I looked through next seasons Premier League fixtures when they were released yesterday and I’m convinced that damn fixture computer has been loaded with some kind of anti-Liverpool virus! Again it’s handed us a tricky away fixture to begin our camapaign, this time at Spurs, while the mancs as usual got what should be a relatively handy home game against Birmingham and the chavs get a home game against Hull.

This is just the latest in a string of tough/tricky opening day fixtures that piece of shit computer has saddled us with in recent years. Last season it was Sunderland away, in 2007 it was Villa away, in 2006 it was Sheff Utd away, in 2005 it was Boro away and in 2004 it was Spurs away. 2003 was the last time we got a home opening fixture and that was against the bloody chavs, who beat us 2-1.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be too bothered about us playing Spurs at their place, in fact I’ve always got on well with those guys, so much so that they’ve even invited me to their end of season party which, as ever, will take place in October! But on the opening day they will be full of piss and vinegar, and keen to do well in front of their own fan. So it’s going to be tough to take the three points but we’ll just have to deal with it.

On the plus side, at least we won’t have to play a qualifying tie for the CL this season. Those games can be a real bitch and getting tougher every year. So we can focus on the league and forget about the CL until the group stage gets underway in mid-September. However once it does get started, again the fixture list has done us no favours and almost all of our European games are followed by a tough league fixture.

Our first group game will be followed by an away trip to Wet Spam and after the second we must travel to the chavs. The third game is followed by the mancs coming to Anfield and Birmingham come to our place after the fourth. The Merseyside derby at Goodison follows our fifth game and Arsenal come to Anfield after our sixth and final group game. If we get to the second round we will have our all-important trip to the Theatre of Illusions sandwiched in between our tie and if we manage to get to the semis we will have a trip to the chavs in between both semi-final legs.

I know these fixtures are supposedly randomly generated so there’s little point in moaning about them but there’s no doubt that the way they’ve come out for us is far from ideal. When Rafa defended his team and had the bottle to point out the facts about Alex Fergiescum earlier this year, one of the things he sarcastically suggested was that maybe the Premier League should send the fixtures over to the manc boss and let him sort them out. Well as I read through our fixtures yesterday it occurred to me that maybe that’s exactly what they had done!

Anyway, having so many tough league games closely following important CL games emphasises once again the need for us to strengthen our squad as best we can over the summer because it looks as if the boss is certainly going to have to dig into it over the course of the campaign. I’m happy to see things on the transfer front are starting to stir for us and it looks as if we are very close to securing the signature of Glen Johnson.

We badly needed another option at right-back and in the system we play it’s so important for us to have ball playing full-backs who get forward to support the attack. Johnson would be a quality addition who ticks all of those boxes with the added bonus that he is just coming into his prime, is Premiership proven and would increase our number of English players. Besides that, having a Johnson in our squad could be a good omen as we’ve had a couple of pretty useful ones in the past.

We’ve been crying out for something extra on our right hand side and I think Deadly Dirk and Glenda would be a very useful combination. Some people are a little concerned about his price tag, but that’s something I think we should let the accountants worry about. Rafa knows how much money he has to play with and if he thinks the lad is worth it, that’s good enough for me. The press say the fee would be in the region of £17 or £18 million but given their past record in reporting on such matters, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was a lot less.

I must admit I am a little more concerned with the situation regarding Arbeloa and I was surprised to hear he has only a year left on his contract. On this blog at the start of last season I expressed my doubts about Arby being our first choice right back, but he proved me wrong. I wasn’t convinced by his early performances but gradually he improved and became a lot steadier for us over the course of the campaign and had a very good season overall.

He had to play a lot of games because our only other recognised cover in the position is a promising but inexperienced kid and another guy who is a medical miracle that appears to be made out of glass. Clearly we needed to bring in another quality option and Glen Johnson would appear to be just the job. However, I now hear people calling for Arby to be offloaded and I just fail to see the logic in that.

It would be great for us to have Johnson and Arbeloa competing for the right-back slot in our team but if we bring in Johnson and sell off Arby, surely we will be back in the same boat of having a shortage of cover on the right side of our defence. What would happen if Johnson got injured or needed to be rested? We’d be back to playing players out of position or gambling on inexperience, and that’s a big risk for a team hoping to have the strength and consistency to be challenging for titles.

