Anyway that’s the end of what’s been a bitter-sweet week for me. The recession was hit hard at Kopblog HQ and on Friday my job finished up, so I am now as redundant as the mancs open-top bus driver. I’ve known for about 6 months that I would be finishing up but it’s still a real downer when it actually happens and I’ve spent the past week at various farewell piss-ups. But not to worry, unlike Didier Dogface, I’ll get back on my feet again!

On the plus side, work did have this annoying habit of interfering with my blogging so now I’ll have a chance to catch up and now that I have a bit more time I might even give this writing lark a go. That was the bitter part of my week but the oh so sweet part came when I saw the mancs being destroyed by Barcelona in the Champions League final.

There’s no doubt about it, Barca totally outplayed the mancs with some terrific football that was a real treat to watch. Messi in particular was immense on the night and I was delighted to see him cap his performance off with a superb headed goal. His display put some egg on the faces of the morons in the British media who constantly claim Ronaldo is the best player in the world.

Watching them both on the same pitch it was very clear that Messi is a class above Ladyboy. I thought it was very evident during the game that the biggest difference between the two was that Messi plays for his team while Ronaldo plays for himself. But he wasn’t the only manc that got found out on the night.

The game confirmed, once again, how completely over-rated and actually quite limited Fergiescum is as a coach. I thought his tactics in the game were astonishingly inept. The most obvious example was him playing Rooney on the left wing so that he could double up with Evra on Messi, but Messi didn’t play wide left he played in a more central role and ran amok against the mancs for most of the game. It was certainly a clever ploy by the Barca boss but one that could have been countered and yet the mancs boss’s solution was to do nothing.

I don’t want to take anything away from Barca’s superb performance, but the amount of space they were given to play their football was unreal. Obviously I was happy to see this because I wanted Barca to win but from a football point of view I was curious to see how the mancs might adapt or adjust their tactics to gain some control. In the end they didn’t seem to do anything much that I could see and just kept plodding along apparently hoping for the best.

A lot of their players came in for some stick afterwards for underperforming but I thought some of them looked unsure about what they were meant to be doing and were perhaps hoping for some direction to come from the bench but they didn’t seem to get a lot. As I said earlier, I don’t want to take anything away from Barca but in all honesty if we had been playing them I would be very confident that we would have beaten them. Rafa would never have allowed them to have that amount of space to knock the ball about. We would have swarmed all over them in midfield and Gerrard and Torres would have definitely caused their defence all sorts of problems.

I’m not suggesting Fergiescum is a bad manager, in many ways he is very good but he is most definitely not half as good as he’s hyped up to be and this is at its most evident in Europe. Once we went into demise nearly 20 years ago, their biggest obstacle was removed and the mancs have more or less dominated the domestic game since then but they haven’t been quite so successful in Europe.

In the 23 years he’s been in charge of the mancs they’ve been one of the wealthiest clubs in the world and despite his dubious record in the transfer market, he has always had access to unlimited transfer funds. But while they have won a lot of domestic silverware, they have only managed to win the top prize in Europe just twice and in both cases very fortunately. For most teams this wouldn’t be too bad but for a man the British media help to throw knighthoods at and dub the “greatest manager of all time”, it’s hardly eye-catching.

It’s only when you truly look at why he can be so dominant in the domestic game but fail to reach the same levels in Europe that you begin to see the truth behind the hype. In England Fergie has absolutely everything going in his favour both on and off the pitch. First and foremost, with occasional exceptions, he has always been able to outspend his rivals but beyond that he bullys smaller sides, intimidates referees and for good measure he also has manc director David Gill in a lofty position at the FA to ensure they remain on side.

He also enjoys the favours of some of his other manager buddies, as we seen recently with his lap dog Allardyce assisting him in a co-ordinated attack on Rafa, and to cap it all off he also has an adoring British sports media constantly singing the praises of him and his players and seemingly afraid to dare to write a single word of criticism lest they lose their place in his circle of trust. These things have all played a part in the mancs domestic success and if you don’t believe this to be the case then you only have to look at their record in Europe without them.

In Europe, the sides aren’t as easily bullied nor are the referees and Fergie has no “special friends” in positions at UEFA. Outside of Britain the media tends to be a bit more balanced and doesn’t look at him quite so adoringly and he has few if any buddies among the other European managers. So this leaves him with “just” a highly priced team and his ability to manage them and this has led to two fortunate victories in 23 years. Is this the type of record you would expect from a man some people in the media claim to be the “greatest” manager of them all?

As I mentioned earlier, it was our demise as the real force in the English game 20 years ago that allowed Fergie and the mancs to go largely unopposed and dominate for most of the last two decades, but we are no longer in demise. When he arrived at the mancs all those years ago he said it was his goal to knock us from our perch and while he might take the credit, the truth is that due to our own shortcomings we fell from it ourselves. But The Reds are rising once again and Fergiescum can see it happening but can do nothing about it. Now it’s our turn to go knocking people from their perches and for Fergie I suspect the end is nigh!

Anyway, before I go here are a few interesting “facts” about last Wednesday’s game.

Michel Platini has announced that the next time United get to a European cup final, they will play with two balls so each team can have a kick.

Former footballer Paul Scholes has been convicted by an Italian court of assault. The accused’s conviction is as a result of a violent two footed lunge at Barcelona’s second choice holding midfielder Sergio Basquets. Unsurprisingly ‘the consistent inability to tackle’ defence put forward by the accused representative Gary Neville was dismissed by the Italian jury. During the trial the Italian courts turned down extradition applications from Spain, Germany, Portugal, France and Holland. Scholes who is known to be a serial offender for these types of assault tackles is wanted by authorities all over Europe. Interpol said today that they would be launching an investigation to determine how Scholes had evaded police for these assaults for so long.

Keep the Faith

In my opinion, their away-goal win at the Bridge was not just a victory for themselves but also a victory for football. I was delighted with the result because it spared me from having to watch another CL final between a team I don’t want to see win and a team I don’t think deserves to win. I can’t abide the mancs or anything they stand for and I am normally very happy to cheer on any team playing against them, even our wee neighbours, but no matter what the stakes are I can never bring myself to cheer on the chavs under any circumstances.

