No place for optimism as Rafa’s predictions leave fans bemused

WARNING: optimism can damage your club’s health.

That’s the last time I claim we’ve a chance of winning anything.

Let’s come up with something clever, like ooooh, how does this sound? It’s not ours to win; it’s for the others to mess it up.

Or Liverpool are England’s Valencia. Quite whom he thinks are Real and Barca I’m not sure but open to suggestions. I may laugh uncontrollably, but that’s the chance you take.

Rafa has been blaming media mischief, perhaps those eternal troublemakers the French sports magazines and their perennially inept translators.

Many’s the manager or player who has been (ahem) “misquoted”.

He may have a point though. Later he’d claim we had an 80% possibility of a chance of the title — a belt and braces outlook that would make Houllier blush — but was greeted with huge “we WILL win the league” headlines.

The man can’t win. Not at home anyway. On foreign soil Liverpool are getting better and better, with or without key players.

PSV’s paucity of quality can’t be denied, but our second-string beat them with such ease it was embarrassing in the end.

The perpetually unimpressed (who, me?) did pause to mention another less than scintillating opening half, but what does that matter?

Riera scored a goal that any of the continental greats would be proud of, and N’gog cast aside his previous impersonations of an entangled squid to finish Rush-style.

Having loosened the bolts on Ince’s trapdoor days earlier it’s fair to say the mood on Merseyside was euphoric.

Then came the differing reports of Rafa’s estimation of our long-term chances.

While the most hated newspaper in Britain did seem to have its filthy hand behind the surrender-monkey headlines, the more highbrow trustworthy efforts (the one you’re holding for example) reported more or less identical quotes.

The Rafapologista had their cake and ate it. He’d been stitched up good and proper by the press “scum”, but even if he did say such things, wasn’t he being remarkably clever by dampening down the arrogance and putting the pressure elsewhere? No, not really. I happen to believe liberties were taken with the original interview, but I don’t see how you can tell the players such things and expect them to pull up any trees.

It would also help a lot if we started games in top gear rather than reverse. Lately the Reds have had a curious Tortoise & Hare thing going on, but surely we aren’t that arrogant that we can allow 2-goal leads to develop before piling on the pressure? And fans get ratty when anyone claims we aren’t worthy leaders! How on earth are we still top? Once it was levelled up, and it hardly took any time at all, we should have gone on to beat Hull but there wasn’t enough of the intensity that immediately followed Carragher’s slice into his own net.

It’s always tempting to blame this on the coach, but with the players buoyant and the crowd baying for more blood that wouldn’t explain how we failed to win.

We could blame the substitutions of course, and the decision to ignore Keane for the second Premiership game running had the phone-in lynch mob looking for the nearest rope and tree.

He’d had an extraordinary night in Eindhoven, behaving with prima donna petulance whenever the referee refused him a foul or Babel decided to shoot not pass.

Having been given a rare outing it was pleasing to see his red-faced desperation to deliver, but it hindered rather than helped.

Then that superb ball to N’gog triggered a 5-10 minute spell where we saw a £20 million footballer for almost the first time. He’s suffering from the usual myopic barricade-raising response to any criticism of our manager, but coming out of Anfield on Saturday there were numerous heads shaking at Rafa’s latest refusal to give him a go.

For the second game running Kuyt was poor up front, his touch clumsy and his finishing — so good when he was the fifth midfielder — pretty damn dreadful.

The manager has many fine qualities, but the one he shares with a mule isn’t one of them. Alan Shearer for one had criticised the tactics at Blackburn, but then what does he know about centre forward play? Putting Lucas on instead gave all the budding soothsayers the ammunition they needed, and sure enough the press was full of ‘Keane on move again’ stories.

More troublemaking? Watch this space.

* For information on Steve Kelly’s “Rotation Rotation Rotation: a season at Anfield”, visit www.ttwar.net