Xabi is a great player, perhaps the most accurate passer of a ball over any range that I’ve ever seen. In fact his accuracy is so great that I can exclusively reveal that Madrid had to fight off a late bid from NATO for his services. Apparently they wanted to install his feet into their latest missile guidance system, as in this increasingly PC world of ours it’s considered to be the height of bad manners to continually bomb the shit out of your allies!

Despite the frustration some of us may be feeling at the moment, I think we will all remember him fondly. He was an excellent signing by Rafa and he gave the club five very good years of service and many great memories. My own couple of favourites were his penalty in the CL final in 2005 which he eventually put away from the rebound but what bottle he showed to take it in the first place, and also of course were those fantastic goals he scored with such superb accuracy and technique from inside his own half. So I want to thank Xabi for his five years of great service to the club and I wish him all the very best in his future career.

There’s no doubt we will miss him but how badly and for how long will be determined by what Rafa does next. This thing really couldn’t have happened at a worse time for us. By the end of last season I think it would be a fair assessment to say that we had the best team in the country but the mancs edged us out by having a stronger squad. As our first team already seemed to be in place I thought our main focus over the summer would be on strengthening the squad but it hasn’t worked out that way.

It’s amazing how quickly things can change in football these days, I was about to go through what options Rafa might have in filling the void left by Alonso but now I’ve just got the news that we have signed Alberto Aquilani from Roma subject to a medical. The medical is normally a formality but in this case it may not be quite so straightforward because this guy was injured for a fair chunk of last season and underwent ankle surgery in May which I understand means he won’t be fully recovered for awhile yet.

Our medical staff will really have to be sure about this one because he’ll be eaten alive in the Premiership if he’s got a dodgy ankle. But if it works out then overall you would have to this would be an exciting signing for us. He would certainly be a bit more offense minded in his play and give us another attacking option. I would expect he’ll play further up the field ahead of Masch and behind Gerrard and it would be very useful for us to have another runner from midfield especially against the ten man defences that some teams sometimes frustrate us with.

Although I haven’t seen too much of him, what I have seen I’ve liked and I would be very happy with this signing if the medical works out. A friend of mine who’s a mad keen Juve fan and watches a lot of Italian football tells me he will be a terrific player for us if we can keep him fit. You can always check out some clips of him on You Tube but those little highlight clips could even make a player like Jermaine Peanut look good so I don’t trust what I see on there.

The best way to judge how good a player is, is to ask the fans and as you can see from the reaction to his transfer by the fans on this Roma blog , Alberto must be very good indeed. I suspect he will not be the last new face we’ll see before the transfer window closes, in fact I believe there will be two more additions but that’s another blog.

Anyway in other matters, I just broke off there to watch our penultimate pre-season game with Norwegian side FC Lyn hoping I might see something exciting. Obviously it’s always nice to see some goals but I’m really far more interested in the performance than the results in these games and so far I have to say our performances have been as flat as witches tit overall and we’ve been far too pedestrian for my liking.

As I’ve already said, I don’t care too much about the games themselves because they are really just about getting the side into peak condition ahead of our opening league game at Spurs but so far we still look some way off that and I’m just hoping we will look closer to the finished article in our final warm-up game against Atletico at the weekend. The other disappointment has been the injuries we’ve picked up and I just have my fingers crossed that Dagger and Skary will be fit for the start of the campaign.

From what we have seen, I’ve been impressed with Glen Johnson and I think he will be a real asset to us this season. Some of our other first teamers look there or thereabouts and I think Lucas in particular has done really well. However there have also been one or two who have worried me and chief among them is Degen. I know he’s been out injured for a season and these are only pre-season games but already I can tell that he is the kind of player who will give me nightmares.

He seems to really like to get forward but defensively he looks all over the place and even against some of the inferior opposition we have faced he has managed to get himself in more awkward positions than a blind prostitute! Of course it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong about a player and I hope I am wrong again this time, but on the basis of what we’ve seen of him so far I dread to think of us having to rely on him in the Premiership. I think we should put an armed guard on this guy with orders to shoot to kill if Johnson becomes injured!

Of the younger players we’ve seen, it was great to see Nemeth grabbing a couple against Singapore and Spearing looks tidy enough in midfield but I didn’t see anything from any of them to suggest they will be knocking on the first team door anytime soon, or at least that was the case ahead of our game at FC Lyn. Just when I was beginning to despair that any of our younger players were good enough yet to join Insua in making the step up to the first team squad, along came Martin Kelly.

I was hugely impressed by this lad’s performance against Lyn. He looked comfortable at centre back in the first half, equally comfortable at right back in the second half and very useful when he got forward. I believe he was also very impressive while on loan at Huddersfield last season and that Tranmere are currently trying to take him on loan for the coming campaign. But I hope Rafa keeps him with us because on the basis of that one performance alone I would already have him ahead of Degen as cover at right back and possibly even as our fourth choice centre-back if we fail in our attempts to sign Sylvia Dustbin.

In other matters there is a very good cause that I’m hoping to drum up some support for and I’m hoping some of you guys can help. As you know, I’m not normally one to bother you people with such things but I had an e-mail about a cause so worthy that it even moved a miserable shit like me into making a donation. The e-mail was from Cllr Bill McCulloch who is campaigning to raise funds for a permanent memorial to Liverpool and Scotland footballing legend Billy Liddell in his home town of Townhill, Dunfermline.

For those who may not know, Liddell was one of our greatest ever players and there are some people who still regard him as the very best player to ever play for the club. He had a playing career at Liverpool that spanned four decades. He was mainly a left-winger but was the ultimate utility player and during his time he actually played in an incredible nine outfield positions and excelled in all of them, a very useful man to have around in the days before substitutions were allowed.

During the 50’s when Liverpool languished in the second division, the club become known as “Liddelpool” due to the brilliance of the Scottish international who was the clubs top scorer for eight seasons in a row. And as if all of that wasn’t remarkable enough, he played a total of 537 games scoring 229 times and in his entire career he never received a single booking.

When I was a lad and just starting to go to games, a lot of the grown-ups around me still referred to Liddell in the same kind of reverential terms that many of us use today to describe Dalglish. Even though he hung up his boots in 1960 he was still fresh in the minds of people back then in much the same way that King Kenny is today, but as Liddell’s exploits were not captured by any TV cameras this great footballing Legend is largely forgotten by the majority of fans today.

However there are some people trying to ensure that The Great Billy Liddell will be forever remembered and are raising funds to erect a permanent memorial in his honour in his home town. To do this they need to raise a mere £4000 which even in these tight times is a relatively paltry amount. I know that it is less than an hour’s wages for some players and that it is the kind of amount that the club could pay for without even thinking about it but I think that it is fitting that this memorial will be paid for by the fans.

So if any of you would like to help you can do so by making a donation and/or purchasing a raffle ticket.

The raffle prizes include –

A limited edition hand painted statuette of Billy Liddell – a real collectors item

A football signed by the 2009/10 Liverpool first team squad.

A bottle of Scottish Parliament Whisky.

Tickets are only £2 each but you can buy as many as you like, and you can do this on-line simply by clicking the link HERE . Spread the word guys.

Keep the Faith

I’m not sure where Alonso’s heart and mind is at the moment but I’m a little disappointed that he has avoided nailing his colours to the wall so far and chosen instead to keep his options open, which has allowed this endless press speculation about his future to run and run. We all love Xabi and I think it’s fair to say that we would see him as a good honest pro, but I think it’s also fair to say that he is beginning to test our patience.

