Ne Moe Imya

Draw > Arsenal win > Manc win

I certainly hope not. Usually you make one of your best players your captain, and I would hope we're never in a position where Henderson is one of our best players, because that would mean we've seriously regressed. A decent player to have in the squad, but I wouldn't want him anywhere near the captain's armband. Harsh. But also basically true.

I was bored last night so I watched the highlights of last year's cup game against West Brom for some reason. It was a real eye opener as to how far we've come in such a short time. It was our second team, but it was still really shocking how poor we were: Jones in goal, an 18-year old Wisdom lining up alongside Robinson, Coates and Carragher in defense. In midfield, the mighty Nuri Sahin, Pacheco and Henderson in midfield, and ahead of them Yesil, Assaidi and Downing. We may still struggle a bit for depth, but I would say that our second XI right now would be: Jones Kelly Toure Skrtel Cissokho Allen Rossiter? Moses Alberto Sterling Aspas which shows that, midfield apart, we are miles ahead of where we were. That team would beat last year's second team 3-0 or so.

It's not his fault, not really. Over the last few years Liverpool fans have gotten used to being terrible. It will take time to adjust to the idea that even though we still may have a weakness (right now our midfield), we're still a decent team and will be in the top 6 at the very worst for sure. Remember that we're still recovering from a time when Lucas-Gerrard-Henderson as our midfield would have been the strongest part of our side (with Konchesky in defense, Joe Cole up front, etc). It will be hard for some of the dimmer fans to come around to the idea that we can have a weak point and still not be utter dross.

About the only positive from today is that he was once again brilliant. Early days, I know, but I'm honestly starting to think we might have one of the best defenders in the league in Sakho.

Sakho by miles at number one. Henderson Mignolet

My better half is a beautiful, classy woman who is selfless enough to keep things going despite my idiocy. However, she doesn't half come up with some nonsense now and again. Once a few years ago we were staying in a "guest apartment," sort of a hostel-type place, and the owner had gathered together all the toiletries that were left behind (shampoo bottles, etc) for future guests to use if they were so inclined. Well, she went looking through to see if there was anything useful in the basket that wouldn't be unsanitary to use. A few minutes later she comes into the room "This tooth whitener tastes absolutely dreadful." "Hmm," says I, "I looked through that basket and didn't see any tooth whitener. What are you talking about?" Turns out she had found one of those bleach pens that people carry about to treat stains on their clothing and applied it to her teeth, thinking it was a fancy whitening pen.

That. is. brilliant. Well done, sir.

I have to admit I can see this happening as well, but I really hope that it doesn't. I don't care if we replace him with Matic, Pastore and Morata, we will be just hoping that they settle quickly and if they don't we won't have any chance at the top 4. If Real comes in for him, as I suspect they might, and he agitates to leave, I hope that we at least have the balls to demand a massive premium for him leaving in the middle of the season. 70 million, say.

That sounds about right. Most likely outcome is between 15 and 20 points from those 10 games, I'd say anything under 15 would be a disappointment and anything over 17 is OK. Over 20 and I might actually start to believe we will end up in the top 4 in May.

I don't think we've had a complete midfield performance in over a year before today. Was it just me, or did Gerrard and Henderson switch places with Henderson playing the more advanced role between them? Whatever it was, it worked an absolute treat. And now with Coutinho coming back in our midfield is starting to look a lot better than it did a few weeks ago. Still think we need a Matic/M'Vila/Fernando-type in midfield to replace/compete with Lucas, but at least today the three worked a treat. Totally dominant from start to finish barring a few moments in the middle of the first half and after their goal.

Suarez Henderson Gerrard Hard to leave off Sturridge, but those three were just so good today.

Sure, the performances haven't been the best, but after having about 5 years where our results were always bettered by our performances, I'll happily endure a season where the reverse is true. Top of the league.

USA '94 is the first one I have clear memory of, though I think I might have watched some of Italia '90 as a young boy. It was especially important because I was just getting into football. I grew up in Bolivia, and we had been dreadful for decades (and soon went on to regress back to this point, but that was not to be known at the time). Anyway, I remember being glued to the radio all throughout qualifying, as we lived way out in the Amazon basin and there was no television. When Bolivia qualified the whole nation celebrated massively. I must have sung the "Bolivia se va al Mundial" song for days. Then we went and we were terrible (not helped at all by our best player, Etcheverry, getting an idiotic red card in our first match and disqualifying him for the rest of the group stage), but we didn't really expect anything else. I was born in Brazil, so as soon as Bolivia went out there was an obvious team to support ready-made. I got to watch the final on television, one of the first games I'd ever seen live, and when Baggio skyed that penalty I screamed myself hoarse. An absolutely brilliant moment. Odd to recall all of that now, when international football seems like a complete waste of time, but as a young boy nothing was more important.

