Rafa coming back to Liverpool.

Interesting one on Sunday.. well before the interesting one anyway. Rafa Benitez comes back to Liverpool, or more specifcally goes to Everton with his new probably quite temporary project.

But a thought occurred to me earlier.. would Rafa winning the league be such a bad thing?

Chelsea, after a wobbly start under Benitez seem to be getting a bit of form together, and the other main 'Not Man United' contender is City, who have wobbled a bit

Personally, the thought of Rafa's hands on the title in May is better than the thought of Whiskey Chops paws on it again.

.. this bit, less so.

There is another level to this scenario thought.. it is this. Chelsea fans clearly were disgusted at the thought of Di Matteo being binned - with some justification - but, they didn't seem to grasp why Liverpool fans were quite so horrified as well at the thought of Rafa being in charge.

This bit was fun...

Part of the reason is that we know he knows what he's doing (now bear with me). Rafa Benitez is responsible for the more recent glory in Liverpool's history. Doing, well doing effectively what Di Matteo has just done for Chelsea and won the European Cup when there really were more likely alternatives.

Now the likelihood of Benitez winning the Champions League with Chelsea appears slim as his "Interim Coach" title suggests, but what if he won the league.

INTERACTIVE PARAGRAPH GAME

Now I appreciate that the thought of Chelsea winning the league isn't great. They do seem to be a bunch of ****ing ****s. < This is the interactive portion. Spend hours of fun thinking of abuse for Chelsea. Will it be the twatting cockmunch of a Captain that inspires you, or their fucking bizarre rent-a-fan, were the best cos we're all got the same plastic flag bollocks.

"Yes, we are all individuals."

Distribute points for abuse out of 10 amongst yourselves to see whose won.

But the main thing that Chelsea have in their favour is that they are irrelevant. They have no history.. there is a song confirming this.

In terms of title wins OUR perch, I would like to think is just that. Now it seems like it's going to be a little while before we're at the pointy end again - but when we do I would prefer it if we didn't have to win twelve titles to get back in front of a potentially cyborg Alex Ferguson , which was what they have just had to do. With less cyborg involvement obviously.

To help us while we get our shit together is the irrelevant teams in the "title race" - or the bigger picture one anyway.

Manchester City and Chelsea have won between them the same number of titles as Aston Villa (7). They can quite happily get in the way for a while - and after a long while we can get our shit together.

Yes it's not ideal, but when Rafa comes back to Liverpool on Sunday, I think the thought of Everton losing  might have more potential plus points than usual.

Don't panic!!!!

My last post was entitled.. "Is top 4 realistic for Liverpool?" - Yeah, sorry about that.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say at that it isn't. 8 points off 4th at the turn of the year and bobbling around in mid-table isn't too great.

In the last 3 games, 1 decent performance (at home against Fulham) and 2 not so good. A horrendous result against Villa, which has even got worse when you consider their next 2 games have resulted in an aggregate 12-0 loss.

I was never very hopeful going into the game against Stoke, but I was very briefly given a glimmer with an actual penalty.. I was almost in shock when we got an actual penalty, from one of the weekly assaults on Suarez as well which I thought the FA had now allowed, but apparently not.

If we could have actually held on to this advantage for more than a minute then the game may have turned out differently. If we had been able to stretch the game with Stoke needing to get back into it, we could have exploited the space. Unfortunately none of this happened and we just collapsed instead.

The Stoke game did look like the hardest of the 5 we had around Xmas, which sadly was how it proved. But we still have a couple of reasonable games coming up. QPR away and Sunderland at home, although they are going to be buzzing after beating Man City which isn't ideal.. although they have got Spurs between then and now so that might bring them down a bit.

I now have to think of reasons why I titled this blog "Don't Panic!!"

Well for once it looks like we might have actually lined some transfers up before the January transfer window opens again. Daniel Sturridge of Chelsea could be a good signing.. I can't help thinking though that it would have saved a lot of problems all round if we'd just got him as part of the Torres deal.

If we'd got say £35m plus Sturridge then we'd be in so much better shape.. So would everyone else. Andy Carroll would most likely still be happily banging him in for Newcastle without any of the pressure of having a laughable price-tag hanging over him. It would be a similar story with Torres, I think he suffered in a similar way to Carroll with the pressure of ridiculous money flying around.

The main difference for Liverpool would have been that we'd still have had £35m to spend, although given the way we were throwing money around at that point (Downing / Henderson etc.) we'd have probably ended up with Lee Cattermole for £20m.

Tom Ince - Why?

We also seem to be lining up Tom Ince back from Blackpool - Why? This is a player, as I understand it, we sold for £250k on 16 months ago after he'd run down his contract because initially he wasn't getting a look in  under Hodgson and when this situation changed, well he didn't fancy it much under Dalglish and decided to do one and we had little choice but to let him go for virtually nothing.

Now I'm not saying he's not a decent player, but I don't think he offers much different to what we already have (Sterling) and he's already shown his commitment to the club and personally I will  be shocked if we do sign him and he doesn't do exactly the same 4 years down the line and run his contract down.

But I do think Sturridge would be a good acquisition.. I remember seeing him playing against us for City in the Youth Cup Final a few years back and being impressed then. He will give us more threat and someone for Suarez to actually pass the ball to will be a significant step forward. It also gives us reinforcements going into a very sticky few fixtures round the corner. Two trips to Manchester and also to Arsenal in January /  Feb aren't going to be easy, but having said that we were wildly unfortunate not to already have 6 points off Manchester from the games early in the season. And against Arsenal... look over there, is that a badger?

