Dark Clouds and Silver Linings Over Liverpool

The gloom after the 1-2 loss to Spurs was clearly lifted after the emphatic 4-0 win against Stoke. It was heartening to watch how we bounced back after a disappointing opener of the season with such an encouraging display of football.

As the wisemen of the game keep on saying, a season is neither made nor broken with one game won or lost. If I remember reading this one somewhere right, no team has won the premier league without dropping at least 19 points throughout a season.

The two fixtures so far had also resulted us being in a better position compared to last season i.e. 3 points as opposed to only 1 point in the corresponding fixtures. That is two better than last season. And if we beat Villa away this season, then it would be four points better than last season in the corresponding games. Something in that light in being utterly optismistic.

So, it is not all dark clouds over our heads at the moment. But of course this will not guarantee us anything this season because it is more and more difficult for a team to win the league after every year. No game is ever a guaranteed 3 pointer nowadays and Burnley showed just that, back in the top flight after 33 or so years and put the Mancs to 'shame'. And for that we are glad and grateful of course because it did give us great pleasure.

We again saw how biased most media are towards us, not that we needed to see much more to start believing it. Just compare what the media and the pundits said after we lost to Spurs with the humiliation of the Mancs at the hands of Burnley. And we can fully expect that this nonsense will not ever end and Rafa will continue to be demonised by the Fergie ****-suckers behind the typewriter/PC/or whatever that is used nowadays.

We also witnessed in both games so far what Johnson has brought to the team. After rebuilding LFC for so many years on a tight budget, we feel that Rafa has finally completed the jigsaw puzzle albeit one or two missing pieces. But even then, we have always moved forward no matter what happened and this season we will continue to trust Rafa to challenge on all fronts again.

We also saw how the young guns in the squad, the likes of Ayala at eighteen, given greater exposure in the pre-season and trust to shoulder the responsibility in the absence of the first eleven. And they all came out with flying colours, which is good for the near future.

It would be interesting to see whether Rafa, after the signing of Kyrgiakos, will stick to the young guns or go for experienced in an anticipated robust game with Villa. An unheard player but with a good height, Kyrgiakos cost is like the price of a Kancil as compared to the Mercs some teams have paid. But just as in the case of Skertel, I trust Rafa would have made the right choice given the circumstances. And his presence should add strength to our depleted squad.

The past few days has also seen the rumour of Rafa quitting on us squashed when it was reported that he stormed out of Anfield and the owners. Even the bookies had stopped taking bets of him resigning, such was the strength of the speculation. But Rafa has came out and said "I can state I am committed to this club. When I signed a new contract I decided to stay here for the fans, for the staff, for the players". Note that there is no mention of the owners at all in his last line. Rightly so.

Let us all cheer and hail our team and Rafa throughout this season and the next and the next no matter what happens. I will end with a priceless quip from the man of the hour himself: "We are at the top of the table now with 23 stitches. Carra, Torres and Skrtel. I haven’t seen how many Torres has but I can guarantee you it’s 10 or more”.

YNWA!!