Arsenal 0 - 2 Liverpool (Talking Points)

On Saturday we achieved our first win of the 2011/12, we also simultaneously won our first away fixture against Arsenal in almost 11 years. Suarez was dropped to the bench for this fixture, along with John Flanagan, who made way for Dirk Kuyt and Martin Kelly respectively. Arsenal were clearly under strength, between injuries and high profile departures, they were not at their strongest. This was still Arsenal though, and through the game they looked pretty strong at times. Liverpool looked strong too and for the first time in as long as can remember we dominated possession against Arsenal. We were a little fortunate in that the first goal was a pretty calamitous own goal from Arsenal, but i don’t think many people would deny that Liverpool were worthy winners on the day. Certainly there were no question marks over the quality of our second goal.

A Lucky Victory

A lot of people have been writing this victory off as nothing more than a “lucky” victory. From fans of other clubs this is no more than we’ve grown to expect, but I have hear it said by a lot of Liverpool fans too, which is surprising. There are a number of things people point to back up this “lucky” theory. Firstly, the early injury to Koscielny, well this is just one of those things really isn’t it? In this very fixture last season we had to start with John Flanagan (still in his first few appearances) at Right Back, he was quickly joined by Jack Robinson on at Left back when Fabio Aurelio succumbed to his usual fate. I don’t remember Liverpool being given extra credit for achieving a draw in that game and so similarly I don’t think Arsenal’s injury issue should take anything away from this victory. Secondly the sending off of Frimpong. The only thing lucky for Liverpool about this sending off was that the tackle which lead to his second yellow card didn’t also lead to Lucas being seriously injured! That tackle on its own could very well have resulted in a straight red card, and I’m sorry but Frimpong had been at it all game. He really does look like an outstanding player and I’m sure it was not malicious, most likely nothing more than youthful naivety, but from the first few minutes he was throwing himself into tackles, having niggles and moans at the referee and opposition players so it seemed it could happen that he receive a second yellow at some point, if his manager chose not to take him off having seen all this then I don’t think that is as much down to our good fortune as it is the player or manager themselves. Finally, we come to the Own Goal and Offside. I wont for one minute try to deny that the OG was good fortune. The offside may have been fortunate too, but it was an incredibly difficult call, the kind of one where if its given against you moan, no matter which team you support. My problem with the own goal being used as fuel for the “lucky” win theory is that this wasn’t the type of OG where a defender tries a hopeful punt back to his keeper only for the keeper to fall and allow it in. This was a crisp passing move where Liverpool forced the ball into a very dangerous position which left a young defender in trouble in a crowded penalty area, he tried to clear through the bodies and it took a wicked deflection over the, here-to unbeatable Szezesny. It was a fortunate outcome but it was forced too.

The Squad

Liverpool started this game with the strongest bench I can remember for a while. Doni, Skrtel, Flanagan, Spearing, Maxi, Meireles, Suarez. The bench had natural cover all over the pitch. It contained some experienced players and it also contained some game changers. Of course Suarez would be everbody’s starting 11 whenever fit, but it showed something new to us that even with these players on the pitch we had a very strong starting 11 on the pitch, a starting 11 which you would back against the majority of premiership teams. Lets not forget that we still have Steven Gerrard, Glen Johnson, Fabio Aurelio, and although it seems nailed on that he will leave soon Alberto Aquilani, in reserve. I would still like us to improve in certain area’s a centre back seems to be lined up by the club and I personally feel we need a back-up striker, but the squad is certainly taking shape and looking stronger than in recent seasons.

The Big Man up Top

Are certain people under some contractual obligation to mention Andy Carroll’s fee every time they mention his name? “Was that worth £35 million?” is the usual refrain, the only way to stop this question being asked is for everyone of Andy Carroll’s touches to be a header into the top corner, or to score a 25 yard screamer with every shot. I understand that Andy Carroll is by no means the finished product and I understand that his price tag seems to reflect that of a player who is very much the finished product, but lets keep things in perspective and not write him off after every poor touch or every goal-less game. I personally think he is doing ok overall. He came into the team last season when clearly not fit and scored a few good goals to get him off the mark. He has done well in getting a full pre-season under his belt, and although he is not at 100% fitness at this early point in the season, neither are most of our players. The team has a set up now which will naturally lead to getting more out of Andy. We can see that our wingers have been told to hit him when in possession out wide. The problem at the moment seems to be too many balls into his head, don’t get me wrong I know the wingers are mostly going to hit his head, and while on the subject I think it’s pretty incredible how many crosses he actually gets his head to, I know these haven’t lead to goals in the first two games but once it all starts clicking it should prove very productive. When I say the problem is too many balls into his head I mean more-so from midfield and defence. When under pressure or when rushing to start a move its an easy option to just lump it, but this ignores the fact that Andy is strong in possession and a lot of the time it would be preferable to see the ball played to him to hold-up, wait for support, lay-off and go. This hasn’t been happening too much so far but I’m sure it will come as the players get more used to playing with him, and of course he with them.

Liverpool 1 - 1 Sunderland (Talking Points)

The new season officially began with a one all draw against Sunderland. Anticipation had been getting higher as the season approached and in the opening half an hour of the game it seemed that all the optimism was totally justified. Early in the game Liverpool were completely in control, we attacked well and early on Suarez went through one on one with the keeper and won a penalty. The shine was quickly taken off the penalty though when referee Phil Dowd failed to dismiss Kieron Richardson, and also of course when Suarez missed the penalty with some flair! He made up for this of course a few minutes later when he got the all important flick to a dangerous Charlie Adam free kick. At this point in the game it seemed Liverpool would capitalise on our control, as the half continued we had many more chances. Adam had a long range effort saved, Downing smashed the cross bar following a blitzing run from the half way line there were other less notable chances too. The best chance of course fell to Andy Carroll who finished it well, the referee struck again though when he disallowed the goal. As half time approached, with the important second goal proving more elusive it became apparent that Liverpool’s intensity had dropped, it seemed the players were getting tired, we hoped that the half time break would prove to re-invigorate them, unfortunately this wasn’t the case. Sunderland were the stronger side throughout the second half and equalized in some style through, a debutant of their own in Sebastian Larsonn. Kenny made some changes, and the players tried to rally but were not able to raise their game to the levels achieved in the first half.

