Guatered

I take your point - better to substitute the word 'ineffective' for 'unworkable'.

Before clicking the headline, I honestly thought this meant the rule where Rooney is allowed to abuse referees as much as he likes without any punishment: Richard Scudamore rules out Premier League 'Rooney rule' and 39th game Strange article though in that it put me in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Scudamore. Unworkable in practice.

Got to be a contender. Obviously a lot of effort has gone in to finding his best moments too. Would be good to see the bloopers reel.

I once saw Titi Camara in a lift in New York. All I could think to say was "are you Titi Camara?" and he said "yes", and the conversation ended there. I put it down to nerves at being in the presence of greatness. Nerves by me, obviously.

If anyone can get a few tats done in time too, that would top it off

Transfer Window, days 1 - 27: Pretty much nothing happens. Day 28: Torres says he wants to do one. Suarez to arrive. Forums close to melt-down. Day 31: Linked to just about every striker going, and about about to spend £35m on Carroll. We've packed a whole transfer-window full of fun into the last day

His top ten: Some fine strikes in there,though the defending does look poor. That tackle from the number 3 on goal 4 on the countdown is possibly the worst I've ever seen from a professional footballer. Seems to be best when playing against teams in yellow - if only Norwich were still in the PL...

They've even picked up on this in Spain already, for some reason: http://www.elmundodeportivo.es/gen/20110109/54099334232/noticia/ryan-babel-viste-del-manchester-a-howard-webb-en-su-twitter.html (Includes the image - worth a chuckle)

He did put his stamp on the squad. That was the problem!

+ a win tomorrow = what a weekend! Actually a bit surprised as I thought they'd wait til after the Utd game. A hell of a place to start for Kenny...

Plus - Kenny in for the rest of the season

He's gone!!! http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/latest-news/hodgson-leaves-liverpool-fc

I have a flight to athens from Speke on the day of the game and back straight after the match for £475. looking to shift as it doesn't look like i'm gonna make it. PM if interested

That's what they do on RTE coverage and I agree that I'd take it any day over the anodyne crap of Lineker et al. Alright it's frustrating when they lay into Liverpool especially when, as in this case, they are so blatently wrong, but it's still provokes a reaction, which good TV should do. One thing I thing should be put to them though: if Liverpool are as crap as they say, and Barcelona are as crap as they say, who is a good side in world football? Ok so Barca aren't as good as they were last year, and alright we weren't as creative as some would like, but if you take what they say seriously there are literally no good teams in the world. which does not make sense, so their standards must be off- kilter, almost by definition. you cannot hold teams to such a high standard that it simply does not exist in the world. But there's the rub you see, it all comes down to whether you take them seriously or not. Just ignore them on nights like this and laugh next time they lay into Ronaldo...

The team I'd want to avoid the most is Valencia. The draw is quite open, without any obviously outstanding teams, but I'd be surprised if it was won by any team other than one of the English clubs or Valencia. United can't get another easy draw, surely...? Even in the League Cup they got an easy draw and still went out. They really have had everything their way so far. PSV would be the best draw in my opinion- I don't think Rafa would let Koeman (or any manager for that matter) outwit him two reasons running.

my bet for the 'established international' is roy carroll- he's a known gambler and has been dropped from the team as well. lucas- you could have been playing tonight buddy... if you cared about football more than a few extra grand a week...

Can teams be drawn against other teams from their own country from the next round? I fancy the other 3 English teams to get through (don't want to jinx us so won't say anything there!) But if all 4 do go through, odds are there will be at least one all-premiership tie. Personally i think we'd have a chance against any of them, but would rather not be drawn against them- I'd much rather chelsea and man u faced off for example, to be guaranteed rid of one of them. I'd prefer pretty much any other team than the other English sides- and I do think an English team will win it overall.

