Walk Outs And Ticket Prices

£77 a ticket, 77^th minute walk out. Take action now or in a few seasons we might only be able to protest during extra time in cup ties. How long until we need a 99^th minute walk out? Who knows.
 
The new ticket price announcements and subsequent reaction from supporters groups has got me thinking so I’m back on here for my first post in years to share my opinions. I’m not promising this will be coherent or flowing and I’m struggling to decide which side of the debate I fall on so don’t expect any conclusions, just a few of my thoughts and you can make your own minds up.
 
Top ticket prices of £77 don’t price me out of going to the game. That happened years ago once it reached about £35. I’ve made it to the odd cup game since but I honestly don’t remember which was the last league game I went to. I suspect it was under Kenny Dalglish but I could be wrong. I remember my first game, mid eighties vs Arsenal, we won 2-1 and my ticket in the Paddock cost £1.50. The announced rises (and drops, it’s only fair to point out not every price has gone up) don’t affect me, I don’t have the disposable income or the free time to go to the games. It will however affect thousands of other people who have chosen to make their feelings known to the club in a peaceful but very obvious manner. More power to them and I hope everybody in the stadium who agrees with them joins in, no matter what is happening on the pitch. Liverpool fans are famous for backing the team as one collective group and should remain as one collective group. A sea of individual voices pulling together (mixed metaphors I know) to become stronger than the sum of their parts.
 
Something that has always annoyed me is ticket touts. I go to concerts as well as football, the frustration of not securing tickets for something in the knowledge that others have got them purely with the intention of selling them on for a profit… We’ve all been there. Bring the prices down at Anfield to below what people are willing to pay and touts will get them. Not all of them but some of them, and these will then be sold on to fans for inflated prices. The club gets less money, the fans pay more and the opportunist walks off with money in his pocket.
 
Let’s be clear on something, the club may be charging £77 for the first time next season, but it won’t be the first time anyone has paid £77 to get in.
 
I suspect every single Premier League game for at least the last 5 years or so has had somebody sitting in the crowd somewhere who has paid at least that figure for the privilege. Games against Everton and Man Utd will be littered with supporters who have paid excessive amounts for entry, why shouldn’t the club take that money rather than the tout?
 
There is a logical principle of supply and demand, and even with the new prices Liverpool will sell out every league fixture next season. From a business point of view the club are fully justified in what they are charging.
 
But football can’t be judged and treated the same way as other businesses. The success and failure of other businesses don’t affect the mood, the emotion, the happiness of people, of towns and of cities the same way football does. The finance side of running a football club cannot be ignored, but a balance has to be struck. Reading other people’s analysis of the figures it seems charging the increased prices will net the club about £2 million a season. That’s a lot of money to you and I but for the club it’s about 7 months of employing Jose Enrique. With the increased TV revenue about to fall into the wallets of Premier League clubs £2 million is a drop in the ocean. If the players put enough effort in to get one round further in the FA Cup that £2 million could be made up in one Saturday afternoon (or Friday evening..).
 
The phrase that has kept cropping up is ‘missed opportunity’ and I couldn’t agree more with this. Since the expansion of the main stand was announced the club have publicly stated they’ve been in discussions with supporters groups. The supporters groups dispute whether or not this was ‘constant’ but the meeting still took place. If nothing else it was half decent PR for LFC. That these groups are so angry and disappointed with this weeks announcements leaves you with the feeling it was only ever a PR stunt and they weren’t taken seriously. Supporters cannot expect to have every demand met and effectively run the club and make key decisions with someone else’s money, but they are the lifeblood of the sport and can offer a valid and important perspective that wealthy owners and high paid executives just can’t. The club has missed a great opportunity to say ‘we’ve met the fans, listened to them, understand them and acted accordingly. They are here for life and we want to make them feel valued’.
 
It’s hard to escape the feeling that this wouldn’t have been as big a storm if we were successful on the pitch at the moment. If we’d pushed on from 2013/14, kept Suarez and were fighting for the title people may be willing to pay more to watch. But we’re not. More than almost anything else you pay your money for a ticket with no guarantee of what you’re going to get. You don’t pay £60 to see U2 and have them come on stage playing nothing but Take That covers. At the moment you pay your money and take your chance, we may play like Liverpool, like Dortmund, like Real Madrid or like Bolton. It’s a gamble and there’s a limit to how much money you’ll risk. It’s easy to say ‘set your own upper limit and if it costs more don’t pay it’ but it’s football, that’s not how it works and anybody who says differently doesn’t understand and never will.