If this thing can be sorted out in the short term it will be great for all concerned but if things continue to drag on and he waits for another couple of weeks to suddenly come out and tell us how much he loves the club and never wants to leave, I think some of our supporters will find it a little hard to take, I know I would!

On the plus side, I’m delighted that we have Rafa Benitez in our corner. If Alonso stays with us I’m certain the boss will get his mind right for the season ahead but if he is to leave then I’m equally certain the boss will ensure we receive the maximum price for his services. Real Madrid have managed to screw us in the past and it must be very upsetting for them to be no longer dealing with the moronic Rick Parry who would all too easily cave in to their demands. No, this time they are dealing with a man who is not afraid to call their bluff and if we are forced into to selling the family jewels he will ensure that they pay through the nose.

While the Alonso situation continues to overshadow everything else that’s happening at the club at the moment, at least as far as the press is concerned, I’ve actually been far more interested in following the progress of our team in the couple of pre-season games we’ve had so far. The results of these glorified training sessions really aren’t important but it’s just good to see the players, particularly the young ones, getting a run-out and building their fitness. As is to be expected at this stage the performances haven’t been great so far but these will gradually improve so that hopefully we will be in the peak of condition for our opening game of the season at Spurs.

One thing I’ve noticed recently is that just as the team have begun their pre-season, my mind has also started to go into pre-season mode. Over the summer we’ve only really had all of the usual speculation to mull over but now that the lads are back in training I find that my mind is now turning to the more practical questions about the team as we head into the new campaign.

There are many such questions of varying degrees of importance buzzing around in my head at the moment and they cover every area of the team. In fact there is probably enough material for a dozen blogs but there are five such riddles that have been on my mind recently and I thought I’d start off our Kopblog pre-season by throwing them in the meat grinder.

Benny Onion: He may seem a bit lightweight and there may even be more meat on a butcher’s pencil than there is on our Yossi, but he is a great player. What he may lack in terms of stature, he more than makes up for with his silky play and his very impressive game intelligence. The guy was super for us in the latter half of last season and there are often times when he reminds of Peter Beardsley.

To my opinion he definitely deserves a place in our first eleven but the problem I always have with him is trying to figure out where he should play in our current set-up? He is the gypsy of our team, capable of playing anywhere across the midfield or attack but as yet he doesn’t have a set position that he can call his own. His versatility means he will always get plenty of games and perhaps he is just destined to be the guy who always fills in for others but if he can continue the form he showed at the end of last season, he will be a big asset to us in the campaign ahead.

Riera: I think the best description of his debut season is Jekyll and Hyde. When he first arrived I thought it was terrific the way he slotted straight into the side and provided us with a lot of extra width on the left. However, in the second half of the season he faded badly and some of his performances were actually quite annoying at times. The question is which one was the real Riera?

Perhaps it was just a case of him joining us late and without the benefit of a full pre-season, the rigours of the Premiership eventually caught up with him and he will hopefully be better prepared this time. Maybe his poor finish to the season is still too fresh in my mind but I have my doubts about him and wonder if he can give us the consistency we will need in the next campaign.

Voronin: He returns to us after a fairly successful loan spell in Germany and Rafa has been talking him up a bit lately, which is to be expected, but the truth is if he were really much good he wouldn’t have been sent out on loan in the first place. The guy shows some good touches at times and seems to have a bit of a footballing brain but I just don’t rate him as a top level player and I don’t think he has the quality to be in our team, in fact the last time I seen him he looked about as much use as a milk bucket under a bull’s bollocks!

However, this time last year I said pretty much the same thing about Arbeloa, minus the milk bucket bit, and he proved me wrong so hopefully Voronin will do the same. Let’s face it at the moment it doesn’t look like we have the funds to bring in anybody else so I think we are just going to have to make do with what we’ve got and hopefully Voronin or maybe one or two of our younger players can emerge and make a worthwhile contribution to our attack.

Lucas: He’s another player I have had my doubts about but he endured a tough time last season and I admire the character he showed to come through it and he put in some decent performances at the latter end of last season. One way or another I think this could well be a make or break season for the young Brazilian. So far I think he has pretty much demonstrated that he can be a competent and tidy player in our midfield when we need him but if he is to really make it at Liverpool he is going to have to do more than that.

Perhaps he has been instructed to do so by the boss, but up to now we have often seen him taking the safe option of a short pass to the likes of Alonso or Gerrard etc. Maybe I’m being a little harsh but I view that type of play as not just passing the ball but also passing the responsibility and I think Lucas is now at the stage when he has to start taking on some of that responsibility himself. I think he has the capability and next season I would like to see a bit less of him just making up the numbers and a bit more of him taking control and making things happen, it’s time for him to step it up.

Babel: I’ve kept the best until last because I think Babel is the ultimate enigma. This guy has so much potential it’s untrue. He is the fastest player at the club, outstripping even Torres for pace in training. He also has plenty of skill, an eye for goal and his work rate has improved a lot over the last season or so. But while the lad has often proved very useful to us as an impact player from the bench, he has so far seemed incapable of imposing himself on a game for 90 minutes and we’ve seen little sign of him really developing enough pitch smarts to make the most of his talents.

That said, I’m glad we are going to hang on to him for at least another season. There are a couple of reasons for this, firstly we paid a lot of money for him but what we really bought was his potential and as he hasn’t so far lived up to it so we would be unlikely to get back even half of what we paid. That and the fact that we have already put so much time into him may be good enough reasons by themselves why we may as well soldier on with him a bit longer.

But the main reason why I am happy we are hanging on to him is that if, and I know it’s a bloody big if at this stage, Rafa and Co can find the key to Flyin Ryan he would really be a huge asset to add to what we already have. I know that maybe I’m being blinded by the player he could be rather than the player he is and I accept the fact that sometimes you’ve just got to cut your losses, but I just think this kid could really be a star player one day and I would hate to see him come to fruition somewhere else after we’ve done all the groundwork.

Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that he is now very firmly in the last chance saloon and this will be his final opportunity to really deliver on his potential in a Liverpool shirt. I hope for his and our sakes we see a significant improvement from him this season and perhaps the lure of next year’s World Cup finals may provide him with that extra bit of incentive to deliver.

No doubt the season ahead will give us some answers about these and the rest of the players in our squad and it will also provide us with the answer to the ultimate question that’s gnawing away in all of our minds. For too many years we’ve have gone into each season with the big question in our minds being, is our team good enough to be Champions? Now for the first time in about 20 years I think we can go into a season already knowing beyond doubt that our team is now good enough to be Champions but the big question now becomes, can they prove it?

Keep the Faith

If Xabi does leave it will be a major disappointment but we’ve had plenty of those over the years and as ever we’ll get over it. No matter which way this thing goes, I just hope it gets sorted out as quickly as possible so we can focus on our preparations for next season. A few words from the man himself wouldn’t go amiss and hopefully we’ll hear something from him when he joins up with the squad this weekend, if not before.

There’s no doubt losing Alonso would be a blow, he is one of our best players and would be very difficult if not impossible to replace but if he’s made up his mind to leave then it’s best to let him go and try to salvage something by getting the best possible price for him. To be totally honest, I’d be more than a little pissed off if he left us at a time when we finally seem to be on the verge of achieving things, but he’s a player I’ve developed a lot of respect for over the last five years so no matter what happens I certainly won’t be throwing any flak in his direction.

