Football Soccer Goals

Newcastle captain Kevin Nolan believes the club were right to sell Andy Carroll to Liverpool.

Everton boss David Moyes has told Liverpool they have no chance of taking Leighton Baines to Anfield.

When he’s not attacking teammates or being jailed for assault or trying to put his cigar out on somebody’s jelly-filled seeing sack–that’d be an eyeball to you and me–or maybe just trying to snap Xabi Alonso’s shins from his legs from his ankles.

Well, when he’s not doing all of that.

Or something like that.

When he’s not doing something like that, Joey Barton looks to broaden his horizons, expand his mind, and generally become the worldly and well-rounded individual he swore to cell-mate Duke Chavington III he would become after finding god for a couple of minutes back during his fifth incarceration. Or his seventh. Honestly, it’s all a bit of a blur. Regardless, some habits are hard to break. Like a love for home-brew facial reconstruction surgery. But at least it might be an outlet for his demons that won’t make the front pages of the tabloids quite so often.

Why, just last international break, Barton flew to Victoria, Australia and changed a lightbulb. Which is against the law in Victoria, Australia, where only licensed and certified electricians are legally allowed to change lightbulbs. It wasn’t quite up there with getting into a drunken brawl or hitting somebody with his car, but a rush is a rush is a rush and sometimes you take what you can get. At least that’s what he told himself before stealing a pillow off the airplane he flew home on.

That wasn’t very satisfying, though. He even rather suspected the airline didn’t mind overmuch that he’d walked out of the fist class cabin with a pillow. I mean, he’d been holding it right there out in the open and they’d just smiled and wished him a pleasant time in England anyhow. Not a lot of thrill in that, when you came right down to it.

So, heading to the post office, he decided to commit a bit of light treason and went to mail the pillow back to British Airways, asking for thirty-seven stamps from the post office lady to pay for the postage and affixing each one with the Queen’s head upside-down on the box.

Now that was more satisfying. Though he supposed when you came right down to it, it was hard to beat treason if you were going to break the law. Of course, he didn’t expect to be hanged for it or anything, but it was the principle that mattered.

There’s always football violence to fall back on.

On a bit of a treason high, he then loudly insisted to the post-office lady that the Queen–and at this he jabbed violently at the treasonously-affixed postage stamps bearing her likeness–personally killed Princess Diana by materialising her TARDIS immediately in front of the car she was riding in. The post-office lady mostly just looked at him askance, perhaps cringing away a little. But still, treason was treason, and his eyes were going a little glazed from the high of breaking yet another law as he wiped the spittle from his mouth and stumbled out of the post office.

By the time the break was over, Barton’s binge had seen him start a car in Denmark without checking to see if any children were underneath it, carry an ice cream cone in his pocket in Kentucky, fly to France and call a pig Napoleon, masturbate in Indonesia, buy a gondola in Venice and paint it white, step on a banknote in Thailand, stand up to urinate after ten at night in Switzerland, and impersonate a Chelsea pensioner.

He had never before felt so alive. His hands shook and his head pounded from the thrill of the myriad illegalities he had committed, and he vowed to expand his horizons further still at the soonest opportunity. Though with football back on the agenda, he might just have to resort to trying to break a leg or three if his urges became unbearable before then. His mouth twitched. The wait seemed unbearable already.

Liverpool has been on title challenging form since Kenny Dalglish’s January return, a 57% win rate enough to be nipping at United’s heels ahead of both surging Chelsea and fading Arsenal were it somehow stretched out over the entire season. Though of course part of that speaks to how poorly the clubs near the top of the table have performed at times, and that isn’t something that Liverpool can pin their hopes of future success on. Then there is what seemed an obviously, chronically thin squad that whimpered out of Europe to consider. A squad that as recently as last month faced having zero healthy fullbacks. A squad that has relied on Jay Spearing suddenly turning from a League 2 pumpkin into a competent top flight midfielder to keep their European dreams alive.

For all the recent success, for all that Liverpool has managed a title challenging pace, this is still a fearfully thin squad. One that needs reinforcements from front to back and side to side; one that over the season has seen a growing need for reinforcements at center back; and one that can’t move forward expecting unexpected revelations to carry them all the way back to the top.

Despite that they may have started the season appearing fairly strong at the back, Liverpool will end with it perhaps their shakiest area. Certainly the problems at left back have been well documented, and as much as Jack Robinson may be a great prospect and Aurelio may be well liked, there’s a clear need for the sort of player who can come in and start 35-40 games a year at the highest level. However, the problems at center back aren’t all that far behind those on the left when it comes to future uncertainty.

