Rafa will not be happy tonight. Yes we won before staging a stunning second half comeback, we allowed city to establish a two goal lead at half time. That is a cardinal sin according to the gaffa.
We were fairly shit in the first half and made some stupid defences mistakes to enable Ireland and Garrido to score. Pepe will be pissed off with himself for the free kick he conceded at the near post. It was doom and gloom at Eastlands when the half time oranges were being consumed. I expect that some journos were getting their pieces ready about Liverpool's title challenge only lasting until October. Alas for them, Torres and Kuyt had something to say. Three second half goals means that we're still joint top of the table. That was stirring stuff. El Nino looks to be regaining his form after a sluggish start. I'm very happy to see Dirk get the winner. He get so much stick that it's great to see him score a winner and get some praise. I love the guy but there are games against the weaker teams when I don't think he's needed. It's been a good week for him though. Could this be true?
Riera had a good match. He looked dangerous on the left and caused the city defence lots of problems. Poor Marty Skrtel was taken off injured with his leg in a brace. He landed awkwardly on it and was in fierce pain when he fell and stayed down. It would have to be serious to keep Skrtel out of the line of fire. The upside is that we should get to see more of Dagger playing if Skrtel is out for some time.
Speaking of our great dane, Real want Agger according to sky who are picking up on a story in the UK press. Ballague discusses the rumours on his website and reckons that it's not cut and dry.
After the international we'll face Wigan who are doing well so far this year. I assume Skrtel will be out. Any chance of Degan being back soon? Slim. Let's hope we don't pick up anymore international injuries.
Chelsea are being linked with the newest of new Zidanes, a player we've been linked to in the past.
Aldo is worried about the American owners. Me too John. Parry says the stadium is being delayed due to credit crunch. The worst part is that I fear we'll be stuck with these jokers in charge for the foreseeable future.

Stoke was a stinker of a game. When I read that it was 0-0 at half time, I had an idea that it would end that way. After seeing the highlights, I think that the Gerrard goal should have stood. But besides that, we should have been well capable of beating a team like Stoke at Anfield. We created the chances but didn't take any. Some of the players are looking tired, like Dirk and Javier, who didn't play here. Others are off form like Robbie and Torres, who hasn't got into his grove so far. It'll come. This was disappointing in so far as we could have gone top of the league and we need to be taking these opportunities. We drew far too many games last year and I don't want us to go down the same route this year. Teams will come and sit 10 behind the ball. We need to be cleverer about how we break them down, be it Albert and Ryan on the wings or Yossi on the edge of the box.

The sparkling spectre of the Carling Cup has rolled around again. Against Crewe, we played Sami and some of the youngsters. The average age was 22 if you removed our Finnish veteran. Unfortunately for Phil Degen, he broke a few ribs on his debut so will be out for a while. This could be an opportunity for local right back Steven Derby. We knew that he had a history of injury so this was him living up to his rep. Another player making his full debut was Diego Cavalieri. The goals came from an Agger free and a header by Lucas from a pennant cross. The bonus was that we got to rest some first teamers while giving some of the youngsters some valuable competitive experience.
Sat morning sees us visiting Goodison for the first Derby of the season. They'll be well up for it, as usual, and we'll need to match them. Moyes has a shite record in these games against Rafa so let's hope that continues. The senior players will have benefited from the midweek rest and should be full of energy. I think reds everywhere would be happy if this were the game that Robbie manages to get off the mark in this one.
Pepe reiterated his desire to stay with LFC. I hope that he doesn't move any time soon. He's a superb keeper and is improving each season. It's not by fluke that he's won the golden golden gloves three times in a row.

A Marseille fan flares a box of matches to celebrate their short lived lead.  


What a goal? Absolute stunner. I don't think he'll score a better one this season and maybe not any other season either. Incroyable as they might say in Marseille. Added to his penalty, it wasn't a bad contribution from the skipper in his first start since his double groin op.  Hopefully he's put his injury probably behind him and will be fully firing now.  


Overall we weren't great.  We looked quite good going forward but quite vulnerable to pace at the back. Our normally efficient offside trap failed to spring a few times and through balls were snapped up by Marseille's nippy forwards.  Cana managed to score against Pepe on one such instance but our keeper stood tall and made a couple of vital saves. Only for him it could have been a draw or worse.  But it's a very important win against a very good team, away from home. That was the second hardest match we'll have to play in the group.  I expect the visit to Madrid to be even tougher. 



Pepe has a great quote in the guardian about the feeling in the camp at the moment.
"The atmosphere is special at the moment and we don't go out thinking about anything else but winning," said Reina. "We are Liverpool and we are favourites. We are in the business of having to win."
I like the sound of that. We're favourites and we accept the pressure that goes along with it but we're going to win regardless. With that in mind, we should be able to beat Stoke handy enough. It would be a disastrous slip if we got anything other than 3 points at Anfield on Saturday. Given that Chelsea play Utd at the bridge on Sunday, it's a good opportunity for us to put some distance between us and them. Let's hope we take it and stay at the top end of the table.

