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.

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A promising start to Transfer Season

We are only a couple of weeks into transfer season and already it is one of the most exciting I have ever experienced. As was the case during the FSG’s only previous transfer window, they have gone about their business in a manner befitting the clubs history and traditions by keeping their cards close to their chest and acting swiftly to ensure they captured their first priority at a price they deemed agreeable. Their first priority of course was Jordan Henderson, the England U-21 player signed from Sunderland for a fee in the region of €20 million. One transfer attempt which did leak was our bid for Phil Jones from Blackburn Rovers, another star for England U-21’s, this time a Centre Back. At the same time as signing Henderson, it was widely being reported that we were very close to capturing Jones’ signature, as the day wore on though it became apparent that Man Utd had also tabled a bid which had been accepted by Blackburn, and not only that, Jones was actually in Manchester completing a medical and discussing Personal Terms. It seemed we had been pipped at the post and that Jones to Utd was now a formality. It was strange however that such a formality did not seem to be being completed. The reasons for this became clear last night (11/0/2011) when the Guardian reported that a spanner had been thrown in the works by Liverpool attempting to gazump the deal by placing another bid of £22M for the player. This resulted in Rovers’ owners (Venky’s) calling a halt to the deal with Utd as they attempted to start a bidding war between the two neighbouring cities. At the moment there is a bit of a stalemate going on, it has been revealed that there is a clause in Jones’ contract which states that any club which bids more than £16M for the player is allowed to speak directly to him to discuss personal terms, It seems that the Utd hierarchy interpret this as a transfer clause, whereas Rovers’ Chiefs say that they are not obliged to accept the offer and can accept a larger off if available. Liverpool’s second offer, while obviously has a main objective of signing the player, has some further intentions too. It shows that for the first time in a long time, we are credible contenders for the best available players. It also proves that for the first time, maybe since Greame Souness sat in the hot seat, Liverpool can genuinely contend with Man Utd with regard to value in the transfer market. I personally think that after a bit of wrangling Jones will still end up a Man Utd player, he has already made his decision it seems, but isn’t it refreshing to see our great club showing Utd that no longer will they have it their own way. We might even cause them to spend an extra €7 million on a player they thought they had sewn up days ago. This could also be a tactic to ensure they have less cash should we go head to head on another target down the road. Wherever Jones ends up now, the manner in which our club have handled this transfer has given Liverpool supporters further cause for optimism as the window continues.

Damien Comolli spoke during the week about our targets going forward, saying there would definitely be more signings and that they would most likely be from within England stating "If a player is English, or British or has played in the Premier League, we'll look at that over someone abroad” This would be in-line with the players we have been linked with over the past 2 weeks, I’m sure you have heard most of the names by now, Downing, Adam, Wickham, Dann, all players who could add something to our squad. They may not be the exciting continentals that get fans pulses rating but they are all proven quality in England and could settle into the side with the minimum amount of adjustment required. I won’t go in depth with regard to any of the players until they are, if they are, signed but I am pleased with all of these names, in particular Wickham the exciting young goal scorer from Ipswich who fits perfectly with our current policy of signing the best young British talent available. The policy which Comolli has spoken of is easy to understand in that we will be signing players who don’t need as much time to adjust to life in Liverpool and the English culture, but I do hope this doesn’t mean we will forsake exceptional talent from abroad. Players we have been linked to recently, in particular Juan Mata from Valencia are true quality players with the ability to lift any team, and while I certainly will back Comolli and Dalglish’s choices I hope we are still considering every option available.

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On another note, thanks to everyone who voted for The Red Article’s player of the year. I don’t think it will come as much of a surprise that Lucas Leiva has won by a large amount picking up 47% of the votes. As we continue to sign midfielders lets hope Lucas can continue his rate of improvement and cement his place in the side again next season.