That said, it’s absolutely crazy in the modern game for any team to allow a player’s contract run down to just one year, but it’s something we’ve been too often guilty of in the past and hopefully this will improve now that Parry is gone and Rafa has more control in these matters. You run the risk of having greedy players, such as we seen recently with Peanut, refusing to move and happy to spend a season biding their time to get themselves a bigger pay day as a free agent when their contract runs out.

I’m not suggesting Arby is anything like the type of scumbag that Peanut was, but if it’s true that he only has a year left on his contract then the club needs to act now. Preferably get him signed up to a new contract but if not, sell him now while we can still get a decent transfer fee to fund a replacement.

There is obviously all of the usual mostly nonsense stories in the press about players coming and going at our club and I wish I had something more concrete to offer but Rafa runs a tight ship and there aren’t as many leaks as there have been in the past. The fact that this comes at a time when there have been 16 people culled from the club’s staff I’m sure is purely coincidental and perhaps best not speculated upon.

My normally reliable sources are as dry as a camel’s bollocks at the moment and very few whispers seem to be coming out. Other than our early links to Silva the only name that’s popped up on my radar screens a few times is Saviola and that’s already been covered in the press so I’m not sure how reliable it is. What I can say as someone who does have a contact or two is that it’s very quiet at the moment, perhaps too quiet.

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part but I get the feeling there may be something stirring at Anfield, something big enough for them to want to keep a lid on it, but I guess time will tell.

Keep the Faith

Dear oh dear, the chavs beat us so badly on Wednesday that even I’ve got bruises! In fairness they played great, probably the best I’ve ever seen them play and they deserved the win but that said, I don’t think we did ourselves any favours with our display. Considering how well we’ve played in recent games and the confidence we appeared to have going into this one, our performance left me as baffled as Adam on Mother’s Day!

Everything seemed to be going well for us initially as we pushed forward with a purpose and got the early breakthrough after some great build-up play was finished off superbly by Torres. As we look back at the game now in hindsight it appears that our problem may have been that we scored too early. Once we got the lead we sat back a little with the intention presumably to soak up some of their pressure and pick them off on the counter.

That seemed to be a pretty good tactic and we did manage to create another couple of half-chances that might have allowed us to extend our lead. The problem was that we weren’t defending well. They were getting at our defence too easily and had a few good chances to score even before they got the equaliser. They looked dangerous everytime they came forward and seemed to grow in confidence where as we began to look more and more nervy and unsure, particularly in defence.

You could see their equaliser coming long before our poorly defended corner handed it to them and I was relieved to hear the half-time whistle. I was hoping the break might give us a chance to sort ourselves out for the second half and we did start the half more brightly but it wasn’t long before more sloppiness at the back allowed them to score a second and then a third, in fact we were very lucky that they didn’t score more.

With plenty of time on the clock and shooting into The Kop, you hoped that we might rally ourselves and score at least one goal to improve our faint chances in the second leg but too many heads had dropped in our team and we were well beaten long before the final whistle. Losing to the chavs was bad enough but I thought the manner of our performance on the night was the most disappointing thing of all and I’m sure the manager feels the same way.

Even when results haven’t gone well for us in the past, I have always been impressed by the grit and determination of our side but we saw little of that character on Wednesday. We had so many passengers in our team on the night that I thought we had done a sponsorship deal with British Rail! Riera has played very well recently but was very poor on the night and did little to trouble their makeshift right-back. Aurelio was also below par and error-prone as was a lot of our defensive play, in fact at times it seemed that we were employing our famous doughnut defence, the one with the big hole in the middle!

As he has taken a lot of unfair stick this season I’d like to be kinder to Lucas and the truth is he wasn’t our worst player on the night but I was nervous every time he got the ball and I just thought he looked a little out of his depth and we really badly missed Mascherano. Even Gerrard by his own brilliant standards was virtually anonymous although we now know he was carrying an injury. Of the rest I thought Pepe did well, Alonso did his best as did Arbeloa and Torres did well in the first half but had little to work with in the second.

The problem for us now is that we have to somehow get this result and performance out of our system and get back on track against Blackburn at Anfield tomorrow. The defeat against the chavs was bad enough but if we slip up in this game as well it will only make a bad situation infinitely worse. In the circumstances, Carra has called this the most important league game in his career and its easy see to why.

