Liverpool FC - Is the Frustration Set to Continue? By Steven Yates At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Liverpool fans must get so frustrated sometimes. They know that in Steve Gerrard and Fernando Torres they have two footballers who could be sure of a place in any team in the world. The statistics about the games these two played together last season make interesting reading, to say the least.

The supporters also know that in Xavi Alonso and Javier Mascherano the club has two players who might, for example, have given the old rivals from Manchester a little more chance of winning the midfield battle against Barcelona last May.

Then there are those games when the Reds seem to be on an equal footing with anyone. There were occasions last year when they really did look ready to, finally, end that, for Liverpool, long barren spell without a League title. I rather suspect that if you'd told someone on the Kop in 1990 – when 28,000 fans could still stand there - that this would be their last championship success for at least 20 years you would have been the recipient of some choice Scouse humour.

At the finish there were many people willing to speculate about why, even though 86 points was a great effort, the club had to settle for second place; having only only lost two league games all season.

The number of drawn games, for example. If just two games out of the eleven that finished up as draws had been won, the title would have been won comfortably – and Reds' fans will be able to point at so many games in which they feel that should have happened. But it's not as if the team didn't score enough goals to win those extra two fixtures – they finished up with nine more goals than the eventual league winners. They managed to concede the first goal in thirteen league games and yet only lose one of them. They even scored an amazing ten goals in the infamous 'time added on'. No-one could ever accuse the players of not giving their all.

Perhaps it all boiled down to keeping Gerrard and Torres on the pitch together. Torres, in that 'difficult second season', missed fourteen league games. Although he still found the net at a strike rate of better than 1 in 2, he still scored ten goals less than the previous year. More than just the goals, though, is the manner in which El Niño galvanises the team by his powerful front running and skilful touch. Few who saw it will forget his utter demolition of Nemanja Vidić at Old Trafford.

But, to get back to the theme – is it going to be different this coming season?

Torres has barely had a rest – having been hauled off to South Africa with the Spanish national squad for the Confederations' Cup competition. And for somebody whose hamstrings were so problematic last year, that's not promising.

And, instead of spending the summer speculating about which world class players the club would bring in, so far it's been the case of supporters desperately hoping that Xavi Alonso and Mascherano don't fly away to La Liga.

We keep reading various financial rumours about the American owners sorting out the finances, selling up or making money available but no-one really knows what to believe anymore.

All we do know for sure is that this Liverpool squad is so close to being the best in the land that it shouldn't take too much to give it the little push it needs to win the League.

In all honesty, though. Can you see it happening? Or are we in for yet another season of being so tantalisingly close – but still missing out at the end?

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