Our chances for the title

[Hooz]

Realistically, you are a ****

What, for not thinking that Torres will turn out to score as many as Shearer?

Get a grip Paul, you dippy *******.

[redpablo]

Quote:
Originally Posted by redpablo
I honestly believe Man U last year was an abberation on a downward spiral. On so many levels they outperformed themselves. Who knows whether the new signings will be djembas or cantonas. I am suspecting the former despite a few cartwheels playing some no marks. That said they'll have shedloads of confidence and lesser teams will be cacking them as always and pooing their panties when they get to old toilet. Apart from our sometimes dire away form we more than matched them at home, and have aded some muscle. I am not fearing man u as much as everyone wants us to. F**k them, we are Liverpool FC they are not all that.
Chelsea are going to be far more of a threat. They are a more stable club now that whingeygub and brewster have kissed and made up again. Ballack couldnt possiblyi be aorse, Cech will not be out with a freak head injury and they will be more careful with their surprisingly fragile central defence this year. It seems (and yes of vourse this is imo only!) that they are singing to mourinhos tune again after Abramovich losing the plot and thinking that he could run a football club. He was proven badly wrong. When Maureen calls the shots they win things, when Roman tries to interfere he makes a total **** of it.
Arsenal. **** knows..
Spurs. Christ on a bike knows where they keep getting the wedge as they always outspend most teams and never win a ****in thing, but all signs point to them looking good but screwing up majorly at times.
Who else?..

There's always the mighty Everton.

"BOLLOCKS!!!!
I hate the ******s with a passion but you have got to hand it them, they were brilliant from start to finish last season, some great individual performers such as Ronaldo, Vidic and Giggs but as a team they were quite superb from back to front throughout the entire campaign. "

erm thats why I said it was an abberation. Of course they were fantastic last season but my point is that I am not convinced that their news signings are that great (although hargreaves will get on with it and do decent but unspectacular work) ie Nani/Anderson and I feel that their season last year will not be repeated and I fear Chelsea far more. THat was my general point. I dont give a ****e that they've been top or thereabout for 15 years. I believe that as a club they have been in decline for some years and had a llot of good fortune last season as well as playing brilliantly.
Giggs and Scholes are going to flag soon and I do not think Ronaldo is as peerless as sometimes spoken.
If we could have put the ball in the net a few times more when we were lashing the nads off teams and had taken the points off Man U there would have been a lot more to play for last season come CL final prep time when we fielded a B team for most games.
anyhoo. thats just my opinion. I will never give that shower of ****e too much credit. I NEED to believe that they're ****ed and over the hill and that a glorious red future beckons. I just wish we had one greedy ******* clinical goalpoaching machine, as our squad is definitely a whole lot better

[Red Chilli]

Realistically, you are a ****

[fred_plasticine]

I accept that our finishing needs to improve but along with that you need luck. Last year in the league we had little or none

I agree that we need that extra bit of luck every teams needs to win league.
what i'm trying to say is, however, if you can't score in one game and get beat by a single goal even though you dominated all of the game, then yes i agree it's probably bad luck.
BUT if that happens over and over again then you can either take a hard look at yourself or believe you're cursed...
look at the gooners last season, they created chance after chance after chance and simply couldn't score in so many games they lost. would you call that bad luck or woeful finishing?

[Skillz]

We have a chance but i have to admit if i sit down and be realistic about it i think we will probably finish third. Mainly due to the fact we will need Kewell to stay fit all year (unlikely) to have a chance of winning IMO. Torres also will need a year to fully settle too.

Having said that i expect us to be much closer, and if we are close enough we may just win it. The main reasons we will be closer

- 1st decent preseason Rafa has had with a team that resembled his own (expect a much better start than the last 2)
- Kewell adding balance to the left ala 05-06 hopefully being fitter we will see more end product.
- Torres and to a lesser extent Babel and Benayoun should add some class and finesse in the final third helping us to break down the buses we so often see in front of the opposition goal.

[simey85]

Its very hard to call unitl we have seen the first few games of the season and how we are playing. We definitely will put in a better challenge but im unsure if we can sustain it i still think we need an out and out goal getter!

