#MUFC v #LFC and how good will triumph over evil (hopefully)

Sunday looms large and our trip to Old Trafford is filling me with a deep sense of pessimism. It should be said however that this is usually a good sign - any deep sense of optimism (for example the one that I felt before the Villa game) is usually a sign that.. well, we know what happened then.

Liverpool's form has picked up since the Villa fiasco.. in a previous blog I said that in the run of "easier" games we had over Christmas it was vital that we collected as many points as possible as it was going to get much harder - well we've got the "easy" ones out of the way - which we won 3 (Fulham, QPR and Sunderland) and lost 2 (Stoke - which was never going to be that easy) and Villa which really should have been.

The next few games are a little tougher. Two trips to Manchester and one to the Emirates with the visit of Norwich tucked in there somewhere.

With the trip to Old Trafford coming up on Sunday, we get the now traditional Alex Ferguson musings on life.. this time, unsurprisingly it's about Luis Suarez  who is apparently "laden with controversy", which in fairness isn't far from the truth, but the same could be said of Alex Ferguson and his frequent trips to the FA to explain his latest nonsense.. and also - I especially like this one.. "I hope we don't suffer from some of the decisions that have gone his way". Now setting aside the curious grasp of the tense in this statement - quite how Man Utd are going suffer on Sunday from decisions that have been made previously - I also puzzled by the word decisions. Decisions as in plural, meaning more than one.

Now, fair enough, the Mansfield goal the other week should never have stood. So that is ONE decision. However, I would point out when Liverpool fans have a song that goes "We're going to have a party, when Suarez gets a pen." I would suggest that it isn't a regular occurence. Actually the penalty we did get this season didn't do us too much good in the end anyway. Notice penalty - singular.

It would be nice not to suffer again from decisions going against us such as those in the game at Anfield this season.. when in fairness Liverpool outplayed Man Utd with 10 men and would have got something out of the game were it not for Valencia's balance issues.

I shouldn't let Ferguson's nonsense annoy me quite so much - he does it before every game - telling the referee, effectively his job or rather how Ferguson wants him to do his job. It also lets us know who he's most worried about in the oppositions side.. it's not usual that he starts banging on about the shite players in the other side.. or at least the ones that are less of a threat.

Man Utd 0 - 1 Danny Murphy

It's been a little while since the 4-1 at Old Trafford and longer still since the days when Danny Murphy turned the fixture into something of an away banker, but I think we can go there with some optimism.

We tend to step up in line with the quality of the opposition.. even we're on an iffy run (for example, just before the trip to Chelsea this season) we are able to sometimes raise our game.. although not it seems when we go to Stoke for some reason.

It would of course be helpful if we didn't need to keep going on about the 4-1 game (although the experience of watching that game in a Manchester pub has stayed with me for some reason) and the news that Howard Webb will be in charge at Old Trafford doesn't exactly fill me with optimism - although I do seem to remember him giving one of the Danny Murphy penalties, but that was before he was drawn to the dark side.

I do have a sense that it will be Howard Webb that will be the focus of attention come the end of the game tomorrow.. some kind of dubious sending off, most probably for Luis Suarez diving although this will recinded by the FA after it turns out that it wasn't a dive and should have been a penalty after all.. at which point Ferguson will be sat that there with a smug expression on his face while presumably stroking a white cat.. His dastardly scheme involving Howard Webb doing exactly as instructed via the subliminal press conference having worked perfectly.

Of course this may not happen at all - Howard Webb could be a force for good instead of evil - and some kind of scenario involving a 98th minute Luis Suarez winner that should have been handball, offside or both may save the day after all.

We shall see what happens, but I hope it's the latter and that the forces of evil will banished forever.

THE END.

I got a bit carried away with the good versus evil stuff didn't I.. never mind.

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.

Rafa Benitez to Chelsea? Nooooooooo!!!!!!

Rafa Benitez taking over at Chelsea makes sense from a number of angles.

• He's not employed by anyone else (apart from occasionally Sky Sports) at the moment, so he's freed up waiting for the next one.
• The revolving door at Chelsea has just spat out it's latest victim.
• Benitez is just the kind of manager Abramovich needs, good track record, especially in Europe.
• The last 3 jobs Benitez has had he has left complaining of not being backed in the transfer market, which should be less of an issue for any suspicious billionaires knocking about the place.

