Hopefully I'll be able to pluralize goal soon. Here's a better, cleaner version of Voronin's blast. Takes a little while to load though.

* In a tribute to their rival's 11-year-old fallen fan, Liverpool will play the Everton anthem "Johnny Todd" prior to their Champions' League clash with Toulouse tonight. If you haven't heard, Rhys Jones, was shot in the back of the neck while walking home from football practice last Wednesday. The shooter has yet to be found nor come forward on his/her own.

Well, Jermaine Pennant and Harry Kewell will definitely not be in the line-up, that's for sure. JP was given a rest and Harry Kewell is injured again, shocking, I know. The question is, did Rafa bring any youngsters and if so, is he going to play any of them? Looking at who's not on loan at the moment, I can definitely see Emiliano Insua, Robbie Threlfall, Stephen Darby, Gabriel Paletta, Nabil El Zhar, Lucas Leiva, and possibly even Anthony Le Tallec seeing time here.

Well, I'm hoping he puts out our best XI despite having to go to Toulouse next Wednesday. There are no new nor niggling injuries that I have heard of, so here's who I'm thinking will start and/or possibly play tomorrow.

GK - Pepe Reina - If I was Rafa, I'd play Charles Itandje next Wednesday since he's probably familiar with Toulouse, which makes Pepe a no-brainer here
LB - John Arne Riise - Really no choice here unless Rafa goes completely bonkers and plays Insua, highly doubtful though
CB - Jamie Carragher - If he's fit and rested, Carra will get the call everytime
CB - Daniel Agger - ditto
RB - Steve Finnan - Until one of the kids step up or we sign somebody, I don't think we'll see Arbeloa starting since he can provide cover for all four backs
LM - Harry Kewell - provides much needed EPL road experience
CM - Steven Gerrard - the only time I ever see our skipper not starting is when he's not fit, it's against a much lesser opponent, or it's an irrelevant match
CM - Xabi Alonso - As much as I would like to see Mascherano or even Sissoko start here, I think Rafa will put a lot of importance on this match and Xabi just has more experience than the other two
RM - Jermaine Pennant - He's our starting right winger.

The most obvious thing Rafa will do is start the players who did not participate in mid-week international friendlies which was Carragher, Arbeloa, Pennant, and apparently Sissoko. As far as I know, Momo did not play for Mali against Burkina Faso. I can also seem him playing players who did not play the full matches for their country, which includes Kuyt, Babel, Torres, Alonso, and Finnan.

Winner: Gareth Barry
In the shadow of a hobble-footed Steven Gerrard, the Aston Villa stepped up to set-up to goals and insure that England live to fight another day.
Loser: Portugal
With Christiano Ronaldo putting them up 2-1 in the 73rd minute, it looked as if the Portuguese were going to move into second in the group and cruise to qualification, but a 87th minute equalizer ruined their party.

My player of the month was Sami Hyppiä. I'm so glad I disabled comments because I can only imagine the garbage spewing from the mouths of those who have their own opinion. If you are one of those who know better, than I have a suggestion, start your own blog. Anyhow, here's the rest of the awards.

Reina
Finnan
Carragher
Hyypia
Arbeloa
Benayoun
Gerrard
Mascherano
Babel
Voronin
Crouch

Subs:

Itandje
Agger
Riise
Torres
Alonso
Kuyt
Sissoko

Good to see Mascherano out there. The only surprise for me is Hyypia over Agger, hopefully that won't hurt us with the lack of pace back there.

Pepe Reina C
Didn't really have to do much. Didn't get bored and have his ADD affect his performance which is always a good thing. It was his first clean sheet of the season, but should have been his third, only this time the ref didn't give a bogus penalty. Funny how that works.

Alvaro Arbeloa B-
He was seemingly all over the place when he was playing left-back, but showed the awareness to be where he needed to be, when needed.

I can finally breathe a sigh of relief. With the conclusion of today's matches, a large majority of our players who would normally be representing their countries in next year's Euro Championship, will now be getting the summer off. Like I've said prior, I don't give a rat's ass about international play, especially exhibition tournaments like the Euro and the World Cup.

Liverpool have officially announced the capture of Ukraine striker Andriy Voronin.

It was already known the former Bayer Leverkusen star, 27, would move to Anfield and he now joins record signing Fernando Torres in beefing up the Reds' attack.

Let's not forget about Liverpool's other signing. He has a 1 in 3 goals to games ratio over the last three years w/ Leverkusen, which isn't half bad.

I didn't get to see the whole match, so I'm going to put myself to sleep watching it later tonight. It was dreadfully boring from what I saw with the only highlight being Voronin's nasty strike. Liverpool will probably get blamed for it's unwatchability, but in truth it was the case of a clearly inferior squad, Toulouse FC, slowing down the game, playing everyone behind the ball, and being overtly and unnecessarily physical.

Sissoko's first career LFC goal, sort of Gerrard-esque. Hey, he learned from the best.

Voronin's first career EPL goal and second for Liverpool.

It was nice to use the plural for once.

Apparently both teams will be missing their respective captains as well as other key players, but this being at Anfield and Liverpool being clearly the superior squad, the Reds should win this one and advance to the group stages of the Champions' League. With that being said though, stranger things have happened. Anyhow, on to the squad.

In goal, probably Reina, though I suspect Itandje will get a start at some point before League Cup or FA Cup ties start.

