uppermost in everyone’s thoughts, we stepped back out onto a football pitch again.
No one at Liverpool could complain too much. UEFA had ripped up their own rule book to allow us to defend our Champions League trophy because we had finished fifth in the Premier League and outside of the criteria for entry into Europe’s élite. Not allowing the Champions League winners back into the competition would have defied logic and the morning after our win over AC Milan, the pressure began to snowball on the authorities until they had no option but to cave in. So stepping out against Welsh part-timers Total Network Solutions (TNS) at Anfield on 13 July did not seem like a hardship.
On a personal note, I started the campaign as I meant to go on. I grabbed a hat-trick against TNS that night and in total scored seven goals in my first four games of the season.
I was up and running, my confidence pepped by what had happened in Istanbul, and I finished the campaign with 23 goals, which was by far the best goals return of my career up to that point.
Collectively, Liverpool were much more competitive as well. Our Champions League success had masked what had been a disappointing Premier League campaign and we couldn’t rely on conquering Europe every season. Something had to change.
One of Rafa’s great strengths around this time was that he would never make the same mistake twice.
Liverpool weren’t physically strong enough the season before so he rectified that in the transfer market. The revolving door at Anfield spun faster than I had known. In came Pepe Reina, Momo Sissoko, Peter Crouch and Bolo Zenden along with others. Out went Milan Baros, Antonio Nunez and Mauricio Pellegrino. It didn’t matter that Jerzy Dudek had been one of the heroes of Istanbul. Rafa felt the goalkeeping position needed strengthening and even before the Champions League Final he had lined up a deal for Reina. You have to say that was one of his best transfers. Baros, too, had played his part in one of the greatest nights in Liverpool’s history. But there is no sentiment in football. He left to make room for Crouch.
The pressure to perform at Liverpool is always intense. We drew four of our first five Premier League games, and then lost 4–1 at home to Chelsea, and you could sense people were sharpening their knives to plunge into Rafa. The criticism lingered on the assumption that he couldn’t get to grips with the unique features of English football, the pace, intensity and physical nature of the game here.
Rubbish. And we soon exposed that myth. When we beat West Ham at home on 29 October, the win didn’t feel out of the ordinary. It was routine. Yet it acted as a springboard for us to go on an exceptional run of form. We won 10 straight games in the league and when James Beattie scored a consolation for Everton in a 3–1 win at Goodison Park in December, it was the first time Pepe had conceded a goal in the league for almost two months.
There are times when, as a team, you play almost on auto-pilot. That stems from the trust you have in your team-mates. We had the best goalkeeper in the world in Pepe and two of the best defenders in the world in Carra and Sami. I was being given licence to roam from the right of midfield and we had Xabi and Momo who were ruthlessly efficient. Plus, we had lots of players who could chip in with goals: Riise, Fernando Morientes, Crouchy, Luis Garcia, Zenden and Harry Kewell.
We weren’t the finished article by any stretch of the imagination, but we weren’t the pushovers we had been on too many occasions the previous season, that was for sure. Football is all about making progress.
There was a disappointment during that purple patch, but it came on foreign soil. We had travelled to Japan just before Christmas for the World Club Championship by virtue of our Champions League success.
To be crowned the best team on the planet was a huge incentive for us, more so because the great Liverpool teams of the
No one at Liverpool could complain too much. UEFA had ripped up their own rule book to allow us to defend our Champions League trophy because we had finished fifth in the Premier League and outside of the criteria for entry into Europe’s élite. Not allowing the Champions League winners back into the competition would have defied logic and the morning after our win over AC Milan, the pressure began to snowball on the authorities until they had no option but to cave in. So stepping out against Welsh part-timers Total Network Solutions (TNS) at Anfield on 13 July did not seem like a hardship.
On a personal note, I started the campaign as I meant to go on. I grabbed a hat-trick against TNS that night and in total scored seven goals in my first four games of the season.
I was up and running, my confidence pepped by what had happened in Istanbul, and I finished the campaign with 23 goals, which was by far the best goals return of my career up to that point.
Collectively, Liverpool were much more competitive as well. Our Champions League success had masked what had been a disappointing Premier League campaign and we couldn’t rely on conquering Europe every season. Something had to change.
One of Rafa’s great strengths around this time was that he would never make the same mistake twice.
Liverpool weren’t physically strong enough the season before so he rectified that in the transfer market. The revolving door at Anfield spun faster than I had known. In came Pepe Reina, Momo Sissoko, Peter Crouch and Bolo Zenden along with others. Out went Milan Baros, Antonio Nunez and Mauricio Pellegrino. It didn’t matter that Jerzy Dudek had been one of the heroes of Istanbul. Rafa felt the goalkeeping position needed strengthening and even before the Champions League Final he had lined up a deal for Reina. You have to say that was one of his best transfers. Baros, too, had played his part in one of the greatest nights in Liverpool’s history. But there is no sentiment in football. He left to make room for Crouch.
The pressure to perform at Liverpool is always intense. We drew four of our first five Premier League games, and then lost 4–1 at home to Chelsea, and you could sense people were sharpening their knives to plunge into Rafa. The criticism lingered on the assumption that he couldn’t get to grips with the unique features of English football, the pace, intensity and physical nature of the game here.
Rubbish. And we soon exposed that myth. When we beat West Ham at home on 29 October, the win didn’t feel out of the ordinary. It was routine. Yet it acted as a springboard for us to go on an exceptional run of form. We won 10 straight games in the league and when James Beattie scored a consolation for Everton in a 3–1 win at Goodison Park in December, it was the first time Pepe had conceded a goal in the league for almost two months.
There are times when, as a team, you play almost on auto-pilot. That stems from the trust you have in your team-mates. We had the best goalkeeper in the world in Pepe and two of the best defenders in the world in Carra and Sami. I was being given licence to roam from the right of midfield and we had Xabi and Momo who were ruthlessly efficient. Plus, we had lots of players who could chip in with goals: Riise, Fernando Morientes, Crouchy, Luis Garcia, Zenden and Harry Kewell.
We weren’t the finished article by any stretch of the imagination, but we weren’t the pushovers we had been on too many occasions the previous season, that was for sure. Football is all about making progress.
There was a disappointment during that purple patch, but it came on foreign soil. We had travelled to Japan just before Christmas for the World Club Championship by virtue of our Champions League success.
To be crowned the best team on the planet was a huge incentive for us, more so because the great Liverpool teams of the
Similar Books
