Premier League 2008/09 Predictions

As the new season looms, I thought I might as well stick my neck out and do a quick glance over each team’s prospects for the season, and where I think they’ll end up. Just so I can look nice and stupid in nine months’ time, like…

1. Liverpool
Well, frankly, why the hell not? It’s the prerogative of the Liverpool fan to claim every year that “this is our year”, so sod it, I’m going with blind misplaced optimism even after the shambles of the other night. There are various reasons I could give – the extra cutting edge of Keane hopefully turning those draws into wins, an already pretty solid backline getting even solider with the burgeoning Agger/Skrtel partnership to look forward to (and Dossena, again Wednesday notwithstanding, arguably Serie A’s top left back last season), Ryan Babel looking to start to fulfil his potential, the anger of one-too-many recent pathetic capitulations to United inspiring us to thrash them both home and away this time out, and our having the best fucking striker in the world wearing our number 9 for the first time since Rushie retired. But naturally, the main reason why we’ll win the league this season is that we’re wearing a silver and red away kit. You know it makes sense.

Oh dear

Standard Liege 0 – 0 Liverpool

Well, if there’s a positive to be drawn from that little shambles, it’s that it will be physically impossible to play worse than that for the rest of the season.

Just quickly, then, because I don’t want to dwell on it any longer than I have to : Is it some kind of massive elaborate practical joke that Dirk Kuyt is somehow considered to be a right midfielder? Xabi Alonso seemed to be doing his best to ensure he stays at Anfield by making his market value plummet as far as possible with each free kick drilled into the wall and each fumbled bit of possession. Arbeloa had perhaps his worst game for the club, and Dossena was only rescued from “worst debut ever” territory by Robbie Keane, on whom we’ve spent twenty million for someone who doesn’t seem to know how to weight a pass. It took until the last ten minutes of the game for Carra – who also seemed to have forgotten he was wearing the captain’s armband, so lacking were any attempts at inspiration - to successfully make a tackle rather than being flat-footedly beaten. Agger might have had a good game, showing a willingness to get forward creatively, but was busy having the crap kicked out of him by an aggressive (but spirited) Liege side, as was Torres, for whom I genuinely feared an injury was on the cards (not because Liege were any worse than your average Championship cloggers, but because that’s just how the night seemed to be going). Plessis showed willing, but was clumsy. Benayoun was pretty anonymous. The only one to emerge with anything like any credit was Reina, simply because – despite a couple of late flaps – he saved a penalty (piss poor as it was) and actually had other saves to make as well. Unlike the Liege goalkeeper.

Dear me. Our early-season optimism isn’t usually in tatters this early, is it? Oh well, roll on Sunderland. You never know, we might just scrape a point.

Green is the colour…

As with Karl, I can only apologise for how quiet things have been lately – various reasons have meant that we just haven’t been able to give the site the proper pre-season focus that we would have liked. BUT! Never fear, because in the coming weeks the site will really kick into gear as the season gets underway, and we’ll be talking about our hopes and dreams for the season, and our thoughts on its opening salvos.

But in the meantime… well, I never got round to talking about the European away kit, did I? And I probably should, since – with Standard Liege sporting a red home kit – our boys will probably be wearing it tonight. And, well… I quite like it. But then, anyone who reads F1 Colours will know that I like green – and the much-maligned ‘91-’92 away shirt is probably my favourite LFC kit of all time (not the horrible shiny centenary one that followed it, though. Ugh.). So anything that harkens back to that is, in my books, a Good Thing. Not hugely keen on the navy collar, but apart from that, it’s a solid kit. Better than last year’s, anyway – which, while dramatic and stuff, never quite looked right as an onfield kit (except when El Nino was dancing through the Marseilles defence, of course).

The other thing I’d wanted to pass comment on was squad numbers. It was apparent from pre-season friendlies that Benayoun was going to sacrifice a first-eleven number for his preferred 15 now that Crouch has left (I’d actually predicted last summer that he’d take that, and Crouchy would get #11), and that Emiliano Insua, Damien Plessis and Nabil el Zhar would enhance their first-team credentials by taking numbers 22, 28 and 31 respectively, and so it proved. If I’d not been in Ireland (and, er, been on the ball at any point) I could have posted that and looked all cool and prescient. The other main “promotions” are Jay Spearing (26), Kristzian Nemeth (29) and Stephen Darby (32), all given numbers that suggest they’ll feature regularly on benches and in Carling Cup games. Somewhat surprisingly, Daniel Pacheco doesn’t make the cut just yet, despite impressing in pre-season – clearly Nemeth remains ahead of him in the queue at the moment. I’m not hugely impressed, either (although I’ve liked him on the pitch so far), by new left-back Andrea Dossena taking #2 – that means we now have a left-back wearing 2 and a right-back wearing 3. It’s WRONG, I tell you.

Of the first thirty numbers, then, only #6 and #11 remain available (demonstrating how fucking huge our squad now is compared to, say, Arsenal). The former, of course, is clearly being kept warm for someone who already wears it at his current club (and if he doesn’t sign, then it should be Skrtel’s next year – none of this #37 rubbish, unless he’s a Clerks fan, in which case I love him even more), while #11 is nicely primed for that winger that EVERYONE BUT RAFA KNOWS WE STILL NEED ONE MORE OF. Although that said, it’s clearly Babel’s future number for years to come. You heard it here first.

And now that I’ve bored you all (well, I would have done if we had any readers yet) with that, I’ll bugger off. See you for Standard Liege post-mortem, and/or Exciting Sunderland New Premier League Joy Joy Build Up!

(Seb Patrick)

Mighty Morphin Four-Past Rangers

Okay four reasons for this post.

