Not Everyone Expected Liverpool To Improve

The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, the BBC - journalists of these respected papers/websites all predicted that this season Liverpool would win the league after finishing four points off the pace with their best and luckiest ever Premiership season.

"I think everyone expected Liverpool to be better, but they haven`t been, and the challenge for them, along with a few others, is to get fourth spot,' said Sir Alex.

"We can all say with some certainty that one of ourselves, Arsenal or Chelsea are going to win the league. But no one has any certainty about fourth place, it changes almost every week."

He is unusually and admirably modest here but the truth is that not everyone expected Liverpool to do better. Sir Alex himself said in the summer that it will be very difficult to 'match, let alone better, their achievements of last season'. And of course they did not do that.

"I thought it was an exceptional season for them. I thought it would be difficult to achieve that again. That was just my opinion."

And it was spot on, of course. But it beggars belief what made all those journalists and pundits believe that Liverpool could indeed win the league after losing one of their most important players and replacing him with an injury-prone Italian who's been stuck in the 'bright prospect' category since his teens.

With Liverpool coming to Old Trafford tomorrow, it is a perfect chance to demonstrate the gap between the two sides and force the pundits to see their own stupidity. I hope we'll do it.

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