Well it seems like Christmas came late for us this year but seeing King Kenny back on his throne again has me about as happy as an Australian umbrella salesman!

It was a bit surreal seeing Dalglish in the dugout for our game at the Theatre of Illusions at the weekend but I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Even Howard Webb’s impressive impression of Mike Reilly didn’t spoil my mood, in fact it only enhanced it even more. Kenny had literally only just arrived to take over the team but already you could see the difference his presence made. Given our fragile state going into the game and then to suffer the injustice of conceding a non-penalty after less than a minute might well have triggered a collapse but Dalglish is in charge now and we just don’t deal in self-pity anymore.

I was impressed with the way the team played their way back into the game after the early set-back and we started to look like the better team before we suffered another body blow with the Gerrard sending off. I thought the skipper deserved to go after his unnecessarily heavy challenge on Michael Carrick. It was really very annoying because it was so needless, I mean why bother tackling Carrick anyway? The guy is crap so why not just let him have the ball, it’s not as if he’s going to do anything with it and the chances are he will most likely give it back to you! So it was a stupid decision by Gerrard that means we will have to do without him for 3 games which is the last thing the new gaffer would have wanted.

But even with 10 men against 12 (including Webb) the team battled on and with a bit of luck might have grabbed an equalizer but it wasn’t to be. I thought Kenny did well from the bench and , unlike some managers I could mention, brought on fresh legs when it was early enough to possibly make a difference. So the Dalglish era mark 2 began with a defeat but it was a loss we could take a lot of positives from. I’m actually not too bothered about being out of the cup this season because our priority right now is to focus on the league and getting as many wins as we can to put ourselves in the best position possible and build on that in the next campaign. We already have the welcome distraction of the Europa League, I don’t think we have enough about us at the moment to cope with a cup run as well.

Needless to say I’m delighted to see Dalglish back. To be honest, I had reached a stage where I was rapidly losing interest in the team and not really looking forward to any of our games anymore. Everything seemed so bleak and depressing, a bit like an episode of Eastenders! I just didn’t want to think about and I for damn sure didn’t want to write about it. But now King Kenny has returned and suddenly I’m buzzing again, I’m looking forward to the games ahead and I’ve even started to plan a couple of trips over to cheer the lads on, something I wouldn’t have bothered wasting my money on up to recently. If Kenny can lift the players half as much as he’s lifted me we’ll really be going places!

Anyway outside of all the romance there’s also a lot of work to be done and it all starts with our game at Blackpool tonight. I’ve got a ton of respect for Ian Holloway and his team, they’ve done amazingly well since being promoted to the Premiership and it’s going to be tough for us to get out of there with a result. They deservedly beat us at Anfield but we’ve got to try to do the same to them this evening because 3 points, particularly away from home, would be a huge boost and will help to keep the Kenny feel-good factor going awhile longer.

I’m fascinated to see what Dalglish will do with the team tonight. If the past is anything to go by we can expect to see a lot more attacking so it will be interesting to see how he’ll use the players at his disposal, which players he’ll select and if any of our youngsters will get a look in, with Pacheco being particularly impressive for the reserves in front of the boss last night. Obviously not having Gerrard available will limit his options but we’ll just have to wait and see how he handles it.

The team will be well motivated that’s for sure, Dalglish is a master at that just as he is of the media but our squad is limited in terms of quality so he’s going to have his work cut out to make the whole greater than the sum of it’s parts. It’s obviously still very early but we just might get a little glimpse of the direction he wants to go with the team, in tonight’s game.

Anyway I’ve got a long drive ahead of me to make it home in time for the game so I’m going to keep this one short and sweet and sign off now because I want to save the rest for the Merseyside derby at the weekend. So my prediction for tonight in the battle of the “Pools” is the same score line as the Anfield game only this time the points will go to The Reds with a 2-1 win and at least one of our goals being scored by Torres.

Keep the Faith

Well the NESV guy’s have made their first meaningful move on the playing side with the appointment of Damien Comolli as our Director of Football Strategy and this is a good move in my opinion. The world is made up of three kinds people, those who can count and those who can’t, and I belong firmly in the latter group but I’ve been doing some careful calculations and be my reckoning if you include King Kenny and this new guy Comolli that brings the total number of intelligent football people at our club to a grand total of two!

