Season review - 86 reasons to be happy

At the start of the season I predicted a second place finish. How right I was. 86 points, 77 league goals, only 2 defeats and the best goal difference in the table. A record points total of 86 for a second place team in the premiership. This in itself is a reason to be happy. Unfortunately it wasn't enough Utd finished 4 points ahead with 90. The post mortem will say that we drew too many and there is some truth to that. 11 draws in unacceptable and I'm sure we'll improve on that next year. We can point to the refereeing errors like the stoke draw where a legitimate goal was ruled out and bad luck with the amount of times we hit the wood work. But a combination of inaccurate finishing, sloppy defending and injuries to key players cost us at times. If we had've converted three draws into wins or our two defeats to Spurs and Boro into wins then we would've reclaimed the title. If. Too many if's. We didn't do it despite playing some great football and we came up just short. 14 points out of 18 against the top four showed we could take on and beat our competition. Utd won the league despite performing poorly against the top 4. They won it because they were the best flat track bully's. We need to improve our ability to unlock a packed defence. If we do that more constantly then maybe we can go one step higher next year.It's hard to look beyond Gerrard when selecting a player of the season. He scored many amazing goals and was named football writers player of the season. John Giles on Newstalk agreed with the selection of Stevie and said that playing in the hole has brought the best out of him. Torres was good when played but missed too much of the season to be considered. Xabi had a great year, his best with us. The Kop love him and want him to stay here for many years yet. I would have him in second place for the year with Kuyt close behind him taking the bronze medal. I'm a huge fan of the Dutchman but will I had my doubts about him last year. But this season he's proved all of us wrong with his 12 league goals from open play and 8 assists, better than Rooney's return. From a right hand attacking spot that is a superb return and he fully justifies his selection. We can improve on Riera on the left but deadly Dirk will continue to be one of the first names in the team.

El Nino has signed a contract extension. There's been a big shake up with coaching staff. Gary Ablett has been released as have Hughie McAuley and Dave Shannon. Rafa is remoulding the academy and youth structure now that he has more control over the club structure with his new contract.

While there has been bad news off the pitch this week in relation to the accounts with soaring debts and no buyers interested, the guardian today suggest that it won't affect Rafa's budget and he'll still have £20m plus sales. But already he's s seen targets like Barry go to City which he won't be happy with. If it means Xabi is staying then I'm quite satisfied. Other targets could be missed out on like Pranjic who looks destined for Munich, Silva who's talking to Real Madrid and Glen Johnson who Chelsea want to buy, again.

Hertha Berlin didn't manage to secure Champions League football and won't be taking up their offer on Voronin. Javier has denied reports that he's off to FCB. Javi Martinez says he's up for a move to L4, but Atletico Bilbao say we haven't made an approach. Despite what Rafa is saying, the Alonso to Madrid rumours won't go away. If he does leave then maybe his fellow Basque will replace him. Babel has been told he can leave. I don't think it's a great surprise given how he's performed and the amount of time he's received this year. The South American press reckon that we've been everybody to the signing of Brazil u-17 star Zezinho. With a name like that, he's got to be good. Lavezzi is being linked by Setanta with Dossena going the other way. Juventus are also interested in the left back and it seems Rafa is willing to let him leave.

Sami's last minutes a red can be seen here. He'll be missed especially for his towering performance when we mashed the mans 4-1 in old toilet.

Red in Dublin is off on holidays for a few weeks to enjoy the Irish rain. I'll return if and when there's some decent transfer moves to report. In the meantime you can follow my updates on twitter. Keep it red.

A bridge too four

The pride of the Liverpool was evident last night. 4-4, an epic European contest. They said that there was no way we could go to London and score three. We went one better and scored four. We led 2-0 at half time but inevitable we left gaps at the back and Chelsea punished us. At 2-0 and 4-3 up, we were one goal from being ahead on aggregate but it wasn't to be. Despite it all, even deep into injury time, we never gave up. The spirit and desire of this team and this club is unmatched.

If we had Mascherano in the first leg and Gerrard in the second would the tie have turned out differently? Possibly but we'll never know. Stevie wasn't risked and watched from the stands. In his absence, Lucas did a decent job at the apex of the midfield where the captain normally plays. He put in a good shift and scored a goal thanks to an Essien deflection but Xabi stepped up as the main man on the night. He was awesome. I'm a huge fan of the basque schemer and this was up there as one of his best displays ever. I hope that Rafa never again considers selling him. Dirk was full of heart and running as we expect in European games. He took his goal well and has a habit of scoring important goals in this competition. Aurelio was another who recovered well from the first leg and his free kick goal was superb.

Drogba caused more problems as he did in the first leg. His diving and rolling around was as distasteful as ever. Anelka caused problems down the right and helped set Drogba up when he got a lucky touch off Pepe's glove. I wouldn't fault the keeper on it, it was just a freak deflection after the Ivorian had done very well.So now we can "concentrate on the league". Scant consolation but maybe the need to rotate will be lessened and we'll see our first choice team every match from now until May. Next Tuesday will be a vital league showdown with Arsenal at Anfield. The gunners will have a big say in the eventual destination of the title as they have to play us, Chelsea and Utd before the end of the season. They're in decent form at the moment but have a few defensive problems with Gallas, Clichy and Almunia injured. I fancy us to win it especially if the captain returns from injury.

