New stadium to be put on hold..again

Hello all, hope you have enjoyed the weekend as much as I have. We are now only six days away from “real football” again. As I’m from Norway, international football is taking the jam out of my doughnut.

Anyway, there hasn’t been much action around Anfield beacause of this international football thing. The main story is that our new stadium is set to be put on hold again. Christian Purslow said in an interview with a newspaper, whose name I won’t say here. He revealed the building of our new stadium will not take place before the global recession is over, and to an certain extent, I can understand that. On the other hand, if all of the promises were kept, the stadium would be nearly finished by now, but that is the yanks’ fault, not Purslows’. The latest news is that Hicks is quoted in the Mirror that “the stadium will be finished”. But honestly, I  can’t see it happen for a very long time. The plan is now to have the stadium finished to England’s potentially World Cup in 2018. Sad, yes, but unfortunately true. And I have to admit I’m not sure if the stadium is ready even in 2018. I think we will play at Anfield in many, many years to come. By all means, I love everything about Anfield. Well, almost everything. The history, the atmosphere, the Shankley gates. But the capacity is too small. We need a 60-70 000 capacity crowd at our home games to keep up the pace with the likes of Arsenal and Man Utd in terms of finances.

In other news, there really aren’t any news. We survived yesterday in terms of injuries to our international games. Steven Gerrard picked up a knock, but is fit for fit ahead of wednesday’s game agains Croatia. And Wayne Rooney made a ridiculous dive agains Slovenia. If the morons at Uefa sat an example when they banned Eduardo for two games, Fifa must to the same agains Shrek. If not, it’s just complete madness.

Until next time

Hicks may sell out Rangers

Howdy all

The main story today is rumours about Tom Hicks may sell out his beloved Texas Rangers after all. It’s not more than a couple of weeks ago he said he was hoping to keep his shares at the club, but now it seems he is about to change his mind. It is SportsProMedia who is behind this story, and they claim to have sources “close” to Mr. Cunt, errm, I mean Mr. Hicks. And if he really is about to sell out and cash inn $600 M, that’s all fine and dandy, but, and there IS a but. He must make Liverpool FC his main priority with those 600 millions. We badly need them, and if he doesn’t make that priority, his status amongst us supporters will be lower than ever before. We want the yanks out, no doubt about that. The way they ran this club, the promises that weren’t kept, and the dirty laundry in the media is just not acceptable. I don’t think Hicks and Gillett can ever fix their relationship to us, but they must start to repair some of the damage they’ve caused. I know it’s a tall order for these cunts, but if they get some fresh funds into their wallets, they certainly have the opportunity. Let’s just prey they’ll take it. It would have been a huge boost to the economical situation at Anfield.

Over and over, they seem to forget their very own words when they first took over this club. The building of the new stadium would take place within 60 days. Rafa would get plenty of money to build his squad in his own way. And  they wouldn’t put Liverpool into the same situation that the Glazer’s did at Man Utd. And they failed to keep their word in 3 out of 3 promises. Not  bad, eh? I’ve never seen more hatred towards own owners, than in our situation, and we have every right to be angry with them. Newcastle’s supporters to Mike Ashley is a love story in comparison. If Mr. Hicks puts even just half of the amount of the Rangers sale, things will look far more brightly.

In other news, there isn’t much going on, as we’re getting closer to the international games. The reserves won 3-1 at home to Bolton last night, after goals from Gerardo Bruna, Jordy Brouwer and Alexander Kacaniklic,  I’m always pleased when our future stars are winning games. So we have a good start in the reserve league then. Good news.

Kop legend John Barnes thinks the Reds have a solid chance to all the way this season. Fingers crossed he’s right.

And that’s just about that. I expect it to be even more quiet tomorrow, unless there are some news about the Rangers sale. I’ll keep you lot updated.