As promised at the start, no conclusions, just ramblings. Thanks for sticking with me if you’ve made it this far. The whole subject is very emotive and everyone will have differing opinions but one thing is certain, we are supporters first, customers second and it is in the long term interests of the owners to make decisions based on this.

Seven Changes And Liverpool Don't Get Hammered, But Brendan Rodgers Does.

 There is a word that has come into football over the last ten or fifteen years that didn’t previously exist – ‘rested’. Last night Brendan Rodgers took plenty of stick from well respected journalists and pundits for ‘resting’ a number of ‘big name players’. We’ve been desperately poor lately and it could easily be argued that we don’t have a single in form player. Does anybody remember the days when players played badly and were dropped? Can anybody honestly say Rodgers left out a single player who has made a positive difference in any of our recent matches? I've never before seen a manager get so much criticism for leaving out under performing players.

  So, who was left out?

 In defence it was Glen Johnson and Dejan Lovren. Johnson has been targeted by most fans and journalists as a poor performer for LFC and England for a couple of years now. Lovren, it’s widely acknowledged, hasn’t yet played particularly well for Liverpool. There’s a very good case for both to be left out of the side based on performance.

 Midfield – Steven Gerrard and Jordan Henderson. Questions have been raised about Gerrard’s performance levels this season (admittedly judged against his own high standards) and his ability, at his age, to consistently play three matches in a week. So he was left on the bench for the midweek game in a period where we have three games in eight days. Should we really be overly shocked? Henderson is young, in good fitness, vice captain and playing reasonably well, his omission was something of a surprise.

 Attack – Mario Balotelli, Raheem Sterling and Philippe Coutinho. Five goals between them all season and none of them are in form. Rodgers is attacked for sticking with Balotelli and now he’s questioned for leaving him out. Surely on current form there’s not even an argument that he was the wrong player to lead the line on his own in the Bernabeu? Sterling started the season well but, like the rest of our attack, has faded lately. Coutinho has had his moments but hasn’t yet this season reached the levels of consistent good performances he showed last term. It’s not possible to see how impotent we’ve been of late and think the attack didn’t need changing.

 Much was made of the fact there were seven changes to our starting XI, but had Gerrard and Sterling started would there have been much comment? I doubt it. The players who came in, especially Lucas Leiva, Kolo Toure, Emre Can, Adam Lallana and Fabio Borini performed at least as well as the players they replaced have done lately, if not better. We’ve only really played well in one match so far this season (away vs Spurs) and it has to be said last night we didn’t play badly. Which is a big improvement on recent displays.

 There is no doubt that in leaving out, for whatever reason, some of or bigger names Rodgers has increased the pressure on himself for the visit of Chelsea on Saturday. Our ‘first XI’ were soundly beaten at home by Real Madrid and we trudged into our next league game at home to Hull with confidence very low. In fact we haven’t scored a league goal since we were blown away so convincingly by Real. Last night’s performance actually gives me more hope of a decent display and, hopefully, a result against Chelsea than if the same eleven had been bettered in every department again by an excellent Real side.

 It’s been said that the team selection for the Champions League last night was not ‘the Liverpool way’ and there is some justification for this. But picking players on name, reputation and price tag is also not ‘the Liverpool way’. Accepting a string of sub standard displays is not 'the Liverpool way'. All eleven who started last night worked hard and played their part in a performance that, while it was far from vintage, was an improvement on all of our recent games. And that is very much the first step to getting back on ‘the Liverpool way'.

Has Luis Suarez Already Been Replaced At Liverpool?

 Last season was without doubt our best of the Premier League era, fast flowing attacking football that was exciting to watch and brought us many memorable wins against all kinds of opposition. The problem with eye catching football is that your best players inevitably catch the eyes of the mega rich and we have lost last season's stand out player, Luis Suarez to Barcelona for £75 million. 

 Suarez is almost a one off, somebody that can make things happen out of nothing and astonish fans, team mates and, most importantly, his opponents. There are only a couple of players out there who could come in as 'like for like' replacements for the talented Uruguayan. Suarez has yet to be seen in a Barca shirt due to his ban earned on World Cup duty and unless Lionel Messi is under similar restrictions and is having to keep his Liverpool shirt away from the cameras after a secret swap deal it's unrealistic to expect us to bring in a straight ahead replacement.

