Are the Reds about to turn the corner?

A Sky Sports News Presenter.

Well, I say turn the corner, it's more starting to climb the ladder... metaphorically speaking anyway. 5 games in and we're still flapping about in the relegation zone for some reason.

This is clearly not a brilliant state of affairs... but happily it is still only September (just) and the league table at this stage is only relevant because Talk Sport / Sky Sports News have to fill up their air time talking about something.

If we are still flapping about in another 5 games then I think it will actually be time to start worrying, but not yet.

We've yet to win in the league.. but we have been unlucky. This seems like a poor excuse, but we should really have had 6 points off the various shades of Manchester and we would have if hadn't been for the professional lapses from Martin Skrtel and Mark Halsey.

Enough of what's happened already.. The next 5 league games look a a bit easier than the ones we've had so far. But considering that our first 3 home games have been against the top 3 from last season, that was always going to be the case.

Norwich City (A), Stoke City (H), Reading (H), Everton (A), Newcastle (H).

The 3 games before the trip to Goodison have become must win games. I know it's stupid to talk about 'must win' games in October, but considering our start, that's what they've turned into.

Norwich tomorrow will be interesting, mainly for the team that Brendan Rodgers selects. I went to game on Wednesday at West Brom and was impressed with what I saw, apart from the first 10 minutes obviously. The kids we put out, did well after an iffy start, and showed real character after going behind to take control of the game over a much more experienced side.

I especially like the stat that Jamie Carragher had 555 more Liverpool appearances than the rest of the side combined.

Quite how many figure in the side remains to be seen, but considering how many players didn't finish vs Man Utd for varying reasons we will see a bit of a shake up from what was turning into a settled side.

Oussama Assaidi - Defender on his arse.

Sahin for Shelvey seems certain. Coates for Agger depending on fitness - personally I think Coates could probably do with a few League games anyway.

The main revelation for me on Wednesday was Assaidi.. it's been a while since I've seen Liverpool player with a proper winger. He's quick, skilful and gave their full-back all kinds of problems as well as setting up the winner.

Now all we need is some kind of large, possibly Northern, centre-forward for him to land crosses on.

That combined with the other kids that are getting their chance in the first team - Sterling obviously, Suso is looking good. The more that Rodgers puts out the youngsters, the more our lack of activity in the transfer window seems to make perfect sense.

Our chances tomorrow look pretty good.. if Suarez can put in a performance like he did last year then perhaps people will start to get off his back, although 3 goals in 5 games doesn't seem too shabby. Another Carrow Road hat-trick and 6 goals in 6 games would do just nicely.

Liverpool v Man United... Here we go again.

The dirty mancs are coming on Sunday.. Apologies if referring to them as 'Mancs' offends some readers, but if I call them rags, no-one knows what I'm talking about.

A foreigner.

For a change, the attention is upon whether two of the players will shake hands with each other. This apparently is vital. I'm not particularly interested.. this was the same situation in the QPR v Chelsea game last week, when Anton Ferdinand refused to shake the hand of Olympic gold medal winner, John Terry, after Terry was caught of camera screaming racial obscenities at Ferdinand... but apparently the courts and FA thought this is OK as long as you do it ironically and you're not foreign.

Moving on..

Far bigger issues surround this game than whether players are civil to each other. It is the first home game since the release of documents last week which showed unsurprisingly that the police had attempted to cover up their incompetence which caused the Hillborough disaster. Football has taken a back seat over the past few days because it  pales into insignificance when you remember those events. I suspect the majority of people reading this don't actually remember Hillsborough as it has taken 23 years just to get to this point.

Fans all around the country showed solidarity last week.. fans across Europe. And the next home fixture we have is against a team whose fans (a small, but still noisy section) still see fit to sing songs about it and their own manager has felt the need to ask their fans to show a bit of respect and decency.

Inter Milan banner at San Siro

I have got into an argument (a twitter argument, but with someone I know in the real world) last week with someone who was defending the Man Utd fans who thought it was OK for fans to be singing about Hillsborough because Liverpool fans sing songs about Munich apparently. Personally I can't remember having heard it, but I'm not denying it it's ever happened. But the point is that is also wrong. A line should be drawn, and if we can just get back to screaming abuse for football related issues, or possibly shagging grannies. I hope that they behave themselves, but I am not hopeful (I'm not still talking about shagging grannies)  

If I could actually get on to the football around this point it would probably be helpful. It's been a bit of a struggle in the League for us so far. Admittedly not a particularly easy start to the season, but 2 points from the first 4 games is historically bad. Yes, we were unlucky against City and it was a better performance against Sunderland last week.. but the less said about the other 2 games the better.

Celebration needs work, hopefully he will get plenty of practice.