The thing with Lucas is that he's bang on "above average," a decent player who will never be anything special but who will consistently give you at least a mediocre game. A 6.5 out of 10, to put it numerically. When our team was good, in 2008, he was the weak spot and as such was easy to identify as a position to improve. When our team was shit, in 2011, he won player of the season. He himself had not changed, but suddenly surrounded by Konchesky and Poulsen he looked, in a relative sense, like Redondo. Now that we're on our way back to good again, it's easy to look at him and say that we need to improve. Which we do, if we want to get back in the CL spots, but it's hardly Lucas' fault that he is Lucas. He seems to work hard, he's a likable enough bloke, and he comes across as someone who cares about the shirt. He's just not good enough for a team trying to reach the very top level, though that's no fault of his own. I like him and hope he stays as a squad player, but I have to admit I hope he doesn't see the pitch that much in the long-term.

The club, to its credit, does a decent job of trying to keep those who are under 16 out of the public eye. Yan Dhanda and Seyi Ojo are the only exceptions I can think of, and both were due to the media (not the club) publicising them due to their price tags. Wilson is clearly being used in some sort of bizarre political ploy by Coleman ("it's not my fault - look, the team has so many injuries I'm forced to call up a 16 year old!") and I hope that the attention doesn't damage his prospects. I've seen him play twice now, and he looks a decent player, but it's not as if he were banging down the door to be moved up to the U21s yet. A good player at U18 level, and he's already ahead of the curve to be there; a callup to the full national team is ridiculous right now.

Wouldn't Matic be looked as a replacement (or "competition," I suppose, if you're a huge Lucas fan) for Lucas? I would think it would be more like: Mignolet Johnson Toure Sakho Cissokho Gerrard Matic Suarez Pastore Coutinho Sturridge which is a title-contending team, with a lot of depth with the likes of Agger, Enrique, Henderson and Moses rotating in or coming in off the bench. That's if we somehow got both of them, which I doubt is financially possible. Far more likely we'd buy Pastore and Hughes for the future, or just Matic might be affordable if we sold someone like Agger/Skrtel for a decent wedge.

Not sure about that, to be honest. Rumour was that he was available for somewhere around £17 million (due to wages, I would imagine). Which is still going to be very expensive, given that he would probably be one of the highest paid players in our squad, but I think it could be done. Obviously we're not likely to end up with Pastore and Matic, but I'm encouraged that again we seem to be looking for the right kinds of players. Another top-level playmaker and a midfield dynamo and we would have solved pretty much all of our main weaknesses.

We're now being linked to Matic and Pastore, either of which would improve us measurably. And if both came, well, then I'd stop worrying about whether we would make top 4 and start thinking about whether we could challenge for the league. One thing about this new transfer committee - we are definitely being linked to a much-improved class of players since they've been around. We may not have brought many of them in, but Sakho, Papadopoulos, Costa, Mkhitaryan, Willian, Muriel ... either someone is briefing the media on false targets, or else we're starting to target exactly the kinds of players we're crying out for.

I seriously want to know what life is like in your brain. You can manage to twist absolutely anything to suit the argument you're having (and I'm not sure there's ever a time where you're not having one).

Love the tone in which this comes across, as if you were being extremely generous to concede that a player who is probably 5 years from the beginning of his peak years still retains the slightest chance to turn out decent.

Have you seen Chirivella play, Moloch? I ask because I'm very interested to hear what type of player he is, but I don't think he's lined up for us apart from maybe a friendly thus far. Aren't we still waiting on his international clearance?

I've always been a fan, myself, but I was very surprised to see him line up front on the left last night. Even more surprising was his performance, which was brilliant! I suppose credit has to go to Inglethorpe for playing two fullbacks as wide forwards on the opposite side; it worked an absolute treat and it's something I would never have thought of doing. I still can't tell if it's just being done to round off their games, or if he thinks that might be McLaughlin's and Smith's long-term positions. Whatever it was, they looked very, very good against good opposition last night.

I would say that the minimum acceptable standard would be last year's points total, or maybe 3-5 points better. My expectation is 5th, I would have said 6th going in but something tells me that one of the other top 6 clubs will be disappointing and we might nick ahead of one of them (Spurs or United would be my guess). Would be ecstatic with fourth, but I still think that's probably out of range unless we're very lucky with injuries this season (or if we can get another January window like our last one; add a LWF and a DM of the same quality as Sturridge and Coutinho and we would be odds on to qualify for the CL).