 So what is the next step, how do we replace the irreplaceable?

 We don't.

 If we try to play exactly the same way as last season with an inferior player in Suarez' position we will produce inferior performances. I don't mean we'll play badly, far from it, but we won't have the same 'get out of jail free' card that we played when we needed to over the last twelve months.

 It seems to be fashionable (and, let's face it, enjoyable) for fans of other teams to say we failed to win the title last term because Steven Gerrard slipped over, but this couldn't be further from the truth. We failed to win the title because our defence wasn't up to it. Away to Hull we were poor, we didn't show up, but we still managed a goal and if we could have kept an average-at-best attack out we would have gained the points necessary to top the pile. Similarly away at West Brom, we scored but a horrendous mistake allowed Victor Anichebe(!) to prevent us taking all three points. Home to Aston Villa was a similar story. Home to Southampton and away to Newcastle -couldn't defend set pieces. Away to Crystal Palace - couldn't close out a game with a commanding lead. Change the outcome of any one or two of these games and we go into this coming season as defending champions.

 Scoring over 100 goals in the league last season was an amazing feat that we were always odds against to repeat this time around, with or without Suarez. But conceding 50 goals was extremely disappointing and quite simply not good enough for a team in the top four.

 The point I'm trying to make is that it will be virtually impossible to replace Suarez' goals but we don't necessarily have to. If somebody can come into the side and score around half of the 31 goals Suarez netted, the defence can do the rest. Dejan Lovren looks a good player and will hopefully keep the ship tighter than either Kolo Toure or Mamadou Sakho managed. If, as looks likely, we can bring in Javier Manquillo and Alberto Moreno to play at full backs in place of Glen Johnson and the improving-but-still-out-of-position Jon Flanagan it should add more stability to our back four.

 Reducing the goals conceded column from 50 to somewhere around 30 will go a long way towards making sure Suarez' goals aren't missed. I'm aware of how many assists also need replacing but Raheem Sterling, Philippe Coutinho, Adam Lallana and Lazar Markovic have the attacking quality to do this. 

 We probably haven't secretly signed Messi but it is possible we've already brought in the players who will allow us to build on the promise of our 2013/14 campaign.

Just Two More Scorelines In Our Favour Needed..

  It’s a cliché, but football really is a funny old game.

  I’ve stayed quiet all through 2014 as Liverpool have won game after game, coming from 4^th place up into 2^nd, and then into 1^st. Talk of qualifying for the Champions League turned into talk of winning the title, but I stayed out of it all. The reason? We’ve never really had a decent cushion and we had two fixtures that I wasn’t confident about, Chelsea at home and Palace away. I felt winning the title was a possibility, but not a probability. Even after the wins against Man City and Norwich there was still a massive amount to be done.

 I don’t like to think of myself as a pessimist, I have faith and nobody could fail to be impressed with how we’ve been playing, but I didn’t get the same feeling as so many others about us becoming champions. I was too concerned about those two fixtures.

 The games came and went, and my fears were realised, we took one point from a possible six, allowing City to overtake us, giving them a two point advantage going into the final weekend.

  The funny thing? I now believe we can finish 1^st much more strongly than I have done at any time this year. There have always been too many games to go, too many results that needed to go in our favour, too much room for error. And now? We only need two scorelines to go right and we’ll finish on top of the pile, and they’re both realistic scores.

  Can we beat Newcastle at Anfield? Of course. Can West Ham turn up at a nervous Etihad stadium and sneak a 1-0? Of course they can.

  I’m not saying we will definitely finish top, City have far too much quality to just assume West Ham will beat them, but I’ve never been as optimistic about our chances as I am right now. That point at Crystal Palace could turn out to be priceless, not disastrous.

To Buy Or Not To Buy - Yevhen Konoplyanka

 I'm writing this with three hours or so left to go until the transfer deadline passes so I've no idea how our pursuit of Ukranian Yevhen Konoplyanka will end, I want to talk about all the circus around the possible signing rather than the player himself.

 Not so long ago we didn't have things like Twitter with it's up-to-the-minute news, clubs just held negotiations and either announced they had signed a player or they didn't. Now we have people who until a couple of days ago hadn't heard of the player suddenly throwing in their opinions about what we are doing right and wrong in the mainly private talks we are having with the players club (Dnipro, for those who aren't up to speed with their Ukranian football).