While the odds are still well and truly with the mancs in terms of the Premiership this is still the best chance we’ve had since our league drought began and certainly the best in Carra’s career. A win will put us back on top with 6 games to go for at least a couple hours depending on how the mancs get on at Sunderland but a defeat would be a disaster.

It won’t be easy because we know Fergiescum’s mate Allardyce will try to get his team to kick their way through us and will no doubt be sent a magnum of champagne from his buddy if they are successful. If we play anything like we can then we should have no trouble but if half of our team doesn’t turn up like the other night then we could have problems.

I would normally think that the players wouldn’t need any motivation to go out and do their stuff in this one but I thought the same ahead of Wednesday’s game and that didn’t turn out too well. The other complication is Gerrard’s injury and whether he’ll be available, so Rafa has his work cut out to lift the players and mastermind a victory. As ever, I’m optimistic and I’ll predict a 3-1 victory for The Reds and hope that Sunderland can do something against the mancs.

We also have another £20 voucher available for you to buy one or two of those great t-shirts from the good people at Soccerprint T-Shirts . So using the same format as last time, predict the time of the first goal, the score-line and the goalscorers and post it in the comments section to be in with a chance to win. Good luck everybody and a Happy Easter weekend to you all.

Keep the Faith

Well there’s no doubt about it, we’ve certainly got a big week ahead of us. The second leg of our CL tie with Real Madrid at Anfield on Tuesday and our league game against the mancs at the Theatre of Illusions at the weekend could ultimately decide our season.

These will be two extremely tough games against two of the best sides in the world and the outcomes are by no means certain. However, I think we can be pretty certain that there are plenty of people waiting in the wings to once again hang the manager out to dry should we fail in one or both, some of them even claiming to be Liverpool “supporters”.

But I guess we pretty much covered that in the last blog so all I can say is I support the boss this week and regardless of what happens in these upcoming games I’ll be still supporting him next week and for the foreseeable future. That said, make no mistake about it I will still be maintaining my Shanks-given right to have a good moan about things from time to time, after-all everybody’s got to have a hobby!

So on to the football side of things and I’ll leave the Premiership until the next blog and focus on the Champions League for now. When it’s comes to European football there really is no doubt that Rafa Benitez is quite simply the dog’s bollocks, the guy has master-minded more victories in Europe than Napolean! Even his harshest critics in the media, of which there are many, can’t fault him in this regard and some of them have even managed to give him a little bit of credit. There have been some who have attempted to pick holes in it but I think our record in Europe under Benitez well and truly speaks for itself.

While it’s true, as some people suggested in an earlier blog, that you can get away with a few draws in Europe, the fact of the matter is that it’s the same for every team but our record of consistent results over five years makes us quite rightly the number one ranked team in the continent. We’ve got to two finals in three seasons and three semi-finals in four seasons.

Our recent record is pretty damned impressive as well with just two defeats in our last fifty games. We’ve scored in each of our last 16 games in the competition proper and if you include our qualifer at the start of the season it’s 17 from 18 games in which we’ve won 12, drawn 5 and lost just once, that unfortunate 3-2 defeat by the chav’s in last season’s semi.

Obviously we all want to see the team winning the Premiership but we’ve also got a proud tradition in Europe which is also very important and on that side of things we’ve improved immensely under Rafa. Over the years some people have suggested that maybe he prioritises the CL over the Premiership but I think that’s a total misreading of the situation. Football has changed a lot over the last couple of decades and money has become a much more vital ingredient for success.

The old Liverpool way of fielding “the same eleven as last week” no longer really applies in the modern game. The league has now become a battle of attrition where having a strong squad is essential as the games come thick and fast. Every season we always see some teams starting very well over the opening months of the season but when they don’t have the depth in their squad it eventually catch’s up and they drift off the pace.

Some good examples from this season would be Hull City, Aston Villa and unfortunately even ourselves. It’s not just about injuries some players will just lose form, as has happened with several of our own, and there will also be tired legs to contend with etc. In such circumstances you’ve got to dip into your squad and if you haven’t got enough quality there you will suffer and that’s why money is so important.

