By LFC Vancouver member Steven Speed, 23 November 06.

Going into last Saturday we still hadn’t scored a single goal from open play in our first six away games in the league. So the last place we needed to be going to was The Riverside to play Middlesbrough, the scene of a boring nil – nil draw last season and a ground where we have always struggled to score goals in the last few years.

The game was almost a carbon copy from the same fixture on the opening day of last season, dull, lifeless and Middlesbrough playing a defensive formation and going for the draw.

We deserved to win the game as we had plenty of possession but again failed to hit the back of the net. Matters weren’t helped by Gonzales and Pennant both having a stinker, with Gonzales particularly atrocious. Kuyt and Bellamy up front didn’t have many opportunities on goal thanks to the woeful crosses coming in from the wings. If ever there was evidence that Riise’s attacking and crossing abilities are needed on the left wing then this was it. I never thought I’d say it but we are really missing Harry Kewell this season.

Crouch, on as a substitute, came closest near the end, but his header wasn’t strong enough and easily cleared by Boro’s Jonathan Woodgate, who had a terrific game for them.

Two points from a possible twenty-one away from home is not the form of potential champions unfortunately. We’ve had some very difficult games and the early starts earlier in the season didn’t help either.

What does worry me is the fact we have been creating chances in these games, so Rafa needs to sort out why we currently can’t hit a barn door with a banjo away from Anfield. We had some clear chances against Bolton, Man Utd and Middlesbrough and you argue that at least one of the disallowed goals against Arsenal should have stood. But at the end of the day one goal in seven games (and that was a dodgy penalty) is not good enough.

However in the Champions League we look absolutely brilliant and seem to be getting better with each game. Bookmakers are currently offering odds of 12/1 on Liverpool to win the Champions League this year and I think that could be worth a punt.

The 2 – 0 win against PSV Eindhoven confirms us as group winners. A superb second half performance from the Reds put the game to bed with two late goals, both of them set up brilliantly by Kuyt. Steven Gerrard scored the first after a great passing move to equal Ian Rush’s record of fourteen European goals at Anfield. He now has seventeen European goals. He’s not far away now from the record for goals scored in European competitions. Michael Owen is still our top scorer in Europe with twenty two goals, followed by Rush with twenty and then Roger Hunt and Gerrard both on seventeen.

The second goal was scored by Crouch, this was his fourth Champions League goal this season and ninth in total. He has set himself a target of twenty for the season and if he can stay fit he should easily pass that total at the rate he’s currently going.

Praise is due for Daniel Agger who had another good game in defense. I think Hyppia and Carragher are possibly still our best central defensive partnership but I feel confidant that Agger can step in at any time.

There are more injury woes unfortunately with Gonzales, Pennant and Xabi Alonso all needing to be replaced. Alonso is the most worrying, especially as with Sissoko out till the new-year it means more starts in the centre for Zenden, and that’s never good. Let’s hope it’s not too serious and he won’t miss too many games.

Man City come to Anfield this Saturday and I’m hoping to see a nice attacking game, City play a good style of football and I think we’ll see a few goals. Hopefully they’ll all be scored by the men in red.

I want to close by briefly saying well done to Celtic for stuffing the Manc’s on Tuesday. Brilliant atmosphere in the ground and a fantastic achievement to qualify for the knockout stage for the first time ever, I hope we don’t draw them as I wouldn’t fancy going to Celtic Park at the moment.

What do you think? Give Ste your comments at steSpeed [at] lfcvancouver.com.

By LFC Vancouver member Keith Perkins, 23 November 06.

Being a Liverpool supporter sometimes means being optimistic beyond all reason; how can we be positive about the season so far after already losing five times in only thirteen games? But of course we always have reason to be optimistic because we’ve had slumps before and long spells of poor performances, only to be followed by long spells of glorious unbeaten runs which lead to the addition of some silverware. Then again, the fact that we’ve won more trophies than any other English football club is not much consolation for us not having won the League title for sixteen years – and still counting. That’s enough to turn some of the most optimistic supporters into doom and gloom merchants.

