still a class above them. I don’t think they are too happy with me at the moment, particularly as I also sent one of them a pair of Liverpool FC designed curtains at Christmas and told him that I figured it would be the ideal gift for someone who enjoys living in our shadow. That didn’t go down too well, but sometimes you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do.

So we’re back to Premiership action this weekend and the resumption of our epic battle for a place in the top four. The only good thing I can say about our drab 0-0 encounter with the biggest team in Manchester last weekend is that we didn’t really lose too much ground and might well have played our part in discovering a brand new cure for insomnia!

Man City were a top eight side who spent £200 million and yet still look little more than a top eight side to me. If we were closer to firing on all cylinders I reckon we would have taken the points fairly comfortably but personnel and performance-wise we aren’t at our best yet so we had to content ourselves with a share of the spoils and move on.

We now face a decent run of three games with Blackburn at home, Wigan away and Portsmouth at home. We all well know by now that we can’t take anything for granted but we’ve got to be aiming to take all 9 points from these games. This would not only improve our position but also take a little bit of the pressure off us for our trip to the second biggest side in Manchester at the Theatre of Illusions next month.

It all starts with our game against Blackburn at Anfield on Sunday and while I don’t have a problem with them as a club, I have a real problem with their manager who I think can best be described in cockney rhyming slang as a cupid stunt. Big mouthed Sham Allardyce is nothing but a Fergie lapdog as he showed last season by aiding the manc boss and playing his part in a childishly contrived co-ordinated attack on Rafa Benitez after Liverpool had beaten his side in the same fixture last term.

His accusations, which suddenly occurred to him several days after the game, that Rafa had made a “game-over” hand gesture to our players after we scored our second goal were clearly false and Allardyce was as guilty as a nun in a cucumber field. I didn’t like this clown before that incident and I completely despise the over-rated arsehole even more now. So while it’s important we win the game regardless of these circumstances, I will take some extra pleasure if we beat this knob-heads team again on Sunday.

Team-wise I expect there may be 3 or 4 changes from the side that started against Unirea. It was a real shame that Skrtel picked up such a bad injury in that game as he had been in good form in the centre of our defence and I hope he won’t be sidelined for too long. In his absence and given the fact that Paddy the Greek is still suspended, Carra will no doubt return to centre back and I’d like to see Martin Kelly coming in at right back.

In midfield, while it may seem harsh to drop Masch or Lucas after they both played well on Thursday, I think we’ve got to start giving Aquilani more time on the pitch and this might be an ideal game for him so I think he might start alongside Masch. In the wide areas I’d like to see us sticking with the killer B’s, Benny and Babel. I’m not sure if Torres will be ready to start the game but if not I’d like to see Kuyt coming in for Eggnog with Gerrard as ever in support.

Hopefully we can carry the positives from our win in Bucharest into this one. A victory is a must and I don’t care how we achieve it but I’ll put my money on a 2-0 win. As a little bit of karma, I hope that whatever goals we do manage to score are hugely controversial and make Big Sham’s blood boil so much that the two-faced bastard ends up back in the hospital.

Keep the Faith

After our disappointing defeat against Arsenal last week, I decided to take a break away from football for a few days. I’ve just become so fed up with hearing all of the usual kneejerk nonsensical crap that seems to follow our every setback these days. Most of it from ignorant morons who clearly know as little about the game as a hedgehog knows about crossing the road, so I decided to give it a miss for awhile.

As I said in the last blog, I thought it might have been worth starting Babel upfront and I was surprised Riera wasn’t in the side but other than that and given what we have available, I wouldn’t disagree with the team or the tactics the manager employed. Overall I thought we deserved at least a draw and our performance while not great, wasn’t half as bad as some people make out.

Obviously (or at least it should be obvious) given the fact that we are missing the likes of Torres, Benny Onion, Glenda and even Aquilani and also considering that Gerrard is only now getting back to his best while Riera and Maxi are still regaining match fitness, it’s understandable that we are lacking on the attacking and creative side of things at the moment. But there is at least a lot more steel and resolve in our performances recently that we just didn’t see enough of a couple of months ago and that will give us a strong platform to build on when these other players return.