The sending off and penalty: 

The rules state that you receive a red card for denying a clear goal scoring opportunity and I don’t know of a much clearer goal scoring opportunity than Luis Suarez one v one with a goalkeeper.  The ref stated he was moving away from goal, but it is very hard to bring a ball around a goal keeper without momentarily going away from goal. To me, it seemed that Phil Dowd bottled it, he didn’t want to be the first ref to give out a red card in the season and so he took an excuse. I also think that if the rules lead to ambiguity then they need to be clarified for everybody. I think the penalty miss made have been as case of over confidence from Luis. He made up for the miss with his goal a few minutes later, you can be sure the Kop wont hold it against him, so long as he doesn’t make a habit out of it.

The disallowed goal:              

I’m not going to dwell on this too much, I could not see any reason for this goal to be disallowed. A very slight coming together between two players, the defender goes to ground and the referee blows for a free kick. If the same circumstances had left the Striker on the deck, You can be sure that a penalty wouldn’t have been awarded. It was a big decision, looking back on the game we can see how it panned out and say that a draw was a fair result, but who’s to know how a second goal at this point might have effected both teams performances?

The Performance: 

As I said earlier, Liverpool looked tired as the game wore on, I don’t think this is necessarily something for us to be overly concerned about. Pre-season training is not designed to have any team at peak fitness for the first game of the season, its usually  intended that a team hits peak from the second or third game onwards. I think there was enough in the first 30 minutes to show that this team has something about them. Once the team starts to gel and players start reaching their peaks we will be a force to be reckoned with.

There are other talking points, the right hand side, Flanno, the first 11, the tactics overall and playing people out of position but as this is the first game of the season i think we need to reserve judgement on a lot of things for the moment. If things keep on cropping up over the next few games I will certainly discuss them but for now I think we can trust that these issues are nothing more than teething problems

First Game, First Blog

The season is at last upon us and Liverpool kick off the 20011/12 Premier League season at Anfield against Sunderland at the traditional, but rare for us in recent seasons, fixture time of 3:00 on Saturday. The excitement has been building ever since Kenny Dalglish returned as Liverpool manager, and the liberation of the club by John Henry and Fenway Sports Group. The upturn in fortunes last season saved us from our horrible plight, and brought the positivity back to our minds, so much so that defeats in our final two games of the season, and the loss of our League title record didn’t dampen scouse spirits. We have had a very busy summer, a summer in which our new owners have fully backed our manager and director of football and brought in players which every Liverpool fan can get excited about. With a few weeks of the transfer window remaining we have most certainly improved the first team and overall squad. We have brought in Henderson and Adam to strengthen the Midfield, both are versatile and strong players, both are ready to play football but neither will feel they have an automatic right to a first team place and will be prepared to fight for their place in the team. Stuart Downing has come in as a specialist left winger, for me, this is the most exciting of our summer transfers so far. Its the first time we have had a specialist left winger at the club in a long time, I am purposely ignoring loathsome Albert Riera here.

There is still some work to be done. We all know there are players that we would like to see moved on from the club, of the expensive rejects still on the books at the start of the summer only Milan Jovanovic has so far been moved on from the club. It looks like more will be moved on before the close of the transfer window, the likes of Joe Cole and Alberto Aquilani are constantly linked with moves. It seems as though there wont be much incoming until some more players have been moved on. Regardless of transfer fees it seems the wage bill will need to be reduced before more can be added.

The question marks now are about how we are going to line up for the first game of the season. Pre-season has been a bit patchy, between players returning to training at different times and other players recovering from injury we have not really had a chance to see what Kenny’s first choice line-up will be. That’s not to say that I think he is some sort of tactical dinosaur who will pick his team based on the famed “best eleven” that Andy Gray and his ilk like to spout shite about, quite the opposite in fact, I think the main thing the summer signings have given us is plenty of options. Two of the most important absentees from pre-season have been two of our most important players. Steven Gerrard has been injured and although we recently received good news with regard to him it still appears it will be September before he makes his campaign debut. Luis Suarez in contrast played football through most of the summer, he won the Copa America with Uruguay, at the same time winning player of the year and top scorer for the competition. Suarez returned to training on Monday, and should be available to play some part on Saturday. Reina, Merieles and Skrtel all had disrupted pre-seasons too. So what we have seen in pre-season cant really be a strong indicator of where we are. Saturday will give us a much better picture of whats to come. Sunderland will be a difficult game but it is definitely a game we should be aiming to win, and, if we do get off to a good start we could hope to go on a nice run at the start of the season which could lead to a strong season overall.

Dont Forget to join The Red Article's Fantasy premier League. You can find the League code on my previous post.

Fantasy Premier League

With the season almost set to get underway, and along with that a lot more blogging from me. I thought I would start off the season by creating a league for the readers of The Red Article. We'll have periodic updates on the site which will hopefully keep it competetive throughout the season.

Its quick and easy to set up:

Just click on this link http://fantasy.premierleague.com and create your team. once you've created your team click on "Leagues", then click on "Join League", select "Private League and click next. Next, enter the League Code 529590-287546

Once thats done your all set up! Feel free to pass the league code to anyone who wants to join.