The Champions League is different and I don’t think the squad element is as much of a factor. Obviously injuries to key players is still a factor but with the away goals rule and the gap between ties etc, the game is as much about tactics as it is about quality and to my mind it is more of a level playing field than the Premiership and in those circumstances Rafa often excels over his rivals. Which is why I mentioned the importance of building a strong squad in the last blog because I firmly believe that if the boss gets the support to add a bit more depth and quality to our squad we will be competing as strongly in the Premiership as we are in Europe.

Anyway, I better finish up here because I’m about to head out to the game. We have a slight advantage going into tonight’s game after our superb team display got us a 1-0 victory at the Bernabeu but this tie is by no means over and there is still much work to be done. The first goal will be all-important, if they get it everything will be up in the air once more but if we can score it we will have a nice little cushion.

At the time of writing this I’m still not sure how things are working out on the injury front. It would be nice to have Arbeloa back in at right back. If he doesn’t play I think it’s going to have to be Carra because I think the boss will be very keen to have Masch back on patrol in front of our back four, but this would men bringing Sami Hyypia back into the centre of defence and we’ll need to be very wary of leaving him exposed to their pace.

I think Torres will start on the bench and maybe brought on later when their defence is starting to tire and it would be very useful for him to gain some match-fitness and maybe even the confidence of a goal into our game against the mancs at the weekend. Riera is suspended but the boss could still start with Babel upfront and play Aurelio on the left side of midfield with Dossena at left-back, as Insua can’t play in this one. But I suspect he might give Eggnog another go and leave Babel on the left side. The rest of the team really picks itself.

I’m heading down to my local boozer to watch the game and I want to be celebrating a Reds victory so I fancy us to take another step on the road to Rome with a 2-1 win and a welcome boost ahead of our trip to the land of prawns.

Keep the Faith

Well I’ve just had a bitter-sweet couple of days and apologies for the delay since the last blog. I had to make a quick trip over to the UK last week but was unexpectedly given the chance of going to our game against City yesterday and as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity. However I must admit that by the time the game finished I ended up wishing I had, but I’ll get back to that later.

My “short” trip ended up lasting several days longer than planned and I arrived back at Kopblog HQ last night, flat broke and feeling as depressed as a cannibal in a vegetarian restaurant. But I received some excellent news when I returned that lifted my mood. As you’ve probably gathered from the message beneath our Kopblog banner at the top of the page, the site won the Best Sport and Recreational Blog Award at Saturday’s Irish Blog Awards which took place at the Cork Airport International Hotel.

As this category included blogs from all sports there was a very big and impressive list of nominees and I considered it a great achievement that we made the final shortlist of five. However, considering the tough competition from the other excellent blogs on that shortlist and the fact that as I was in the UK I couldn’t attend the event, I figured I stood about as much chance of winning this award as Rafa Benitez does of winning the Football Writers Manager of the Year Award.

So while as a Liverpool fan I remain very disappointed with the result and our performance at Anfield yesterday, on a personal level I am delighted and immensely proud to receive this award. This is the second award won by the site following our Best Football Blog Award in last years New Football Pools Awards. Many thanks to all of you guys for visiting the blog and posting your comments because it is you that have made the site what it is and made it possible for us to receive such recognition.

Also many thanks to the unsung heroes of the site Matt Ladson and Max Munton. I only write the blogs, it is their technical wizardry in the background that keeps the site and all the bells and whistles working. I can assure you that this award will not change me or make me arrogant in any way. I will remain just an ordinary blogging God and just like before, should you ever be fortunate enough to meet me in person remember to avert your eyes from my magnificence and I think a slight courtesy might also be appropriate.

Anyway back to business and yesterday’s game was a real downer for Reds fans. Drawing at home for the sixth time this season has left our title hopes for this season hanging by the tiniest of threads and handed every possible advantage to the mancs. It’s depressing but the reality is we now face a battle to even remain in second place and avoid the potential banana skin of having to play in a qualifying round to get into next seasons Champions League.

As we weren’t involved in last weekend’s FA Cup games the team had the benefit of a long decent break before we headed into the business end of the season and I went to Anfield yesterday full of expectation but my worries began as soon as I heard our starting eleven. The reasons for my fears became very apparent almost from the first whistle. Without Gerrard or Alonso available our team had the footballing equivalent of a lobotomy.

