2012-2013 English Premier League: Liverpool

Tweet The new EPL season is finally here! It feels like Sergio Aguero's last minute goal that won the premiere league title for Manchester City happened only yesterday (sorry United fans, had to mention it). It was the first instance since 2003 that the premiere league was won by a team not named Chelsea or Manchester United. It showed us that with enough patience (and more money than everybody else) anyone could win the league. Manchester City is set to return the same team from last year and looks poised to capture their second title in a row. Of course Roberto Mancini, Manchester City's coach has already tried to claim that United are the favorites to win the title (maybe they even are with the Van Persie signing, but at least act like you are defending champions Roberto!), kicking off one of the more amusing things about soccer: managers trying to deflect pressure away from their teams. In my opinion, Arsene Wenger is the king of this, nobody complains more than that guy. But enough about teams I dislike heavily, let's talk my favorite team: Liverpool.

Last season, Liverpool's captain Steven Gerrard missed roughly half the season with injuries, in addition to Gerrard, Liverpool's best player (Lucas) tore his ACL and Liverpool fell into a slump of mediocrity without him. To add insult to injury, expensive signings Andy Carrol, Charlie Adam, and Stewart Downing not only failed to perform; but they played so poorly that I openly questioned how good professional soccer players actually are. Liverpool's lone quality signing, Luis Suarez, was suspended eight games for using a racial slur, and this was backed up by video evidence... wait, no it wasn't I'm thinking of John Terry, who got a two game suspension despite the fact that the case against him actually had evidence to support it. Suarez was guilty of not being English. To add on top of all that, Liverpool astonishingly managed to hit the post or crossbar roughly 35 times over the course of the season, and compounded that by missing 6 penalties. Then coach, Kenny Dalglish (club legend, best player to ever wear a Liverpool shirt) still guided the club to two cup finals (winning one) but was unceremoniously dismissed at the end of the year for failing to finish in a Champion's league position, a task that was border-line impossible given all of the above things I mentioned. Needless to say, last season was not a very fun one.

This year brings new hope to Liverpool (mostly in the form of, it can't possibly be worse than last year). Unlike last year, Steven Gerrard will be healthy to start the season along with Lucas. New coach Brendan Rodgers is bringing an attacking, fun style that the club sorely needs (so hey, if they suck again at least it will be fun to watch), and management seems to have finally put some quality signings together (which I will talk about in future posts). In all honesty, despite the crap pile that was last year, I am excited that soccer is back on and that I can watch my favorite team play again. For now I will leave it at that.