About Me

I have been a Red since I was about 6 or 7. My boyhood hero was Kenny Dalglish and I have an autograph from him while he was still at Celtic. Thanks Gran! As such I gravitated towards the team he played for. So I have been Scottish-South African- Scoucer for about 30 years now! I am extremely passionate about our club, and have felt the need to start this blog in the face of the abject nature of our performaces under Benitez and the Hicks/Gillett ownership.

Sunday 25 July 2010

Pre-Season Farce

Firstly, let me take care of the additions to the squad.

Joe Cole - Great piece of business, a free transfer. Can play just about anywhere in Midfield and has that 'X-factor' which we have seen so little of under Rafa the Clown. Perhaps we will finally see what this player can really do.

Danny Wilson - I have to be honest dont have a clue where this one came from. He played for Rangers and as watching Scottish Football is akin to having red-hot needles inserted in your eyes, while your scotum is sauted in oil, I have no idea whether he is any use, but he can't be worse than Insua! Let's hope he isn't here on a Mary's Prayer. Sorry couldn't resist.

Still need a striker to support/replace Torres. Only time will tell on that one.

Midfield -I would still like to see a Damian Duff or Stephen Ireland join us.

At the back - A decent Leftback would be nice and a replacement for Carra in the middle, otherwise its not looking too bad.


So the knub of my posting this evening, Pre-season Tours/Friendlies what are they all about? My understanding is they serve 5 purposes:

1)Get the players fit.
2)Helps intergrate new player into squad.
3)Assess some of your younger players, to see if they can make they step up.
4)Build match fitness.
5)Lastly, the purpose of most tours these days marketing & selling 'The Brand'.

On that last point, I think we do the right thing, we tend to shun away from it and have used our base in Switzerland to do 1)& 3) at least over the last few seasons.

I fully appreciate that Roy Hodgson probably had very little to do with organising this years fiasco. What is the point afer a World Cup of taking your reserve & youth team for a jolly????? That is roughly what our pre-season has been so far. Only Ngog,Lucas,Aquilani, Soty & Jovanivic have featured so far. We have our 1st competetive game on Thursday, and most our 1st team squad havent kicked a ball yet! Admittedly that is against a Macedonian side called Rabotnicki Kometal, however are we going ot play the youngsters again? We can't make 10 chnages at halftime, so I think we will be struggling.

Again I appreciate we have to give the players involved in the latter stages of the Word Cup need a rest.I only see 6 players who qualify for the extended break. Torres (injured again playing for hm country. That is 5 times now), Reina, although as a splinter catching keeper he can hardly be tired! Kuyt who actually played for his country. Babel filled his usual role for club and country, sat on the bench and wasn't needed.So again like Reina he can't be tired. Maxi & Mascharano. The rest were all out in the Group stages or round of 16. That means they played a maximum of 6 or 7 games over a 2 month period if you include friendlies. Hardly a schedule to make you tired.

So we are only really starting training on Monday as a squad, Mascha & Maxi aren't due back until the week before the season starts!!!!! Surely a team who finished 7th and was so abysmal for most of the season would be in early fro pre-season, not turning up 10 minutes before the season starts! Oh yes, maybe we aren't worried because our 1st game is Arsenal!

Seriously, we need to steamroller this Macedonian lot & Borussia Moenchengladbach inbetween, so we can at least have some confidence in our start. We have tough opening 6 fixtures and if we don't the ground running we could be out of sight by October.

I have just finished watching Spurs v Sporting Lisbon,and both those teams look about 2 yards quicker than we are at the moment, they both have similar early European ties. Unlike us they seem to have most of their 1st choice squad already togeher and they look quite sharp. Here is hoping we wake up in time for the Arsenal game, because I assure you they will be ready to go on the 15th!

YNWA

PS Roy keep up the good work, I like the change to 4-4-2. I also think Kelly, Spearing, Shelvey, Darby & Ecclestone look like they might be useful to us next season.

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