Until then

Babel´s moaning – international silence

Morning all

There is really not much going at all, in footballing terms. I could go on and on about my incredible exciting life, but do I wish to do that? Not very much, so. Let´s start with Ryan Babel who has been chatting with dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf. He´s not happy at all with the situation at Liverpool, and says he´s considering a loan deal to Ajax in january if he doesn´t get more first team football. I´m really not sure whether to be happy with this or not. Firstly, he has never lived up to his expectations or potential at Anfield. He had a decent first season, but last season he was terrible. I cannot remember he had one good game, part from the thrashing of Real Madrid. But he had in all honesty just one good half at that game. He also started against Spurs this season, and for me that was one of his worst performances ever in a Liverpool shirt. An in-form Babel is a very handy tool against the best defenders in the world. But the fact is that I can´t remember Babel being in form, and my patience with him is almost lost. When he plays like he has done the last year, he won´t be a threat to a Sunday League-side. If we lose Babel to Ajax on a loan deal, we will be a bit short of choices, but in the long term, I think it can be worth hit. If he can regain some confidence at Ajax and return to us as a whole new player, then he will be like a new signing next season. If he continues to struggle also at Ajax, we should sell him off whilst we can get some good money for him.

Elsewhere there is not much happening. Spanish starlets Daniel Pacheco and Daniel Ayala has been talking to liverpoolfc.tv, and how they are dreaming about playing in front of the Kop. You can have a look at both interviews here, and here. Now, I know Ayala has already been playing in front of the Kop, but you know, on a regulary basis.

David Moores´s status at Anfield have been suverely degraded. Before he had access to the club´s delegation both home and away, and would sit with the direction box. Now he has been moved to the VIP-box where he still enjoys free hospitality. But the rest of the goods is gone. Of course it´s the yanks who is behind this. Those utter cunts. I really can´t understand why they do this. Save money? David Moores will have more moral rights to sit in the direction box, than they ever will. I think it´s utterly disrespectful towards Mr. Moores, and he doesn´t deserve this. He is much as part of Liverpool, as they are. Even more so, in my opinion.

And that´s about that. As I said to you, there´s not much happening. The international games are three days away. Let´s prey we won´t get any injuries.

´till tomorrow

Good injury news – last day of transferwindow

Happy tuesday to you all.

Today there is actually plenty to go through, so let’s just get it started. Rafa has been speeking about our injured players, and it seems like he had some good news. Aurélio will be matchfit against Burnley after playing with his kids in the garden earlier in the summer. Personally, I can’t wait to have him back in full fitness. Yes, Insua is a bright and upcoming left back, but he is not the full package, yet. We saw Aurélios contribution to the team at the second half of last season, and he was in my opinion the league’s best left back. I think Insua will be in a  couple of years time, but it’s too early for him to carry the whole burden.

The Aquliani-situation is pretty much the same. Rafa is pleased with his progress, but we must probably cope without him until October. But good news his recovery is going as well as scheduled. We badly need some creativity in the midfield, and I think the italian maestro fits the bill perfectly. Can’t wait to see him in action.

The date for the cup tie against Leeds United is set. The game will take place september 22, 7.45PM. Looking forward to it.

PL’s most handsome right winger, Dirk Kuyt har been talking to our official web site, and throws out a warning against Chelsea whilst he’s at it. Saying: “At the moment it’s not important to look at where teams like Chelsea, Man United and Arsenal are because we’ve got to think about ourselves. That is the priority and I’m sure if we keep winning games, we’ll be up there soon.” He then continues: “We will see where we are in a couple of months. Chelsea are a top side. We knew that at the start of the season and we’ve seen that so far. But every team will struggle this season. We have to focus on ourselves and keep winning our own games.”

That’s the spirit, isn’t it? I firmly believe we can get a title challenge up and going if we can get consistent and win 5-10 games in a row. As you all know, we have started our season pretty badly, but the win against Bolton may somehow be kind of a turning point for us. We have Burnley at home next, and then West Ham where they blow bubbles in the air. So we have a good chance to pick up three wins in a row, taking the Bolton win into context. Then we will have a 4-0-2 record, and our season will be up and running, Wish thinking? Hope not.

