Off the field the season so far has been great for Liverpool F.C., our despised former owners are gone and have been replaced by responsible ones who want bring back the glory days. In typical L.F.C. fashion it was not easy, however at the end we prevailed and Tom Hicks and George Gillett were sent packing to their little corner of the world.
The new owners (N.E.S.V.) under the leadership of John W Henry and Tom Werner have been very cautious in their approach so far, this is understandable. They have bought a club with great history and traditions in a sport that they didn’t know much about. We (Liverpool fans) maybe sometimes get a little ahead of ourselves and see what they did right after they purchased the Boston Red Sox. In Boston they fired the coach just after a few days of taking over. This hasn’t happened at Liverpool and instead they have backed Roy Hodgson and brought in Damien Camolli as Director of Football to assist Roy with the transfers.
We (The fans) would like to see the changes as soon as possible and you can’t blame us. Lack of investment by the previous owners and a sacking of Rafa Benitez has left us with an unpopular manager and a squad with quite a few average players. There are some that argue the case for Roy Hodgson to be allowed to stay until the end of the season giving him a chance to “sign his own players” in the January transfer window. Roy has already had the summer transfer window however with the exception of Raul Meireles none of his recruits have impressed. The argument is the same as the ones who backed Rafa had used, “Hicks & Gillett” didn’t give him enough money.
We are currently in 9th place on the Premier League table, with just 22 points we are closer to the bottom three than we are to the top four, our goal differential of -1 speaks volumes. It has been a horrible first half of the season and our away form has been disastrous, we have only been able to pick up 5 points on the road from a possible 27. Many of us fans agree that Roy is not the right man for the job, he never was. Our opposition hasn’t been that great either which makes it more painful that we didn’t pickup more points. Based on all our games so far I would say Blackpool were the best opposition we have faced. Of our players I would say that Lucas Leiva and David Ngog deserve some special recognition while at the other end of the spectrum I think Paul Konchesky and Christian Poulsen have become the symbol for everything that is wrong.
Moving forward:
Christian Poulsen, Paul Konchesky and Milan Jovanovic would be the ones that I would like to see sold in January while Ryan Babel and Joe Cole should be given until the summer to prove themselves. Top of my signing list is Eden Hazard however we really need a winger and a second world class striker to partner Torres. If Roy stays I predict a difficult rest of the season and we have to face the possibility of no European football next season.
Y.N.W.A.
-Antoine
On Twitter @empireofthekop