Recently by Faith Fulcher

Liverpool has in the last four days played in two different games. The first was in Trabsnor in Turkey and the second took place this afternoon at Anfield. Several seasons ago both of the teams would have I suspect have been a walk over, but since then, the team for many reasons on and off the pitch has been in a steep decline.

We can have the usual arguments about whether the players are not good enough and whether there has been enough money in the transfer account for us to purchase the calibre of players that are needed to bring the squad up to date. These though will not help the fact that the players still seem to be unable to give their best for the club.

The team for Thursday's trip to Trabznor , saw several of the senior players left out, to enable them to rest for the West Brom game this afternoon. This of course left Roy to make up a squad that included several of the youngsters who have moved up from the academy. The addition of Joe Cole to the team though meant that they should have played a lot better than they did.

Last night was the night that Liverpool, under new manager Roy Hodgson had its first game away from home. They were playing Manchester City, who for all their money should have been any easy team to beat. What happened though left the supporters with the feeling that the ghost of Rafa was in the stadium.

Roy, who earlier in the day was forced to change his team selection, due to the exclusion of Mascherano, put out what seemed on paper, a team capable of beating anybody.

The team was: Reina, Johnson, Agger, Carragher, Skrtel, Kuyt, Gerrard, Lucas. Jovanovic, Ngog and Torres.
Substitutes: Jones, Babel, Aurelio, Kyriakos, Maxi, Poulsen and Pacheco.

Dear Martin & Christian,

Firstly I hope you don't mind me calling you by your Christian names. At the moment I feel it is more appropriate to do that as you seem to have more enemies that you do friends within the confines of your work for Liverpool Football Club.

It has as I am sure you are aware over the last couple of weeks been like a roller coaster with all the different ifs and buts regarding the sale of the club. Most of the supporters have now reached the point of mass hysteria regarding the sale of the club. I am not one of those and believe that you and Christian are running the sale of the club in the way it should be run. Unfortunately there are many supporters who with their lack of understanding about how the financial and take over laws are run, believe things will and should happen immediately. This of course has never been the case and whoever is chosen as the preferred bidder, will due to these constraints be unable to invest in players until the January transfer window at the earliest.

We have put up with silly twitter messages and a strange public relations campaign by Mr Kenneth Huang who somehow managed to convince supporters that he could supply the funds needed. This is exactly what I suspect he wanted to do and last night after you had asked for his financial records, which I guess he could not fully comply with, he realised the game was up and he issued his statement, in order to make the supporters feel that he was the one in the wrong.

On Sunday Liverpool began their premiership campaign with what had been classed a very hard opening game at home to Arsenal. The difference of course was that from the time the coming season's fixtures had been announced and Sunday the club had made changes in the staff. We now had a new manager, in the name of Roy Hodgson and the medical team had been changed completely.

Would that make any difference? Was the question many people were asking before the season had begun?

Strange things happen though and from the moment of Roy's arrival and his quick move back to the old fashion way in which a football club should be run, people began to see a massive shift in the mood of the players. The air of gloom that had surrounded Melwood and Anfield was also lifted and after what seemed to be a short but good pre-season the expectation had changed. The team that Roy is putting together has every chance of reaching a Champions League place by the end of the season, but to do this, they have to win against opponents such as Arsenal.

Now Arsenal is a team that will guarantee a good game, but that game will always be full of incident. Sunday was no exception and to honest by the end of the ninety five minutes, it was a relief to see the game over.

This morning Gary Richardson of Sportsweek had a ten minute telephone interview with Managing Director, Christian Purslow.

It began with several questions about retaining the services of Stevie G and Fernando Torres.

TORRES: He was extremely tired after what had been a very disappointing season and was then thrown into the cauldron at the World Cup, which is what led to the subsequent speculation surrounding him. Christian said that he was very grateful that Fernando allowed him to interrupt his holiday, so that Roy's plans for the future could be explained in full. Once known it was then that he pledged his future to the club.