However, it is annoying to see the media vultures using this situation as yet another stick to beat up on Rafa Benitez. During his time at Anfield we have regularly seen him being criticised in the press for his tactics, team selections, transfers, conduct on the bench, arrogance etc, etc, etc. Rarely if ever do we see the likes of Alex Fergiescum subjected to such constant critical analysis but it seems to be open season when it comes to our boss and anything goes.

Now it appears that they are blaming his poor man-management skills as one of the main reasons why we may lose Alonso and just like much of the other crap they write, that is complete and utter bollocks! This is typical lazy journalism based largely on the fact that Xabi was nearly sold to Juventus last summer and to read some of the reports you would think Rafa had tried to drag him away at gunpoint. But this is clearly ridiculous and you only have to look around at what’s happening in the transfer market at the moment to see why.

In the modern game the powers of the players and their agents seem to be increasing all the time, while the powers of managers and clubs seem to be diminishing. It makes me laugh when a player signs a new contract at a club and it gets greeted with headlines about them “committing” themselves to the club for the next 4 years or whatever.

Contracts mean very little these days and regardless of their length it appears that players can walk away pretty much whenever they choose, and often do. Alternatively they can also sit on their arses, run down their contracts and refuse to move on even when it’s clear they are not in the manager’s plans, as we seen recently with Peanut. So my point is that had Alonso moved to Juve last summer, the player and his agent would have been very much involved in making it happen and he wouldn’t have been forced to go anywhere he didn’t want to.

Besides this if Xabi was feeling so unsettled about what went on last summer, as the press claim, then it’s strange that he went on to have his best ever season for us and as recently as just before the Confetti Cup he was saying how very happy he was at Liverpool. So all I’m saying is that if Alonso does end up moving on to Real Madrid there is no way any blame should be placed at Rafa’s door.

I don’t think the boss can do any more to keep the player then he’s already done. Time and again he has publicly stated that Alonso is an important player for us and he is not for sale, the club even released an official hands-off statement and let’s not forget the player still has three years remaining on a fat contract. These are hardly the actions of a manager trying to supposedly force a player out of a club, as some media morons claim.

The reason why the boss has placed such a large price on the players head is simply because he doesn’t want to sell him but if he is forced into it, he wants to ensure that the club is amply compensated and has enough funds to bring in a couple of quality replacements. My intention here is to counter some of the crap that’s been in the press recently and I’m not trying to have a go at Xabi, but it has to be said that if he does move to Madrid it will be down to the efforts of him and his agent not Rafa Benitez.

Anyway, like just about every other Reds fan I know, I’m just totally pissed off with all of this crap and I just want to see it sorted out as quickly as possible. Thankfully we’ve got a little game against St Gallen tonight and even though it’s a pretty meaningless friendly, I’m looking forward to seeing a little action. This is a very small first step in what will hopefully be a very memorable season for us and it will be particularly interesting to see Glen Johnson in action for us for the first time and some of the younger players getting a run out.

Apparently Rafa intends to give all of the 24 players he has available, some time on the pitch. According to the official site our starting eleven will be Cavalieri, San Jose, Degen, Insua, Carragher, Spearing, Gerrard, El Zhar, Babel, Voronin, Nemeth and in the second half we can expect to see the likes of Martin, Darby, Skrtel, Johnson, Kelly, Plessis, Pacheco, Benayoun, Lucas, Ngog, Gulacsi, Ayala and Kuyt.

The LFC TV station is available free for the next couple of weeks or so and they are showing a delayed transmission of the game at 9pm in this part of the world. So I’ll be having some of that and I’ve got some ice cold Stella waiting in the fridge, life is good! I don’t care too much about the result but just give me a few goals for The Reds and no injuries, and I’ll be as happy as a pig in shit!

Keep the Faith

In other matters, I’ve just had a very frustrating few days. I thought I had the best of security on my laptop but somehow a virus snuck through my defences and infected my whole system. I tried everything I could to get rid of it but this thing just seemed to be indestructible. It was one of those rootkit viruses, a real nasty little bastard that hides away and hits you when you least expect it, in football terms it would be very much like a Joey Barton!

In the end I decided to use my nuclear button and rebooted my system back to a restore point I created a year ago. This obviously got rid of the virus but I lost everything from the past year and had to spend many hours updating and installing software etc. It was just as well I did though because I soon discovered that the asshole responsible for infecting my machine had also used it as a means of getting into my e-mails etc and was in the process of emptying my paypal account, but I managed to stop him just in time. On the plus side, the experience has given me a newfound respect for poor old Helen, it’s certainly no fun having a Trojan inside you!

Anyway with all that going on I had lost touch with what was happening in the footballing world but once I had brought myself back up to speed I found that I hadn’t missed anything, in fact things are more or less exactly the same as they were a few days ago. The media is still full of the usual much ado about nothing but the worrying thing from a Liverpool point of view is that despite the club issuing a statement a couple of weeks ago stating it’s unwillingness to sell Masch or Alonso, the stories just won’t go away and they do appear to have some substance.

I think it’s fair to say that there is nothing we would all like more than to see both of these guys still in our team at the start of the season. It would be difficult for us to replace either one of them but if we were to lose both it would certainly be a big blow, although I just can’t agree that it would necessarily be a knock-out punch to our chances next season that some doomsday merchants seem to be predicting.

I can certainly understand the concern a lot of fans have about this situation. Now that we seem to be finally on the verge of making that big step forward we’ve all been waiting for, it would be very disappointing for us to lose two of our most important players, but should it happen life will go on. Maybe age has brought me wisdom or made me a little bit soft in the head but over the years I’ve been privileged enough to see some of our greatest ever players in action and while they were all fantastic in their day, there came a time when each of them either hung up their boots or moved on.

I’m not saying I didn’t spent time fretting about some of these departures but over time I soon learned that life goes on and it often proved to be the case that when one hero departs, another emerges. I don’t need anyone to tell me how important Xabi and Masch are to our team, I’ve written a lot about them both in past blogs and I am very well aware that they are two of our best. That said, I just don’t buy into the argument some people make that our prospects next season will be finished without them.

Damaged yes, but over, no way. We’ve got too many other good players for this to be the case. Let me emphasise again that I would be delighted to see them both in our team next season but if they leave we will still have players such as Gerrard, Torres, Carra, Pepe, Agger, Kuyt, Benny, Skrtel, Johnson, Rier, Insua, Babel and all of the others giving it everything they have to bring us success and that ain’t to shabby.

Even more importantly we will also still have Rafa and knowing that crafty bastard he is most likely already working on plans B, C, D and E. This guy leaves nothing to chance and he will be well prepared to cope with whatever scenario may come our way. Besides this, both players have plenty of time left on their contracts so it’s not as if they will walk away for nothing. We don’t want to sell either of them but if we are forced into it, each of them will bring us a hefty fee to fund replacements.

So overall I would regard the possible uncertainty regarding their futures at Anfield as a cause for concern, but certainly not a cause for panic. Rafa has built us a team, not a collection of individuals and I’m confident we will cope with whatever circumstance may throw our way. For example, if at this time last year we had known that Gerrard and Torres would only be available to play together for us in less than 20 games there would have been plenty of doom and gloom about, but the boss managed that situation and we ended up with our highest ever points total and pushed the mancs all the way.

I suspect calm heads will be needed more than ever in the season ahead, so let’s not go losing ours before it even begins. I actually believe Xabi and Masch will stay with us and at the very least I just can’t see us losing them both, but should that prove to be the case we will cope with it and I still think we will have an excellent chance of getting our hands on the title. So keep your chins up (quite literally in the case of Fat Scouser) and as ever;

Keep the Faith

But the most important thing about Johnson is that he’s a bloody good player. Some have had reservations about his overall defensive qualities but these are the same reservations that are always expressed about attacking full-backs. Pushing forward there is always a chance that they can sometimes be caught out but Johnson will have an excellent partner on the right hand side in Dirk Kuyt and the hardest working player in the game will be sure to give him plenty of cover.