I am obviously first and foremost a Liverpool fan but I am also a football fan and in my opinion, Chelsea, its players and supporters are an absolute disgrace to the game and we saw plenty of evidence to support that during the two legs of their semi-final with Barca. I read an article during the week which stated that chelski are not a big club, they are just an average club with a lot of money and I totally agree with that.

It’s really hard to believe that for the first leg of their CL semi against Barca at the Nou Camp, they were allocated 4,800 tickets for their “supporters” and had to return 2,000 of them unsold. I just find that incredible and even if you leave the likes of ourselves or the mancs aside, you could just imagine that if the likes of Everton, Villa, Newcastle, Leeds or just about any other club were involved in such a game, those tickets would be like gold dust.

But the chav fans couldn’t be arsed to turn up, in fact in most of their away games their entire away support could travel together in a mini-bus! They also couldn’t be arsed to really getting behind their team last night and for most of the game they were out-sung by the Barca fans. These pathetic excuse for “supporters” don’t deserve to see any kind of success.

The way their club is run is also quite pathetic. I actually don’t have a big issue with their spending. I think if the funds are there then, unless you’re Arsene Wenger, you’d be crazy not to use them and as I often wish we had more money to spend, I can’t really criticise them for spending theirs. But as far as I can see, for all their spending they have built nothing.

The fact that Hiddink is due to leave them at the end of the season and they will need to appoint someone else means that in the same time that Rafa Benitez has been at Liverpool, they will have had five managers and yet they still don’t seem to have made any real progress in building anything sustainable. There is no meaningful youth system there that I’m aware of, no young players emerging and no real development of the side whatsoever.

Given the money they’ve had at their disposal you would think they had a golden chance to build something significant but there doesn’t seem to be anything there but an aging squad. It seems like they will either have to spend another fortune rebuilding or else they will sink like a stone over the next couple of seasons and in the current economic climate I suspect the latter.

But the perhaps the most shameful thing about the chavs is the conduct of their players. The player-power in their dressing room where they decide to play for certain managers and not for others, the constantly disgusting on the pitch antics of Drogba and their behaviour towards the match officials at the end of last night’s game was nothing short of disgraceful. The chavs were clearly unlucky with some of the decisions but that’s no excuse for the petulant display by their players at the final whistle. Let’s not forget Barca also had a man unfairly sent off and were also unlucky not have had a penalty themselves in the first leg so they would have had just as much reason to feel hard done by if they had lost.

We’ve certainly inflicted quite a number of injury time winners against opponents over the years but we’ve also suffered a few defeats that way and been very hard done by officials ourselves on many occasions. It’s a real sickener when such things happen but you’ve just got to take your medicine and move on. But the chav players behaviour last night and their supporters apparently sending over 100 death threats to the referee is just beyond words. I really hope UEFA throw the book at them and don’t just hit them with some meaningless fine. I think a proper example needs to be made of them and they should be kicked out of next seasons competition.

As for Barca, my respect for them has certainly grown after watching both games. For almost all of the 180 minutes things weren’t really going their way in terms of breaking through the chav defence but their heads never dropped and they kept playing their football. Even when Abidal was unfairly sent-off, they picked themselves up and kept going. As the game entered its final minutes and even into injury-time they never once resorted to just lumping the ball forward, they kept passing the ball and I was delighted to see them get their reward. They really are a proper football team and I hope they go on to lift the trophy in Rome.

Anyway on to Liverpool matters and there’s nothing like a nice stroll on a Sunday afternoon which is exactly what we had against Newcastle last weekend. We never really got out of second gear in the game but we didn’t have to because we were in total control of things from the first minute to the last. The 3-0 score was the least we deserved and the Toon can count themselves lucky the score-line wasn’t far more emphatic.

The crossbar was their best defender and we hit it so many times that once again the ball had to be treated for woodworm at the end of the game. As for Joey Barton’s cowardly tackle on Alonso, that guy is just a total scum-bag but let’s just hope he learns from his parents mistakes and tries using some birth control! Our little competition in the last blog was also very close but congrats to akka for taking the prize and the Amazon vouchers are on the way to him. There will be more competitions coming up in the weeks ahead.

Unfortunately Boro didn’t do us any favours and were complete shite against the mancs but all we can do is keep winning our games and hope for the best. I think we will face a sterner test this weekend away at Wet Spam. They have been playing well since Zola took over and they will be a lot tougher for us to break down but hopefully Torres will be back to help us along.

A win is obviously vital and would put us back on top for at least 24 hours until the mancs play Man City on Sunday. With City you just never know. It’s a local derby so their players should be right up for it and it’s possible they might spring a surprise, as they did in the same fixture last season.

I’ll also be keeping an eye on the game between the gooners and the chavs at the weekend. If the arse win it they will give themselves a chance of creeping into third place and avoiding next seasons CL qualifiers which will give them plenty of incentive when they face the mancs later on.

But all of that will mean nothing if we don’t take three points on Saturday. I have a feeling this will be a close game but I’m predicting a 2-1 win for The Reds and fingers crossed on Sunday!

Keep the Faith

I was damn proud of the effort put in by The Reds at the Bridge in midweek but it was frustrating to come so close to achieving our objective only to have it slip away from us. The question ahead of the game was whether we could get through the strong chav defence to score the goals we required, and having Steven Gerrard ruled out with injury appeared to be a major blow to our chances. So I think you’ve got to give full credit to our lads for battling away and scoring four goals, a feat many claimed to be impossible particularly without our captain.

Unfortunately we also managed to concede four which was very disappointing. For me the turning point came from that OG by Reina. I’m not having a go at Pepe because sometimes these things just happen but we were 2-0 up at the time and if we could have kept it at that for a little longer I believe we would have got through. Once that goal went in it filled the chavs with confidence and they became a different team.

There’s no point in me going over the game again at this late stage as it’s already been well covered by others. All I would say is that other than the whistle-happy referee, a guy clearly depriving some poor village of its idiot, who did us few favours and really got on my tits, I’ve got no complaints. I take some consolation from the fact that we played our part in a great game and our performance should give us the heart to go and do our stuff in the rest of our league campaign.