 Some of the stuff I'm reading is sensible, most of it isn't. People are saying we should just stump up the money the selling club want and bring the player to Anfield. If you asked me for my opinion on the player's value I'd have to tell you I have no idea, I'm not aware of ever seeing him play. And I like to think I'm fairly knowledgeable about football. If our scouting, management and finance departments have come up with their own conclusion about what the player is worth based on months of scouting, an in depth knowledge of the transfer market and years of negotiating experience I'd probably go with what they say rather than a figure I plucked out of the air.

 The credible sources I have read seem to be saying the major stumbling block is not the total value of the deal, it's the way we want to spread the payments, with a certain amount up front and the rest depending on appearances and whether or not we make the Champions League. I seem to be in a very small minority who think this makes perfect sense. Anybody remember what happened to Leeds United? 

 We don't know if we will qualify for next season's Champions League, we're in a good position and bringing in an experienced player who has already had an impact in the Premier League could be just what we need to help push us over that magic line into 4th place. But that's not what we're on about signing. Coming from Ukranian football into the English game you would expect Konoplyanka to need time to adjust, he would be a signing with more of an eye on the long term future than the remaining fixtures of this campaign. If we finish in the top four there will be financial rewards AND we will be more attractive to potential new signings, in short maybe in the summer we could do better.

 Where we finish this time around will have a big impact on how much money we have to spend. If we finish 5th we may find ourselves looking at £8million players, if we finish 4th we could be looking at £16million players. Offering around £8million up front with the rest dependent on success is sensible, and I'd rather the club I support was run sensibly than not.

 Then on to the players we already have. Raheem Sterling, Philippe Coutinho and Jordan Henderson are all talented young players who have improved as the season has gone on. They are exactly what you want at your club, players who are playing well now but are also ones for the future. Would any of them losing their place in the starting XI to somebody who may take time to settle really benefit us? Nope.

 Long story short, if the deal is right for the club buy the player now, if it doesn't suit us then let the players who have performed admirably this season carry on. Take stock in the summer when we know where we are from both a sporting and a financial perspective and get our summer business done early. Simple really.

Liverpool Drop Two Points, Suarez Drops To The Floor

 We dropped points at home today for only the second time this season in a 2-2 draw with Aston Villa, coming from 2-0 down to earn a point. We weren't at our best today and didn't deserve to win but over the ninety minutes we probably justified our share of the spoils. 

 Our defence didn't perform well and our midfield was over-run until the introduction of Lucas at half time, but a cool finish from Daniel Sturridge and a pressure penalty from Steven Gerrard gave us a draw that had looked unlikely for the majority of the first forty-five minutes. It was our penalty that will prove to be the main talking point of the match and will doubtless gain more column inches in the Sunday papers than anything else that happened in the Premier League today.

 Luis Suarez put the ball past Brad Guzan, waited for contact and went down, only the contact didn't really come. And if it did the Uruguayan was already on his way down. Guzan wasn't blameless in the incident, his challenge was clumsy and not clever and in truth Suarez should have been able to gain a legitimate spot kick from the goalkeeper. But he didn't. As a Liverpool fan it's very difficult to know exactly where to stand on this. We should have had a penalty inside the first five minutes for a clear handball so I have no qualms accepting a dodgy penalty later on in the game. Also I'd much rather we got a draw today than a defeat, nobody wants to see their team cheat, but nobody wants to see their team lose either.

 Suarez has a reputation as a diver and I don't see how anyone can say it isn't justified, but I also feel his position as poster boy for all that is wrong with football is unjustified. I can't and won't defend Suarez for some of his actions, but I will happily point out the inconsistency in the reporting of what he does and what others do. I've never seen a penalty decision replayed as many times as the one today and that includes several 'dodgy' ones for pretty much every big team in Europe.

 I'll freely admit out number seven takes a dive sometimes and I wish he wouldn't, but today is honestly the first time I can remember us gaining a point from him doing so. If any fans of any other team can tell me Suarez has cheated them out of points I'll admit I'm wrong but I don't think I am. 

 Luis Suarez has a high profile and a reputation for diving, and in my view the times he has gone down to easily have cost him rather than helped him. Today he was fouled on several occasions and got nothing. He received a knee to the thigh when he was potentially through on goal, and a flying elbow to the head from an opponent who had no control over where his body was going. Both could, arguably, have been interpreted as red cards by a different referee on a different day. Why weren't they even called as fouls today? Because it was Luis Suarez. His dive today won us a point so it was worth it, but his dives in previous matches have possibly cost us the chance to have been playing against nine men today, an advantage that would surely have seen us take all three points. 