I’ve heard some people moaning and saying the manager was playing for a draw but that’s just bullshit. To play an open game of football against Arsenal in their own backyard is about as dangerous as going bareback on a five dollar whore! Keeping things tight and playing them on the counter was definitely the way to go and it almost worked for us. We had several chances and had we stuck one or two of them away, we would have been praised for grinding out another result but we didn’t take our chances and the Gooners managed to put away one of theirs, end of story!

We’ve had a decent break since that game so all of our available players should be fully fit and firing ahead of a couple of big games for us this week. The first of these comes on Thursday when we face Unirea at Anfield in the first leg of our Europa League tie. This wasn’t a competition that was on any of our agendas at the start of the season and even now some people continue to sneer at our participation but I believe that for many reasons this could be a really important piece of silverware for us to go after and I’m still dreaming of a silver lining at the end of this difficult season.

Finishing in the top four has become our main priority this season but this needn’t be a case of either/or and I don’t see any reason why we can’t go for both. Firstly, as a supporter I would be very happy to see us finish in the top four but I would be even more delighted to see us pick up a trophy as well. The Europa League gives us an opportunity to pick up some silverware and I want it, and if we were to win it then next season we would face off against the winners of the CL for the European Super Cup and while that is just basically a European version of the Community Shield, it’s another piece of silverware and I want that too!

But even more important than my selfish desire for silverware is the fact that most of the players in our squad have never won anything in the game and for them to pick up a winners medal would be a huge boost to their confidence. For our players to get a taste of success can only be beneficial for us going forward and it is often the case in football that success breeds even more success.

If we were to win the Europa League this season it might well be seen in the years to come as a breakthrough moment for this side, just as our UEFA Cup win in 1976 was seen as a breakthrough moment for the side back then. After that success we went on to win the European Cup in ’77 and again in ’78, as well as league titles and just about everything else.

So basically, while I wouldn’t see the Europa League as our ultimate destination, I would definitely view it as a sign post that we are on the right path. I know we face a dogfight between now and the end of the season to retain our CL place but at the end of the day I would much prefer to see us finish in fourth spot with a trophy than for us to finish in third spot without one.

It may seem premature to talk about winning a competition that we haven’t even started yet and if there’s one thing we’ve learned this season it’s that we cannot take anything for granted but you’ve got to think we’ve got a very good chance of winning this competition if we take it seriously. We face Unirea first and if we come through this tie we will face the winners of the tie between the Lilly’s and the Fannybashers.

We are well capable of beating these sides and if we do so we would find ourselves in the quarter-finals with hopefully all of our main players available to us again. There are other big sides in the competition but nothing we haven’t faced before and nobody we should fear. So in my opinion it’s all there for us if we really go for it.

But of course we’ve got to get the balance right between this and our battle for fourth place. I believe we have enough to successfully fight on both fronts but as ever we’ll need to take things one game at a time. That said, this week Rafa will obviously need to have one eye on our big game at Man City on Sunday when deciding on his team to face Unirea on Thursday.

As I see it there are two ways he can play it. He could use the squad and play Diego between the sticks and have Aurelio come in at left back to give Insua a break. Paddy the Greek is able to play in this so he could come in alongside Skrtel and I would prefer to see Kelly again at right back, if not him then Darby but not bloody Degen who is about as much use as a trap door in a life boat!

Across the middle we could go with Riera and Maxi in the wide positions with Aquilani alongside Masch or Lucas. Then upfront we could partner Babel with Eggnog or maybe even Pacheco could be given a run out. This would be a reasonably strong side and would also give us the benefit of resting Reina, Carra, Agger, Insua, Gerrard, Kuyt, Lucas or Masch and possibly the returning Benny Onion, for the game at Middle-Eastlands on Sunday. But we would have these players available on the bench if we need them on Thursday.

The other option is that after an eight day break since our last game, the gaffer could decide to put out one of his strongest sides and try to blitz Unirea on Thursday, carry that momentum into our game on Sunday and then rest some of our players for the second leg of our Europa League tie.

Both options have their merits and I wouldn’t really mind which approach he takes but it would be obviously easier for us to get our goals in the home leg of our tie then it would be in the away one. So I would favour a strong side on Thursday and try to get most of the job done at Anfield and make the second leg less of a task. In any case I’m looking forward to the game and my money’s on a 2-0 win to send us into the City game in confident mood.

Keep the Faith