Pessimists, who always see the glass as half empty, will point out the extremely poor performances away from Anfield so far this season. We don’t need to look very closely to see that we have scored a grand total of one away goal, which was a penalty in our first match. Even that was a come-from-behind equaliser, against Sheffield United, following a very questionable call after Gerrard went down in the box. Since then, our away form has been abysmal to put it mildly. Just think about this: a 3-0 loss to Everton, a 1-0 loss to Chel$ki, a 2-0 loss to Bolton, a 2-0 loss to Man Ure, and finally a 3-0 loss to Arse-nil. That would be a terrible list of results over a season, but this is just in our first dozen or so games! One point out of a possible eighteen and only one goal for with twelve against (for a minus eleven goal difference). This is not the form of potential champions. At what point would we have considered our participation in the title race to be over? Or is it all over? What we can console ourselves with is the fact that these were among our most difficult matches of the season to come; so the worst is behind us, let’s move on and worry about the next game.

Optimists, who always see the glass as half full, will say that the home form is surely better than our away form, but we even dropped points at home to Blackburn, coming from behind to salvage a 1-1 draw. We can be pleased with the mostly entertaining play at home combined with the results of 2-1 over West Ham, 2-0 over Tottenham, 3-0 over Newcastle, 3-1 over Aston Villa, and 2-0 over Reading. The home form is sixteen points out of a possible eighteen, with thirteen goals for and only three against for a goal difference of plus ten. Those five wins out of six matches also include three clean sheets. Now that’s more like the form we would expect of champions. If only we could do that away from home.

It really is a case of optimism at home and pessimism away. But how seriously should we take the first dozen games when we are looking at a stretch of twenty six more before it’s all over next May? What I would suggest first is that we should remember that there’s still a long way to go in the season and, as already mentioned, we have already played what we would normally pick out as our toughest matches. We have to accept that we won’t have it easy when we play away to Everton, Chel$ki, Man Ure, Arse-nil, or even Bolton. Out of those fixtures from last year we only had four points, so we’re not so far behind. The biggest disappointment to me is the single point from the Sheffield United match. Last season we disposed of all three of the Premier League newcomers with some ease (winning all six while outscoring by eleven to one, with five clean sheets).

Last Saturday’s match away at Middlesbrough might be seen as a possible turning point for the remainder of the season. A win would turn our fortune around, while a loss would surely put any hope of success beyond reach. If anything summed up the season so far, it was this one fixture. We played well, we built up attacks, and we kept possession and generally had the better of them. But we couldn’t find the finishing touch that would put the ball in the net, and seemed to get continually bogged down as we tried to find a way through their five man defence. At least we didn’t lose, and at least we were able to finally keep a clean sheet away from home. But a win was what we all wanted, and so it was with a sense of frustration that we watched the final minutes of the match tick away without any sense of accomplishment. Is this the way it’s going to be for the rest of the season?

The best way to answer that question is to look at our previous two seasons and see how we fared then. In fact, we only need to look back at last season and see the comparison because we know how difficult the first one was, and how much we improved on that. By comparing the same fixtures from last season to this, we don’t look quite as bad as we may have thought. Yes, we dropped points to the likes of Everton, Bolton, and Blackburn, but we are no worse off against the others up to and including the scoreless draw at Middlesbrough. We should also keep in mind that last season started off slowly (to say the least) with four draws and a win in our first five. We only scored three goals (one direct free kick, one penalty, and one from open play) and conceded two. It didn’t get any better with a 4-1 loss at home, a 1-0 win, and then a 2-0 loss. On top of that slow start, we were knocked out of the League Cup in our first match away to Crystal Palace. At this point the nay-sayers were out in force, talking about the crisis at Anfield. This was apparently the worst start to a season in thirty or forty years, and that loss at home was our biggest defeat since some time in the sixties. Our only bright spot so far was an impressive run in the Champions League, plus the UEFA Super Cup victory. Obviously Rafa is not competent in the Premier League, even though he can hold his own in Europe. The new defensive patterns are not working, and even when they do we have no way of building an attack. We have players with great promise but no production, while the rest seem lost and confused. So said the critics at this stage of last season.

