Berbatov : £30m. Keane : £20m. Beating United : Priceless

Liverpool 2 – 1 Manchester United

Well. Well well well. They say a pessimist is never disappointed, and I’ve never been a fan of tempting fate – which is why my previous post was so negative. But it was also like that because, well, I honestly didn’t expect us to take anything from that game. Not a sausage. After three minutes, I expected a hammering. After the equaliser, I still expected them to nick it, but I was at least pleased that the inevitable defeat was at last going to come in the face of a pulsating match, a non-embarrassing performance, and not a whiff of controversy. It wasn’t until about ten or fifteen minutes into the second half that I even allowed myself to dream. And not until the final whistle that I believed we’d actually won it. That’s the ludicrous situation we’ve got ourselves in – a team that considers itself to be a title challenger treats a simple home win over one of its closest rivals as a fairytale result.

Squeaky bum time…

I hate playing United. Hate hate hate. Despite that run of Danny Murphy-inspired 1-0 victories, I have barely any fond memories.

Thieving Scousers

Liverpool 2 – 1 Middlesborough

“Below-par Liverpool steal win against North-East rivals… Mark II” seemed to be the press consensus after this game.   I’m not going to get into accusations of bias, but simply state that I disagree.  

Tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1988

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the updates

Some words from our captain.

Too right, Mr Gerrard sir! Ultimately it doesn’t matter how we beat United this Saturday.  All the matters is that we beat them.  However before we get all fired up about what’s just about the biggest game in the domestic season over the next few days expect a few updates.   For the sake of completeness, belated reviews of the Middlesborough and Villa results and then a bit of a heart on sleeve rant and round-up about the last couple of weeks as a Liverpool fan.

Karl

D-List

UEFA Champion’s League Draw

So then PSV, Atletico Madrid and Marseille.  Ouch! That could have gone better!

Initial reaction is that we should qualify, our European pedigree in recent years suggests that on our day we can take all of those sides.  What’s a little worrying is that all three will believe they have a genuine chance of qualifying, not to mention unique motivation to take some revenge on us.

Marseille deservedly beat us at Anfield last season, but a Torres masterclass tore them apart in the final group game.  It put us through, but let’s not forget cost Marseille a place in round two.

PSV we played four times in the 2006-2007 campaign – winning both group games before a majestic 3-0 away win in the First Leg of the Quarter Final followed by a drab 0-0 back at Anfield.  On that form we’ve nothing to fear, but a closer look at PSV’s Champions League record will show a team who’ve reached the last eight twice in the past four seasons and only once failed to qualify from the group stage.

Finally there’s Atletico.  Obviously the big focus here will be on Torres.  We took away their hero and whilst his armband proved he was a red,  for the previous decade he was the golden boy of the other Madrid.   Imagine Gerrard or Carragher turning out against us? It’s going to be an emotional night at the Vicente Calderón Stadium.  What’s more it won’t just be Nando in line for a reunion.  Little Luis Garcia and Florent Sinama-Pongolle are both ex-reds in the Atletico squad.

Karl

Albert docks

New signing! New signing!

Well almost.  It’s going to happen though, I’m sure of it.  After all, Liverpool missing out on their prime summer targets and then blowing the best part of £10 million on second or third choice targets just a few days shy of transfer deadline day.  I mean that’s never happened before has it?

I admit, I’m being a bit harsh on Senor Riera here.  I’ve never seen him player, I know very little about him other that he’s not in Spanish national side and once had a unsuccessful loan spell at Manchester City.

What’s wound me up here is the same old, same old situation.  We’ve had these kind of signings repeated over the last few years.  They’ve not worked before, so it’s hard to believe that it’ll be any difference this time.

I’m also not entirely sure where Albert fits in.  He can’t operate as a left-back or as a defensive midfielder in the way Gareth Barry could have.  So to make things even more depressing it looks like we’ve shot £9 million on a squad player.  Yes, we do need width and decent wingers, of that there’s no doubt.  I just find it difficult to believe that Riera is anything more another stop-gap signing.

Plus what of our youngsters and reserve options.  People like Paul Anderson and Adam Hamill. Signings like this have the knock-on effect that everyone else gets knocked one-step further down the pecking order.  Instead of looking forward to some young vibrant motivated youngster appearing down the flanks in the early rounds of the league and F.A. Cup’s we can expect to see the likes of Yossi, Voronin and all the other squaddies making us squirm against Lowerleague Albion.

