We all dream of a team of Carragher's

This picture doesn't really need a caption

So that's it then. Jamie Carragher will play his final game for Liverpool this Sunday... his 737th appearance for the club. Pretty special in todays era of agents moving players round just for the sake of their bank balances.

It is also fitting that he leaves Liverpool with the supporters not wanting him to leave.. well stop playing at least. You can be pretty sure he's still going to be around on matchdays, especially now he's working for Sky alongside the anti-Carragher.. although credit where it's due, he has done a good job for Sky despite being "a busy little cunt" at Man Utd.

It is curious that Carragher's  announcement that he would be retiring at the end of the season coincided almost exactly with his return to the first team. Personally I am surprised that he didn't have second thoughts once it seemed that he did have another season left in his legs. Maybe that was the problem, if he was finding it a struggle, although it didn't seem too apparent. Not enough of a problem for Skrtel to get much of a sniff of a game. The fact that he already had something lined up with the move to Sky probably influenced his decision also... I suspect if that wasn't there we'd still be seeing Carra next season. But getting paid a shit-load for sitting about talking about football doesn't seem too taxing does it. Even Andy fucking Townsend gets paid for that despite barely having a basic grasp of the game.

The Carragher Manifesto

My hope is that this isn't the last the Liverpool FC will see of James Lee Duncan Carragher.. and not just sat in the stands with all the other ex-Reds. Or working for the TV with all the other ex-Reds. After reading "The Carragher Manifesto" (I believe it was called something different officially but that's not important) I want that lad in charge of Liverpool Football Club.

Football autobiographies are usually achingly dull, but Carragher's is one of the best one's going which is actually mainly about football. There are interesting ones but they aren't really about football (for example : Tony Adams, Steve Claridge).

But why am I trying to sell you this book, you've probably already read it and if not you're more likely to be interested in what the Anti-Carragher (Rat-Boy, Gary Neville, the devil has many faces) has to say for himself, which he tends to do quite a lot more these days now he's got a job for Sky.

Actually in many ways they are pretty much the same, it's just that they played for different clubs and depending on your allegiance. You either love Jamie Carragher.. or well there's probably something wrong with you if not.

Whatever Jamie Carragher does or says just makes you like him more.. (whilst the exact opposite was true of Neville) whether it was scoring a penalty for Everton at Anfield, or looking at the interviewer as if he had three heads when asked whether he'd consider leaving Liverpool for a bigger club and then telling him "Who's bigger than Liverpool?"

Or on the eve of the 2nd leg of the 2005 Champions League semi-final when on a booking saying that he didn't mind getting booked and missing the final so long "as it mattered".

Or the the story of how Salif Diao confided in him that Everton we're interested in him, but he was worried about the Liverpool fans reaction. "No.. don't worry about that.. you go and sign for Everton." Please for fucks sake go and sign for Everton.

I got stuck in a bit of a loop then... sorry.

To get back to my point.. I want to see Jamie Carragher in charge of Liverpool. He eats, sleeps, and breathes football. He studies the game like not many players do and I believe would make a  great manager - a few years down the line admittedly, but he will one day.

Now this is a bit of a leap, but say 5 years down the line, perhaps more.. hopefully we haven't gone through too many managers by that point, because a high turnover is not a good sign - maybe even with him in as a coach before then. He's practically doing this already - I read that he barks orders at Andre Wisdom whilst on the bench apparently - you can bet that this isn't an isolated incident.

But can you imagine a better person to be in charge for the re-perching of Liverpool?

THE PRICE OF FOOTBALL

Before you read my ramblings, please check out my Just Giving link.

Football in England and for that matter quite a lot of the rest of the world is getting out of hand and quite frankly it's beginning to make me sick.

From the start of next season the TV deal from SKY, with a little help from BT, will be worth a smidge over £3bn - globally this gets up to £5bn. This seems insane, but I suspect it is anything but. Between them Sky & BT will show 154 games, which works out at £6.5m a pop. 

But you can bet that it's worth it. Advertising and well lets face it, would anyone really have Sky if they didn't have the football on. It's what their entire business model was built upon.