This is also the last day of the transfer window, and we have not been very glowing in the media. We’ve really not been linked to anyone, and it seems nobody will leave either. Except our bulgarian goalkeeper Nikolay Mihaylov, who will leave Liverpool in january to PSV. He never got a work permit here, so I wish him all the best in the future.

And that’s pretty much that. There will probably be more from me tomorrow.
Until then, have a great day

I´m back, Liverpool´s back. It´s all good

Phew, that was close, wasn´t it?

As Paul Tomkins pointed out, saturday´s result and performance had last season written all over it. Let´s first work us through how we conceded our goals. Again, we conceded at defending set pieces, and as incredible as it seems, we have only conceded at set pieces so far this season! And this will raise the discussion about zonal marking to an ever higher level. And I will make my view very clear to you: I´m all for zonal marking, even though how crazy it may sound. All system has its flaws. And Liverpool are going through a shaky time at defending set pieces, so it will automaticallt be a little nervous back there. Nevertheless, Rafa and his boys has to sort out this problem quickly, and it is a problem, make no mistake about that. We can´t afford to keep conceding easy goals this way. Matches against Chelsea, Man Utd and Everton will begin in about a month, and if we haven´t sortet this out by then, we´re in all sorts of trouble.

The game against Bolton started brightly. Our new boy Kyrgiakos dominated in the air, and looked pretty solid, shouting out messages in his first minutes in a Liverpool-shirt. Although, we didn´t create many chances, and we allow Bolton to get into the game. And in the 32nd minute, Bolton´s biggest cunt Kevin Davies stood all by himself in the box and put away a Bolton corner. Again the defending was laughable, and you just had to think “It´s one of those days”. But Liverpool respended well, creating chances and Torres should in all fairness have grabbed himself a goal, after two very good chances to score. A Liverpool corner fell to Johnson right outside the box. He said goodbye to his marksman and slotted it beautyfully into the net.

Right after half time Bolton again scored on a set piece, after Kyrgiakos lost in the air to Kevin Davies. The ball fell nicely to Tamir Cohen who sent it past Pepe Reina to make it 2-1 to Bolton and me to throw things in my apartment. Not long after, Sean Davis gets sent off and Bolton are one man down. We absolute hammered them after this, and right after the sending off, Liverpool exploits the situation. Kuyt lays it off beautyfully to Torres, who makes no mistakes against Jaaskelainen. 2-2 and game on. The rest of the half we don´t let them breathe for one minute, with countless good chances. In the 83rd minute, our captain really shows he is sorry for his poor performance agains Villa last monday, and hammers the ball into the top corner, after massive pressure. So deserved, and so fucking great. After the winning goal, we created several chances on excellent counter attacks, and we should really put at least one more past Jaaskelainen, but 3 points was the most important thing.

The boss was naturally happy after the game, thinking it was the perfect response after Villa´s game. Saying: “From the first minute, the players were playing with a great determination to win and it was important to have this mentality. I am really pleased with the reaction of the players. I think today we showed we have quality and when we play at our level, we can beat anyone. We had a game plan and we wanted to keep the ball and have plenty of possession. It was a difficult game and we had to come from behind twice, but I think we showed a lot of character.”

And you have to agree, haven´t you? Reebok Stadium will always be a difficult place to go to, and we won´t certainly be the only team struggling there this season. Bolton´s style of play is so effective against the big sides, because they don´t allow us to play our regular football. And I think the likes of Scum, Arsenal and Chelsea will notice that. In other news, there is not really much going on. We are going to have an international break, which means injuries. I expect Torres to die from Swine Flu, and Gerrard to break his neck during this break. No seriously, fingers crossed our players gets throgh their games and returns to Melwood well and healthy. You can show much this victory meant to Glen Johnson here

More tomorrow.

Champions League draw – Reina calling for faith

A very happy afternoon to you all.

