Next year in Anfield

Liverpool supporters should enjoy the next four hours, because I strongly suspect they will be the last the club spend, this season, at the pinnacle of the Premier League. Although I have frequently criticised Rafa Benitez and his side, I have to acknowledge that topping the table in May, even for twenty two hours, represents the type of progress which defined the club’s aspirations at the start of the season. Of course fans will ruefully remember points carelessly cast away as the team spluttered to home draws against teams which it was expected to beat. Indisputably, though, the manager has managed to iron out inconsistencies as 2009 has progressed.

2008-09, then, will have to serve as a dry run for Liverpool’s ’big push’ in 2009-10. I tend to agree with the Observer’s Paul Hayward that the team’s spine is its strength and the positions around this core should form Rafa‘s focus when the transfer window reopens. I read with apprehension reports that the manager still views Gareth Barry as his main summer target. Surely Xabi Alonso has proved, beyond all doubt, that he is the fulcrum of Liverpool’s passing game? At full back, left wing, centre forward and even centre back, improvements or more strength in depth would be welcome. Central midfield is, I would contend, the team’s strong suit.

I fully expect the title’s destination to be confirmed by the time Liverpool visit West Brom next Sunday. However, on the back of his team’s strong challenge, Benitez has consolidated his position at the club’s helm. He faces his most vital summer. To continue to improve league form must be every manager’s goal and next season the only room for improvement will be to lift the trophy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Guest Post: Leave our Alain alone

By itwassammymcnallywhatdoneit As we know well in Northern Ireland, predicting someone’s views on a range of issues doesn't require a crystal ball, just a clue as to their background - their name, the school they attended or their address. Once you have sniffed out those details, you can identify their tribe and you can then have a fair stab at working out what they think. Of course, tribalism is not just confined to Ulster and tribal loyalties are not always that straightforward. Take Monsieur Alain Rolland for example, born and raised in Ireland but with a French father. For many Welsh rugby fans such continental lineage was proof positive of his preference for the land of his father, Wales's opponents in the rugby world cup semi-final and of course explains his 'outrageous' decision to send off the Welsh captain Sam Warburton. When England were knocked out of the world cup, by perhaps the bitterest of their many 'old enemies' France, Wales found the...
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retaine...
Read more