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Making my annual trip to the stadium of light for this one. Haven't heard if GJ or Gerrard will be available and I take it Agger is still out. ------------------------------Reina------------------------------------ Kelly/GJ-----------Coates----------------Skrtel------------------Enrique -------------------Spearing--------------Adam-------------------------- Downing-------------------Henderson/Gerrard---------------------Bellamy ------------------------------Suarez--------------------------------------

Nothing’s really changed under Kenny Dalglish has it – outwardly anyway. This is not a team that looks any closer to challenging the league’s elite team than the ones built by Rafael Benitez or Gerard Houllier. What I see, and what most who are objective see, is two or three world class players surrounded by a lot of average British players. Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing, Jordan Henderson, and Andy Carroll? I promise you this, no side that ever wins anything will include any of those players. All of them brought to the club by Dalglish, all for exaggerated transfer fees – and one for the most absurd transfer fee that the football market has ever seen. When Dalglish returned as manager, the concern was that he would try and apply a previously successful philosophy to rebuilding the team – the one that served him so well at Blackburn. But that’s the problem, that was over fifteen years ago. The players brought in over the Summer are just so British, and by which I mean that they’re one-dimensional. Those are no longer the components needed for a successful Premier League club. The reign of Rafa Benitez seems to be derided an awful lot with hindsight, but look at the team he built; Fernando Torres, Xabi Alonso, Luis Garcia, Pepe Reina. Those were players to be envied and feared by other teams. Do you get any sense of dread from watching Stewart Downing cut back in off his wing half-a-dozen times? Don’t tell me that he needs time to get this right, because he’s had time – and he’s had two transfer windows and an awful lot of cash to create a team that’s supposed to challenge for a place in the top four. That’s not going to happen, at least that’s not where this team is headed for. Whether the team is better to watch is really irrelevant, they’re still dropping points in games where they shouldn’t. Isn’t that a hallmark of Liverpool in the Premier League era? Playing up to the Sky cameras one week and then getting done by some cannon fodder the week after? What’s improved? The story is great; a legend returning to lead a club back to where it feels it belongs, but that’s just romanticism. Dalglish is a great man, and his contribution to Liverpool and to the game as a whole is unquantifiable – but it feels like he might might be in danger of tarnishing his legacy. I think most people want a strong Liverpool for the sake of the league, they are still one of the most storied football clubs in world football – but I don’t think Dalglish is capable of creating a title-contender. Ironically, it’s this kind of backwards thinking that hurts the club so much, at the time of the Dalglish appointment they needed a fresh face – someone with a different approach to the game. Instead, it just feels like they’ve gone for the immediate feel good factor that Dalglish was capable of bringing. The anti-Hodgson. The end of the Rafa Benitez reign combined with Roy Hodgson’s tenure created a false reality at the club, everything seemed much worse than it really was – hence any slight improvement was always going to bring with it a disproportionate sense of achievement. Kenny was the short-term fix, he’s not the long-term solution. Short thing on downing - It must be a dream for a left-back to face Stewart Downing, because any time he plays wide-right he’s very predictable. Either he’s cutting back onto his left-foot, or he’s going down the line to over-hit a cross