Today's Times preview of Tuesday night features a surprising (and quite funny) story about Rafa before the 2005 Final. However, it goes on to argue that 2005 wasn't a fluke- since Rafa arrived, we have the best record of the English clubs in European football in terms of wins/draws/defeats, better than Arsenal and Chelsea and easily better than United. A good quote from Rafa to finish it too... Liverpool on song for Europe Chumps at home but champs in Europe. What is it about Rafa Benitez?s team that will make Barça fear them on Tuesday? In the small hours on the day of the 2005 Champions League final, Rafael Benitez loitered in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza hotel in Istanbul, chatting to two of his oldest friends, Teo Escamilla, a former teammate from the Spanish second division, and Emilio Garcia Carrasco, a television commentator. Both had travelled from Madrid to share their amigo?s big moment and as the trio had passed the evening at the hotel bar, Benitez eschewing drink as usual to talk football and chomp on peanuts, Escamilla and Carrasco had found the manager in familiar form. Then, in the lobby, he did something that surprised the pair. There were four lifts and Benitez suddenly pointed to one. ?If this lift comes down, we?ll win the final on penalties,? smiled the normally unsuperstitious manager. A bell dinged. The doors at which Benitez had pointed opened. Saying nothing, he departed for his room on the seventh floor, his grin wider, his eyes glinting. Benitez smiled again on Friday at mention of the word that has come to be attached to that whole strange sequence of events leading to Liverpool conquering Europe two years ago - miracle. The idea of the miracle is always going to be more exciting than that of the methodical. In 2005 it was possible to see Liverpool?s Champions League campaign as star-crossed, one of the game?s unexplainable marvels, a year when magic touched a football club to the extent that its manager could even have premonitions in hotel lobbies - or more extraordinary still, beat Milan in a final with a starting XI including Djimi Traore. That, of course, ignores the alternative version of the story, the one in which mundanities such as Benitez?s painstaking training ground preparation or the onfield effort and focus of Jamie Carragher, Sami Hyypia and Steven Gerrard, are to the fore. The miracle concept also fails to explain what has happened since. Lightning does not strike twice. If 2005 was simply ?special? for Liverpool, why, two seasons on, are they continuing to achieve the best Champions League results of all English clubs? What about two weeks ago in Barcelona? Since Benitez arrived in 2004, Liverpool have out-performed Manchester United and Chelsea and, by a small margin, Arsenal, in terms of games won in football?s primary club competition. A quick recap of their opponents over that period confirms that it has not been because of flukes or easy fixtures. There is consistency about Benitez?s success in Europe, just as there was at Valencia, where he made a serious challenge in the Champions League before winning the Uefa Cup in 2003-4. England, perhaps, still cannot get its collective head around the manager and there was probably less surprise abroad about Liverpool?s 2-1 victory in the Nou Camp than at home. Benitez knows his capabilities. The lift story is revealed in a biography of the manager by his friend, the Spanish radio journalist Paco Lloret, who says that when they talk before any match, no matter how difficult, the same word always comes into Benitez?s analysis: ?winnable?. Perhaps the Spaniard?s fearlessness is best suited to the big, one-off occasions of a knockout competition. Liverpool?s Premiership form continues to cower in the shadow of their European performances. The pattern was most spectacular in 2004-5: in the day job the team finished fifth behind Everton, losing 14 times, with defeats by the likes of Crystal Palace and Southampton, while slaying Juventus, Chelsea and Milan on midweek evenings. Again the theories that seemed to hold true then - that Benitez?s foreign signings were still adapting to English football, that he was being surprised by unfamiliar domestic opponents, that the squad was only big enough for cup challenges rather than a league - now seem less definitive given that, two seasons later, Liverpool?s pattern of champs in Europe, chumps in England, is still being repeated. The muscular, high-tempo pressing game always favoured by Benitez, to the point that his Valencia were known as the Crushing Machine, seems suited to mangling continental opponents who are less equipped for a physical challenge than English ones. Benitez also likes defence-based, compact, counter-attacking play, the type of approach that has always flourished for teams in Europe, where a 0-0 or a stolen away goal is always more valuable than in a 38-game league campaign. There is also the fact that clubs have traditions, and Liverpool?s is of success in Europe, and that players like Carragher and Gerrard are inspired when they are standing in the lineups and that Champions League music starts. Benitez believes that Liverpool have lost nothing of what made them special in 2005 and have only improved. ?This team, my team now, I think it is better,? he said. ?I think in 2005 in the Champions League we were spectacular. It was really difficult to play against Olympiakos and Leverkusen and Juventus and Chelsea. They were top sides and some people say, ?Luck?. No. Luck is one or two games, but not over a lot of games.? For a spell in the Nou Camp, Barcelona were weaving through on Jose Reina?s goal as if Benitez?s players were training cones, but there was a nervelessness about Liverpool. They kept their discipline, kept exerting physical pressure, kept looking for Craig Bellamy and Dirk Kuyt on the counter, and the gameplan prevailed. Benitez did not dismiss the idea that beating the current European champions over two legs would be more satisfying than defeating Milan in Istanbul. ?It would be good. For me, beating Barcelona means you can beat any of the top sides. The only thing is, you have to do it with more regularity, you must be more consistent.? This is Benitez?s mantra and this is why, at full-time in Istanbul, rather than cavorting before the fans with the rest of the Liverpool staff, he made a beeline for Djibril Cisse to discuss a technical detail that had arisen during his appearance as a substitute. Barcelona travel to Merseyside talking about attack, having turned around a Copa del Rey tie against Real Zaragoza in midweek by switching to 3-4-3, winning on the night 2-1 to progress on away goals. Benitez is quick to dismiss concerns about Ronaldinho?s form and fitness and believes that Samuel Eto?o will return to improve the Catalans. Barça were very successful away from home against his Valencia team, ?but we are playing in Anfield, not the Mestalla, and that is a big difference?.

they look like some sort of comic little and large burglary act

Presumably their thinking is that he'd be great against two of the best players in the world, but won't be able to hack it once he faces Kilbane and the other fine wingers of the premiership... ? By the way, on the Grauniad footie podcast they were saying the Spanish press in general were quite impressed with Liverpool in the first leg and more complimentary than some of the English press, who, on seeing Liverpool win could only suppose that it was down to luck. That seem the reaction out there in Spain?

Yeah, he will be- there's a new rule this year that one player who has played in UEFA football can play CL football for his new team. I remember reading somewhere a few weeks ago that it was expected that Liverpool would nominate Neill rather than Mascherano though I suppose that choice is a bit easier now... I'm delighted personally- I think he's an excellent player. I was following his time at WHU even before I found out we were interested (thought it was an interesting story) and actually he always seemed to say the right things- and I know WHU fans are confused why he wasn't used more. Something related to the takeover I think. Anyhow- their loss, our gain hopefully...

That article is ridiculous. Even leaving history aside, in the past two years we've won two of the biggest trophies around, with some of the best finals ever. But more importantly, why does he think we all watch football? It's a hobby. It makes it more fun to be passionate, I thought it was great the way the fans last night decided they would stay positive and take what they can from the game. So he's basically saying we'd all be better off if we got miserable and angry about it. No thanks mate

It's a Let To Buy deal?

If we could pick up another Momo or Agger we'd be doing rightly... I'm surprised personally no Spanish clubs have made a move for Mascherano, Argentinians often seem to do well in that league. I agree with other posters who reckon that Mascherano will look a completely different player in a good team rather than a relegation-threatened one. Even Makalele wouldn't look too hot in that WHU team.

There are a few rumours now that Heinze is on his way out, not that Evra seems to be taking first place. I'd love to see Heinze come here, not that it would ever happen...