We've had to wait six seasons for this. Does that make it sweeter? What a result? We outplayed them by their manager's own admission. What was even more impressive about the victory was the fact that it was achieved without our two best players. That Rafa doesn't have a clue.  


I only got to see the first half of the match live as I was in the airport about to get on a plane. I then had to sweat on the result for an hour and twenty minutes while the plane was in the air. I don't have to tell you that I was overjoyed when I turned on my phone after we landed. The only downside is that I'm not at home to discuss it and slag a few people. I'll have to make do with a beautiful beech in southern France. Tough break for me.


This is the team that I would have played but I didn't think that Rafa would start without Kuyt.
As it happened, Dirk did start, up front with Keane, and had a great match. True he should have scored, definitely once, and maybe twice, but his movement and link up play were very good. He did really well to get his head up and pick out Babel for the winner. Despite the fact that he can do a job on the right, he should be played up front. If he isn't going to get a game there then he should be on the bench and used as an impact sub.


I do feel slightly churlish talking about individuals in what was a superb team performance, but I have to mention monster Masch. He was awesome. He could have done better for the Tevez goal but after that he bossed the midfield alongside Alonso. Once Carrick went off it got even easier for them. Scholes and Anderson were fairly poor as was the Utd passing in general. Vididc getting sent off was the icing on the cake rather than being a direct cause for victory as we had the game won anyway at that stage.


Ryan Babel made a huge impact when he came on.  His nutmeg on Wes Brown was quality. Poor Browny looked like a mug. Liverpool were in control when Babel came off the the bench but he really put the book in and put them to the sword. I hope he does continue to deliver like this against the big teams and make the step to deliver on the vast talent he possesses.


What about young Albert? Riera made a stunning debut. His dribbling skills were sublime. He was a joy to watch and got the Kop going. If he can do this consistently then £5.5m will look like an absolute steal.


Jocky Hansen assess our tactical approach and our potential title challenge for the BBC. "After the international break you don't usually get a match like that, the quality and entertainment was just so high compared to other matches we've seen between the top four." He also says that Rafa's "tactics won at the end of the day." Never let a cliche opportunity pass.


The champions league is upon us once again. Just like last year we're playing Marseille. They stunned us in the first game at Anfield last time out but I hope that we've learned from this and we can put them away in the Velodrome tomorrow night. Losing Nasri and Cisse must have hurt them even though they did buy Ben Arfa.


The Liverpool Daily post suggest that we could be back in for Gaz Baz in Jan.


Soccerlens have a review of the Liverpool youth and reserve team, focusing on those players who are likely to make an impact in the coming seasons. They do manage to leave out Bruna and Pacheco which is a glaring omission on their part. Another Hungarian teen is on the way to the reserves. Poloskei, a 17 year old midfielder, will join on a season long loan from MTK in Budapest.


Pepe reveals that when he returns to Spain in the future he would like to play for Atletico. Thankfully, that won't happen any time soon. He also says that he recommended the Villareal winger Cazorla to the staff. Xabi's agent has hinted that he could move on in January.  Does that mean that we'll make another effort to sign Barry?

We don't like to do it the easy way, do we? That was too close for comfort. I thought that we'd batter them after the first leg where they were great. As it happened we were only marginally better and they were marginally worse. Even though we had almost three quarters of the possession, we didn't do a whole lot with it. Babel did well when he came on and beat the right full to put a far post into Kuyt who stuck it away. That's 9 goals in his last 15 champions league matches. Astounding record considering he was playing on the wing and his poor league record last year. But it was all he did last night as he was terrible. He wasn't the only one. Most of the team was poor bar Pepe and the defence. Arbeloa wasn't great. Gerrard didn't look fit which makes his sense given his groin op today. Honorable mention goes to El Zahr who looked lively when he came on. The ref somehow failed to give him a peno when he was taken down in the box. Between that decision and the pen given against us which was a yard outside the box in the first leg, we didn't have great luck with the officials. But despite all that, we're through. Cheers Dirk.
Our Olympians will return for the Villa match and we'll need them with Gerrard out for 2 weeks with a groin op. Here they are flanking scouse Olympic boxing medal winner David Price. I expect to see Javier slot in beside Xabi for the trip to Villa Park. It's going to be a tough one, despite their shock defeat to Stoke last weekend. O'Neil will have them fired up against his number one Rafa. Young and Agbonlahor can cause us problems with their pace. Carra at right back perhaps?
The Riera deal isn't done yet but I expect it to be completed shortly according to what's knocking around in the media. An initial £6.5m will be followed by £1.5m in add ons depending on appearances and success. This is a lot better deal than the £16m they had been looking for earlier this summer. Everton bid close to £12m which was turned down because the player only had eyes for us and would you blame him? On last nights evidence, maybe.
Gareth Barry to sign a cut price deal next summer perhaps? He's staying at Villa for now but won't discuss a new contract for 12 months, at which point he'll only have a year left on his current deal.
Thanks to Dirk we made it through to the CL draw today. Unfortunately we got a pretty tough draw. We drew arguably the easiest team possible from pot 2 in PSV but maybe the hardest teams from pot 3 and 4 in Marseille and Atletico Madrid. PSV we've beaten comfortably in the last few seasons and I'd expect us to do so again. Marseille gave us loads of problems last year and beat us at home. We made up for it by dominating them in the Velodrome in the final group match. Atletico Madrid will be difficult. In Sergio Aguero they have one of the most exciting young talents in the game, one who Rafa tried to sign form Independiente. I would imagine that El Nino is glad that he gets to make a homecoming and I'm sure he'll receive a hero's welcome. I reckon it'll be a bittersweet victory for him if we win in the Calderon.