The main story this morning is obviously the group stage draw of the Champions League. The draw will take place 4.45 PM, british time. As alwyas I expect Liverpool to draw the best teams in all three seeding groups, which will see us in the worst possible group. There are four seeding pots, and Liverpool find themselves in pot 1, top seeded. That doesn’t mean the group stage will be a walk in the park, as we’ve experiences in the past few years. There are good times in all pots, we might even risk facing Real Madrid, which would have been a bit of fun actually, in my opinion. The seeding is as follwing:

Pot 1

Barcelona (ESP)
Liverpool (ENG)
Chelsea (ENG)
Manchester United (ENG)
AC Milan (ITA)
Arsenal (ENG)
Sevilla (ESP)
Bayern Munich (GER)

Pot 2

Olympique Lyon (FRA)
Internazionale (ITA)
Real Madrid (ESP)
CSKA Moscow (RUS)
FC Porto (POR)
AZ Alkmaar (NED)
Juventus (ITA)
Glasgow Rangers (SCO)

Pot 3

Olympiakos (GRE)
Olympique Marseille (FRA)
Dinamo Kiev (UKR)
VfB Stuttgart (GER)
Fiorentina (ITA)
Atletico Madrid (ESP)
Girondins Bordeaux (FRA)
Besiktas (TUR)

Pot 4

VfL Wolfsburg (GER)
Standard Liege (BEL)
Maccabi Haifa (ISR)
FC Zurich (SUI)
Rubin Kazan (RUS)
Unirea Urziceni (ROM)
APOEL (CYP)
Debrecen (HUN)

In pot two, there’s quality pretty much all over the place. The obvious ones we want to avoid, would be Real, Inter and Juventus. I would be more than happy with Porto, Alkmaar or Rangers, but that’s good teams took, make no mistake about that.

In pot three, I would be happy to take on Dinamo Kiev or Besiktas. We’ve had some good experience with Besiktas before, now haven’t we? The obvious “no thanks” teams in this pot would be Atletico Madrid and Fiorentina, I suspect.

In pot four, I really hope we avoid Wolfsburg and Standard Liege. Remember how we struggled against the belgium side last year? They were quality, and even though we hadn’t got the new season up and going, they really gave us a good fight, and we were somewhat very fortunate to qualify to the group stages.

So, fingers crossed we get a good group, and as always I expect Man Utd to draw teams like Rubbish FC and Utter Shite Rovers.

In other news, Pepe Reina is asking us to keep the faith in our team, despite our horrible start to the season, saying: “The fans can trust us until the end because as a team we have always been strong,”. Thanks Pepe. I will keep my faith to the end and I expect you lot to repay that faith, beginning at Reebok on saturday, comprende, amigo? No seriously, I think it’s good that the players comes out and gives us messages like that. They know they haven’t been living up to their standards, and they’re now telling us they are fully aware of that. You can read the full interview with Pepe here.

There’s really not much going on elsewhere. The reserve league will start up again tonight, and their first game will be against Blackburn. So, good luck to them. Hope some of the promising talents will deliver the goods this season.

And thats pretty much that. I won’t be able to update this blog before tomrrow morning, so I’ll see you then.

Laters.

Not much going on, Insua has a WC dream

A very, very hung over and happy morning to you, my good old pedigree chums.

As the title inquire, there’s really not much going on concerning Liverpool this morning. There are a few bits here and there, so why not get right to it? Firstly, Xabi Alonso has been talking about how he believe his departure is not the main reason to Liverpool’s bad start to the season. You can read the interview here. However, Xabi Alonso is nothing but an extremely annoying and ugly mother-in-law to me, so whatever comes out of his mouth, I really don’t care. That being said, my mother-in-law is not annoying or ugly at all. In fact, I’m really happy with my mother-in-law, so don’t you worry “mum”, you know I’m a good lad.

Our new first choice at left back, Emiliano Inusa, has been talking to LFC Weekly Magazine, and “reveals” one of his dreams is to play at the World Cup for Argentina. This may come as a big shock to you. I mean, seriously, he wants to play the WC for his national team? Really? I certainly didn’t see that coming.
In all seriousness, Insua doesn’t have much time to make it to the WC-squad. An excellent season, and solid back-to-back performances all season through. Then he will have a fair shot at playing for Argentina, and nothing would make me happier.

