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.