Having a Director of Football has caused problems at other clubs but in our case, and given the direction that NESV seem to want to take the club in, it could work well. I’ve done some checking into this and if the facts I’ve been given are correct then basically Comolli’s job will be to meet with the management team and agree on the profile of players we are looking to bring in and then through scouting and contacts go out and find them. Once candidates that fit the profile are found he would then come back and agree on the ones the management want to persue and then he will try to sign on the most favourable terms possible for the club.

I think this is a good idea because player recruitment is an area where we’ve constantly screwed up in the past. In recent seasons there were many occasions when the manager and our scouts would have all the groundwork done on a player and then have to hand it off to the likes of Parry or Purslow to complete the deal which more often than not they would screw up and the whole thing would fall apart. We lost many of our targets through such incompetence over the years and suffered for it on the pitch.

So having a guy on board with a decent track record in this area who can take charge of our player recruitment process from start to finish is a good idea in my opinion and as long as he and the manager are on the same page, it shouldn’t be a problem. I guess we’ll know more about this guy when the transfer window comes around but given the swiftness of his appointment I suspect NESV are planning on bringing in a few badly needed new faces in January.

Over the past few days I noticed Roy Hodgson has once again put his foot in his mouth by playing to the gallery and taking a few cheap shots at Rafa Benitez which was another big mistake in my opinion. Even for a man with about as much class as a leopardskin jockstrap such as Hodgson this was a new low on his part. Almost all managers these days profit from the misfortune of others and are usually appointed to their positions due to another man being sacked, resigning or leaving by “mutual consent” but even in the cut throat world of football you will rarely if ever hear a new manager taking cheap shots at the guy who was there before him.

I’m not sure if this is an unwritten rule or just common decency but clearly some people couldn’t spot a priest on a mountain of sugar and our Roy of the Ravers started a verbal joust with Rafa and got his ass kicked by a master of the art. But on another level this was even more stupid because the vast majority of Liverpool fans still have a lot of respect for Benitez and for Hodgson to try to take cheap shots at him was another bad call on his part and yet more evidence that he is totally out of touch with the fans of our club and seems more interested in remaining popular with his press buddy’s and managers of other clubs.

He has since offered a half-arsed apology to Rafa saying that he didn’t mean to be critical of his tenure at the club and he apologised if he caused him offence. Apparently when he talked of expensive mistakes by the former manager and accused him of banishing Kenny Dalglish from Melwood this was him not being critical! But this may not be over yet. I’ve spoken to a few people who will be travelling over to tonight’s game and our weekend game against the chavs and some of them told me they were going to try to start a Ra-Fa Benitez chant which could leave our Roy even more red-faced.

I must admit I’m getting a bit fed up of Roy bashing and I think on this and previous blogs I’ve made it pretty clear that while this guy may have a decent record as a manager of smaller clubs, as a Liverpool manager I think he is about as much use as a nuns tits! But my lack of support for the manager is far outweighed by my support for the team and I have no intention of starting to hope that the team gets beaten in order to hasten his departure. I’m prepared to wait for things to run their course. If I’m right about this guy being totally out of his depth then I don’t think it will be too long before the NESV guys take action and if I’m wrong and by some miracle he manages to turn things around, then we will all benefit and I will be more than happy to eat my words. Time will tell.

Tonight we play Napoli at Anfield in the Europa League. It’s an opportunity for some of our younger players to shine and subsequently be ignored by the manager. I’m hoping we’ll see the likes of Pacheco, Shelvey, Spearing, Kelly and Wilson in action but I suspect it may be only one or two of them. A victory would pretty much see us qualify for the knock-out stage so I’m hoping we’ll achieve it and use the last two group games to give our youngsters a bit more experience. So my money’s on a 2-0 win for us tonight.

On Sunday we’ll have the chavs visting Anfield in the league. Some people are a little worried and think we might get our asses handed to us in that game but for some crazy reason I actually think we might do well. The fans will be up for it, the players will be up for it and we are due a performance so I just have a feeling we might pinch it, mind you it could be indigestion!

Keep the Faith

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