 The reaction when Suarez steps out of line is nothing short of hysterical and is hyped up far more than when other players do the same things. I don't need to name the other players as you know who they are, but they never seem to get criticism quite as fierce as that directed at Suarez. And I believe this influences the decisions made by referees. Luis Suarez has probably been denied more genuine penalties and free kicks than he's been awarded, and ultimately this is costing us. He is a victim of his reputation but he's also a victim of his own actions.

 It's not as easy as it seems for fans to criticise players who cheat as every team has them. I'm sure Aston Villa fans were screaming at Suarez today and calling for retrospective action, fines, bans, public hanging and so on. And then half an hour after the penalty their own player is touched in the chest and goes down clutching his head trying to get an opponent sent off. Had the ref fallen for this and sent off Daniel Sturridge and Villa gone on to beat a ten man Liverpool would the same Villa fans have complained? Of course not. I repeat, nobody wants to see their team cheat, but everybody wants to see their team win as well.

 I feel I have to mention that this season up until today Luis Suarez has been exemplary, he has made mistakes in the past but genuinely seems to be learning from them, let's hope the referees who don't protect him when he is genuinely (and painfully) fouled learn as well.

 Anyway, back to the match. We didn't play well and our system for the first half didn't suit us so I think we have to be happy with a point. Every team has results and performances like this, the key is not to let it happen too often. There's no point making the same mistakes again and again, the management and players have to learn what went right and what went wrong and make sure our next performance sees us improve and hopefully win. 

 One final point abut today's football in general for anyone who has managed to keep reading this far. Why is it so hard to fit two strikers into one team and still have a good balance in modern football? History is littered with great strike partnerships but it seems it's getting harder to play two strikers side by side. We've had a good balance in the team for the majority of the season, especially when Suarez was suspended or Sturridge was injured. Now we can play the pair of them together we seem to have a gaping hole in the middle of midfield and an exposed defence. That's an issue Brendan Rodgers has to address quickly.

Is Brendan Rodgers The Next Alex Ferguson?

 So the FA are looking at Brendan Rodgers' comments after the Man City - Liverpool game yesterday, and it's not really a surprise. It won't be a surprise to Rodgers either. Will he be punished? Yes. Should he be punished? Probably. Will it bother him? No. 

 Saying the officials were horrendous is merely putting forward a personal opinion, even if any seasoned football fan can see it as a fairly accurate statement. Mentioning the Lee Mason is from Greater Manchester is implying, without saying it explicitly, that the referee favoured the home side. Suggesting a match official is / was biased isn't really acceptable and to be honest I very much doubt it's true. More to the point I doubt Brendan Rodgers believes it to be true. Bad decisions were made, but they were made because the officials were inept, not because they had any vested interest in seeing a specific team win. And Rodgers knows this.

 I didn't watch very much of the 'Being Liverpool' documentary at the start of last season but the bits I did see made it clear our manager is very keen on the psychological aspects of the game. I have a strong feeling the Northern Irishman knew what he was doing when he laid into Lee Mason after our defeat at the Etihad. 

 Which manager has spent more time than any other criticising officials during the Premier League era? And which manager has had the most success during the Premier League era? You should have the same answer for both questions. As much as we despise Alex Ferguson as a manager and as a person you cannot argue with his ability to make a team play for him. Having a pop at match officials was part and parcel of this for him and it worked. 'Come on lads, everyone is against us, even the ref, we'll have to put twice as much in today to get a result'. It worked. The 'it's us against the world' mentality helped forge winning team after winning team and it can work for us the way it worked for them.

 When Man City come to Anfield it will be a tough game for us, but imagine the team talk now - 'Right lads, remember the ref last time? We're not going to get any favours, we've got to give it everything out on that pitch'. And if Rodgers does receive a touchline or stadium ban for what he said, how easy will it be for his assistant to motivate a team to play for the manager who took a bullet standing up for them? The manager is the spokesman for the group and saying difficult things that you know will land you in hot water for the good of the group will earn you respect.

 At the end of last season I hadn't really warmed to Brendan Rodgers, I don't mean I wasn't keen or I didn't have faith in him, I just felt he hadn't left much of an impression on me. Hearing him standing up for the Liverpool players and echoing the words of most of the fans watching the game yesterday will go just as far towards winning me over as some of the exciting football he's been getting out of the team. We're Liverpool and we stand by our own. 