Moving on.. well, if we can get a couple of decent results out of the next two games then hopefully the form of a few players can pick up. Shelvey is looking a bit sloppy and Allen, before his injury, was starting to look  a bit lightweight. But on the plus side even Downing is showing signs of turning it round.. it is this kind of imbalance that is one of the reasons for out somewhat erratic form.

I think though that Rodgers does seem to have an idea of where he wants to take the team, but one things for certain is that it will take more than 2 or 3 transfer windows for this to take shape. If things haven't improved by this time next year, or more into February / March next season then we need to start having a look at things but idiots who want to sack the manager after 6 months.. well frankly need to concentrate on ripping off other Russian billionaires with underhand deals and other things they do best.

Is top 4 realistic for #LFC?

With reports today following an inteview with Brendan Rodgers quoting him as saying "For me the ambition is to grow higher. We are 11 points off second and that can all turn around very quickly." - which was translated on the BBC website as Rodgers is targeting a top 2 finish, well it set me thinking.

Well this is a lie of sorts. I was probably thinking about it anyway as you were to probably to some degree... where can Liverpool finish this season?

This is a question that usually gets asked with less and less optimism as the season progresses if recent history is anything to go by.. and following our - well, stuttering start - and bobbing around mid-table halfway through the season.. well it's not looking great, is it?

Let's look at the next 5 games..a) because I quite like doing this kind of crap and b) I think they will be pretty vital in terms of where we end up (and who ends up in a red shirt from January).

Aston Villa (H)	Sat 15 Dec
Fulham (H)	Sat 22 Dec
Stoke (A)	Wed 26 Dec
QPR (A)	Sun 30 Dec
Sunderland (H)	Wed 2 Jan

Now to me they all look pretty winnable - the trickiest out of those 5 being Stoke away - on paper anyway.

I think, given our recent improvement and with the return and increasing fitness of Lucas to knit everything together that 13 points is achievable out of that lot - which would move us on to 35 points. More important for Lucas' return is the effect he has on other players and their responsibilities - a problem that we suffered from last season as well.

With Lucas back playing, he frees up the likes of Gerrard and Allen to be more progressive if they don't need to keep an eye on shoring things up quite so much. A similar problem to that last season. Charlie Adam has many qualities as a footballer, but he learnt to tackle by watching Paul Scholes - if he'd paid more attention to the rest of Scholes' game then he wouldn't be playing for Stoke now.

So Lucas is going to save the day - what about the competition.

Everton

Stoke (A)	Sat 15 Dec
West Ham (A)	Sat 22 Dec
Wigan (H)	Wed 26 Dec
Chelsea (H)	Sun 30 Dec
Newcastle (A)	Wed 2 Jan

Way trickier than our next 5 games - maybe 5 or 6 points out of that lot, which would move them on to 32. A point from the first two, beat Wigan and 2 more points from Chelsea and Newcastle.

Arsenal

Reading (A) Mon 17 Dec Wigan (A) Sat 22 Dec West Ham (H) Wed 26 Dec Newcastle (H) Sat 29 Dec Southampton (A) Tue 1 Jan

Again, not straightforward. Especially as they are wobbling at the moment. An embarrassing League Cup defeat against Bradford (with the full first team out as well) cannot have helped confidence. Maybe 8 points.
Can see them losing one of the first 2, not sure which and probably win the other. 4 points from the home games and maybe another point at Southampton. 32 points.

Chelsea

You can always tell die-hard supporters by their matching flags.

Aston Villa (H)    Sun 23 Dec
Norwich (A)       Wed 26 Dec
Everton (A)        Sun 30 Dec
QPR (H)            Wed 2 Jan

What with the faffing around in Japan, Chelsea will be playing catch-up in terms of games, so they will have played a game less by the time we get to the FA Cup games. Win the home games, draw the away. 8 points moves them onto 37. Now it could be argued that it isn't fair to only base this on 4 games for Chelsea, but whoever said that life had to be fair - it's a cruel world.

Spurs Swansea (H)	Sun 16 Dec
Stoke (H)	Sat 22 Dec
Aston Villa (A)	Wed 26 Dec
Sunderland (A)	Sat 29 Dec
Reading (H)	Tue 1 Jan

15 points.. this is where this sort of thing falls down a little. 41 points.

Now you may have noticed I've missed a few teams out that are currently between where Liverpool currently sit and 4th place.. but if West Brom, Swansea or Stoke are still knocking about at the pointy end come April then I'll eat my trousers.

So where does all this leave us? Well if my predictions are even close, and lets face it they're usually fucking miles off the table will look something like this at the start of January.

I have left a few teams out of the equation so it is possible that Everton could be further down the league than this, but the point being that Liverpool have a real chance to get in the mix for fourth and if we can get a proper run going then we will be much better placed at the start of January - which by the way is when we are talking about here - and when the transfer window opens again and we give all our money to Newcastle for some reason.

If we fuck up the next few games, we are screwed. If we are still stuttering then the desperately needed striker is going to be a lot harder to get hold of.

We need to take advantage in this "easier" run of games while we've got a little break from the UEFA Cup which I think has been making life a bit trickier. Plus I think we're starting to get something like our first XI on the pitch.

With Lucas back (I proper love Lucas, can you tell) and even Suarez having had a little rest now is the time for Liverpool to kick on.. Because if we don't we are screwed - and also the next 4 fixtures after these include 2 trips to Manchester and one to the Emirates, but we'll worry about those at a later date.