I look forward to seeing the Doris and Glenda partnership on our right next season. They seem to have qualities that could complement each other well and it should certainly improve our attacking options on that side. However, as I said in the last blog, I still think we should try to hang on to Arbeloa as well. Arby and Johnson vying for the right-back spot would give us plenty of cover and over the course of the season I think they would both get plenty of games.

But Johnson wasn’t our only signing and I suppose it had to happen one day, Jesus has finally come to Anfield. Another signing Liverpool have made is 16yr old Jesus Fernandez Saez (Suso), who has joined us from Cadiz. Apparently it’s not just his first name that he has in common with his famous namesake but, according to his former coach (Click Here) , this kid can also walk on water!

It’s great that we have made our first move on the transfer front of the summer and I’m sure it won’t be our last as Rafa will no doubt be working hard to bring in another couple of additions, to give us that extra little bit of strength and quality to improve on our endeavours from last season. Johnson has the right stuff, in more ways than one, and is a strong beginning to an important summer for us in the transfer market.

Until we make our next move we’ll have to content ourselves with the usual exaggerated bullshit in the press. In many ways the crap these clowns write can be very annoying but I must admit there is a small part of me that is a little amused by the irony of it all, for reasons which I’ll attempt to explain.

You see it wasn’t so long ago that many of these same morons were calling us a “one man team” and claiming that Steven Gerrard was practically keeping us afloat singlehandedly. Then Fernando Torres arrived and suddenly we became a “two man team”, which is a term I was still hearing last season despite the fact that we collected a record number of points and came pretty damn close to winning the title with both of them missing a lot of games through injury.

I would certainly agree that Gerrard and Torres may be our two most important players but referring to our side as a one or a two man team is extremely stupid and totally disrespectful to the rest of our team. But the ironic thing is now that Torres and Gerrard have recently happily signed off on fresh new deals to keep them at Anfield for the foreseeable future, it is our other players, presumably the ones many of these idiot journos dismissed as bit part players in our “two man team”, that are appearing on the wish lists of other top teams around Europe and giving these same press clowns something to fill their pages with.

It seems like Liverpool players have become the latest fashion accessory in football and every billionaire owner wants to have at least one of them in their team! If we believe that there is even the smallest grain of truth in many of these press stories then it would appear that in recent weeks the club have had enquiries for Alonso, Masch, Benny Onion, Babel, Dossena, Arby, Dagger and even Reina. That’s quite a bit of interest for a bunch of “bit part players”.

I mean other than losing the Ladyboy to Real Madrid and Tevez who doesn’t belong to them anyway, I haven’t heard of any teams knocking on the mancs door to make any enquires for the likes of Carrick, Fletcher, O’Shit, Evra, Park, Ferdinand or Van Der Sulk etc. And the chavs haven’t been inundated with requests for the likes of Teary, Cashley Cole, Bootswinger, Plank Lampard, Obi Wan Kenobi, Michael Bollocks or the rest. I would expect there may eventually be some callers for Adebayor and Fabregas at the Gooners, but other than that no-one seems too interested any of their other players.

No, it’s the Liverpool players that are attracting attention and are in demand, which may be a little disconcerting at times but it is a sure sign that we are most definitely making waves and going in the right direction. I know from reading the comments on previous blogs that some people are concerned about the possibility of us losing one or two players and that’s understandable, but I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about such things.

My view on such matters has largely remained the same from the day that Keegan left us to join Hamburg all those years ago. Basically I’ve always been of the opinion that if, for whatever reason, a player no longer wants to play in front of The Kop for Liverpool Football Club then we are better off without them, and it really is as simple as that as far as I’m concerned.

We may feel the loss in the short term, but in the long term it will be their loss, just ask Michael Owen! This club is much bigger than any player and we will carry on regardless. We may not be the richest club in the world but our players are very well paid and if any of them want to earn an extra few grand somewhere else, let them go and do it. I think it really depends on what a player wants from his career but at Liverpool we write songs for our heroes, at other clubs they can only write cheques!

On a final note, if you’re planning on buying any merchandise such as LFC books, replica kits, retro shirts, t-shirts, DVDs etc, could you give the TIA site shop a try first (Click Here). The lads on the main site have just relaunched the shop and any commissions earned through sales goes straight back into both the main site and here at Kopblog, so give it a try and hopefully you’ll find what you’re looking for.

And on a final, final note, I have personally designed a Liverpool t-shirt aimed mainly at our often neglected but completely fantastic international supporters, which I’ll be unveiling in the next blog and giving away a couple of them in competitions over the next week.

Keep the Faith

Anyway on the football front, there has certainly been no shortage of job offers for Liverpool players recently which is a sure sign that we are going in the right direction. Once Rafa got his own contract signed it was very wise of him to get some of our other senior players sorted out with new contracts, which they were all very keen to sign. Had he not done so then you can bet the mischief-making clowns in the British media would have invented all kinds of transfer links away from Anfield for the likes of Gerrard, Torres, Kuyt and Agger etc.

Even when these stories have no foundation in truth they can still be a pain in the ass and have a potentially de-stabilising effect on fans and players alike. The boss would have to spend the whole summer publicly denying them and privately re-assuring the players, but getting them committed to new contracts has killed off these stories/rumours before they begin.

This is the kind of area where Rick Parry constantly caused us unnecessary problems by dragging his heels on such things but with Rafa now involved we are moving much faster and more professionally and I think the players will appreciate that. But of course Liverpool is far too newsworthy for the media to ignore us and it is noticeable how quickly they have turned their attention to some of our other players. Alonso, Masch, Benny Onion, Arby and Dossena among others have all been the subject of recent press transfer speculation.

In all cases the players in question have said that they are happy to remain at Anfield, but that hasn’t stopped the press vultures from stirring things up. A recent example was the story doing the rounds about Dossena wanting a move back to Italy. What he actually said in an interview a while back was that his first choice was to remain at Liverpool but if he had to leave he would prefer a return to Italy, and of course the press twisted this to read that he wants to leave to return to Italy. It’s this kind of press mischief-making that can make fans, and maybe even some team mates, unfairly question the commitment of a player.

I’m not suggesting there is no truth in any of the press stories but because of their tendency to sensationalise things it’s often difficult to define how much is fact and how much is fiction, so I take everything they say with a grain of salt. That said, there are some clubs splashing around a lot of cash at the moment and there is a possibility that we may lose one or two of our better players.

It is usually about this time of year that we start talking about removing the deadwood from our squad and while in the past there would always be three or four players we would all be glad to see the back of, it’s yet another measure of how far we have come that there are no longer any obvious choices to offload. Let’s not forget that with just a little more luck with injuries to key players or in front of goal, we would be champions, so our squad is already pretty strong.

Peanut is already gone, so apart from Voronin and maybe one or two fringe players all of our first team squad have something to offer, so let’s not be too quick to throw the baby out with the bath water. With the talk of Rafa having to sell players to bump up his transfer budget the three names I keep hearing mentioned the most are Lucas, Babel and Dossena, but I’m not convinced we’d be wise to lose any of them.

