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.

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.

Liverpool v Hearts... time to experiment?

Liverpool face the return leg of the UEFA Cup (Europa League - what the hell kind of name is that?) qualifier against Hearts in a reasonable position. Whilst eh performance in Scotland wasn't especially inspiring a 1-0 away win in Europe is not bad for starters. Especially when you consider the games that Brendan Rodgers also has to deal with.

With the Hearts games being immediately followed by two of the biggest games of the season, he has had things to chew over in his new job. To be fair it could have been trickier. If Rodgers had been sorting through the balls himself when they were doing the draw you suspect that Hearts would have been one of the preferred choices. When you consider some of the other teams in the draw, it looks as though you would need a wardrobe to travel to the away leg. It also helped that the City and Arsenal games were both at home. A trip to City, followed by a mission to Azerbaijan (I'm pretty sure that's where Baku is), followed by another trip to the Emirates and things would be a little less straight-forward.

In the early stages as well it gives Rodgers a chance to experiment a little. I think it's a fair bet that we wouldn't have seen Raheem Sterling get a full game against City if Rodgers hadn't had the chance to see him properly against Hearts in the first leg when he impressed.

He also got the chance to try Downing at left back in that game which apparently is something Rodgers is considering as an option. Not sure of the wisdom in that one myself, but we shall see.

I suppose I'm glad that tie is still alive tomorrow.. if we'd just crushed Hearts in the first leg, it would have made the second game a little bit dull. It keeps us honest. Especially as it's going to be the first European game I've been to for a little while.. and in my current circumstances I don't think it's going to be that regular Thursday night trip.

The UEFA Cup does provide the opportunity for squad rotation and it will be interesting to see who gets a run out tomorrow. Presumably Agger will play to keep him up to speed following his suspension, I suspect Downing will get the nod tomorrow as well. I can't see Sterling starting his 3rd game in a week, although he will most likely be on the bench.

The main problem as I see it will be the shape of the midfield, more with Sunday's game against Arsenal in mind. With Lucas out for another couple of months, it will be interesting to see how Rodgers brings it together. With the 4-3-3 system, you would have thought he was looking at Gerrard, Allen and Lucas. With that option now removed for the time being, presumably Sahin will given more of a role than he might have expected.

With the likes of Spearing and Adam, players who filled in the holding roll last season, looking like they are on the way out then we will see how Rodgers  intends to bring it together, and which players will be surplus to requirements.

Raheem Sterling with one of the bigger boys.

The UEFA Cup does give him the opportunity to look at players in proper games and shape the squad as he wants.. and it will accelerate the process given the amount of games you have to play in it. It will also accelerate the progress of the kids he seems keen to bring through, again with Sterling being the prime example.

It is a decent tournament, and given Liverpool's history in Europe one we should be looking at seriously. It does make me sick that the likes of Villa and Spurs in recent seasons have not given it the respect it deserves. If for example Barcelona dropped into the competition (quite how this would happen is not clear) but they could be forgiven for not being fully committed - although they would probably win it anyway. Spurs on the other hand  haven't won a European trophy since the UEFA Cup in 1984 and only two League Cups in the past 20 years.

Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I consider winning big shiny trophies the point of football. Finishing fourth, is handy financially and all of that. But ask yourself this.. In 2001 Liverpool qualified for the Champions League.. was that the best bit of that season?