All of that seems eerily familiar at this stage of our current season, with similar comments about the rotation system not working, and the new players not producing. We had such high hopes at the start of last season after the success in the Champions League, and so it was natural to suppose that we would be off to a bright start. That didn’t happen, but those of us who believed in Rafa knew that it would turn around and improve very soon. It did – our only disappointment from then to the end of December was the defeat in the World Cup of Clubs. We finished first in our Champions League group ahead of Chel$ki, and were well up in the top four in the table by the beginning of the New Year. Then came another slump with away losses to Man Ure, Chel$ki, and Charlton, as well as a single point against Bolton. At home we dropped points to Birmingham and Charlton, which we should have been counting on as an easy six points. It didn’t improve much when we struggled against Luton in the FA Cup, and went out of the Champions League to Benfica. The problem was obvious again – we just couldn’t score goals. We all know what happened after that: we went on a twelve game winning streak, scoring plenty of goals, which gave us the FA Cup and came so close to finishing in second place. After such a slow start and a slump in the middle, how did we manage it? Those depressing runs of results are just sandwiched between the successful ones. It’s the kind of roller-coaster ride of results that’s just part of the game for us lately.

Is this season such a disaster then? Well, again, if we just look at the first third of the Premier League season so far, we could say that we are already eight points behind the pace from the equivalent fixtures from last season. But then we should keep in mind that if those losses to Charlton and Fulham last season become wins this time around, as well as those odd draws that should be wins, it would allow us to easily make up those points. Also, we should keep in mind that with that deficit made up, we could be close to the points total that we had at the end of last season; that would have been enough to be champions in most of the previous seasons.

The fact that we can’t win, concede too many goals, and can’t even score away from home is not really a fact at all. It’s only a half truth, and only applies to our Premier League matches so far. We just wrapped up first place with a game remaining in our Champions League group, after four clean sheets out of five, and with one win away at Bordeaux. Our only goals conceded were the two at home to Galatasaray, giving us a goal difference of plus seven. In the League Cup, we are into the last eight following a win away at Birmingham. Some of our new players are not performing to the level that we would like, but have shown promising signs of improvement. The rotation system has been brought into question, which is almost the exact parallel to last year’s debate over zonal marking. When we’re winning, it’s not a problem; but when we lose a match, it’s an easy target for a reason why.

As far as I’m concerned, Rafa is the best manager we could hope to have. He’s already given us plenty to be proud of over the last two seasons, even though we often thought we were going to finish each of those seasons empty handed. Most of the players will find their way into the system, and those that don’t will be on their way elsewhere. It’s a tough business, but being tough is the only way to succeed. Even in the most pessimistic view that we cannot possibly win the Premier League after the losses so far, we must remain optimistic that we can finish well up at the top and pick up a trophy or two by the end of this season. With all that there is to look forward to for the rest of this campaign, I have to see the glass not only as half full, but also with a level that is rising.

What do you think? Give Keith your comments at Keith [at] lfcvancouver.com.

Standings as of 26 November 06.

Rank	Member	Points
1	Kevin	13
2	Ste	7
2	Dave Curits	7
4	Lance	5
4	Dennis	5
4	Glenn Whyte	5
7	Andy	4
7	Quentin	4
7	Mark Ashton	4
10	Keith	3
10	Glenn Whitt.	3

It has been many matches and no winner yet!

To enter the members contest see the rules below.

RULES:

• Only open to paid LFC Vancouver Members.
• You list the names of the players you think will start the next LFC match.
• You must submit your list to lfcvancouver [at] gmail.com at least 12 hours before kick-off.
• This contest will include every match that LFC plays this season. Starting with Blackburn.
• The member(s) that correctly guess the starting XI will be awarded 5 points.
• At the end of the season the player with the most points will win the prize.
• What is the prize? It is a surprise!
• The standings will be included in each week’s newsletter.

Scoring System:

• 11 Correct picks = 5 points.
• 10 Correct picks = 3 points.
• 9 Correct picks = 1 point.
• 0-8 Correct picks = 0 points.

YNWA/JFT 96,

Andy Neumann