Lucas is definitely someone we should keep and I would be extremely disappointed if we let him go. I have to hold my hands up and admit that I’ve been critical of him in the past but the extremely unfair flak he took last season and the character he showed to play his way through it has convinced me he has the heart and the ability to be a big asset to us now and in the future. It’s taken a lot longer than we would have liked but he improved immensely in the latter stage of the season and I would expect a big contribution from him next year.

Babel is like a caterpillar that we all keep expecting to turn into a beautiful butterfly. He definitely has the ability but we’ve only ever seen it from him in brief flashes. As an impact sub he has proved useful to us in the past but playing from the start he tends to either drift in and out of a game or disappear completely. But he does have that all important gift of pace and I hear in training he even leaves Torres trailing in his wake.

Unfortunately, unlike Torres as yet he hasn’t developed the footballing brain to use his pace as effectively as he might do. However, I must say that he is the one player outside of our first eleven that my manc and chav supporting mates genuinely worry about when they see him coming off the bench and they often ask me how come we don’t play him more. Basically if we received a decent fee I would understand the boss selling him but I would hate to see us put so much time and effort into him only for him to come good for somebody else. Next season he will also have the added incentive of trying to get himself into the Dutch World Cup squad, so Flyin Ryan might well be worth another season.

As for Dossena, he’s a guy who didn’t have the most impressive of starts with us but he came good towards the end and looks as if he might be able to hit the ground running next season, if he’s still around. His dodgy start was understandable given the facts that not only had he to adapt to the faster pace of the English game but in our team he also had to play 15 yards further back from the left wing-back role he had been playing in Italy, so he had to virtually learn how to play in a new position.

But he worked very hard on it and it’s been well documented that he constantly stayed back to do extra training in an effort to adjust his game and I think we saw evidence in his last few games that he was succeeding. So he certainly seems to have the commitment and I wouldn’t be disappointed to see him staying with us. However he does play in an area where we have plenty of cover.

Insua has emerged as a fine prospect, Aurelio is also very useful in that position for us when he can keep himself fit, Dagger recently said that he could play left-back for us if required and in an emergency situation we could also call on Riera who previously played in that position for Man City. So of the three players I’ve mentioned perhaps Dossena might be the most likely to be allowed to leave if we received the right offer.

As I mentioned earlier, there are no longer any obvious choices for us to offload and apart from maybe one or two on the fringes, there could be arguments made for the retention of every player in our first team squad, which is a massive improvement on previous years and a great testament of the work done by Rafa and his backroom team.

We came damn close to the title last season and much has been said about the need for the boss to make the right moves in the transfer market this summer to take us forward those extra couple of steps. But I think it’s equally as important for him to try to retain what we already have, as there would be little point in filling in one hole only to create one somewhere else.

At this very early stage in the transfer window we haven’t as yet made any moves but even by standing still we are in better shape than our main rivals at the moment. With the sale of the Ladyboy to Real Madrid the mancs are now weaker. I can’t stand the petulant little bastard but he did score a lot of goals for them which they will find difficult to replace, and let’s also not forget that his diving and cheating antics also won them many unwarranted free-kicks and penaltys from intimidated officials over the years which they may also find difficult to replace.

Apart from him, Giggs is also finished as a top level player and Scholes and Neville were finished two years ago but Fergiescum was too stupid to notice. I’m not too bothered about the £80 million they received for Ladyboy because even if they hadn’t sold him they would have likely have had at least £50 or £60 million to spend anyway. Besides this, and despite what the media may say, Fergiescum’s record in the transfer market is extremely patchy at best.

Barbie Doll is the most recent example, but there was also Veron, Djemba Djemba, Kleberson and dozens of others over the years. It’s one thing having the money, but spending it wisely is another thing entirely and Fungus head’s record is extremely dodgy to say the least. Even if he does get it right it will take time for new faces to settle in and to get the balance right.

At the chavs Roman Corleone seems to have installed a revolving door on the manager’s office and is determined to get his money’s worth. They have appointed yet another manager and I can’t say I’m too bothered by Carlos Ancelotti. I don’t think he’s as good as Hiddink and despite having a number of big name players at his disposal at AC Milan, they were finishing well behind Inter in the Italian league and they are no great shakes as we’ve seen in the CL over the last two seasons.

He will also have to contend with the various player power factions in their dressing room and a plastic flag waving bunch of supporters who will turn on him as soon as he gets a couple of dodgy results. Besides this, I find it hard to take a guy seriously when he has a surname that sounds like a pizza topping, so I’ll be surprised if he lasts the season. And Arsenal have definitely gone backwards in the last couple of seasons. They will always be dangerous on their day but I think they will lose some of their players over the summer and they will need to spend. In all honesty I think they might struggle to stay in the top 4 next season but a lot will depend on what moves they make in the transfer market.

So if we can keep our settled squad together and bring in a couple of quality additions, we will be in great shape. Ideally we need to come out of this transfer window stronger than we went into it but at the very least we need to ensure we don’t become weaker. This is why that it seems to me no matter how you slice it, Xabi Alonso is the key.

He was terrific for us last season and as far as I’m concerned he was our best and most consistent player. If we keep him and strengthen the squad with a couple of good quality signings we will be very strong going into the next campaign and I think we will all be very happy with that. But of course the other situation is that there are a number of clubs with very deep pockets casting envious eyes in his direction and if the right offer was put on the table I think Rafa may be tempted.

Man City are meant to be interested and I’m sure they would offer a shit-load of cash but perhaps the most tempting offer could come in from Real Madrid. They are certainly the most arrogant club in the world, even worse than the mancs and that’s saying something, and in that part of the world I hear they are already reporting that they will have Alonso signed up by next week despite Rafa saying he doesn’t want to sell him.

It would almost make you want to tell them to piss off just to spite them, but let’s not be too hasty. They have already spend about £170 million acquiring Ladyboy, Kaka and Villa but the rules over there state that their squad can only contain 25 players. So basically they need to offload some players and there are a few interesting big names among them.

Despite today’s official announcement from Liverpool saying Xabi and Masch are not for sale, I think if Rafa could get a couple of those players and a decent chunk of change it might well prove to be very tempting to cash in. Don’t get me wrong, I would prefer it if we kept Xabi and no matter how much money we got for him, I think he would be almost impossible to replace.

But these things are never straightforward and given the meagre finances our gaffer has to work with in comparison to his rivals, I could understand it if he were tempted by a big offer. Hopefully it won’t come to that and Alonso will be lining out for us at the start of next season but you just can’t be sure of anything in football these days, so whatever happens I will support the manager’s decision and hope for the best.

Keep the Faith

Big Sami has been without doubt the best value for money signing we ever made. In football, £2.6 million doesn’t buy you much these days, maybe Kaka’s little toe or the mancs annual donation to the Premiership referee’s benevolent fund or any three Everton players, but 10 years ago that’s what we paid for Hyypia. Little did we know back then that such a relatively small outlay would yield such an excellent return.

Like most people in those days, I’d never heard of the guy and was actually a lot more enthusiastic about our other centre back signing of that time Stephane Henchoz. As it turned out they formed a very solid partnership for us, which I used to refer to as our Hippy Hedgehog defence. Unfortunately Henchoz tended to pick up a lot of injuries but it was very clear from early on that Hyypia was a colossus.

In his decade of loyal service to the club, he was always rock solid for us at the back and has put in many man of the match performances for us over the years. In my opinion his finest moments came in the 2000-2001 season when injuries to Jamie Redknapp and Robbie Fowler meant he was given the captaincy of the side and he went on to led us to three trophies that season. He turned out to be a great captain, perhaps not the most vocal but the type who leads by example and I’m desperately hoping Rafa and Gerrard will allow him to wear the captain’s armband one more time in our final game of the season on Sunday.