Tony Evans in the TImes has a moving piece on going back to Hillsbourgh on the 20th anniversary. As I've said before on here, Evans is one of the few hacks that I respect when it comes to writing about LFC. You can hear him most weeks on the Game podcast from the Times.

The guardian rumour mill is linking us with another move for Javi Martinez at Bilbao. Could that mean that Lucas or Xabi are on their way this summer? Maybe he's being lined up as an alternative if moves for Gaz Baz fail again. I think the Englishman is a much likelier signing, mainly due to his nationality and his price. Another player linked is Wesley Sneijder who Real Madrid are willing to sell and David Silva who Valencia have to sell. Guillem Ballague reckons that we're interested in both of them but Real want Alonso and are using Sneijder as bait. I'd like to see us sign the Dutchman but not at Xabi's expense.

Babel says that he's not happy with sitting on the bench. Fair enough, but when he's played this year he's been fairly average. He's a prime candidate to be sold this summer from what I can see. We should be able to get a decent price for him as he's a young and talented player but I don't see him realising his potential with us.

It's all kicking off - part 2

Four items on the agenda today.

1. Very well done against Newcastle. Another 3 points in the bag away from home. Our away bag is now the fullest in the league. Long may it continue. 3-0 at St James' Park is always a good result. The press tomorrow will say that the Toon were shit, and they were. But we played very well and we could have had a lot more goals.


Gerrard answered his critics, and the Toon fans booing him, in style. He hit a superb free kick to open the scoring and had a hand in the next two goals. Stevie played in the middle with Lucas and Momo alongside him. This is an effective away from home tactic and has worked well for Chelsea in the past. Lucas had a great game bar a dip just before the end of the first half. He passed and tackled superbly. He sat a bit deeper today which let Momo move forward to hassle the opposition and Gerrard pull some strings. Lucas will be a great alternative for Xabi in times to come. A really impressive first Premier League start from the young Brazilian. Momo was poor again. He hassled and harried as he does and was as effective as ever without the ball. But his touch and passing were as bad as they have been in recent times. Great to see Harry manage to play 55 mins. We'll need him in the weeks ahead.

Torres played very well but his finishing was slightly off. He could have had four or five goals if he was on top form. He was unlucky to see one effort on half time hit the post but the keeper was out of the way so he really should have scored. Kuyt had a mixed game. He was doing his usual workhorse role supporting Torres from behind and out wide. He didn't do too much for his goal beyond being in the right place. But they all count and he has three in the league now. It was a definite improvement on some of his recent form but there is still a long way to go before he's back to his best. Babel came on in the second half and ran Newcastle ragged from the right. Rafa seems to prefer using the Dutch kid as an impact sub for now. It's working well and he gave the home defenders a nightmare. He combined superbly with Gerrard for the third score. It was a sublime goal and the pick of the bunch. I'm a big fan of Babel and hope that he keeps improving at his current rate.


The defence did what it had to do, which wasn't much at all. Martins was well managed by Carra and Sami. There wasn't a huge amount of threat from them anywhere else. Arbeloa had another good match at left back. Between him, Aurelio and Insua we will be able to cope at left back if Riise is sold in Jan.

Utd dropped 3 points against Bolton today was an unexpected bonus. I really didn't expect that to happen. It looked to me like the big four teams all winning before the matches began. We're now three points behind Utd and two behind City, with a game in hand, which is a decent situation. Unfortunately, we're still 6 points behind Arsenal without games in hand. They could do with slipping up and letting us back into the race. That's not too much to ask for, is it?

2. The board v Rafa battle rumbles on. I was hoping that we had left this behind when it all kicked off in the summer. This is a really bad situation and I'm very worried. Rafa came out in the press conference on Thursday and made it clear that he's not happy with the Hicks and Gillett in relation to transfer plans. They seem to have told him to concentrate on training and coaching the current players. I hate to our dirty laundry being washed in public. Things seem to be slightly better after the match today and Rafa said that the row wasn't serious. Hopefully this is the case and both parties can move forward. Unfortunately I fear that Rafa will walk away from the club sooner or later over the boards conduct of transfers and lack of speed. The plan in the summer was rumoured to be that Foster Gillett would be based on Merseyside to work with Parry and Rafa on transfers. It now appears that we went back to US after the Arsenal game and hasn't been back since. I think that they will be able to sort this out short term but I can see this row erupting again in 6 months and Rafa walking in the summer. It'll be a sad day for the club is he does leave as he's a superb manager and the perfect man for the job. His resignation would set us back around 3-4 years in my view.

3. The Porto match on wed night is huge. We're in much better form than we were when we played them in Portugal. But they're still a good team and will cause us problems. We have to win and will be going for it from the start. If we don't score early, I can see the sitting back and trying to hit us on the break with the likes of Quaresma. An early goal and it mightn't be too bad. But we'll have to go for it as we're out if we fail to win.

4. AOB. Javi Martinez has been linked to us recently. He's another young creative midfielder, who plays for Athletic Bilbao, so I don't really see where he fits into the plans at the moment. Rafa then came out on the official site and said that we aren't interested in signing him now. We have more than enough central midfielders at the moment though. Maybe he'll be a target if we sell Momo.

Until Wednesday. Anfield awaits.