AUGUST
18 West Brom (A)
25 Manchester City (H)
SEPTEMBER
1 Arsenal (H)
15 Sunderland (A)
22 Manchester United (H)
29 Norwich City (A)
Not pretty reading that is it?
In theory we could hardly have asked for a more taxing start.
Particularly at home, where we had such well publicised struggles last season, winning only a handful of games and seeing our Anfield form be a massive contributory factor to our embarrassing 8th placed finish.
With a new manager, new set-up and presumably and hopefully a number of new acquisitions coming our way I am pretty sure that isn’t the start we’d have wished for. The champions, Arsenal and our deadliest rivals in our first three home games. Now it makes things exciting alright but I doubt they would have been our first picks had there been a draft system going on.
But the more I think about it, the more I think it might actually do us a favour on this occasion. Sure, it’s a tough start but let’s take ourselves out of the equation for a minute. West Brom and Norwich are having new starts themselves having lost their managers to their country and to another club respectively. They are going to be in a similar place to us in terms of getting used to new managers, new ideas and new philosophies.
Keeping us out of the equation, this is all taking place inside the first six weeks of the season. I think it’s fair to say that no team in the league hits the straps in that period of time, not even the team that goes on to be champions. If everyone isn’t on their top form (and considering our three home games that will be of big assistance if they aren’t) then it gives us a chance of competing further.
Of course, it should be all about us. At home we should be looking to show initiative, have some impetus and take teams on. The bigger the opposition, the better we tend to play. This was true often last season as we won at Arsenal, Chelsea twice, as well as eliminating City from the Carling Cup and knocking United out of the FA Cup. We’re often there or thereabouts for the big opposition. If we continue this tradition under Rodgers there is a good possibility that we can get good results in all three of those matches. Our home record against United in particular is very good at the moment. The players know what they need to do to beat them.
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Additionally, because our competitive season begins at the dawn of August owing to us needing to qualify for the Europa League, there is a good chance that we could be in a little bit more of a groove than some of the teams we need to play. We might not play our strongest teams against the likes of FC Dogh and Duckh but first teamers will feature though I won’t expect any Euro’s players in these early matches for obvious reasons. Problems with tiredness after an early start to football tend to manifest themselves in November and December time as opposed to August and September.
We’ve not really spoken about the away games. Apart from Sunderland, where we have a terrible record for whatever reason (hearing the name “Gavin McCann” still makes me shudder to this day) the away games we have early on aren’t as bad as it could have been. WBA will be a big challenge as they take on Steve Clarke’s new way of thinking and Norwich the same for Chris Huyton, but in spite of how poor we were at times last season, we won both of these corresponding fixtures and won them very easily. I see no reason why they are going to get far stronger and cause us any more problems than they did. I’m not saying they are easy games as there are no easy games in the league anymore, but it’s far from impossible to expect a win. Sunderland will be a hard, hard game as they seem to have something over us at the moment but hopefully Martin O’Neill’s Stone Age tactics will have worn thin on his players by then and we can pick three points up.
It’s all bluster at the moment though. We might sign wisely, we might sign poorly. Either way, if we are to get off to the good start that Brendan Rodgers so badly needs for this crucial first season of his project at Liverpool, we need to get off to a good start at home and that is going to be a big task. I’m pretty sure Rodgers is up for it – let’s just hope he’s up to it.
In the unlikely event you want to hear more from Dan, you can follow him on twitter (@TLW1Dan) and you can also catch him as a regular writer in The Liverpool Way fanzine and on TLW forums. Please be aware that any content from Dan may contain sarcasm.