In other team news, our new boy Sotiris Kyrgiakos will probably figure in central defence alongside Carra agains Bolton. If that is Rafa’s plan, I think he should pull it through. We need strength in the air, especially agains a physical side like Bolton. We’ve also defended set pieces very poor so far this season, so I think a fella like Kyrgiakos back there is exactly what we need.

And if you guys have lost faith in our title chances already, have a look at Paul Tomkins’ latest article. As always, it’s an excellent piece of writing, so have a look.

And that’s about that. Stick around for tomorrow, as we will be one day closer to the all-important  game at Reebook.

Enjoy the rest of day.

Liverpool 1 – 3 Aston Villa – reds slump to second defeat of the season

Morning all.

So, what is there to say? A truly awful display from Liverpool last night, gave Aston Villa their first win of the season. For starters, defending at set pieces must improve immediatly. We´ve conceded five goals in three games so far this season, and all of them from set pieces, which ultimately cost us six points in two games. Now, I wouldn´t go as far to say the title race is over, but our start to the new season is as good as Joleon Lescott´s haircut. But we must start picking up three points on a regular basis, and we must start at Bolton in three days.

The game agains Villa got off to a good start with Benayoun almost snatching a goal from after a Friedel howler after just 30 seconds into the game. Then Gerrard and Torres had a series of chances in the space of just five seconds, but it just wasn´t to be. Then the game got very quiet, with literally nothing actions in either side of the park. Liverpool huffed and puffed, but couldn´t get past the Villains defence. Then, Lucas conceded a silly freekick, and if that wasn´t enough, he put the following freekick into his own net, by a wicked deflection. Now, that OG can happen to anyone, as it was just plain bad luck. But you have to reckognize the fact he often gives away freekicks in dangerous areas, and also gave away at least one penalty last season. Lucas is a gifted footballer, make no question about that, but you have to take his “unfortunate” contributon into the context. Personally, I can´t wait to Aquilani will be fit, and if we can keep him fit, my guess is that Lucas will return back to his status as a squad player.

Just before the ref, which by the way acted like a cunt all night, was about to blow his whistle instead of his assistant referee, Liverpool conceded a dubious corner. The corner should never have been given, and on the sideline, Rafa was absolute furious along with the rest of the red section of the world. Liverpool looked very unfocused at the time, focusing more on the ref´s decision, rather than defending the corner. And Curtis Davies got an easy job to give Villa a comfortable 2-0 lead at half time. A poor first half, and it makes me concerned that we were not able to create more chances than we did. By all means, if lady luck were on our side last night, we would have won this game by 3-0, but then, it wasn´t our night.

Liverpool got out of the racing blocks in the second half, paired up with the Kop, which really stuck behind the lads and gave them hopes and adrenaline. We created several good chances, but we didn´t get the much needed goal before after 72 minutes. Insua did a good job on the left hand side, got in a good cross, and Torres put it away like you always expect him to do in that sort of situations. Everyone then expected an absolute storm against Brad Friedel, but only minutes after Torres´ goal, Steven Gerrard gave away an absolute horrendous penalty. It was completely unnecessary, and I suspect his level of adrenaline was a little too high. However, when the team needs your captain as bad as they did at that point, you just don´t get into that sort of tackle in your own penalty area. It was a clear cut penalty, and Ashley Young had no problems to send Pepe Reina the wrong way, and give Villa 3-1 on the night.

So, three points in three games. Not the started we wanted, now is it? The boss has called upon his more experienced players to take on Bolton this saturday, and give the Reds a much needed win. In other team news, Kriztian Nemeth has gone to AEK Athen on a season long loan deal, while Andras Simon has gone to spanish side Cordoba CF. Best of luck to both of them, hope they will get some first team experience, and return to Anfield as world class players. Erhhh..

Not much else going on this afternoon, so I´ll leve you for now. I will concume a heavy amount of pints this evening to put yesterday well and truly out of the system. I recommend you
to do the same.

´till tomorrow