What I really wanted to cover in this blog is this latest attack on Rafa by Fergiescum and his lapdog Allardyce. Given my situation at home this week, I didn’t get the chance to follow much of the media coverage after our game at the Bridge. Strangely though, despite the fact that we got knocked out the little I did see seemed to be generally positive about us, more positive than the mancs received for struggling through against the weakest side in the competition.

Which makes me wonder if this could be part of the reason for this latest joint verbal attack on our boss? But before going into the detail of what’s been said, there are a couple things worth noting about these clowns. The Bung Brothers are connected in more ways than one. There have been serious questions about some of their shady dealings in the transfer market in the past and both have sons who were exposed by the BBC in separate investigations into their extremely dodgy dealings as football agents, where they were fully supported by their fathers. So let us have no lectures on respect for the game from these two pillars of morality!

Anyway, getting back to the matter at hand I find Allardyce’s comments to be particularly cowardly and unwarranted given the fact that he has waited almost a week to make them. He now accuses Rafa of being disrespectful towards him which is a bit rich coming from a guy who publicly called our manager a “whinger” and a “moaner” a couple of days before we played them last week.

Allardyce’s claims in his latest rant he was very upset that Rafa made a disrespectful gesture towards him and his side after Liverpool had scored the second goal in our 4-0 thumping of Blackburn last weekend. Strangely though after the game Allardyce was all smiles and even went so far as to suggest that Liverpool played great and could go on to win the title.

There was certainly no hint of this upset he now claims a week later that he was feeling. The supposed “disrespectful” hand gesture by Rafa can be viewed here, make of it what you will. However I hear he was actually gesturing towards Xabi Alonso because he had taken the free-kick that led to our second goal differently than the way Rafa had instructed him to but as we scored from it the smile and gesture that followed was apparently a light-hearted “it’s ok, pay no attention to me” message to Xabi. We will no doubt hear Rafa’s explanation soon enough but surely that makes a lot more sense than Allardyce’s and Fergiescums interpretation.

The swiftness in which Fergiescum has leapt on this makes it more than a little suspicious that this whole thing has been co-ordinated. This is what the old fart had to say earlier today;

“Benitez said Everton are a small club, which just points to his arrogance,” said Ferguson.

“He had a weakened team and to get that kind of contempt….I don’t think any other Liverpool manager would have done that. It was beyond the pale.”

As you can see from the above he even went so far as to drag up the supposed “small club” reference made by Rafa in relation to Everton about three years ago, strange that he should wait all this time to finally comment about it!

Another interesting point about his comments today is that ahead of the first leg of our CL tie with the chavs a little more than a week ago, Rafa was asked a question about Fungushead which he answered and when Fergiescum heard about it he said, “But the interesting thing as far as Rafa Benítez is concerned is that he’s got a European tie and he’s talking about Alex Ferguson. Fantastic – I didn’t know I was that important.”

So with that in mind, if Rafa chooses to respond to this latest crap I think it would be hilarious if he threw that one back at the old fart and said, “But the interesting thing as far as Alex Ferguson is concerned is that he’s got an FA Cup semi-final and he’s talking about Rafa Benitez. Fantastic – I didn’t know I was that important!”

As far as I’m concerned all of this rubbish stems from the fact that Benitez has clearly gained the upper hand over the manc boss when it comes to these so-called “mind games”. During these verbal exchanges he has been coolness personified to such an extent that even some of the media have swung just a little bit more towards him and away from the moaning old Scottish git.

In fact I think his latest rant may very well blow up in Fergie’s face. I say this because to me this is quite clearly a co-ordinated set-up between Fungushead and his lapdog, and an embarrassingly inept one at that. He is insulting the intelligence of people if he thinks they can’t see through it and in my opinion this is a sure sign that Rafa has got under his skin and he is becoming increasingly desperate. Check this article out for example Click Here

We are running out of games in the league and it could turn out that we fall a little short of overtaking them but when it comes to mind games there’s a new master in town and he needs no help from his friends to mentally torture his rivals. Perhaps in future Fergiescum would do well to remember the old saying, a closed mouth gathers no foot!

Keep the Faith

Rafa was understandably pissed off with the decision and made some angry comments afterwards which suggested that the mancs have enjoyed some favourable treatment by the Premier League in this and other matters. The only thing I found surprising about his statements was that it had taken him over three years to reach this conclusion and all I could think to say was, welcome to English football mate. (click here)

I think most football supporters of all teams would agree that, both on and off the field, the mancs have always enjoyed favourable treatment by both the league and the manc obsessed British media. Throughout the years there have been countless examples of this. Just some examples that spring to my mind are:

Cantona’s receiving a virtual slap on the wrist by the league for his infamous “karate-kick” assault on a Crystal Palace fan. And by the time the press got through with this one, it was the assaulted fan who was painted as the guilty party and branded a racist. Just one example of many favourable disciplinary punishments handed out to their players over the years.

The mancs pulling out of defending the FA Cup in 2000 with the leagues blessing as their price for taking part in the World Club Championship in South America that year. I don’t remember Liverpool receiving any preferential treatment when they were forced to travel to Tokyo in the middle of the season, to take part in the same competition in 2005.

Back in 1993 when trailing 1-0 at home to Sheffield Wednesday, the referee somehow allowed over 7 additional minutes to be played which enabled the mancs to score twice and win the game that secured them their first Premiership title. Never had so much additional time been played in a league game before or since, and yet no questions were ever asked.

Those are just three examples of many, and that’s without even mentioning the many penalty decisions that always seem to go their way, as Jose Mourinho discovered last season. Favouritism is something the mancs have always enjoyed, but just in case anyone thinks that I am being a little paranoid, consider this. Liverpool are the most successful team in the history of the game. We have won more league titles and more European cups then the mancs or anybody else in English football, and we have also had the most successful manager of all time in Bob Paisley. Yet despite this, check out how many knighthoods have been handed out to manc players and managers as opposed to Liverpool. I rest my case!

