f***in love this from Neil: NEIL ATKINSON, THE ANFIELD WRAP1. What do you make of the summer transfer activity? Strong in policy which is all anyone can ask. Brendan Rodgers is Liverpool manager. This is reality and if you are deeply unhappy with this reality then maybe do one now. From this page, from Anfield, from whatever really. Given that reality, that Brendan Rodgers is Liverpool manager, then what needed to be done was address the issues around Liverpool’s lack of attacking options and find options that suit Brendan Rodgers. This has happened. Liverpool have added £75m of lads who stick the ball in the back of the net. The decision to do this, to commit to this, should be applauded. What that £75m suggests is that Liverpool aren’t messing around, that Liverpool are picking attacking sides, that Philippe Coutinho is seen as a midfielder not a forward, that enough goals weren’t scored last season and this needs to be addressed, all of what it suggests I like a great deal. The follow up question is “has it been spent well?” Given comparative fees around Europe I don’t think Liverpool have hugely overpaid. Loads of transfers fail. Every season, loads of them. So some of Liverpool’s probably will. The players may or may not prove to be the right players but they are the right type of players in terms of CV, age, position and advance billing. So it probably has broadly been spent well but there isn’t a manager, committee or supporter alive the transfer market hasn’t made fools of. 2. What is a realistic expectation for Liverpool this season? Winning the title. That’s it. Winning the title. I try to imagine the readership when I do these things. There will be a minority of people who like my nonsense reading this and there will be a majority of people who sensibly have no idea who I am, some people who don’t like to be ostentatious or ambitious, some who do, some will be Evertonians and they will be thinking all sorts of complex things by this stage. There will be Liverpool supporters thinking about top four and thinking this sort of thing just puts the pressure on. Let’s address this: What’s a realistic expectation for any of last season’s top four? Any of them? What are they thinking, in dressing rooms, in stands, in boardrooms? At least three of them should definitely be thinking about the title. And the fourth are Manchester United. They’ll definitely be thinking it because that is part of the point of being Manchester United. So if you want to come top four, if that is the limit of your ambition, then be aware that the sides ahead of Liverpool are thinking far beyond that. And rightly so. Because they look a division where they expect to go in massive favourites to win in twenty eight games a season - essentially home and away against everyone who finished outside the top four with the exception of Liverpool, and, for Arsenal and Chelsea, the games against Spurs. Twenty eight excellent opportunities these sides have to come away with three points. Twenty eight games where they should have better players in seven or eight of the eleven positions and especially have attackers superior to opposing defencers. They should a far superior bench should the game get away from them. Twenty eight games they should win; twenty by more than one goal. Twenty eight games and then facing one another. And that is exactly the same for Liverpool, except for the fact that Spurs isn’t their extra worry outside the top four, it’s Everton. Liverpool can expect to marmalise Spurs. The examination that Liverpool face - twenty eight winnable games - is exactly the same as that of the sides above them. These twenty eight games, Liverpool should expect to win. In short, if you want to come fourth, you have to be ready to try and come first. There’s no point thinking about the top four. Think about the top one. First. It’s as realistic as anything else. 3. What are you most excited about? See above. Winning the league. And in process I am excited about watching Liverpool walk a tightrope. There’s every chance this doesn’t work and Liverpool fail to get going. There’s every chance they do get going and no one gets a minute’s peace and everyone gets sick of picking the ball out of their net. Oddly, I’d probably be most disappointed with a 4th, 5th, 6th season now. Either touch the sky or crash and burn. I don’t want Liverpool to be alright. I want them to be aggressive, thrilling, demanding. I want them to be a red tide that cannot be stopped. That is what I am excited about. 4. What’s your biggest concern? That we alright our way to 5th. That we go into the last game of the season needing a win and a bit of luck to come 4th and we get the win but we don’t get the bit of luck. That nothing is resolved. That the arguments, the discussion, the problems don’t change. That we score just fewer than seventy while conceding just more than forty and that we get 68 points not 61 for our trouble. Brendan Rodgers, manager of Liverpool in action during a preseason friendly at County Ground on August 2, 2015 in Swindon, England. (Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images 5. Is Rodgers the right man to take the Reds forward? If he goes full Brendan Rodgers then yes. I think we underestimate how hard being Liverpool manager is. It’s a nightmare job and it has done for a fair few of them since we last won the title. And what they have all done is doubt themselves and reverted to basic football at some point; even Rafa Benitez. There is no point Brendan Rodgers’s Liverpool being solid. In the same way that if Liverpool try to do what everyone else does then the lads with more money will do it better, if Rodgers tries to be a solid manager then we might as well go and get a manager who has solid on his CV. But if Rodgers commits, goes all in, gets his side playing and playing and playing, arrogant in possession and hungry out of it, if he gets his lads being direct when they win the ball back and being able to knock it around when the moment calls for it, if he gets them looking for one on ones to win and looking for goals in twos, threes and fours, if he is Brendan Rodgers and not a karaoke version of himself or another manager then he’s as good a chap as any. Lastly though, it really does come down to players. You need to have more good ones on the pitch than the opposition more often than not. Regardless of who your manager is. Managers and coaches can make a difference for a few games here and there or for key moments in a game, but it is about having better players and having more players likely to score the next goal than the opposition. 6. Predict Liverpool’s final position, points total and anything else you want. Final position: 1st Points: All of them Joe Gomez to get league games at centre half. Everton to win the league cup and beat Liverpool en route. Norwich to surprise people. A bottom half defender to cry off the morning of a game because of the intensity of the nightmare he had about facing Benteke, Firmino and Sturridge with Coutinho in behind. Daniel Sturridge to retire from international football. Raheem Sterling to score 15 league goals.