*sigh* Oh and to make it worse Villa have just signed Milner and our new stadium has been delayed yet again!  Has being joint-top of the league ever felt so depressing!?

karl

Sub-Standard

Liverpool 1 – 0 Standard Liege
(aet. agg. 1-0)

Well, I can see why Gareth Barry’s decided to stay at Villa. He’s got far more chance of winning on Sunday playing in claret and blue than he would in silver.

I can’t really say much about last night, except to applaud the adroitness of the 606 hosts who pointed out how frustrating it is for Liverpool fans to have all of their complaints ready only to then have them blunted by the little detail of actually winning the game. Particularly when such complaints revolve around Dirk Kuyt. But listen – him scoring an instinctive striker’s goal after having been switched up front doesn’t excuse the eighty-three bloody minutes he spent giving the ball away on the right of midfield. If it wasn’t galling enough that he was deployed there while Ryan Babel sat on the bench and Jermaine Pennant wasn’t even in the squad, it was made even moreso by the promise shown by Nabil El Zhar when occupying that position.

Look, we’re through now. It was a horrible, horrible performance by a completely disjointed team bereft of ideas, confidence and passion. But let’s not dwell on it. The only positives were the aforementioned El Zhar (who should have had a penalty – but let’s be honest, losing to a pen would have been even harsher on Standard, though I’d feel more sympathy had they not been such niggling, bullying gits, especially in their treatment of Our Boy Torres) and Reina, by far our best (although “best” is a relative term here) performer with a solid and reliable performance in addition to a couple of top-drawer saves.

I’m not at all confident heading into games with Villa and United (the latter in particular), but still. Three wins and a draw is, on paper, a good start to the season no matter what the performances have been like. If those performances improve, we’ll have no need to complain. But if things don’t start to come together sharpish… well, we’re going to get hammered when we come up against opposition better than the three teams we’ve played so far…

(Seb)

Well it probably is Deja-Vu. It sounds like it.

Fuck off.  Fuck off.  Fuck off.

A quick summary of last week.  We’re all set to sign a player, the team is playing well and Rafa is happy.  Enter stage left Parry, Gilette and Hicks to spoil the party by refusing to stump up the cash for Barry.  So inevitably we now have disharmony between manager and board and what little confidence we’ve managed to muster as fans stripped bare all over again.

Oh and look here’s news of Rafa’s potential resignation (or in this case a denial of it).  I give it a week before one of the tabloid’s publishes a story about DIC launching a new takeover bid.

* * *

Now it’s dead in the water, I feel genuinely embarrassed by how the club handled the entire Barry affair.  Hopefully all Villains will welcome him back with open arms.  It seems the majority of Liverpool fans didn’t want him anyway, so he’s surely better off at a club where he’s a living legend than as a squad player at a club run by the three stooges.

(Karl Eisenhauer)

Beautiful!

Sunderland 0 – 1 Liverpool

The Performance? No.  The result? Hmm… no.  Torres’s finish?  Well okay yes, but no.  I’m talking about that goalie kit!  Infact, the entire away kit.  Seeing a Liverpool team run out in silver & red, with a keeper in a proper keeper’s green top just for a few moments jumped me back twenty years.  Then the game kicked off and we were far from championship material.

So what can we take from that game?  It was a better performance than against Liege, although it’s hard to see how it could have been worse.  We were somewhat fortunate to come away with three points.  If the Sunderland starting XI had possessed a decent striker things could have been very different.

Still we rode our luck a bit, and ultimately we did that thing all league winning sides are meant to do – Play badly and win One-Nil.  How often we can do that this season will depend on how often the big names do the business and those pundits thinking Torres will struggle to repeat his form last season might want to think again.

Ultimately I’m still feeling quite positive despite our slow start.  We’ve 3pts in the bag. We have Masch, Lucas and Babel all to come back and if we’re lucky maybe one more new signing to come in.

Right now if I have any concerns it’s over starting selections.  Alonso was brilliant for us today, grabbed the assist for Nando’s goal and almost won goal of the season on the opening day with a trademark 60-yard screamer.  Yet Rafa chose to start with the inexperienced Plessis.  Similarly defence? A lot of the talk this summer has been about the future defensive pairing off Skrtel and Agger, so it was a surprise to see Carra and Sami get the starts.  Surely it’s too early to start rotating already!?

As for the new signings.  Dossena definitely stepped up a gear today.  Meanwhile Keane frustrates, mostly himself with another ordinary showing.  Surely it would make more sense to stick with our winning formula from last season with Gerrard in behind Torres and then bring in Keane gradually?  At the moment it’s all starting to resemble Crouchy’s early Liverpool career and we all know how long it took him to break his duck.

(Karl Eisenhauer)