The reason I bring all this stuff up is because I read Alex Fungusfaces latest rant about Liverpool earlier today, with some amusement. He told a press conference: ‘We are looking at Liverpool’s whole role in this. We are not letting them off with it.“ I’m sure Rafa is quaking in his boots, but anyway he continued: “That is what we are investigating. We will see how it comes out. David Gill is working on that at the moment. We will get to the bottom of it. They had no chance of winning the case with Heinze. They obviously haven’t studied the Premier League rules.’

Presumably these Premier League rules include a paragraph which states that Liverpool must not piss off the mancs by attempting to buy a player that is readily available to everybody else. It may be the mancs desire not to sell any of their players to a domestic rival, but that doesn’t make it a rule, or does it?

What struck me most about Fergies latest rant is that he now seems to be giving up any attempt to disguise the fact that the mancs and the Premier League are joined at the hip. Afterall isn’t it meant to be the job of the Premier League and not the mancs, to investigate any supposed wrong-doing on Liverpool’s part in this matter?

Or is it just that the mancs are afraid that any impartial investigation into dodgy transfer dealings would surely reveal that it is the mancs themselves who are by far the biggest offenders. In any case I suspect all of this hot air Fungusface is spouting is purely designed to draw peoples attention away from the piss poor start his expensively assembled team have made to the season and I only hope that Spurs can heap more misery on them on Sunday. So get stuffed Fergie, you are nothing but a wart on the arse of humanity!

More importantly, Rafa’s move for Heinze shows he has recognised an area of weakness in the squad and I think its an area that needs to be addressed. If it was just another left back we needed, then I would favour giving young Insua a chance. I was impressed with him in the couple of games he’s had so far and he looks like he’ll develop into a fine player. But, with Paletta going on loan to Boca Juniors for the season, we need some extra cover at centre back and I think he’s going to need to bring somebody in.

On to tomorrow’s game and some people say that it is bad luck for a Black Cat to cross your path, but I think we’ve had more then our fair share of bad luck over this past week and its time for us to turn the tables at the Stadium of Light. These are the kind of games that we simply must win if we are to stay in touch at the top. Too often in the past we have allowed games such as this to become banana skins by failing to take our chances and kill teams off. Sunderland started the season well by beating Spurs but they have conceded 5 goals in their last two games, 2 against Birmingham and 3 against Wigan, so we have got to fancy our chances of finding the net against them.

It looks likely that we will be with Steven Gerrard for the game and without his driving presence in the centre of our midfield, I think we need to be a little more adventurous in the wide areas and in attack (click here) . If it were up to me, I’d like to see Torres and Voronin in attack and the Killer B’s (Benny Onion and Bubble) on the wings.

But Rafa usually favours players that haven’t been involved in the international games, so he will probably go with Pennent on the right and this will probably also mean that Crouch will play in attack. Don’t get me wrong, Crouch would deserve a place in the side for his ability to cause problems for the Sunderland defence, but he also has the extra advantage of being the only player in the side tall enough to have any chance of getting on the end of one of Peanut’s crosses!

Anyway, if we do our stuff tomorrow, my money’s on us continuing our good start to the season with a 3-0 win.

Firstly, my answers to his questions.

1. Would you have preferred one of the other two clubs, Manchester United or AC Milan, in the draw?

No. I think we got the toughest draw in the last 16 when we got Barcelona but once we got past that and knew which teams were left in the competition, then given a choice I think we would have chosen to face PSV and the draw kindly gave them to us. Looking at the other three teams in the semi’s, I think its fair to say that the draw has been kind to us again, as if we had been given a choice I think we would have chosen to play Chelsea rather then one of the other two at this stage. I say this because in our four previous Champions League meetings over the last two seasons, you haven’t managed a single goal against us and in our previous 4 meetings in all competitions, we’ve won three. As we all know, the mancs are a jammy shower of bastards and you just never know what your going to get from AC Milan, so although it will be a tough game, I’m happiest about us facing Chelsea.

2. Don’t you just get the feeling that there will come a time soon when you will lose to Chelsea in a cup competition?

Well, of course you did beat us in the Worthington Cup final a couple of seasons back, but given our record against you in cup competitions, I think we’ve every reason to feel confident.

3. Do you agree with Stevie Gerrard’s opinion that a Premiership win would eclipse a Champions League win?

Yes, definately. I don’t think there’s any secret about our desire to win the Premiership and we’ll hopefully put in a decent challenge for it next season but the Champions League is the richest tournament in the game and a wonderful consolation prize.

4. Your opinion on the takeover and what it’ll mean for your club? (Will you be the new Chelsea )

I’m delighted with the takeover. Despite all of our glory years, we were always weak on the business side of things and didn’t even have a corporate box at Anfield until 1992! Although Rafa has brought us great success since his arrival, he has had a relatively limited budget to work with in comparison to the other big teams in the Premiership and beyond. This was mainly due to the clubs debts and the need to fund a new stadium etc. The deal with our new owners means our club debts are pretty much wiped out, the building of our new stadium will finally get underway and Rafa will have a larger transfer budget, so of course I’m happy about it. Our new owners Gillett and Hicks have a very good track record in sports and really seem to have there heads screwed on, in a business sense so it looks like the future is bright. No, we will not be the new Chelsea. We are not very far away at the moment as it is and we don’t need to splash around the obscene amounts of money that you guys do. We just need a couple of real top quality players to add to what we’ve already got and we’ll be fine.

5. Are you pleased to be at home for the second leg?

Yes, I’m very pleased we have the second, and deciding, leg at Anfield. The atmosphere in the stadium will be fantastic, I don’t know if this will have an effect on your players but it certainly has an effect on ours and we will be doing our very best to drive them on, so bring your ear plugs!

6. Where do you see any danger coming from?

Obviously, Drogba is a danger. Now that he’s decided to stay on his feet, he can’t seem to stop scoring at the moment and Joe Cole is also a bit of a bogey player for us. I also hope we have a strong referee who will be able to stand up to some of your more “theatrical” players.

