Given the start to the season the club has had, I doubt many would disagree that this year, the Christmas period is crucial for Liverpool FC. The first 15 games have brought just 5 wins. Coupled with 4 draws and 6 defeats, there is a sense of trepidation about the club, despite now being in the top 12.
The problem being that our position is far from safe. If we sat in our current position, 10-15 points clear of the bottom 3, we could at least just put this down as ‘one of those seasons’ and hope for the best but the fact is, the team in 18th is just 4 points behind us, while we are more than 10 points off the top. It was only a couple of weeks ago that some pundits were claiming that a decent run after the Chelsea win and we could find ourselves actually being in the title race still, as bizarre as that sounds but purely in terms of mathematics, it was true. Now, we are seriously struggling again. The top four has never seemed further away and but for the erratic form of the rest of the top 10, we’d have no chance of getting anywhere near the top 4.
The fact is we can no longer look to other teams to bail us out by having poor results. Too many times this season, we’ve drawn or lost and been saved from dropping 4 or 5 places by equally poor results around us. This is not the way this club works; if the teams around us are struggling, we should be exploiting that; using it to galvanize the fans and the players and taking advantage every time one of our rivals slips up. Not being thankful that they’ve slipped up, because so did we. Again.
The fact is this Christmas period is going to make or break both our season and the future of the current staff. We are in a weak position currently, but it could be worse: we have 19 points. Including tonight’s game, there are 18 points up for grabs between today and New Years day. Hypothetically, we could enter the New Year with 37 points; the club would easily be safe from relegation and would probably be in a very comfortable position in the top 4. How likely is that to happen? I’ll leave that up to the cynics to decide. Looking at it game-by-game, the game against Villa tonight is incredibly winnable. It’s at home, Villa are on a really bad run and we know that our former manager will set up his side to not lose. The problem is: will our own manager do the same? Well, as we’re at home I’d guess not so we can hope for a solid performance and 3 points from tonight’s game.
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This week it is former Liverpool WAG Claudine Keane.
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CLICK ON THE IMAGE OR HERE TO SEE CLAUDINE KEANE’S GALLERY
A few seasons ago those games looked dead certs for us but now under Roy I can not see any safe bet to be honest.
Looking forward to the Newcastle game though as it will bring back memories of those classics a few seasons ago – 4-3, 5-1 etc
Fingers crossed that Santa delivers – come on lads its xmas and lets kick on in those games
Agree. Newcastle should be interesting with the news of Chris Hughton getting the sack. Wonder if Roy wants the job!!!
After 2days result i feel like cming 2 the newyear we wld b at 5 place jst 2points shy of Man city. And Chelsea on top of the table.
This article is pretty good.
We wld surely take all 18 points or almost 16points. We shld hve a descent run with win’s. Comon Roy stick with 4-4-2 pls dont change the line up , the key to descent run in games is our midfield combo of Lucas and Merieles. Pls use Gerrard either with Torres or on RM . Pls. ROY it is time for u to gain some respect.
Pls tell ROY to leave Raul n Lucas in the midfield even when gerard is fit. Gerard can play behind torress or RM. What do u think.
The article gives us an idea of where we will be after New Year’s day despite it being just assumptions. Getting 14 or 16 points out of 18 would be excellent considering our inconsistency this season and I honestly think that this period will be very, very important. Looking at the teams we’re going to play, whether home or away, I’m pretty confident we can win at least 5 of them. After this period we will be in January and hopefully we can get a couple of top quality players who can improve our squad for the second half of the season. So starting this weekend, let’s see if we can get the three points at Newcastle and maybe the sacking of Hughton may help us as well.
Traditionally December has been a strong month for us along with post xmas. Lets see if Woys Boys can deliver us some xmas spirit worth cheering – thats if you’re still in charge – lol
Hiddink 4 Lpool 🙂 – hint hint hint!