However there are a number of reasons why I feel that Benitez should not be the next Chelsea boss.

• He's not really suited to Chelsea. Because he seems like quite a nice chap, and all the other people involved there are a bunch of twats.
• He is going to upset a lot of people (Liverpool fans) if he goes to Chelsea.
• He knows what he's doing and if he does go there Chelsea will start to challenge properly.

Now you may notice that the reasons for him not being the next Chelsea boss are a little less well constructed. But you cannot disagree with the first one at least - they do have there and most other people's share of twats.

Luis Garcia - after scoring one of the loudest goals in history.

The main reason being though - I, and I suspect most of the people reading this would be sickened by the thought of Benitez taking charge of Chelsea. Because lets not forget, there was a certain degree of antagonism going on between Benitez and Chelsea (well Mourinho) when he was in charge at Liverpool - largely because we kept beating the in Champions League semi's and they didn't like it very much (left).

And that's part of it. You don't want to see your heroes from the admittedly quite recent past rock up at your rivals (quite how big of a rival we are to Chelsea at the moment is arguable) but it's the same as Torres going there, although that was a bit more brutal and in a roundabout way Michael Owen turning up at Man Utd - although he did have the good grace to be shit, although you can probably give Torres that as well.

I suppose that the main reason that we don't want to see him go there is really the point I made earlier.
Chelsea, to a man, are a bunch of twats. Now I appreciate that this isn't the most intelligent of arguments, but given the massive weight of evidence, I believe it is pretty relevant.

Roman Abramovich : Represents all that is wrong with the game today. Indeed it was our need to try and keep up with these billionaires that nearly crippled us in the first place.

Ashley Cole : I think this one speaks for itself.

John Terry : see above. Seriously, I'm not going to start going into the reasons why John Terry is a twat, because I don't think the internet is big enough.

From a completely objective point of view it makes perfect sense.. He needs a job, they've got one going.

But please... ANYONE BUT CHELSEA.

and Man United

or Everton.

(sort of) Match report : Everton 2 - 3 Liverpool

Everton 2 - 3 Liverpool

Well that was about as annoying as it is feasible to be.. not only did we manage to blow a 2-0 lead about as quickly as we gained it in the first place, but the injury time random flapping about by the linesman made it pretty hideous.

It would have been a perfect end to the game (from my admittedly biased perspective). For Luis Suarez to complete his sort of hat-trick and win the derby at Goodison.. thus requiring a new statue outside the Kop, probably of him diving onto the floor in front of a quite angry David Moyes... well that would have been pretty special.

The grim reality of what actually happened was well a bit shit. Not only we did go jumping about the pub after witnessing a perfectly good goal.. but by this time there were more than a few Man Utd fans in for their game which didn't really help matters.

Quite how he could have given offside in that situation is beyond me. This is quite handily demonstrated by this picture, with the completely unnecessary red line along the actual line on the actual fucking pitch.

And if that wasn't bad enough we then had to watch the same game again more or less in the bunch of cunts derby.. Freakishly the same game in fact. The away team in red go 2-0 up, it gets pulled back to 2-2 to the home team in blue only for the linesman to fuck up the decision at the end. Only in that instance Man Utd get the points (seriously how much help do they need). Admittedly it was quite funny to see Torres face when he go sent off, but there is no way hwe should have got another booking.

After the curious decisions that Man Utd have had in their favour on their 'trickier' away trips I'm thinking of having a few quid on them for the Manchester derby at the start of December, possibly including the sending off of Kompany for being just a bit too Belgian.

Actually sending off the Belgians would have done us a few favours yesterday, but I'm reasonably confident that FIFA regulations don't have a specific Belgian rule as yet.

I think I've had enough ranting now.. this is probably due to me being quite hungry rather than any lack of bile rising in my stomach - maybe it's both, who can say.

I think though we can claim the moral victory yesterday.. in lieu of an actual 3 points kind of victory and with that celebration Luis Suarez has made us love him that little bit more and I suspect the opposite is true of our friends across Stanley Park.

Oh and Phil Neville got booked for diving instead.. now that was funny.

The New Anfield

Before you start reading my ramblings, please check out this link to my Just Giving page.