7. The Vital Network – Do you feel the banter between our two sites sometimes verges on the unacceptable?

The banter between our two sites can be a little over the top at times, but I’d rather see it on the messageboards then on the terraces. Despite the intense rivalry between the teams, I’ve never seen any trouble at any of the games. So I’m happy for people to blow off as much steam as they like on the sites, as long as it doesn’t go any further.

And now, his answers to my questions.

1. Yet another semi final between our sides, would you have preferred to meet us in the final?

Difficult! In a way your questions implies it will be Chelsea in the final! We’re not fussed who we face. If you’re going to win the Champions League you have to take on all those sides you’re presented with as opposition. In all honesty, it could be a case of – the better the devil you know – besides, we’re about due for a win in a semi-final against you lot.

2. Unlike many of your other fans, I know you are a lifelong supporter of the Blues, so which former Chelsea players do you think would have got into the current side?

At the risk of being accused of repeating myself; that’s a very difficult question. Football has changed but I’d like to think several of the leading Chelsea players from years gone by would have been professional enough to adapt. In order to simplify things I’ll just pick a couple from each area of the team. In goal, Peter Bonetti would have given Petr Cech a run for his money whilst in defence I’m not sure the tackling talents of the likes of Ron Harris would have been appreciated by modern referees. In the attacking areas I’d hazard a guess that Jimmy Greaves, Kerry Dixon, Peter Osgood, Pat Nevin and Charlie Cooke may well have made an impact. Strangely enough, our current problem area of right back could well be filled by Albert Ferrer who was an unsung hero in the late nineties. However, whilst putting forward the names of these ex-professionals I’d be reluctant to suggest they could oust any of the current team but I wouldn’t complain if they were on the bench ready to be called upon in an emergency. Although the more you think about it the more other names crop up, Ray Wilkins, Eddie McCreadie, the list could go on and on. All in all a pretty unfair question I’d suggest.

3. Does it bother you to have so many divers and cheats in your team?

Oooh! They tell me they studied the Steven Gerrard technique for hours on end!

4. How do you feel about Jose Mourinho’s off the field antics?

The guy is an absolute legend, besides not sure by what you mean about his off the field antics. Has he been up to something we’re not party to? Or do you simply mean his mind games? If it is the latter, I’d just like to say that in the three years he’s been there he’s picked up every trick that Sir Alex Ferguson ever used and has turned the heat up on several of his rivals. There is a reason for this strategy; it takes the heat off of the players. Go on, admit it, the Premiership would be a poorer place for his absence.

5. What’s going on between Jose and Roman, will he still be there next season?

I’d say yes! There is no doubt there has been a fall-out and I hazard a guess we’ll never know the real reason why. However, it’d be madness to get rid of him when he’s done so much in the three years he’s been with us. Unfortunately, Chelsea have a history of shooting themselves in the foot, just look back a few years to the eras of Ruud Gullit and Luca Vialli!

6. Given the recent break down in the clubs contract talks with John Terry, are you disappointed that your captain has turned out to be just another greedy footballer?

Don’t believe all you read! As Terry has said, contract talks always break down. In fact you should probably need to know that one of the clauses he wanted inserted was that if it all went pear-shaped he’d be prepared to have his contract ripped up and his salary re-negotiated. I think football has changed (for the worse), players are now akin to rock star status and the money is being paid accordingly. I’d even suggest that when your American owners get around to improving Liverpool, you’ll have several others on £100k a week. If you want to compete at the top end of the scale you need to pay accordingly. Sadly, it’s resulting in the big four becoming more isolated from the rest of the Premiership. What price a European Super League inside the next decade? As a G14 member, has that not what you’ve been after for years, a chance to feather your own nest?

7. Do you feel your club is treated fairly by the media?

Not particularly! Unfortunately, it’s a British trait to knock those who are on top of the pedestal. If it wasn’t us it would be somebody else. What annoys me is when lazy journalists trot out lame articles that have no truth in them simply to fill a few column inches. Obviously, the tabloids are the worse culprits. However, in recent weeks I’ve been surprised to see those same tabloids grudgingly offering us some praise for our sheer resilience this season.

8. Which three Liverpool players would you prefer not to see in our starting eleven in the semi final?

You are not going to catch me out with that one. We want to face your strongest team, we want to beat your strongest team and not give you the chance to harp on about fielding a weakened side J However, if you were to push me, just take out Gerrard, Alonso and Carragher!

9. If you could only choose one, which would you prefer to win, The Premiership or Champions League?

Seeing as we’ve won the Premiership twice (back-to-back by the way), I’d edge towards the Champions League possibly beating Manchester United a few days after we’ve also beaten them in the FA Cup but saying that it wouldn’t half be sweet to overhaul Manchester United in the Premiership after being so far behind. The look on Fergie’s face would be an absolute picture.

10. How devastated will you be when we beat you, yet again?

Oh! Come on! Devastated! It’s only a game or didn’t a legend in your part of the world sum it up perfectly – “It’s not a matter of life or death, it’s far more important than that.” – I guess life would go on but I can’t see it happening!

While we cruised through to the semi finals with a 4-0 aggregate win over PSV, the CSKA London boys booked their passage through with a very good away win at Valencia. While I must admit that was a great result for them, the chelshit fans, who are second only to the mancs when it comes to “only singing when they’re winning”, have gone completely over the top about it.

They seem to be trying to paint this result as the greatest away win in Europe, since the Christians went to the coliseum and unexpectedly beat the lions 3-2 after extra time, and since the game I’ve heard quite a few of them saying that if they play like that against Liverpool, they will win.

What these poor saps seem to fail to realise is that their team tried to play exactly the same way in our four previous CL meetings over the last two seasons, and didn’t manage to score a single goal against us. They also tried to play exactly the same way in our last four games in all competitions, and we’ve won three of them, so pardon me for not quaking in my boots! The reality is that we have nothing to fear from chelski but they have a number of reasons to fear us.

CSKA London hold few surprises for us tactically and, injuries permitting, I think we could all easily name the team that will face us in two weeks time. On the other hand, Mourinho will not be quite sure what to expect from Liverpool. While our squad may not be as strong as theirs, it is certainly more versatile and Rafa has a number of tactical options at his disposal. This may give us an advantage in the tie but its not the only advantage we have over them.