Jamie Carragher has of course been a loyal servant to the club, yet his firm embrace of the aimless long-ball under Roy Hodgson has seemingly survived Dalglish’s arrival, where his refusal to pass to open men in midfield while launching balls upfield has been at the core of Liverpool’s passing game breaking down whenever Andy Carroll is on the pitch. And though he still has it in him to make a spectacular last-ditch tackle every now and then, the continuing diminishment of what was his already fairly snail-like pace will only serve to pin the back-line deeper next season, thereby making an up-tempo, high-pressure game by the forwards and midfielders almost impossible as the resulting separation from the back-line would leave space for opponents to exploit.

Then there’s Martin Skrtel, who at least has shown signs of becoming a slightly more stable defender again under Dalglish. Still, before now the Slovak had spent a season and a half in the proverbial wilderness, a terrifying weak point for opponents to focus their attacks on. He was timid in the air, insecure on the ground, and nothing like the player remembered from 2008-09’s title challenge. So while perhaps a summer under Dalglish and Clarke would see him back to his best, it’s far from a sure thing that he will ever fully return to being the defensive force he was for a time under Rafa Benitez before wheels started falling off all over the place.

Sotirios Kyrgiakos, meanwhile, has become a huge liability against any side that can play with pace on the ground. And it’s not as though he was any better than a moderate liability at the best of times, either, though he might still be able to do a job against the occasional target-man. In any case, he clearly seems far from a weekly solution.

Which brings things around to the unfortunate case of Daniel Agger, potentially one of the classiest center backs in world football. Potentially Liverpool’s Gerrard Pique. Potentially available 50% of the time if the club is lucky, though of course the coaching and medical staff may have some level of faith in his long-term prospects. If that is indeed the case, then one can only hope for him to become Liverpool’s defensive centerpiece moving forward, though like Skrtel (albeit for different reasons), this seems a long-term question mark at best–even if it’s one that still has a huge potential upside.

And even if one assumes for the sake of argument that Agger will be able to find some kind of long-term fitness, center back has clearly become a major problem. From four quality options and a handful of talented kids at the start of the year, it has largely devolved into one oft injured player of undeniable quality alongside three potential future liabilities and a handful of talented kids who might or might not pan out.

Still, in an indirect way, that left back position that seemed the club’s thinnest less than a month ago may now in no small part help to solve Liverpool’s growing central problems. The emergence of John Flanagan and Jack Robinson as not only promising prospects but, though they are almost certainly not ready for the weekly rigors of the Premier League, players who may in fact be ready to contribute occasionally yet reliably, could solve that center back problem. At least if, as everybody assumes must happen, the summer solves that other niggling question of who exactly will be starting those 35-40 matches at left back next season.

If that hole is filled, it would allow Robinson to be eased into the first team slowly, getting cup games and occasionally covering for injury and fatigue, while Glen Johnson would in all liklihood move back to the right and allow the same thing to be done with John Flanagan. That would leave Liverpool suddenly–and fairly unexpectedly–looking secure at fullback for the first time in years. Though it would also seem to leave Martin Kelly the odd man out, at least until one recalls that he came up through the youth system as a center back and most have assumed that would become his eventual home, as was the case with Carragher in his younger days.

With the likes of the club’s other center back prospects, particularly Danny Wilson and Daniel Ayala, though they do have promise and might become fantastic players, it would seem foolish for Liverpool to gamble all their future success on either stepping in next year and doing the job of a £15M-rated player bought on the transfer market. Especially with the aforementioned classy injury and three question marks being the only other options currently on hand. For Martin Kelly, too, it would have seemed a similar gamble throughout even much of this season, but before his recent injury the strength and consistency of his play under Dalglish had already gone a long way towards soothing any doubts as to his long-term suitability, making him a viable option to start week in and week out in a way that would have been nearly unimaginable when the season started.

That still doesn’t make Kelly a sure thing, of course, and with Daniel Agger’s uncertain situation one imagines the club will still need to bring in at least one center back who can compete to start every week, but Flanagan and Robinson helping to make Liverpool’s fullback future just a little more certain might in a roundabout way be enough to solve that problem at center back with one new player instead of two.

• Manager hails roles of Damien Comolli and Ian Ayre
• ‘We need to wait a few years before we judge’

Kenny Dalglish has hailed the managerial structure installed at Liverpool by Fenway Sports Group but cautioned it will take years before its work in the transfer market can be judged a success.

FSG, Liverpool’s owners, promoted Damien Comolli to director of football and Ian Ayre to managing director last month and Dalglish is working closely with the Frenchman to identify targets for this summer despite not being appointed permanent manager as yet. Comolli and Ayre were at Ewood Park on Monday night to monitor Blackburn Rovers’ coveted central defender Phil Jones against Manchester City and they presided over the signings of Andy Carroll and Luis Suárez in January, although the Uruguay striker had been on Liverpool’s agenda since the final year of Rafael Benítez’s reign.