0-0 last night and a terrible game. We were shit. Pepe was one of the few to take any credit out of the match by saving a peno. We looked slow, sloppy and nervy. We can and will have to play much much better than that against Sunderland and in the second leg against Liege. This is Anfield continue their excellent Kop Star series with a feature on Gerardo Bruna. The new Messi? Read it to find out but I'll give you a hint: probably not. Reports in Germany suggest that we're after Dortmunds Polish right winger Jakub Blaszczykowski and we're going to bid €8m for him. I can't say that I know much about him. Xabi played last night which surely means that he's staying now. Only a team outside the champions league would be interested in him now and there aren't too many of those who could afford him. Looks like Barry deal is dead too. He played for Villa in the Uefa cup tonight so I can't see him signing for us anytime before next summer. I reckon our business for the summer could be done as a result of this. The BBC give a run down of our new signings here. Will there be one more before the end of the window? There's been rumours of a Joe Cole bid this week. While I think he'd be a good addition, I can't see a scenario where Chelsea would let him join us. As with most transfer stories in the summer, it's probably bullshit.

If you're feeling down after the Utd defeat then have a look at this. It tells the real story of what happened at Old Trafford. I wasn't too confident going into this unlike previous years, and thought that a draw was the best that we might have gotten. I thought that we looked nervous and a lot of our big players didn't perform. We probably would have been beaten anyway as Utd were the better team on the day but once we had 10 men it was a question of by how many.

My feelings on the sending off are that Bennett was a disgrace all match and was as blatant a homer as you're likely to see. That said, Javier should have stayed away from him after he had received the first booking and not risked getting a second. I can understand his fury as Torres booking was a disgrace given the kicking he was receiving. But Mascherano should have been mature, calm and professional enough to know that by getting involved and getting a second yellow he let the team down. Whatever slim chance we had went at that point. Rafa says that Masch knows he made a mistake. By not leaving the field he faces the prospect of an extended ban. But I think that if it had been Rooney, Terry, Neville or Ferdinand in the same situation they wouldn't have been sent off. How often have we seen them crowd and abuse the ref? Terry even stopped the ref from taking out his yellow card this season. Ferdinand was trying to talk the ref into booking our players on Sunday. Rooney berates refs every match he plays. How come they don't get sent off? There is an an awful lot of leverage allowed for England players. Gerrard can be guilty of it too, especially at Anfield but by and large I don't think that we crowd and abuse the ref en mass like some of our rivals. Maybe we should as it didn't seem to do Keane at Utd any harm.

David Pleat makes the point that it was long balls over the top which caused us problems. Rooney targeted Carragher knowing that he had the beating of him with pace and trickery. Carragher was poor and could have given away a peno for a challenge on Rooney. The ease at which the defence was being torn apart had a knock on effect on Pepe who missed some punches which was costly. His distribution, which is normally superb was poor on Sunday too. But I can't remember the last time he's had a poor game for us and he did make some super saves which prevented us from losing 5 or 6 nil.

According to Sky Sports Torres is unlikely to play for Spain tomorrow which is great news. Unfortunately, it means that he's a doubt for the derby. We're definitely going to need him against a very up for it Everton. They are in poor enough form having taken 1 point from 6 but they always raise their game for the derby. Given we've a superior goal difference and 2 more points, a draw mightn't be too bad a result. But if Torres is fit and the fact that they're missing a few players, we really should be able to win at home.

The BBC gossip page yesterday said that we will bid £12m for David Bentley in the summer. I think that it's a position that we have to look at in the summer as Dirk is only a stop gap there. Bentley is decent but I think that we can do better for a £12-15m winger. He'd give us a lot in terms of set pieces, crossing and goals but he doesn't have the pace that we need out wide. Another player linked to us on the forums is Gareth Barry of Aston Villa. I think that he's another good player but again we can do better. If we're buying him for left back then I think that he'd be an improvement. I hope that he's not being bought because Xabi wants to go back to Spain. It looks like David Villa wants to leave Valencia in the summer and we're one of the clubs being linked with him. I know that Rafa tried to sign him when he was still at Zaragosa and he is a top quality player. But I don't know if he would fit into our current 4-2-3-1 system. I think that we could spend the large amount of money that he would cost, on more pressing needs.

Everyone's favourite saga continues to rumble on and on and on. This article suggests Hicks is in financial trouble and DIC could reap the rewards. Let's hope it's accurate.