Perhaps the biggest advantage to us is that the second leg is at Anfield. I don’t know if the atmosphere in the stadium will have an effect on their players but I know that it certainly has an effect on ours, and our “twelfth man” will be doing everything it can to lift the team to victory so I suggest the chelski players and supporters bring some ear plugs!

Another factor which may have an effect on the game is that CSKA are still fighting on all fronts which is a good thing from their point of view, but the disadvantage of this is that they have a number of important games to play before the tie and really cannot afford to rest any of their main players. However, on our side of things our piss poor start to the season put paid to any chance we may have had to challenge for the Premiership this season, but we are in a relatively secure CL spot and can afford to rotate a few players in preparation for the semi final, so tired legs will not be a factor for us.

The yellow card situation could also be important. Essien will be suspended for the first leg and they have 5 or 6 other players sitting on yellow cards who could miss the second leg if they pick up a booking, Drogba, Joe Cole, Robben and Ballack among them. Whereas we have only got Jermaine Pennant on a yellow.

Whether any of these things I’ve mentioned become a factor in the semi final, remains to be seen, but even without them I would still strongly fancy our chances. Don’t get me wrong, I think it will be a tight, hard fought tie, but we’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt and I don’t see any reason why it will be any different this time. There is no doubt they have been superior to us in the Premiership and we will hope to put that right next season, but equally there is no doubt that we are the Masters of Europe and they are a mere pothole on the road to Athens and NUMBER 6!

After all the excitement of our Champions League elimination of Barcelona its time to get back to business in the Premiership. The gooners have leapfrogged over us into third spot with their win against Villa in midweek, so we’ve got to win this one and take care of Arsenal when we get them at Anfield in our next game. And God knows we owe those bastards a good beating after their two cup victories over us earlier in the season.

It’s also been a quiet week on the blog front as well because work commitments took me away from Kopblog HQ for a couple of days but I’ve returned in time to celebrate St Patricks Day today and like every good Irish man I’ll be spending the day “wetting the shamrock”, as we call it in this part of the world. I was doing a bit of mixing with Villians during the week, when I was asked to answer a few questions for the popular Aston Villa website Vital Villa as part of their match preview and most of the rest of my thoughts are reflected in the answers I gave them, so I’ve copied them below. I’ll be back again when I sober up after todays celebrations so until then happy St Patricks Day to you all.

1) So how has your season been so far? Why do you always start so slowly?

I don’t know why it is that we have started so slowly in recent seasons, it seems that if the season were to begin in October we’d be fine. The Premiership is such a difficult league and if you give the opposition a headstart its very hard to make up the ground, and unfortunately we’ve been guilty of allowing this to happen over the last two seasons. Between October and the end of last season, we had won more points then anybody else and we knew we had to hit the ground running and try to carry that form into this season if we were going to challenge. However, and without trying to make too many excuses, I think it needs to be noted that in the previous season we had to pre-qualify for the CL which meant that our season began almost six weeks before everybody else and many of our players went from there all the way through to the World Cup finals. A lot of people blamed Rafa’s over-rotation of the squad for our poor results at the start of the campaign, but observers of those games could easily see that many of our top players just weren’t performing and looked totally knackered, so in those circumstances I think a lot of the rotation of the side was necessary. Nevertheless it was very disappointing to see our chances of challenging for the PL effectively disappear so early on in the season. Our early cup exits at the hands of Arsenal were another major disappointment at the time but it has had its benefits. Without the cup involvement, we have an almost fully fit and well rested squad as we head into the business end of the season. We are currently battling for 3rd place in the Premiership and have just knocked the holders Barcelona out of the CL, with a very winnable quarter final with PSV ahead of us. So what once looked like a season in disarray could yet turn out to have a memorable finish.

2) What do you think of your new owners, happy with the change?

Overall I’m delighted with the change but a little sad to see David Moores step down as he was a brilliant Chairman of the club for many years. He was a genuine fan of the team who always put the needs of the club first. Recent revelations that he put his hand into his own pocket to pay for Dirk Kuyt, tells you the kind of man he is and I’m delighted he has been kept on as a life time Club President. However, his need to fund that move himself also tells you the kind of precarious financial position we were in. The business side of things has become more and more important in the modern game. Despite all of the success we had in the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, we have always been weak on the business side and its amazing to think that we only installed our first corporate box in 1992! As this area of the game has grown in importance we reacted too slowly and this allowed others to overtake us. This takeover deal effectively wipes off our debt, gets our new stadium built and gives the manager more funds to compete in the transfer market, so its hard to see a downside. I’m glad Gillette and Hicks took us over rather then the arab bidders because they are tremendously successful business men who are already successfully involved in other sports, and when it comes to building sporting arenas there is simply no-one better then the Americans. While it’s true that they cannot be considered lifelong supporters of the club, they know what it takes to achieve success and will take the hard nose business decisions when necessary. These days you need to be as competitive off the field as you are on it and I think having these guys on board will help us in that regard.

3) Fancy your chances in the Champions League this season?

Yes, I think we have a very decent chance. Although they will be no push overs, PSV was the best draw we could have got in the quarter finals. They didn’t cause us too many problems in the group stage and we’ve got to fancy our chances against them. If we get to the semi’s, we’ll face the winners of CSKA London or Valencia. If its the Londongrad boys then quite frankly we are becoming a little bored of beating them in major cup semi finals and we’ve already beaten them in 3 of our last 4 encounters, so we won’t lose any sleep about facing them again. If its Valencia (and I think it will be), then as their former manager Rafa will know them inside out and I’m sure he will come up with a gameplan to defeat them. If we manage to get to the final we would face either Bayern, AC Milan, Roma or the mancs and I’d fancy our chances against any of them. So as we are specialists in this competition and have already won it FIVE TIMES, there’s every reason to be optimistic.

4) Rafa – the future?