Dalglish believes whoever is in charge at Liverpool can operate alongside a director of football but, with the club having been held back by numerous transfer mistakes in recent years, he also says it will take more than the Suárez and Carroll deals to prove the merits of the partnership on transfers.

“The structure is great now with Ian as managing director and Damien as director of football,” the Liverpool manager said. “We said at the time they were two great appointments by the club. As for transfers, it remains to be seen. We have Andy and Luis in and they have done very well but it is only two. We need to wait a few years before we judge it but certainly they are two positive appointments.”

Dalglish believes Liverpool will witness further improvement in Suárez and Carroll next season. “Most players are better after a pre-season with their new club and that will apply to Andy and Luis next year,” he said. Those plans are in jeopardy due to international commitments, however, with Stuart Pearce determined to take Carroll to the European Under-21 Championship in Denmark in June and Suárez heading for the Copa América in Argentina in July.

“Luis will be away until 24 July if Uruguay get to the final,” he said. “It’s not helpful but there’s nothing we can do about it and we just have to get on with it. The competition is there and it’s a huge event for the South Americans and we’ve got to respect that.”

Carroll trained on Friday as he attempts to overcome a knee injury in time to face his former club Newcastle United at Anfield on Sunday, while Liverpool have denied reports in Belgium of a £20m bid for the young Anderlecht striker Romelu Lukaku, a Chelsea target.

Jamie Carragher will make the 665th appearance of his 14-year Liverpool career against Newcastle, a landmark that puts him joint second in the club’s all-time list alongside Emlyn Hughes and Ray Clemence, behind Ian Callaghan. Dalglish said: “He’s been a real compliment to this football club. His record speaks for itself. Talent is a good starting point, starting in the first team at 18 is another good starting point and not picking up too many injuries helps, but the most important thing is his ability and his desire and commitment to this football club.”

Europa League qualification appears a strange incentive for a club that was hardly fixated with the competition this season but it is a mark of Liverpool’s transformation under Kenny Dalglish that it is within their sights. Liverpool remain three points adrift of Tottenham, having played a game more, but face a less daunting run-in commencing with this fixture against a Newcastle team that has lost its way on the road of late. Newcastle have won as many away games as Manchester United – five – but only one of their last seven. They have not won at Anfield in the Premier League since 1994. Andy Hunter

Venue Anfield, Sunday 12pm

Tickets Sold out

Last season n/a

Referee Peter Walton

This season’s matches 23 Y78, R6, 3.65 cards per game

Odds Liverpool 1-2 Newcastle 7-1 Draw 17-5

Liverpool

Subs from Gulacsi, Rodríguez, Poulsen, Kyrgiakos, Cole, Ngog, Hansen, Wilson, Shelvey, Sterling, Coady, Jovanovic

Doubtful Carroll (knee)

Injured Johnson (hamstring, 9 May), Aurélio (hamstring, 15 May), Gerrard (groin, Aug), Kelly (hamstring, unknown), Agger (knee, Aug)

Suspended None

Form guide WDWLWW

Disciplinary record Y57 R2

Leading scorer Carroll 13

Newcastle

Subs from Harper, Soderberg, Kuqi, R Taylor, S Taylor, Campbell, Perch, Ferguson, Ranger, Tavernier, Vuckic

Doubtful Harper (knee), Nolan (leg)

Injured Ben Arfa (broken leg, 7 May), Guthrie (shin, 7 May), Gosling (knee, 22 May), Best (ankle, Aug), Ireland (ankle, Aug), Smith (ankle, Aug)

Suspended None

Form guide DDLWLL

Disciplinary record Y72 R2

Leading scorer Nolan 12

Match pointers

• Kenny Dalglish has overseen an upturn in Liverpool’s fortunes but his 1.67 points-per-game average is still inferior to Manchester City’s over the course of this season

• Newcastle have won only two of their past 13 Premier League matches

• Dirk Kuyt has scored seven goals in his last six league appearances and has four in six starts against Newcastle

• Newcastle scored with all three of their shots on target in the reverse fixture against Liverpool at St James’s Park with Andy Carroll scoring twice in a 3-1 victory

Preview followed by live coverage of Sunday’s game between Liverpool and Newcastle in the Premier League.

Porto coach Andre Villas Boas has rubbished speculation linking him with other jobs.

Liverpool boss Kenny Dalglish will not rush Andy Carroll into a reunion with Newcastle if he is unfit.

Dalglish may well have been right when he said that. Right that it doesn’t hurt Joe Cole or Liverpool in any way; that it may even do some small amount of good for both. But it hardly marks the revival some were eager to bill it as immediately following the match. It hardly changes Cole’s status as the club’s biggest ever big-money failure.