One Nil Wins, New Signings And The League Cup

 It's been a little while since I put anything on here so there's a bit to catch up on LFC related, first and foremost we've earned nine points out of nine and currently sit top. Looking at our fixtures I would have been happy with six or seven points by now so to have achieved the maximum is impressive. Last season it took us eight games to earn nine points, this season we've done it in three matches. And of course it's always nice to beat Man Utd, and it's always fun to defeat David Moyes, I think this is why they invented the phrase 'killing two birds with one stone'.

 All three games have been 1-0 with Daniel Sturridge getting the goal, but that's where the similarities end. All three goals have been very different and so have all three performances. Against Stoke we passed well and played very positively, against Villa we tailed off dramatically after half time and against Man Utd it was a case of scoring early and keeping our heads and working hard as a unit. Three different types of victories but all pleasing. Our next four fixtures are Swansea, Southampton, Sunderland and Crystal Palace, all winnable games. Though football being football we won't win them all, it's just not how it goes, but if we could manage three victories from the four encounters we'll be set up nicely for a big season. Our good start so far rightly increases expectation but it shouldn't lead us to believe we'll win the title, there's too far to go yet and we haven't proven we have the consistency needed to achieve anything like that. But three wins and three clean sheets is the prefect start and long may it continue.

 We've brought in a couple more defenders, Tiago Ilori and Mamadou Sakho at a total cost of around £25 million. Currently we have Daniel Agger, Martin Skrtel, Kolo Toure plus the two new recruits which seems a bit excessive to me for a side without the extra fixtures of European football. I think Skrtel was probably on the verge of a switch to Napoli before his performance yesterday, though I wouldn't be overly surprised if that still happened. Ilori is one for the future but Sakho is ready now and will have joined with the promise of first team football. Toure has settled in quickly, meaning once he recovers from his injury Brendan Rogers has a big decision to make about who plays, but no manager will ever complain about having too many options, competition is healthy and will hopefully lead to raised performances from those chosen.

 Victor Moses also looks like joining on loan from Chelsea in what at first seems like a strange move but after a bit of a think it makes perfect sense. We've tried and failed to sign attackers Henrik Mikhataryan, Diego Costa and Willian so far, showing that Rogers clearly feels the squad needs more forward options. Having failed to secure any of these signatures we're left with two choices - panic buy and over pay (prime example being Andy Carroll), or start the season with the squad a forward short, like the first half of last season until Sturridge arrived. We dropped too many points before Christmas and were left playing catch up from too early on and consequently missed out on a European place. Finding a third option of bringing a loan player in is without doubt the right way to go. As far as I understand it it's a straightforward loan deal with no option to buy, meaning we're not looking at Moses long term, he's here for a year. This gives us time to scout properly for a genuinely top class attacker without leaving the squad short. I'd also think that bringing Moses in on loan means we have no real interest in bringing Tom Ince back to the club, as had been suggested in some quarters.

 The League Cup victory against Notts County was the perfect example of why you shouldn't pick first team players in such a fixture, three injuries taking the shine off what was a really well fought cup tie. The difficulty of the game was also the perfect example of why you do need to pick first team players in the competition, it's a bit of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' scenario. I think overall it was good for the players to have experienced being ahead, being pegged back and pushing on to win, without having the pressure of dropping any league points. Hopefully County's comeback from 2-0 down will serve as a helpful warning to us early on in the season. 

 The draw for the next round sees us visit Old Trafford, which will be feisty to say the least. Visiting fans are allocated more seats for cup games, add an evening kick off into the mix and it gets more explosive, throw in the return of Luis Suarez (assuming he doesn't move on today) and you have dynamite. Bring it on. Without European football we have two cup competitions we can win this season and we should be having a real go at them both. If we're to win the League Cup then somebody has to knock out Man Utd along the way, why shouldn't it be us? What would have made it better for me though is if Brendan Rogers had come out with the following statement - "It's a tough draw, the hardest we could get, suspiciously so, especially considering we won the competition two seasons ago, it's as if they don't want us to win it again, I only hope the balls in the draw weren't marked, it can't be a coincidence". Of course he couldn't actually say that though could he? They would have been the words of a paranoid manager who has found himself in a job that's far beyond his capabilities......