It seems that every month there is yet another rumour linking him with Real Madrid but I think these stories are all rubbish and just a result of lazy journalism. Given half a chance I’m sure Madrid would love to have him but I think he’ll stay at Liverpool for quite a few years to come. He took on a big job here and inherited a squad full of deadwood but with a smaller budget then any of the other members of the “big four” he has managed to overhaul the squad, win us trophies and we are improving all the time. Thanks to the work he has already done, we are not very far away from where we want to be, but we are just getting started. With the work on our new stadium about to begin and a bigger transfer budget for Rafa to play with, we feel The Reds are on the rise and its no longer a question of if we win the Premiership, its a question of when and how many.

5) Peter Crouch and Craig Bellamy have both been linked to exits, the golf clubbed wazock to us in actual fact, if you had to lose one, which would it be and why?

I think you’ve been reading too many tabloids mate, Crouchy and Craig Bellasterous will not be leaving. Rafa got a bit of stick from certain quarters when he signed Crouch for £7 million from the Saints, but he’s been a great success for us and now looks like we got a bargain. He’s big and awkward to deal with, he’s very good on the ground and he’s scoring goals more regularly then any of our other strikers. I know other clubs are interested in him but why would we sell him? I’ve been a bit tee-ed at some of the critisism of Bellamy. He was a bit under par in his early appearances for us but he’s come a fairway since then and chipped in with some great performances including a few goals that have really got us out of a hole. Besides, he’s far too good for your lot and the golf courses are far better up north!

6) What is your opinion of Villa and with us having the best new owners around, do you think we might finally re-establish ourselves as contenders?

I don’t know about them being the best new owners around, I’d always be suspicious of a guy that has a name that sounds like a cheap porno flick. As regards Villa finally re-establishing themselves as contenders, unfortunately I’m not old enough to remember a time when they were! There’s no doubt Villa are a big club but they’ve underperformed for years, thanks largely to a hopeless chairman and a series of poor managerial appointments. Now that you have new owners and a new manager, there’s fresh hope. There’s a big gap between the top four and the rest of the Premiership, and I think Villa face a tough task just to get back to the head of the chasing pack.Whether your new owners have the finance to match your ambition, remains to be seen.

7) Any opinions on Martin O’Neill?

There’s no doubt Martin O’Neill has a great record as a manager and I think you guys did well to get him. However, although he did a great job at Celtic, its really just a two horse race up there. In his other jobs he has shown he can do wonders with limited resources at smaller clubs but those clubs have limited ambitions and are sometimes just happy to survive. I think the Villa job is his toughest one to date. The expectation at Villa Park is much higher. I’m sure he’ll make you tough to beat but only time will tell if he can actually make you winners.

You are fed up of stupid kick off times as I am? Sky have brought a great deal to football but Sunday kick offs at 1.45pm is something I’ll not thank them for, that is the time my belly should be having roast beef and yorkshire pud!

Totally pissed off with them and we seem to get stuck with them more then most. There should be a law passed to prevent matches kicking off before 3pm!

9) Prediction for Sunday please sir?

Liverpool will win of course, 2-0 to The Reds! Thanks for the three points and all the best in the rest of the season.

I can’t think of any team I’d least like to see win it then one of those two. Well actually there is another one that comes to mind, but they’re far too small to be worthy of consideration. Anyway, given that this is the situation, which of them would you rather see win the title? It really is the Devil’s dilemma for a Liverpool fan but its I question that I recently had cause to answer.

A couple of weeks back, just after we’d beaten Chelsea and around the time Alex Ferguson claimed that he had even received texts from Liverpool fans wishing him luck in the title race, I received an e-mail from the manc magazine United Review. They were doing an article about Ferguson’s comments and decided to contact some Liverpool website editors to ask for their opinions. The question they asked me was this;

Assuming the title race boils down to just United and Chelsea, which of the two teams would you prefer to see emerge with the title and why? Or, following the weekend’s results, do you feel you’re back in the hunt?

I gave their question some thought but the more I thought about it, the more obvious the answer became, so I sent them the following response;

I haven’t given up on Liverpool’s title chances, just yet. I realise we have an outside chance at best, but its a chance nonetheless and while its still possible I’ll keep believing, as I’m sure you would in my position.

However, in answer to your question, if it came down to Manchester United or Chelsea for the Premiership, then all rivalries aside, I would definately prefer to see United win it.

At least with Utd you have a club that have built a strong foundation over many years and have worked hard for the success they’ve achieved. Whereas Chelsea have just arrogantly bought their way to the top and have built nothing.

While its true that United have also spent a fortune on players over the years, they have also spent a lot of time and money developing young players of their own, just as ourselves and Arsenal have done, and some of those home-grown players are in the team at the moment. This work doesn’t just benefit the club but also benefits the game as a whole, as many of these young players filter down through the divisions.

But where’s the emerging talent coming through at Chelsea? All they do is spent fortunes on highly paid superstars but haven’t developed a single player of their own.

A prime example of this was when we beat them 2-0 last weekend. All Mourinho and their fans could do after the game was moan about their three central defenders being injured for the game. But in a similar crisis situation, United, Arsenal or ourselves would have given an opportunity to one or two of their emerging young players and got on with it. Chelsea have no emerging young players and wouldn’t give them a chance even if they had.

So in my book Chelsea deserve nothing and it would sicken me to see them buy their way to a hat-trick of titles. So good luck to United or any other team that prevents this from happening, because it won’t just be a victory for their club, it will be a victory for football!

Believe me that was tough to write, and needless to say they used it in their piece. But that’s my opinion of the situation, what’s yours?

When playing against these “smaller” teams the trick is to match them for effort and then let your quality win the day. In terms of effort, you can’t really fault our players because they were more then a match for Everton, but our performance did lack that extra bit of quality that is often required to break the deadlock in such games.

With players such as Carragher, Gerrard, Kuyt and the soon to return Sissoko among others, we will never struggle when it comes to hardwork and effort. However, I do think we have a shortage of real quality in the squad and this was evident again yesterday. Alonso is one of the few quality players we have but he had a poor game on the day and we missed his normal precision passing . Pennant saw a lot of the ball on the right and although he did ok, he consistently failed to deliver any real quality into the box, and the list goes on. An injection of quality is badly needed but quality doesn’t come cheap and hopefully when this takeover mess gets cleared up, Rafa will be in a better position to add some to the squad in the summer.