In recent seasons I’ve heard some fans and pundits being critical of his lack of pace, which is something that always makes me smile because he was never fast to begin with. Big Sami was blessed with many fine qualities as a centre back but speed was never one of them, in fact I think if he had, had more pace he would probably be regarded as our greatest ever centre back.

A lack of pace would generally be seen as a fatal flaw in the make up of any centre back in the modern game but while most teams would try to get their pacy forwards into a position to expose this perceived weakness, how many times have they succeeded over the years? Very, very rarely. This is because one of Sami’s great strength’s is his excellent reading of the game and this would enable him to use either his power or positioning to take away the attackers advantage.

However I think there is little doubt that Hyypia’s greatest attribute is his towering aerial ability. In defence he has been an absolute giant for us who would put his head on to a Skud missile if it was launched into our penalty area. In attack he has also been a huge asset to us over the years. Not only has he scored nearly 40 goals himself but his towering presence would often cause panic in our opponents penalty area and has indirectly led to many more. Liverpool fans have been obviously very well aware of his importance in this area and any corner or free-kick we have been awarded over the last decade would often be greeted with shouts of “get up there, Sami!”

On and off the pitch he has been a total professional and a great ambassador for the club. Recently we’ve heard of him making a sizable donation towards the building of a unit at a local children’s hospital and he’s always been willing to stop and sign a few autographs and have a little chat with the fans, as I’ve seen first-hand for myself on several occasions. Which just shows that as a player and a man he is a giant for more reasons than just his stature, but where does he stand in the overall scheme of things?

The simpletons who support the mancs and the clowns who run the show at Sly Sports, seem to like to pretend that football only really began when the league rebranded itself and became known as the Premiership. But if we were to look at things just over that period of time then I think most Liverpool fans would have Hyypia placed somewhere in their top 5 of our most important players since the foundation of the Premiership, and probably our number one overseas player.

If we look back over our entire rich history, there have been many great players. In terms of centre-backs, I would judge Hansen and Lawrenson to be the best that I’ve seen and while he was before my time, from everything I’ve heard I believe Yeats would also be a strong contender for a place in our greatest eleven. Hyypia may not be quite up there, but he has at least earned the right to be spoken of in the same breath as those guys.

It’s always difficult to compare players from different generations but I think that a good rule of thumb is to consider what would Shankly and Paisley have made of them, if they’d been around in their era? I’ve no doubts that they both would have loved Hyypia and he would most definitely have had a place in their teams, which is probably the finest accolade I can pay to any player.

So Big Sami will play his final competitive game in a Liverpool shirt tomorrow and I’m sure the crowd will give him a mighty big send off. He will leave us with many happy memories but perhaps more importantly he will also leave behind another small but significant legacy that I think is worth mentioning.

I’ve noticed that, particularly in recent seasons under Rafa, any young centre back trying to take their first steps in our first team would often be partnered with Hyypia. I would imagine that in those nervy first few games it must have been a great relief for them to have his calm presence next to them, talking them through the game. All of them, including the likes of Palleta, Hobbs and others that didn’t quite make it, have spoken of their gratitude to Hyypia for the help and time he had given them both in games and in training, which explains why Rafa had him ear-marked for a coaching role.

We’ve had a great progressive season in the league with a record number of points and our first real challenge for nearly two decades. Next season we will be hoping to go one better but to do so our defence will need to be rock solid. The three men at the heart of that defence will be Carra, Dagger and Skrtel. All three, particularly Carra, could be referred to as the Sons of Sami because they have served an important part of their apprenticeship, in games and in training, alongside Hyypia. So while the Big Finn has played an important role in our successes of the past, his influence may also play an important part in our successes of the future.

Regardless of the pro’s and con’s of Hyypia’s game, he has definitely been one of my favourite Liverpool players of all time. I’m predicting a 2-0 win for us in our final game of the season against Spurs at Anfield tomorrow and I will be absolutely over the moon if Big Sami can sign off with a goal.

Thank you Sami and all the best in the future from everyone here at Kopblog.

Keep the Faith

I’ll get to my top ten shortly but I’ve been thinking about this during the week and I reckon that if we gave ourselves a lobotomy and used the same criteria that saw Ryan Giggs named PFA Player of the Year last weekend, then the choice for our player of the year would surely have to be Sami Hyypia. I certainly do not mean any disrespect to Big Sami who has given our club some fantastic service over the years, but of all the players in our squad his stats for the season are the closest to Giggs.

By my reckoning he has started 15 games, 3 more than Giggs, he has scored one goal, the same as Giggs and he has given the club more than a decade of loyal service. That may not be quite as long as Giggs has given to the mancs but there again these awards, we are told, are meant to be about a players performances over a season not their careers, so longevity shouldn’t make any difference.

So there you go, conclusive proof of why Sami Hyypia has been our best and most important player of the season, or at least he would be if we were like the lobotomised members of the PFA! Don’t get me wrong, Big Sami has played an important role for us this season as he has done in every season he’s been with us, but our player of the season? I think not and I dare say even the man himself would agree.

I don’t have a problem with Giggs and loyalty, even if it is to the mancs, in the modern game is certainly something worthy of acknowledgement but to confuse this with naming him not just the best player at his club but in the entire league over the past season is quite clearly ludicrous! In allowing this media driven sentimental bullshit to cloud their judgement, I think the members of the PFA have forever tainted this once important award and diminished the achievement of the many great players who have won it in the past.

But all this talk about best players etc got me thinking that although there is still some football to be played before this season ends, I’ve already pretty much made up my mind on my top ten Liverpool players of the season. I don’t expect there’s much going to happen in the remaining games to affect the placings, so without further ado and a little earlier then I’d originally planned here’s my Top 10 Liverpool Players in season 08/09.

10. Hyppia: The big Finn just keeps on going. He has now completed a decade at Anfield and in that time his bad games would barely reach double figures. He would now be our fourth choice centre back but when we’ve needed him this season he’s come in and done a great job, particularly in our game at the Theatre of Illusions when he was called into the team just minutes before the kick off but took it all in his stride and never put a foot wrong. I’m not surprised to hear that other teams are still anxious to sign him but I will be definitely sorry to see him go.

9. Arbeloa: At the start of the season I had my doubts about him as our first choice right back but I think he’s grown into the role. Thanks to the medical miracle known as Degan, we’ve been a little short of cover in the position so Arby’s had to play a lot more games this season than perhaps was originally planned but for the vast majority he’s done very well.

8. Skrtel: He’s proven to be a great signing. A very solid centre half who is sure to be at the heart of our defence for many years to come. He’s had a few dodgy moments recently as have the rest of our defence but he’s had a great season overall. I just hope he can find a way to add a few goals to his game and be a bit more of a threat when he comes up for corners etc.

7. Benny Onion: He wasn’t overly impressive in the first half of the season but since the turn of the year, and particularly recently, he’s been terrific. If he can maintain this form he will be a great asset to us in the remaining games and next season.

6. Carra: He’s had a good season although not his best in my opinion but he is still the rock at the heart of our defence.

5. Reina: In my opinion he is the best goalkeeper in the Premiership and one of the best in the world. I don’t know how many goals his excellent distribution has been responsible for or how many points he has been worth to us this season but it’s a lot that’s for sure.