Number One – Apology.  Who the shitting hell stole the last three weeks? Oh well it’s not like we missed anything important is it.  Oh wait, pre-season.  Oh hold on two new strikers.  NEW £20 million signing.  NEW NUMBER SEVEN!  Oh, and the Barry-saga which was on, off… and as of about half an hour ago back on again.  Thanks MON we knew you always loved us really.  Of course by this time tomorrow he’ll have probably signed for Arsenal, but at the moment it’s looking promising again.  Anyhow, yes – we’ve missed far too much so apologies.

Number Two – We stuffed FOUR past Rangers and I really wanted to use that headline.  Okay it’s only a friendly, but after the mostly reserves outings against lower league teams and middling european sides we’ve now hit pre-season proper.  Today’s performances was impressive. Great to see Torres back in the old routine, positive to see our other new striker, David Ngog, show great confidence for the 2nd goal and also a personal highlight getting to see us in a silver away kit again.

Number Three – To push my last post and it’s stupid amount of tags from the top of our hymn sheet.

Number Four – Barry. Keane. Ngog. Pacheco.  Four potential new names for the first XI.  With the new season now in sight we’ll run through our expectations for each of them for the coming 12 months.  Apart from the one that will probably be staying at Villa/poached by Arsenal/Announcing he’s Shergar’s lovechild (delete as applicable) by the time I’ve finished this sentence.

Karl Eisenhauer

Reasons to be Cheerful?

The off-season for me is usually a period of blissful optimism.  Back in the Roy Evans era I would regularly check the gossip line headlines on teletext several times a day anxiously waiting for the “£10million superstar linked” rumour to turn into a new signing.  Last season it was message boards and transfer rumour blogs, but the feeling was the same.  That excitement that comes with new signings and the blind faith that this time it will be your season.

This year, however, it’s really hard to know what to think. 

Ugly Stuff

I’m not enjoying this at all. Garry Barry has always seemed like a decent bloke, a hard-working and honest player. I’ve long had a soft spot for the Villa, through family and later friend-based connections. And they’ve usually been a club with whom we’ve had a good relationship – mutual appreciation of Steve Staunton, mutual dislike of Stan Collymore, that kind of thing. So to see all of that soured by the summer’s ugliest transfer saga is not pleasant in the slightest.

Not least because… well… do we actually need the guy? At that kind of money? If he’d genuinely been available for the £12m or so that we first came in with (and you have to bear in mind that despite his ethereal value to Villa as a talisman and club captain, he’s a 27-year-old with no European experience and a solitary year left on his contract), then yes – good signing. But £18m really is taking the piss. Sadly, the only realistic outcome of this situation is that we do eventually sign him for that fee. His position at Villa is just about untenable, and nobody else is showing signs of coming in for him. So we’ll spend five or six million quid too much on the guy, and be short of cash with which to strengthen areas of genuine need. I would much, much rather see us spend the roughly twenty-to-thirty million we’re likely to have left on David Silva and, at a pinch, Robbie Keane (if Crouchy does end up making the move, to Portsmouth or elsewhere) – and keep Xabi.

Meanwhile, relations with Martin O’Neill (a man who I’m sure many of us wouldn’t have minded seeing in our own dugout some years in the future) and one of the Premier League’s few genuinely likeable clubs appear to have been irrevocably damaged. Not to mention our own reputation – and for all that United and Chelsea fans might want to have a pop at the “whinging Scousers” on the F365 letters page and so on, we’re usually above this kind of thing. This is supposed to be the summer in which everyone unites to laugh at Ronaldo shafting the club that made him – we’re not supposed to be involved in something similar…

Incoming!

Now that all that messy Euro 2008 business is out of the way, and a whole host of new names (mostly Spanish, Russian and Dutch) have made their way onto the shortlists of managers with cash burning holes in their pockets the continent over, we thought it was about time to have a look at the various areas of the pitch in which Rafa and Liverpool might (or might not) be looking to strengthen over the truncated (because hey, nobody but Chelsea does business while there’s a cracking tournament to watch) summer break. Some of the players we’ve been linked with are clearly wild fantasy, others are the sort of name that always seem to pop up but never really seem like realistic targets – but others (not just a certain Villa captain) are clearly names that El Gaffer has in his sights, so just how will he be looking to fit these potential new signings in…?

If I go there will be trouble…

Now then.

It’s all becoming a bit unsavoury.   I’ve very mixed feelings about the Barry transfer largely due to two of our closest friends, and creators of our excellent sister*-blog ‘Oh, It Must Be! It Is!‘ being ardent Villa fans.

Having your club captain (and fan favourite) openly criticise your manager and publically state his intention to join a rival team cannot be easy reading, and given the paper printing the story he’s hardly endearing himself to Liverpool fans either.

Karl Eisenhauer

* – I say sister.  I mean more like an anorexic junkie, slapper, half-cousin obviously.

Nunca Caminaras Solo

So, 42 years after we were last represented by the winner of a major international tournament, the Euro 2008-winning Spain squad contained four Liverpool players (jointly “donating” the most players to the squad, along with Valencia), all of whom saw match action during the tournament. We’ll finish the “Eurowatch” roundup of our various players’ (and ex-players’) fortunes early in the coming week, but for now, I just wanted to say congratulations to Jose Reina, Alvaro Arbeloa, Xabi Alonso (even if he does bugger off to Juve shortly) and final-winning goalscorer Fernando Torres! Let’s just hope it’s some kind of omen for the season ahead…

(Seb Patrick)

Playing spot against the walls of Anfield

“You can’t play with your ball here”.

The word’s spoken by a faceless exec, after some friends and I had purchased a ball from the club shop and began an impromptu kick-about.  Kind of sums up the Parry-era doesn’t it?