Everton played the majority of the game with nine men behind the ball and failed to create much to trouble us, but despite this we did manage to hand them the best chance of the game and Reina did well to save Andy Johnson’s effort. Johnson has only just recovered from injury and only played after a late fitness test, however he did need to be substituted before the end because his injury was preventing him from diving as effectively as he normally does.

The ultra defensive tactics employed by Everton were to be expected and it was our job to break them down, but we just didn’t use our possession effectively enough to do this. When a team such as the Everton’s, Watford’s and Wigan’s of this world use such negative tactics at Anfield and get away with the point they came looking for, you normally say good luck to them and move on to the next game. However, it seems our neighbours have got themselves all bent out of shape because in his after match interview Rafa referred to them as being a small club.

I actually don’t think Rafa’s comments came out as he intended but he really should know by now that he should stir well away from the truth when discussing Everton, because they’re a sensitive lot who don’t like to see their bubble being burst. Despite all they’re moaning to the contrary, I think this is just a case of the truth always hurts because in every measurable way, Everton are in fact just a small club and its about time that they excepted that fact. In response to Rafa’s comments, David Moyes said there was £100 million difference between the sides and he had to employ whatever tactics he could to achieve a result. That’s fair enough, but doesn’t it just prove Rafa’s point?

There is this myth in the English game that certain clubs such as Everton, are big clubs despite all the evidence to the contrary. So how do you measure a big club? Success? Everton have won one trophy in 20 years. Worldwide fan base? Everton’s worldwide fan base is measured in thousands rather the millions. Top class players? Everton have a team full of players that nobody else wants, even when they had the lure of possible Champions League football a couple of season’s ago, they still couldn’t persuade any top class players to come to Goodison. Ambition? Everton have taken 4 points from a possible 6 from Liverpool this season, so regardless of what lowly mid table position they finish the season in, many of their fans will still regard it as a successful campaign, that’s about the limit of their ambition!

However, I have done some research and found that Everton did once have a decent team that managed to win a few trophies. It wasn’t easy to find this information but I eventually found a good mention of their exploits in the Old Testament, but I still don’t see why this entitles them to be referred to as a big club by those of us surviving on this side of the Ice Age.

In comparison to clubs such as Kettering, Everton might be considered a big club, but in Premiership terms there are most definitely a small fish in a big pond. However, in these days of political correctness perhaps its not considered polite for us to refer to them as small. Afterall, these days small people are now referred to as “vertically challenged” and blind people are referred to as “visually impaired” etc. So with this in mind perhaps a more politically correct description of Everton would be a team who are footballingly challenged, coached by a facially impaired manager and supported by a bunch of intellectually challenged fans, that sounds much better.

However, I don’t think we can be too harsh on Everton for being a small club, afterall nothing grows in the shade!

“I have seen it a million times and Cristiano lost his balance completely.”

He then goes on to say:

“The interpretation is down to the referee but, to me, it was a clear penalty.”

So, basically, Ferguson is saying that losing your balance results in a clear penalty. But of course this only applies to the mancs, if it was given against them he’d be screaming blue murder.

He even went on to say:

“But it is difficult for players who run as quickly as he does.”

So that explain’s it. According to Fungi that “well respected” figure in the world of football, it’s alright for players who run fast to dive looking for penalties, or to roll around on the ground as if they’ve had a broom handle shoved up their arse (which I’m sure wouldn’t be a new experience for Ronaldo), pretending to be injured in an attempt to get an opponent booked etc.

Saying that Funguson is a two-faced tosser won’t come as news to many people. Afterall, he is the same guy who defended Eric Cantona’s pathetic attempt at a kung fu style attack on a Palace fan many years ago, by practically saying that it wasn’t Cantona’s fault, he merely held his foot in the air and the fan rushed towards it!

The reason I bring this up is because I believe his comments to be cowardly and stupid. A few weeks back he gave an extensive interview in which he condemned the amount of diving and feigning of injuries by players that has crept into the modern game, and he went on to speak of the need for the people in the game to take action to stamp it out.

Suddenly one of his players is caught doing it and he comes out with this crap. Before coming out with half-baked calls for the people in the game to take action to stamp out all of this diving and cheating that’s going on, Ferguson should have the courage to get his own house in order. As it happen’s, I think Ronaldo is the worst player in the Premiership for indulging in these kind of antics but it’s not really surprising, considering he has a manager that gives him a license to do so.

Of course, Ferguson isn’t the only one. Wenger is just as bad and don’t even get me started about Mourinho. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen examples of this cheating by every side in the Premiership, including our own. But when it comes to ourselves and the others, it tends to be the exception rather then the rule and these examples are rare.

I’m not above having a cheap pop at our rivals but I’m not writing this for those purposes on this occasion. I think it’s clear that the players of CSKA London, London St Germain and the mancs are effectively cheating with the full approval and instruction of their managers. It happens far too often at these clubs for it to be otherwise. I guarantee you that if you watch these 3 sides playing this weekend, or any other weekend for that matter, you will see many examples of diving, feigning of injury, attempts to get opponents booked and players trying to intimidate referees by crowding around him during major decisions etc.

I’m not suggesting that these managers come out and publicly criticise their players but neither should they come out publicly and ridiculously try to defend them when they’ve clearly cheated, as Ferguson has done. If these people are serious about clearing this stuff out of the game, then it would be better if they said nothing at all and genuinely dealt with the matter internally.

As things stand, the only way I can see to take this cheating from the game is for a panel to review matches afterwards and award red and yellow cards to cheating players retrospectively. Perhaps, if these teams started to lose some players from bans handed out as a result of this, they would finally take some action to stamp it out instead of just talking about it.

All of this diving and cheating etc is like a cancer growing within the game and I don’t know a single supporter of any team who approves of it. Sadly, until managers like the three clowns I’ve mentioned above, stop just talking the talk and start finding the moral courage to start walking the walk, it’s an ugly feature of the game that’s set to be with us for a long time to come.