Well done UEFA on pulling another blinder. The farce of Athens was an embarrasment for UEFA – highlighting their lack of regard for ordinary match purchasing fans. Some fans that night failed to gain entry for the European Cup Final, despite having tickets, despite having travelled thousands of miles at enormous cost.
Earlier this week they banned Atletico from playing their next two European games at home. Liverpool, and around 3,000 of our fans, are due to play there in 6 days time.
As Liverpool fans, we’re highly tuned to travelling all over Europe, and no doubt flights, hotels and complex travel arrangements will have all been put in place – in many cases before even the tickets were pocketed. For the reds to then play at least 300km away is ridiculous. Many fans will have arranged their plans to fly in with only hours to spare, or to leave Madrid shortly after the game. For UEFA to add this ruling at such short notice implies that when they came to their decision they had not even considered the supporters – and football fans should be UEFA’s top priority.
Whether or not you agree with UEFA’s verdict, and obviously any form of violence from the Police should be punished, the problem in this matter is the timing. No matter what happens from now on in, even if the game goes ahead at the Vicente Calderon stadium – UEFA have proven once again that they fail to learn the lessons time after time.
Internationals
The international break has been great. I’ve managed to paint the fence, sort out the loft and fit some new taps in the kitchen. It’s with huge regret that I missed England’s highly important games against those legends of international football – Kazakhstan and Belarus.
And now this morning we hear that Torres and Babel are two returning Liverpool players who will be taking to the treatment room at Melwood rather than on to the training pitch.
What a waste of time some of these internationals are. In my opinion FIFA need to look at introducing some kind of seeding system, or even a knockout qualification phase. It would be much more interesting, and result in less of these totally unexciting games.
Reds Form
So Liverpool return to action this weekend against Wigan. Despite the season starting abysmally in terms of form, the results have been very decent so far. The Stoke draw was the only result that can be looked on with disappointment. Wins against United and the bitters, and a great fightback against Robinwho and co has left us looking pretty healthy in the league.
Keane and Kuyt have even been on the scoresheet – and Riera has made a good start to his Anfield career – and gives us something we have been missing on that left wing.
Many reds have already got their eyes set on the Chelsea game as the barometer of how far we have progressed – but a win there will only get us three points – just like Wigan this weekend.
Against Wigan though there can be no repeat of the Stoke result. Some fans were quick to jump on that result as indicating that we have no chance of winning the Premiership. If we don’t walk away with three points this weekend then they will be back out of the woodwork – and they will probably have a point.