Eight friendlies, no defeats, not a bad pre-season I would say. Last night, Liverpool played their final pre-season game at home against Lazio. It looked like the game would end in a scoreless draw until Andriy Voronin smashed home a late winner in the 90th minute to give Liverpool the win. Yet again Voronin was the man to come up with the goal. That was his third goal in pre-season. If one did not know Liverpool well and just looked at the statistics from pre-season, they would be wondering why Liverpool would want to sell a player like Voronin and think that he is a prolific goal scorer, but most of us know how Voronin just did not seem to cut it in the Premiership last season. If he stays on at Anfield this season, let us hope he can carry this pre-season form for the duration of the season.
Last night was a rather special night for the Kop; we got to see Robbie Keane for the first time partnering up with Torres. Although the two of them did not score, the signs were there for all to see that this is going to be one great partnership for us. Rafa started the game will probably the best 11 he has at his disposal right now: Reina was in goal, starting his first pre-season game, Arbeloa at right back, Dossena at left back, Carragher and Agger in central defence. Alonso and Plessis were anchoring the midfield with Benayoun just ahead of them. An attacking trio if Keane, Torres and Kuyt. I suspect that this is going to be the same starting eleven for the match on Wednesday night against Standard Liege in the Champions League qualifier.
The Liverpool faithful made it clear last night that we want Alonso to stay at Liverpool. The stadium was chanting Alonso’s name through out the match with a section of the fans actually chanting negatively about Gareth Barry. Wether Barry joins Liverpool, we have to wait and see. But on the field where it matters, we put in a decent performance yesterday and hopefully now the players are ready for the real deal come Wednesday night.
quick questions: 1: why didnt Babel start? 2: can you please explain to me why we jsut don’t run a 442 formation with torres keane up top, midfield with KUYT AND BABEL on the wings with mascherano and gerrard (when healed) in the middle with mascherano playing more defense and gerrard feeding balls to torres and keane. the defense would be carra and srktel in the middle with dossena and finnan on the wings. why won’t that work???
Babel, Mascherano, and Lucas are at the Olympics. Also, Finnan isn’t going to be our right back hopefully and with good reason. Lack of pace, creativity and for the past two seasons even his positioning has been in question. I was hoping he’d move along so he could play elsewhere this season, and he may yet.
but why can’t we have kuyt and babel on the wings??? and leave gerrard and mascherano in the middle? why does evyone say we have a SHORTAGE of wingers?