There is a certain reluctance too push too hard against the wave of nearly unbridled optimism that has followed the demolition of Birmingham City, but in the case of Joe Cole and that game’s fifth goal the unfortunate reality is that it is no more a meaningful suggestion of his potential to contribute than was his bundled goal against Bolton on January 1st. It must not be forgotten that that late bit of good fortune briefly seemed a revival to his career with the club–not to mention the possible salvation of Roy Hodgson’s. The manager followed that up by shortly thereafter losing his job. Cole followed it up by continuing to be fit enough for about ten minutes of action every second week, staying mostly stuck to the bench, a tantalizing enigma to those who insisted that if he only could get a run of games would surely come good.

Of course Luis Suarez came good after nearly two months without football and a switch to a new club in a tougher league. And the often derided Maxi Rodriguez scored his hattrick against Birmingham after spending an entire month on the bench since his last action, a seven minute cameo against Sundeland on March 20th, and having gone six weeks since he had last started in the match against Manchester United.

So sure, Dalglish is right. It’s nice that Cole scored. It was good for the club, since five is always a more impressive score than four, offering a mental boost on top of adding to a potentially difference making goal differential. And it was good for Cole, since perhaps it will help to convince QPR or West Ham or some other side to take a flyer on him, some club that can afford to give him the endless chances he seems to need to potentially regain his increasingly mythical form and fitness while playing as the focal-point of attack he lusts to be.

It doesn’t mean a whole lot more beyond that, though. Particularly since, at the end of the day, it was really a quite poor goal that ninety-nine times out of a hundred wouldn’t have found its way into the back of the net, instead leaving fans to walk away from a four-nil win shaking their heads at Joe Cole’s selfishness and lack of vision. That it went in is nice for everybody, but the endless indecision and refusal to put it quickly to open teammates that proceeded a tame shot, one that deflected first off the defender before dribbling sadly under the hand of Birmingham’s back-up keeper, encapsulated all that is wrong with this aging star lacking match fitness who still plays–when he plays–as though he believes he should be any side’s centerpiece.

Without that fortunate goal ending the move, it would have been a moment up there with his early season penalty miss, an act which at the time seemed one of supreme, entitled selfishness by a player who bought into the hype that he had come to save poor little Liverpool. And while yet another season spent largely injured or on the bench for two more in a long string of managers who have found Cole largely surplus to requirements may have bruised the ego that was at times on display early in the season, when the ball sat at his feet, mesmerizing as he turned and pirouetted in place against Birmingham, it was the same old Joe Cole. The same Joe Cole who could see Maxi and Kuyt and Suarez largely unmarked in the box in front of him and decide he was going to do it all by himself.

This time he was lucky, but luck doesn’t change that at almost every moment leading up to that moment he made wrong choices and repeated the things that have made him such a frustrating failure for Liverpool. Lucky doesn’t change that he’s not a good enough player now–if he ever truly was–to rely on the occasional moment of good fortune to supplement a locker full of flicks and tricks, as can be the case with some of the game’s more selfish superstars. Lucky doesn’t mean he’s regained any kind of form, not any more than that bundled-in goal in January meant he’d turned the corner.

Lucky doesn’t change the fact that he is currently Liverpool’s biggest ever flop, a big English name brought in on £90,000 a week and with a hefty £5M signing-on fee that has already seen him cost the club more in total wages and fees than the Robbie Keane fiasco did–or than Alberto Aquilani, who even in his year spent largely recovering from injury at Liverpool saw a greater return on the pitch, will have if he eventually goes to Juventus for the originally agreed upon fee. Though of course that’s only if either through some foolishness or an inability to move Cole on he stays with the club. That’s only if his wage demands are such that no other side will take him and Liverpool is forced to either wait out the remainder of his gargantuan contract or send him out on loan while paying some portion of his wages just so that they aren’t required to pay all of them. That’s only if the club continues to tie itself to a player who has contributed almost nothing to the team this season and will only become less relavent next if the expected squad reinforcements arrive in the summer.

Admittedly it does feel a touch overly cynical and negative to question so strenuously a Liverpool player scoring a goal, yet Joe Cole’s case is an odd one due to the esteem he’s still held in in certain quarters and that despite the club having better secondary options currently on the books–while those observing rightly insist on a need to strengthen that squad–some would claim he needs to still be part of the future. His was a failed experiment, a costly mistake, and that has been clear for some time now. To drag it out any longer would only be unnecessarily painful for all involved, not least Joe Cole himself, who for all his flaws as a player doesn’t deserve to be stuck in a situation where he can likely never be more than an unfortunate afterthought.