[Rich]

I think the other area we need to learn from is when going on our travels against a weaker team is to learn to take the game to them - too often we've gone to places we should win and play too conservatively, trying to strangle the life out of the game and then nick a goal - harping back to United, but we need the same mentality that they show, they can score 3 away goals and win the game.

[Big Dave]

Well, either or really.

As I see it, we're falling short because we are not able to create chances, especially when some of the weaker sides are 100% focused on defence against us, and we miss too many of the chances we do get.

Ideally we could address both problems but whether we don't have enough money left or Benitez thinks we're sorted, we won't sort both of them out this window. If we filled either of those roles that I've mentioned we could reasonably challenge.

Your point about Torres; well look at his record, he is not a goal-scorer in the vein of Fowler etc. Maybe he'll become one but I don't think it's that likely.

And when I say wingers, I'm referring to wide midfielders rather than just the sort of wide forwards Chelsea use to play with. Chelsea, United and Arsenal all have FAR better wide midfielders.

I think the point I'm trying to get accross though mate, is that none of the teams that we're competing with have a Fowler / Owen type either. I think that there's far too much emphasis put on this requirement for a 20 goal a season striker.

The way the game is played these days, requires players from all attacking positions to contribute to the goal scoring, and I think our biggest problem here might be out "conservative" approach to many games against weaker teams. I would love us to see us attack the weaker teams even in away games, I feel that too many times last season, we played two holding players away from home instead of unleashing the wolves as it were. It's no coincidence that the number of goals from midfield last season was so low. Compare that against the number of goals scored by Ronaldo at Man Utd and Lampard at Chelsea.

Man Utd and Arsenal attacking players seem to have far more license to get forward and make something happen. All too often, our number of attacking players in the right area are too short.

[Big Dave]

I think the other area we need to learn from is when going on our travels against a weaker team is to learn to take the game to them - too often we've gone to places we should win and play too conservatively, trying to strangle the life out of the game and then nick a goal - harping back to United, but we need the same mentality that they show, they can score 3 away goals and win the game.

Fully agree

[Hooz]

I think the point I'm trying to get accross though mate, is that none of the teams that we're competing with have a Fowler / Owen type either. I think that there's far too much emphasis put on this requirement for a 20 goal a season striker.

The way the game is played these days, requires players from all attacking positions to contribute to the goal scoring, and I think our biggest problem here might be out "conservative" approach to many games against weaker teams. I would love us to see us attack the weaker teams even in away games, I feel that too many times last season, we played two holding players away from home instead of unleashing the wolves as it were. It's no coincidence that the number of goals from midfield last season was so low. Compare that against the number of goals scored by Ronaldo at Man Utd and Lampard at Chelsea.

Man Utd and Arsenal attacking players seem to have far more license to get forward and make something happen. All too often, our number of attacking players in the right area are too short.

Well that's what I mean, in the absence of that sort of attacking play from midfield, we'll only get close if we have a brilliant striker.

[fred_plasticine]

Well that's what I mean, in the absence of that sort of attacking play from midfield, we'll only get close if we have a brilliant striker.

what about having 4 strikers who can each get you 15 goals?

[Skillz]

Well that's what I mean, in the absence of that sort of attacking play from midfield, we'll only get close if we have a brilliant striker.

Dont tell me..........Michael Owen

[Hooz]

what about having 4 strikers who can each get you 15 goals?

That'd do too, but giving the playing time needed for each of the 4 to get that isn't possible. I can tell you now, we won't have 4 strikers scoring 15 goals this season.

[Hooz]

Dont tell me..........Michael Owen

He'd help.

[Rich]

How many goals do we need to win the league?

Say 75-80?

If we can get Torres to score 20
Kuyt = 15
Crouch = 10
Voronin = 10
Gerrard = 10

It leaves us with a lower reliance on goals coming from the rest of the squad:

Benayoun = 5?
Babel = 5?
Alonso = 3/4?
Agger = 3/4?
Riise = 3/4?

Not much goal threat elsewhere in the team.