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.
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