This however isn't my point... according to Malcolm Clark of the Football Supporters Federation.

"The new media rights deal for the Premier League, even before the foreign rights deal is announced, means they could knock around £30 off each single ticket next season and still have as much money as they have now."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19987630

Now I did the back of an envelope sums on this and this is actually about right.

Astonishingly it works out that Sky / ESPN currently pay about £44 per person who actually attends Premier League games. This is every game, whether it's on TV or not. 

When the £3bn deal kicks in, this will go up to £75 - so actually more than it costs to go in the away end at Arsenal.

It's worth noting that the linesmen at the recent Arsenal v Man City game reminded the City players that their fans had paid £62 a ticket and suggested it might be an idea to make the effort and go over to them. The Premier Leagues reaction to this was to drop him from the next game he was due to officiate.

If that doesn't tell you all that is wrong with the game these days, I don't know what does.

When you're paying nearly £50 a ticket these days you begin to wonder if it's worth it. This is brought into focus by the way that Liverpool distribute their tickets these days - which in fairness is better than the old system of just having to hammer the phones and hope your boss thought you were just being persistent with some unlikely work-related activity.

But paying £30 just for the right to be able to buy tickets and then being asked to get all the tickets you want up to December in July - a lot of money depending on how many games obviously - and then being asked to get the tickets for the rest of the season quite handily just before Christmas. You begin to realise just how much money you're spending.

Unnecessary picture of Mrs Sneijder

And when the money from the new deal does kick in, where exactly do you think the money will go?

Well that's anybodies guess - given Liverpool's recent track record quite a chunk of it might go to Newcastle - or possibly to Wesley Sneijder for his missus* to spend on whatever she spends it on I suppose, but one thing is pretty certain - It won't be £20 a ticket in the Kop for League games next season.

* I realise that Mr Sneijder has since signed for Galatasaray, but that's not a sufficient reason not to still have an unnecessary picture of Mrs Sneijder  sat there in her pants.

Luis Suarez - Read all about it...

Well he's in the papers again.. actually when is he ever out of the papers. Everything he does, or indeed doesn't do is back-page news and also sadly sometimes front page news as well.

It's fair to say since we signed him 2 years ago he had been loved and loathed in equal measure. If you read the annoyingly reasoned article by Gary Neville he made much the same point.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2261403/Gary-Neville-Luis-Suarez-nasty-little-player-youd-want-team.html

The kind of player you want in your side because of the level of skill and goal threat he possesses, but I suspect that he didn't play for Liverpool my rose-tinted glasses may view him a little differently.

It seems controversy will always follow him around and in fairness this latest one - admitting to a dive in the Stoke game earlier this season - is a little odd, but shall we say not quite so serious as some of the other things he's got himself involved with. He hasn't bitten anyone this time round anyway.

Now the incident in question was really odd. From my recollection it wasn't really obvious it was a dive until he actually appealed for a penalty. He sort of stopped, stumbled and then just sort of fell over. At first glance it looked as if he'd just stumbled, but on the replays you saw that it was a pretty odd attempt to win a penalty.

Now he hasn't done himself any favours admitting this.. although it was blindingly obvious anyway. Brendan Rodgers has condemned  his actions (diving, not admitting it) and the club will be taking action, presumably some kind of fine. You can't exactly see him being dropped.

Now it's not in the same league as Roy Keane who admitted shattering Alf Inge Haaland's leg to sell more copies of his book. I should again clarify - he admitted it to sell more books, crippling the man with a view to selling more books a few years down the line would require a level of evil and foresight that even Roy Keane lacks.

Quite how this will effect Suarez is unclear at this stage - this burst of honesty probably will give referee's less reason to give him decisions in the future, but as he doesn't get any anyway that doesn't matter too much.

The tabloids will froth at the mouth at the dirty cheating foreigner, not like out good old British players who never ever cheat, or admit to it anyway. But he's Public Enemy no. 1 as far as the sports pages in the tabloids are concerned anyway, so again no change there.


So with a bit of luck it'll just be tomorrow's chip paper - or whatever the modern equivalent is these days

#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.