With little quality in the wide areas we rely on our central midfield to provide us with some creativity but yesterday our team had no brain, what we had instead was Mascherano and Lucas. Although we’ve seen little evidence of it this season, on his day Masch is one of the best defensive midfielders in the world but he does little for the team in an attacking sense. I don’t wish to be too hard on Lucas after the stick he has already had to endure this season but the truth of the matter is he often plays the game like a blind crab, almost always going sideways and lacking the vision to play a decent forward pass.

Ahead of the game yesterday this is what worried me most because whenever we play these two together we always struggle to create in an attacking sense. Sure playing them may make us a bit more solid defensively and may also offer us a bit more control but sometimes a little bit of control has to be sacrificed at the altar of creativity particularly in a home game against a mid-table team that we simply had to win.

If we had no other choice than I would simply accept it and hope for the best but the fact is we did have another choice but we weren’t bold enough to use it. When we played Pompey in our previous game Aurelio put in an excellent display in central midfield spraying passes around and even capping his performance with a goal. In that one game he did more than Lucas has ever done in that position and he quite rightly received a lot of praise from fans and even the manager for his display.

So, particularly in regard to the absence of Gerrard and Alonso, I was quite frankly amazed to see him on the bench on Sunday and you can’t help but ask yourself just what does a player have to do to keep his place in the side? Regular visitors to this blog will know that I try to avoid being kneejerk and I am still a supporter of the boss but I just believe that on this occasion he got it wrong on the day. I know if Benny Onion’s great shot had got past the keeper or if we were given that late penalty for a clear hand-ball, we might have got away with it as we have in some other games but we just can’t keep going from game to game hoping we’ll get away with it, which is what we appear to be doing lately.

I’m not trying to be wise after the fact so you’ll just have to take my word for this but had I been able to put up a blog before the game, the team I would have preferred to see us start with from the players we had available would have been Reina, Carra, Skrtel, Agger, Insua, Kuyt, Masch, Aurelio, Babel, Benny and Torres. Granted this is an armchair opinion but that would have been my team based on the fact that these are the players that I would regard as being the most in-form of the ones we had available, with the exception of Masch and Babel but remember that would have been my choice before the game and I would have been hoping that these two might have showed a bit of form on the day.

I think Agger is too good a player to be left on the sidelines so I’d move Carra right to accommodate him and sacrifice Arby and I’d have had Insua straight back in at left back to hopefully pick up where we left off before he went on international duty. In midfield Kuyt on the right where his hard work is most effective, Masch doing the defensive bit, Aurelio pulling the strings and it would be really a toss-up between Babel and Riera as to which of them is the most out of form but I’d go for Babel purely for his pace. Upfront I would have had Benny, probably our most in form player at the moment, playing behind Torres where hopefully his intelligent use of the ball would create some opportunities for El Nino.

Now granted as I mentioned earlier this would have been only my armchair opinion and I obviously wouldn’t have had the benefit of seeing the numerous training sessions available to our coaches but to my mind that side would have had a much better chance of delivering us our badly needed win on the day. But it’s all water under the bridge now and we are where we are.

We’ve still got a slight chance if we could win all of our remaining games but with the way we’ve been playing since Christmas I can’t say I’m very confident of that happening and I’m just hoping we can win enough of them to get as close as we can and ensure that we at least finish second which would at least be a big improvement on previous seasons.

So our thoughts must now turn to our big CL clash with Real Madrid and it’s a competition which now represents our best hope of any silverware this season. Despite our frustrations this season, if we could somehow manage to win the CL and finish second in the league I would definitely be celebrating what I would consider to be a successful season. I’m currently doing a Q&A session with a Real Madrid website so I’ll post up my answers to their questions on Wednesday ahead of the game. That’s all for now from your “multi award winning” blogger but now that I’ve done my bit in the trophy department let’s hope the team can follow suit!

Keep the Faith

Last year Kopblog was (rightfully,  in our unbiased opinion) crowned Best Football Blog in the Football Fanzine Awards.

Well, 2009 sees Kopblog again in the nomination process, so if you think Gerry and the blog are worthy of taking the accolade for a second consecutive year, click here to place your vote. Select Liverpool: Kopblog.com.

You may also wish to vote for Gerry in the best writer category and for the This Is Anfield website which runs the blog in the best online fanzine category.

Cheers!