Ever since those two cowboys Hicks and Gillett rode into town, promising the earth - or rather a spade in the earth - and delivering nothing, the prospect of Liverpool FC's new premisis has never been too far away from discussion.

In fairness to them their timing was about as diabolical as everything else about them. Millions was spent on producing fancy new pictures of the "New Anfield" but as the financial crisis was beginning to bite in 2008 in meant that if they were going to do this they were going to have to spend their own money, rather than borrow more money that no-one was going to lend them that they couldn't afford. So in the end they spent millions on planning and designing what a new stadium might look like, but it never became anything more than a figment of someone's imagination.

One of the most expensive pieces of "art" in history

I don't really want to rake over the whole Hicks & Gillett saga again, because frankly we all know the story and it's really quite depressing.

It seems that John Henry and Co are now thinking more in terms of redeveloping Anfield, or rather two sides of it and personally I feel that this is a far better proposition.

This is where I get all misty eyed, but as Liverpool fans banging on about history is something we do rather well as there is plenty of it worth banging on about.

Anfield has been the home of Liverpool FC since day one in 1892 when John Houlding told Everton to do one, started his new team to show that they probably should have done as they were told in the first place. I suppose were all quite glad he did as we might all be Everton fans now and there wouldn't be any such thing as Liverpool FC and Everton would be on about 27 league titles by now.

I don't like the idea of Liverpool just getting a new ground, although admittedly it would have just been a couple of hundred yards from the 'old' one.

If you look what that means these days you end up loads of grounds that all look the same.. Derby, Southampton, Middlesbrough.. the only way you can tell the difference is by what colour the seats are. Or in the case of Boro if there's anybody sat in them.

The case of Southampton is interesting actually. They had one of the most distinctive grounds in the country actually at The Dell (largely because it was made up of bits of grounds borrowed from other clubs) and as soon as they moved to their new rent-a-box after spending years in Premier League and Division 1 they dropped down two divisions and ended up in.. well Division 1. Didn't you prefer it when counting made sense.. I blame George Lucas.

Spot the difference.

Even the Emirates, which by Premier League is pretty distinctive is virtually identical to the Stadium of Light in Lisbon - although admittedly the seats at the Emirates are comfier and they don't have riot police breathalyzing you on the way in after you've spent the previous several hours drinking around Lisbon. As a point of reference it's not a good idea at this point to try and run away as you will only get about 3 yards, they will take your ticket off you and you end up sneaking in the home end trying to not let on you're English.. and to top it off we lost 1-0.

I'm getting off topic slightly.

Personally - I don't want us to move from Anfield so I am happy that it seems that this will now happen. However, I would like us to sort out the things that are wrong with it, because some bits of it are a bit rubbish. Now if you're a season ticket holder you perhaps don't have to put up with such things, but if like me you end up scrabbling for tickets wherever you can get you will know that there are certain parts of Anfield that are to be avoided. Anywhere near the back of the lower tier of the Anfield Road end is to be avoided. When everyone stands up it is like watching football through a letterbox because the roof slopes down too much.

Sitting in the main stand is also a bit of a lottery when it comes to your restricted view seats.. this was a particular favourite from the Spurs game last season (left). Although this picture doesn't actually show how bad it was.

Luckily though nothing much happened in that game so I didn't actually miss much. Best part of £50 well spent I thought.

That is another thought actually. How much is all this  going to cost? You see, seamless. You might think this is all just thrown together, but it is all planned out.

It is already hideously expensive going to watch the football. Especially if we are not going to be in the Champions League regularly to help pay for it. Just look at Arsenal. They have managed themselves reasonably well financially, with the benefit of playing Champions League football every year. But they still lose all their best players because they've not won anything for years because they don't compete on the transfer market.

How will this translate to Liverpool? It's not clear how much money FSG are willing to throw at Liverpool. But if they spend on a new ground you can bet there isn't going to be a lot to be spent on new players. That was even the case this summer after they got there fingers pretty much burnt off throwing money around when Kenny Dalglish was in charge.

And you can bet that we will be the ones paying for it. It is already almost £50 a ticket. I can see that by the time we get our comfy new seats, with hopefully no posts in the way, well I wouldn't like to guess but in say 5 years time we could be talking about when it was ONLY £50 a ticket.