One of the great things about playing in the Champion’s League is that you get to see your team competing against some of the best teams in Europe, but unfortunately sometimes you’ve also got play a team like Chelsea. They are a team with relatively little history or pedigree in Europe, who have managed to bully their way through the competition and once again it has fallen to us, to take out the trash!

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!

It’s been a pretty quiet and boring week on the football front and I’m looking forward to seeing us back in action at Villa Park on Sunday.

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.

Sometimes life really sucks! As our loss to Newcastle last weekend, has all but ended any slim chance we might have had of a late run at the title, we now face the stomach churning prospect of watching either John Teary or Gary Nipple holding the Premiership trophy aloft at the end of the season. It’s depressing isn’t it?

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?

It was a frustrating day for Liverpool in yesterday’s Merseyside derby. Once again we totally dominated possession but failed to convert our chances and Everton managed to hang on for a 0-0 draw.

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!

Two-faced Sir Alex Ferguson, the scumbag horse sperm loving manager of The Scum, has been at it again with his twisted words of “wisdom”, this week. Speaking in defence of Christina Ronaldo winning a penalty at Middlebsrough on Saturday, when anyone with even a half a brain could clearly see his dive was about as genuine as Pamela Anderson’s left tit, Ferguson defended his player, saying:

“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.