4. Torres: When fully fit and in form our number 9 is the most lethal striker in the game. He is an awesome player who just oozes class and is already being talked about in the same breath as some of the other great strikers who have played for the club in the past. He would definitely be higher in my list but he’s missed a lot of games this season through injury. Even so he has still managed 13 goals in barely more than 20 games so who knows where we would be now if he had been available for more.

3. Deadly Dirk: I’ve never seen a player who works as hard. He runs his bollocks off from the first minute to the last of every single game he plays in. Tiredness is never a factor for Kuyt, he rarely picks up injuries and tends to score some very important goals. He’s played a lot of games this season and been very consistent so he well deserves a place in my top three.

2. Gerrard: You run out of superlatives to describe our captain but in my opinion he is the best player in the world. There are some other great players around but none of them have as many strings to their bow as Gerrard. When he is on form he is almost unstoppable and he has developed a brilliant partnership with Torres in attack. He only misses out on my top spot because like Torres he has unfortunately missed a lot of games this season with various injuries.

1. Alonso: In my opinion this has been his best and most consistent season for us, he’s been brilliant. The fact that he almost ended up at Juventus last summer is a stick that some people have tried to beatRafa up with but the truth is that before this season he’d been very inconsistent for about two years. The close call of a move away seems to have inspired him to produce his best and he’s been excellent for us this season pulling the strings in the centre of our midfield. Let’s hope for more of the same from him next season.

So that’s my top ten. There are of course some notable omissions and while the likes of Masch, Aurelio, Lucas, Babel, Dossena and Riera have all had their moments this season, they haven’t produced them often enough to make my top ten. Insua has also been great for us but he hasn’t played in enough games.

In other matters I am obviously hoping that Boro can do us and themselves a favour against the mancs. Having watched some of their games this season it seems unlikely, but they have upset the mancs in the past so you never know. But no matter what happens in that game we’ve got to beat Newcastle on Sunday.

I’ve seen some of the Looney Toons games this season. Quite frankly I think they are the worst team in the Premiership and Shearer hasn’t really made any difference to them. You can’t afford to be over confident or take anything for granted in football but if we play anything close to our best we should beat them without too many problems and I’ll predict a 3-0 victory for The Reds.

Which brings me to our competition and as I mentioned earlier, this time it is sponsored by the good people at Liverpool Airport Parking and in terms of us getting these prizes it would be useful if you click on that link and check out their website. Once again we’ve come up with a prize that is equally as useful to our great overseas fans as it is to locals and this time we will be giving the lucky winner £50 in Amazon vouchers.

It’s a great prize and perhaps you can use part of it to buy my latest book, Great Everton Footballing Legends. It’s a postage stamp edition which has the unique quality of having more words in its title than it does in its content! Anyway you know the format by now. In the comments section of this blog have a guess at the time of the first goal in our game on Sunday and in the event of a tie-break I will also need your score prediction and Liverpool goalscorers. If it finish’s 0-0, and I hope to Christ it doesn’t, we will roll the prize over to the next game. Good luck everybody.

Keep the Faith

First and foremost, it’s The Derby and it’s always important for us to do everything we can to win these games no matter what the circumstances, but there are also other incentives for us in tomorrow’s game. A win for us would shut our wee neighbours up for another season and end any faint hopes they may have had of silverware this season and leave them with only the dubious merits of a UEFA Cup place to play for in the remainder of the campaign. I say dubious merits because I find it amazing how these teams make so much out of qualifying for the UEFA Cup and then treat it as a nuisance and field weakened team throughout the competition.

But perhaps even more important than this is the badly needed injection of confidence a victory would give us. In recent weeks we’ve had a lot of off the field stuff going on, our form on the pitch has been indifferent to say the least and the mancs have overtaken us at the top of the table. All of this has meant that the mood around the club is a little bit down at the moment so a win against our wee neighbours tomorrow would give fans and players alike a much welcome lift.

There are some who feel that the gaffer should make wholesale changes and rest a lot of our players ahead of our upcoming all-important league games at Wigan and against the chavs next week. I understand the argument but I think at this stage confidence is just as important as fresh legs, probably even more so. Whatever happens in the game you can bet it will be the headline story on the back pages of all of the papers on Monday morning. So I think the benefits we would get from the kind of confidence the likes of Gerrard and Torres would get from contributing to a victory and perhaps even scoring the winning goal tomorrow would be much greater than the possible benefits of them resting their legs on the bench.

Of course there is always the chance of injuries but these can happen at any time and you don’t win any prizes for finishing the season with the freshest players, so I think it would be a chance well worth taking. Besides all of this and the whole confidence thing, there are sound practical reasons why a win on Sunday is also very important to us.

There’s no doubt we’ve been wobbling a bit in the league lately and let’s not forget that we also have Real Madrid waiting for us in the Champions League. So we face big challenges in both competitions but they are the kind of challenges that we as fans relish and we know that they can be overcome. However, things don’t always go according to plan and having the FA Cup as a back-up would be very useful indeed and a good victory tomorrow and a favourable draw might see us with one foot in the quarter-finals.

So all of that is my long-winded way of saying that although there is room for a couple of changes, we should field a strong line-up to ensure we win the game and avoid a replay. I’m sure that Carra and Gerrard will be desperate to play and I daresay Torres will be also keen to build on his recent performances and I think we should start with all three.

In the blog before the last game I said that I thought Rafa might revert to our tried and trusted 4-2-3-1 formation but we went with a 4-4-2 which was understandable but it just didn’t work for us on the day mainly because we couldn’t seem to get any quality delivery into our two strikers. So once again I would favour a return to our 4-2-3-1 for this one. At the back I think we could give Arby and Dosser a run out in the full back positions, move Carra back into the middle as I think he would have more nounce to handle Cahill and leave Big Sami in there for his aerial presence to counter their threat for set-plays.

In midfield I think Masch will play because he didn’t play in the last one and this would be just his type of game. I would prefer to see Alonso alongside him but I suspect the boss might be looking to play Lucas. The lad has done well in most of his games recently and I don’t really have a problem with him but when he and Masch play together we seem to suffer from the lack of vision and creativity from this area that we normally get from either Alonso or Gerrard when they play there. So ideally I’d prefer him to be playing alongside one of those two and besides this he does tend to give away too many free-kicks which is the last thing we would want in this game.

Other than that I’d revert to the attacking foursome who did well for us in this formation last season, Babel, Gerrard, Kuyt and Torres. The Toffee’s defence seemed to have Riera sussed in the last game and he didn’t get a lot of joy so maybe it’s time to give Flyin Ryan a go and while Kuyt also didn’t seem to play particularly well on Monday, he does seem to excel in this formation. It was around this time last year that we switched to this system and it served us very well for the remainder of the season so even though it wouldn’t suit everybody in our squad, maybe it’s something worth considering for this campaign.

Of course it’s very possible the boss might decide to stay with a 4-4-2 formation because even though we didn’t play particularly well on Monday we still really should have won the game and so logic would dictate that if we used that system again but played closer to our true level we would win the game. But if we go this way again we would badly need to be more creative and give our strikers better support so I would like to see us change things and bring in Babel and El Zhar in the wide areas. No matter which formation the boss goes for I think if we can play anywhere close to our level we will win the game and my money’s on 2-0.

In other matters I notice our old friend Jermaine Pennant aka Peanut has been running his mouth in the press now that he has moved Pompey on loan. Reading what he had to say reminded me of that old saying, better to keep your mouth shut and be thought of as a fool then to open your mouth and confirm it! The lad just isn’t very bright, in fact he almost sounds like an experiment in artificial stupidity!