There have been positives to take from the season so far. Not least the performances of 12 year old child Raheem Sterling.. he may be a bit older, but I bet he could still get away with not paying full fare on the bus. Joe Allen has come in and done well, and Jonjo Shelvey is developing fast despite sounding more like a jockey than a footballer. His performance last night against Young Boys at the presumably made up Wankdorf Stadium was pretty special.

We need to turn a corner, and do this quickly. Hopefully those who played last night will help spread a bit of confidence in the squad, or at least get a few of them looking over their shoulder. Rodgers has shown that he isn't afraid to use kids if they're good enough.

Although it seems unlikely that too many (with the exception of Sterling) will feature on Sunday. Indeed the first XI is looking reasonably settled and we are gradually getting the hang of how Rodgers wants us to be playing. Whether this will get us a result against Man Utd remains to be seen.

We beat them at home in the FA Cup last season, and whilst we have lost the match winner that day as Dirk has gone to Turkey, they have gained Robin Van Persie who did OK at Anfield last season in the game which effectively dismantled our league season. We are going to have our work cut out keeping him quiet if my rather elaborate voodoo plan fails.

We've done pretty well though at Anfield against them recently. 4 wins out of the last 5 and we weren't too far off winning the one we didn't. I don't hold too much by those kind of statistics though, most recently when they visited Merseyside this season they.. well they lost that as well to a goal from a man with ridiculous hair. Perhaps we shouldn't have let Andy Carroll leave after all.

3 games in.. A bit shit so far.

Following the defeat against Arsenal, the familiar feeling of early season optimism being swiftly swept away is here again..

No matter how you dress it up, 1 point from 3 games is pretty shocking. Admittedly 2 of the games were against stronger teams in the league, but they were both at home - although even that doesn't seem to be the advantage it once was these days.

When the best performance is a home point against Man City which should have been three, but for Martin Skrtel's abberation it would have been, then you have problems.

I'm not even sure that the results are what's contributing to the generally shitty mood surrounding the club and it's supporters at the moment. Granted they've not helped, but the lack of a clear transfer strategy it seems is becoming quite alarming.

Letting Andy Carroll leave on loan to West Ham made more sense if he was surplus to requirements as seemed to be the case, only last Thursday when that deal was struck. And it does make sense to get rid of one player, before you get the next one in if you are trying to balance the books.

Bad idea.

But to let Carroll go and then fail to replace him smacks of incompetence. FSG seem to have gone from one extreme to the other and have somehow fucked up two transfer windows with the same player. Bearing in mind Carroll is still on our books, it seems pretty feasible that further transfer windows are going to be similarly shafted.

I don't want to go over the Carroll nonsense too much, but once we agreed to give away all the Torres money to Newcastle in a blind panic we were always going to cause ourselves problems if we tried to get rid of him and face the impossible task of recouping anything like the truly idiotic fee we paid for him.

We have now lurched in the other direction, partly due to FSG getting their fingers burnt last time and they didn't - or couldn't - go throwing the cash around this time round.

The mess surrounding the potential Clint Dempsey deal didn't make an awful lot of sense. The money Fulham were after seemed pretty reasonable although they wanted more of us than they did anyone else which you can imagine annoying a few round the table. But either way.. sign him, (£7m was cheap considering his recent record). Plus he's only 29 I suspect we would have got our money's worth over a few seasons.. although he is American.

Shit.

It would have actually made sense to offer the £4m if there wasn't anyone else in for him.. if he'd been stuck at Fulham until January then we would have got him for that if he was set on joining Liverpool which he seemed pretty keen on. For Spurs to come in at the last minute just takes the piss a bit.

So where does this leave us. Being linked to every free agent going between now and January presumably. Owen, Del Piero.. fucking Drogba. All pretty weird, especially Drogba. He'd probably want what Fulham wanted for Demspey in wages just till the end of the season.

It doesn't help that we've not exactly been eased into the season fixture list wise.. City, Arsenal and Man United for the first 3 home games is a bit taxing considering we've a new manager in charge. Sunderland away next as well isn't going to be easy either.

On the plus side, the teams were hopefully going to be fighting with are struggling a bit too.. Spurs especially. 2 points only when they would have been expecting more from their home games especially.

I suspect we're going to see a few more youngsters thrown in.. Adam Morgan got a start in the Hearts game which was good to see. He would have scored too, although unfortunately the linesman managed to notice the ball going a yard over the line in the build up.Maybe.. can't exactly see him starting at Old Trafford, although the squads looking a bit thin at that end of the pitch so you never know.

A win or two under our belts and hopefully we'll kick on.. confidence is everything in football. 6 (unlikely) points from our next two games and well be flying. I hope so, because the alternative (kicking round the relegation zone for a bit) would be a little bit hideous. It's just unfortunate that we've got the England nonsense first which just leaves more time to get annoyed by the situation, although reading this probably didn't help.