Liverpool May 2014 - Chasing The Trophies

 Hello everyone, welcome back! After wrapping up the league title in April, we now had a chance to rest some players ahead of the FA Cup Final against Man City, and the Champions League Final against Real Madrid. Victory in both would secure a historic quadruple, I really wanted that to happen.

First we had three league games to play, and here are the results:

We absolutely hammered Middlesborough, they had no answer to the fantastic attacking play of my young team, Danielsson, Brown, Kortadi and Williams are all young regens, the oldest of them is 22. You can see there profiles (and all the other profiles of all players in the first team squad) in the 'Current Squad' pages.
The Man City game was very even, a draw was a fair result, but I was very disappionted with the West Ham game, the players were poor, it seemed like most of them were on their holidays already.

Here is the league table, another very good season for us, we wracked up 95 points, 1 point more than last year.

After those final Premier League games it was on to the most important games of the month, first up was the FA Cup Final, versus Man City, who had enjoyed a good season themselves.

I expected quite a tough game, but Man City were alot better than I expected. They started the game fantastically and ripped our defence apart in the early staged, deservedly taking the lead when Carlos Tevez rifled in a free kick. We hit back though, our first attack saw Fernando torres whip in a cross from the right and Steven Gerrard bundled the ball in. It was 2-1 not long after though, Jo finished a nice City move that left our defence standing. Once again we managed to equalise, David Silva had an easy finish after good work from Torres. The match then became more even, and I thought the game was going to penalties when Gignac, on as a substitute, was played in and slotted home. I was very happy, I thought the cup was ours, but with 10 seconds left on the clock Pablo Zabaleta powered in from range and the match went to extra time. Extra time was quite boring, little happened except that Sanchez got a second yellow, I was very disappointed with him for that, and the match went to penalties.

 I was quite confident as I chose the spot kick takers, but I was not preapred for what was about to happen. After Anthony Anderson and Carlos Tevez missed in the early stages, everyone on both teams scored until Jose Reina and Nedum Onuoha both missed. After that everyone scored until finally someone crakced under the pressure. Unfortuantely it was Glen Johnson, he rolled his shot wide and we had lost the shootout.

So we had lost the FA Cup Final, but we had to pick ourselves up quickly, we had the Champions League Final coming up! We were facing a very strong Real Madrid side, just look at some of their players!

Casillas, Ramos, Zapata, Pepe, Santon, Diarra, Velosos, Ronaldo, Vucinic, Higuain, Benzema.... not a weak link anywhere. They have such a good squad that Kaka was only on the bench!

R.Madrid started as the better team, they were knocking it about well. Our defence stayed strong, they had no clear cut chances, and we were looking dangerous on the break, using Sanchez, Silva and Torres' pace. We couldn't break through, and neither could they, the match drifted into extra time, and eventually, penalties.

We faced our second shootout in a week, and I'll admit that I wasn't too confident after losing against Man City. Everyone scored in the first five penalties so the match went to sudden death. We immediately had a chance to win it, after Sergio Ramos missed Glen Johnson had the chance to win it but his kick was saved by Casillas. We had another chance straight away, Evra missed for them, but Axier Kortadi couldn't punish them. Another two penalties went in, but Cristian Zapata missed for Real, leaving Nicolas Otamendi with the chance to win it. He ran up and belted it into the top corner, past Casillas, we had won the Champions League! It was our second in a row, I was so pleased that we had managed to defend our crown!

Here are some player stats for the season. I would say the best five players of the season are:

1 Fernando Torres

2 Steven Gerrard

3Nicolas Otamendi

4 David Silva

5 Andre Pierre Gignac

That's about all for now, we have a busy summer ahead, it's World Cup year! I will be leading England there, hopefully we can come home with the trophy, there will be a post about our adventures soon.

Thanks for reading!

Liverpool do the double and player stats!

In the last post I said that Liverpool were in the FA Cup final against Arsenal. To my great pleasure we managed to win the match, although it was hardly a classic. Not much had happened until Torres ran through and scored in the 60th minute. I then set the mentality from attacking to standard and Arsenal didn't create any real chances and the match just petered out. I didn't mind though as it meant we had done the double! Above are the premier league stats for 2010/2011. Because of his amazing goalscoring it's no surprise that Torres was also the top goalscorer in Europe and won the golden shoe. Gerrard won the English Footballer of the Year award mainly due to the amazing feat of scoring 24 goals from midfield. Gignac won players player of the year, which is a bit of a surprise as he faded towards the end of the season.

Above are the player stats for every competition. Glen Johnson again played in every game of the season. He has now played all 113 games since I took over!

Above are the player goalscoring stats. Obvisouly Torres was top and Gerrard and Gignac were behind him, although it is slightly worrying that more goals aren't coming from other players. If one or two out of those three get a serious injury, it would be interesting to see how the team could cope.

This is the final league table. The table shows our superiority, as we won by a huge number of points.

These are the last few results of the season. In the last few Premiership matches (after the league had been won) I played alot of the subs and a couple of young players. I think they aquitted themselves quite well, apart from the 0-0 at Hull which was slightly disappointing. As I have said before the target for next season is the Champions League, and I can tell you that I have got $101m dollars to spend, which is a huge sum of money. I will be looking for players who can take us to the next level and I will fill you in about Transfers in a next post.

Please comment if you are a reader, otherwise how do I know if you like it?