But I better be careful what I say because calling him an idiot might be an insult to stupid people so let’s just look at some of the stuff he’s said. Firstly he says that he was surprised that he wasn’t in the manager’s plans this season but he seems to forget that during the summer the club accepted at least two bids for him but he refused to leave and if that didn’t give him a big clue that he wasn’t in the manager’s plan’s then I don’t know what would.

He then talked about not being given a chance by the boss and pointed out that he had only made two appearances this season but with his next breath he pointed out that he had played 34 times last season and had also played in a Champions League final two seasons ago, so isn’t this and the fact that the boss signed him in the first place proof that he has most certainly given huge opportunities at Liverpool? As far as chances go Peanut has had plenty of them throughout his career, far too many for a player of his limited ability in my opinion, his problem has never been his lack of chances but his consistent failure to make the most of them.

Peanut than even stooped so low as to play the old nationality card and suggested that he wasn’t picked because he was English and Rafa seems to prefer foreigners instead, an accusation I seem to remember he once also levelled at Arsene Wenger. Well Peanut I think you’ll find that it’s not that Rafa or even Arsene prefer “foreigners” it’s just that they prefer players who aren’t shite, who have enough respect to turn up on time for training every day and who don’t appear in pictures in the tabloids pissed out of their minds while knocking back bottles of Jack Daniels, maybe they are both just a bit fickle like that!

Regular readers of this blog will know I was never a big fan of his, to say the least, and I was a bit surprised that we signed him in the first place but I guess he was just another one of those compromise signings that the boss had to gamble on when he was refused the cash required to sign the players at the top of his wish-list. I seem to remember at that time we were pursuing Alves and had bid a reported £10 million for him but his club wanted £12 million or so and our guys walked away. I seen that same player valued at about £25 million last season, so what a piece of business that would have been if only Parry and Co had, had enough balls to back the gaffers judgement.

So we eventually ended up with Peanut whose crosses are about as accurate as a John Terry penalty and a winger who can’t cross is about as useful as a dog who can’t bark. If that had been the only thing that was wrong with his game it could perhaps have been worked on but there were also one or two other little things we discovered about his game in his time at Anfield that made him even more of a liability on the pitch. Such as the fact that he isn’t exactly blessed with pace, his passing is almost as bad as his crossing, he can’t tackle and his goal-scoring prowess makes even Jamie Carragher look prolific, but other than that he was fine!

I wasn’t surprised that he ended up following Big Crouchy to Pompey because let’s face it, six metre Peter is the only striker tall enough to have any hope of getting up high enough to reach any of his crosses. So as far as Peanut goes it’s good riddance to bad rubbish. I’ve always thought of him as the type of person who could light up a room just by leaving it, so let’s hope his departure has a similar effect on our dressing room.

Keep the Faith

I think it’s fair to say that any of us would have been happy to settle for a point ahead of the game to maintain our unbeaten start to the season and to be honest I would have been only too delighted if we managed to get any kind of old flukey win. However this win was anything but that, it was a richly deserved victory and we thoroughly deserved all three points.

I hate to state the obvious, but Rafa Benitez really is a tactical genius and for my money the best manager in the world at that side of the game. As he has done in almost every game this season so far, he had his homework done and got his tactics absolutely spot on. However, no matter how brilliant a manager is he is only as good as the players he has on the pitch and our lads were fantastic today and I was proud of every single one of them.

In the last blog I said that I was a bit worried about our full-backs going into this game and I was pleased to see Aurelio coming back in at left back. He may not be the greatest in the world but he has a cool head and is very experienced in these kind of games, as was evident today. I feel a bit guilty for being critical of Arby. He had a very good game for us and gave it everything he had, not for the first time I think I’ve allowed myself to be influenced by the opinions of others and I’ve got to hold my hands up and admit I think I’ve made a bad call on that one.

It certainly hasn’t taken Dagger too long to get back into the swing of things. He had a great game in the centre of our defence alongside Carra who was an absolute rock for us once again and Pepe was as commanding as ever between the sticks. One of the most impressive things about the chavs style of play this season has been the way they have stretched teams with their attacking full-backs. Clearly this wasn’t a fact that was lost on Rafa and he used Riera and Kuyt to counter this threat. Both of them worked tirelessly on the flanks for us today and so frustrated both Bosingwa and Cole that they managed to help us relieve the pressure on our defence by giving us some handy free-kicks towards the end of the game.

Mascherano was his usual tigerish self doing the dirty work for us in the centre of midfield. Gerrard also had a great game and is really providing the team with some leadership this season. Thank God we didn’t sell Xabi Alonso in the summer as he really seems to have rediscovered the form that he hasn’t really shown for a couple of seasons. He got a bit of good fortune with the deflection on his goal but full marks to him for being in the right position to take the strike and he was very unlucky not to get a second goal when his excellent free-kick struck the post. Robbie Keane also played his part by running his socks off as the lone striker when he can’t have been fully fit and Babel also did well when he replaced him.

Overall, the hard work and character the side has shown this season has us all beaming with pride and it was immense again at the Bridge but to focus totally on that today would be to do the side an injustice. This was no smash and grab, backs to the wall victory. Much has been said about the chavs this season but we were clearly the better side, we outplayed them on the day and totally deserved all three points.

This was no rearguard action, we were on top and playing the best football for the first 20-25 minutes and then we began to defend a bit too deeply and they got on top of us for the rest of the half and I was starting to get worried. I would imagine the chavs were thinking they would just have to maintain the pressure they put on us towards the end of the first half and they would eventually force a breakthrough. But clearly Rafa was aware of this and while in the past we may have retreated into a defensive shell, there seems to be a greater belief in the side this season.

When the second half got underway we pushed out and got after them again and I think that might have actually surprised the chavs and it wasn’t long before they were forced into making some early substitutions. They might have had the lion’s share of possession in the second half but they didn’t really hurt us with it. We looked far more dangerous than they did when we attacked and we put together a few excellent passing moves that were as good as you will see anywhere.

Before the game I expected that I would have had my nails bitten off by the end but that wasn’t the case. For the first time in years I felt very relaxed watching us play against them particularly at their place because I thought we controlled the game and dictated the pace throughout. And to think we’ve now beaten both the mancs and the chavs without Torres in our team, absolutely brilliant stuff!

This excellent start we’ve made to the season has me as excited as a priest at an altar boy convention, but it’s still early days and we cannot afford to get too carried away. The team has battled away brilliantly since the start of the season and we now find ourselves at the top of the table with a little bit of breathing space over our rivals, but there’s still a long way to go. It’s been tough enough getting to the top but it’s going to be even tougher trying to stay there.

Hopefully, Torres will be back soon because we are definitely going to need him. There is going to be a few tired legs in the team after today’s game and we’ve got some tough games coming up this week at home to Pompey on Wednesday and away at Spurs, who will be a tougher prospect now that Harry Redknapp is in charge, next Saturday. So the team can’t afford to rest on their laurels and will need to remain focused.

Will we be on top of the table come next May? I don’t know, but I do know that we are on top of the pile right now and as long as it lasts, I intend to enjoy every second of it. So I’m off now as there are a few cold pints of Stella calling to me from my local and a few people I’m anxious to meet, if they have the nerve to show up!

But there’s a very happy Red in Dublin tonight and as the second best writer in the history of English literature, behind my good self of course, once wrote, “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Ok, so maybe that’s a bit dramatic but I think what he was trying to say is, if your team going to the top of the league isn’t a good enough reason for you to go out and get pissed, then you’re probably already dead!

Keep The Faith