New football season

Not posted anything about the new football season yet with being on holiday. But so far so good for Liverpool - in fact I almost feel like I'm tempting fate by posting about it in case it all goes pear-shaped. Hopefully not though, Benitez has spent a lot of money on new players and re-couped a small percentage by letting a few players go, and so far the signs are promising that his choices have been good this time around. Still a long way to go though - will be interesting to see how the season progresses...

I've managed to watch 3 matches so far - league matches against Chelsea and Sunderland, and the Champions League qualifier 2nd leg against Toulouse. We played Sunderland off the park - major gulf in quality was very apparent. I know that a large part of that is down to the money Liverpool have available, but the manager has still got to make the right choices and the players still have to perform. We coped without the talismanic Gerrard and lost both centre backs to injuries during the game, but still never gave Sunderland a look in. Was pleased to see Sissoko (above) score his 1st goal for Liverpool. My only worry was that with the number of chances we created it took until the 87th minute to kill the game off completely with the 2nd goal. Call it missed chances or great keeping by Craig Gordon but Liverpool should have scored a hatful! Similarly against Toulouse the other night - played them off the park, scored a couple of goals but missed a hatful of chances again before a couple of late goals when the tie was all over made it 4-0.

Even thinking about the Chelsea game makes me angry still! I thought Liverpool were the better team and good value for the 1-0 lead given by Torres' great goal, and I still can't believe how abysmal the decision to give Chelsea the penalty that got them a 1-1 draw was. I don't normally have too much of a go at refs because I think they've got a horrendous job that I would never want to do - but this was perhaps the biggest howler I've ever seen!! Enough about that...

So signs are promising - lets see if it keeps going, starting with the match against Derby County on Saturday. I'm not going to make any silly claims at this stage about Liverpool's chances of winning the league this season - but what I will say is that I will be very disappointed if we are not a lot closer than last season and still in the mix with a chance of winning going into the last few games. We shall see...

Talking of Liverpool, Lisa and I are off up there today for the weekend for my nephew and godson Nathaniel's baptism, so looking forward to catching up with various family and friends. Also going to have an initial meeting with a vicar about a possible curate post for me for next year. More details about this will follow if and when appropriate, but for now any prayer would be appreciated!