Broken record alert: Stevie-G and Carra are out for this one. God I hope this means Gerrard sits out the England qualifying matches. Come on, Stevie, let Limp foot Lampard get some playing time. Moving on, I first expect to see all those who weren't featured against Toulouse on Tuesday start, which means Torres and Voronin up front, Xabi & Pennant in the respective midfield positions, and Finnan at right-back.

Well aside from Ukraine boss Oleg Blokhin taking some cheap shots at our boy, which I'll get to in a minute, Andriy Voronin, the bard arse striker we got on a free transfer from Leverkusen this past summer did not take kindly to his International manager's words late in his country's 2-1 loss to Italy yesterday. Voronin assessed the situation which led to a toe-to-toe confrontation by saying that his coach patronized him which was something that he as a man was not going to stand for.

Well, we got some good news today with the international clearances of Fernando Torres, Ryan Babel, and Lucas Leiva, as well as the near return to fitness for Stevie-G, because after Tuesday's match, it looks as if we'll need all the bodies we can harbor. I'm really excited about getting a look at Lucas and fully expect him to start in the middle with Gerrard.

Well, I finally got to watch this match again and despite pausing it on multiple occasions due to tedium and letting my cloud like attention span float through the sky of the internets, I finally finished it. What's more amazing is that I didn't fall asleep, though when actually watching I tried to focus on other things going on on the field: movement, spacing, etc, to keep me entertained.

Reina
Arbeloa
Hyypia
Carragher
Finnan
Babel
Alonso
Sissoko
Pennant
Voronin
Torres

Subs:
Itandje
Agger
Riise
Kuyt
Mascherano

No real surprises except for maybe Hyypia for Agger. I sort of expect Agger to come in for the second half. I wasn't sure how much Voronin played on Wednesday for the Ukraine, but I did think he would be somewhere on the team today.

Congrats to Momo Sissoko who scored his first career goal for Liverpool today. Maybe now this will give him the confidence to be more consistent.

The ref has allowed Sunderland to pretty much get away with murder as they have pushed and prodded their way to making this match competitive. It seems to have gone against them though as they looked quite tired towards the end of the second half and we probably should have added another on a Pennant cross to Torres, but El Nino didn't get quite enough on it and Gordon was able to recover in time before the ball trickled past the line.

Same old story, different result. The final tally in this match should have been much, much worse as our finishing looked a lot like it did last year, horrid. If we play this away against a decent squad at their place, forget it. We'd be lucky to get away with a scoreless draw.

Torres, even though he put in a man of the match performance, should have at least had one goal if not two, and I would really like to know what Voronin was thinking near the end when he had a two-on-one with Torres and a Sunderland defender and he tried to pass it to El Nino through the defender.

Well, today is the day plenty of Liverpool fans will dread. Frankly, the thought that one of our first-teamers could pick up an injury whilst away on international duty is worrying, but with the sheer number of players away, it is increasingly likely.

Pepe Reina is away with Spain, and after last month's appearance in the friendly with Greece, there is a possibility he may start for the Spaniards.

Nothing spectacular, but our only player to manage to score today. Oh yeah, there's a commercial before hand? Cheers.

Here it is:
Pepe Reina
Alvaro Arbeloa
Jamie Carragher
Daniel Agger
Steve Finnan
John Arne Riise
Steven Gerrard
Xabi Alonso
Jermaine Pennant
Dirk Kuyt
Fernando Torres

Subs:
Charles Itandje
Sami Hyypia
Andriy Voronin
Ryan Babel
Momo Sissoko

Nothing too shocking except maybe Riise starting at left-mid.

Did you expect me to be optimistic about our 6-0 thrashing of Derby County today? Okay, so I'm a little pleased. Okay, so I have a smile on my face right now that plastic surgery probably couldn't take away. More so because I picked up Xabi and Torres on my Fantasy squads than anything. Anyhow, before I watch it again, and I'll definitely be watching this one again, I'll say Mascherano is the Man of the Match.

Here it is:
Reina
Aurelio
Hyypia
Carragher
Arbeloa
Riise
Mascherano
Gerrard
Pennant
Kuyt
Torres
Subs:
Itandje
Benayoun
Sissoko
Finnan
Voronin
Once again, Rafa isn't messing around. I wonder how Voronin feels about the rotation now and really don't care how Crouch feels.

I wonder if we'll hear any nonsense about Yossi not starting today as to why we barely pulled this one off. Probably not, I figure the memory vacuum will take care of all the Rafa rotation bashing. Anyhow, on to the match.
Wigan should be commended for a well-played, well-executed game plan. We were really lucky to come away with three points as they were the better side and missed a couple of relatively easy opportunities in front of the net.

As the weeks go by, it gets tougher and tougher to find a diamond in the rough, the key things to look for are opponents, whether or not the player is playing at home, if they are due for a big match, and if they haven't played a lot recently be appear to be getting a rare chance to shine. With that in mind, here's who stands out to me. Per usual Yahoo!

- Well, he's gone and done it, Steven Gerrard has declared himself fit to Steve McClaren for England's tie with Israel tomorrow. No word on whether he'll get an injection or not, and I doubt they'll we'll hear about it if he does with all the controversy surrounding it. After tomorrow, I don't expect Stevie-G to play for us for about a month, call it Anfield intuition.

(Sorry for not posting but once yesterday and in advance for being so brief today, but really, there's not much going on and Euro-qualifying is on my mind. Cheers.)
- First up, Voronin has come out in defense of Rafa's rotation policy. Again, it's been proven that Rafa in fact rotates his line-ups just as often as Mourinho and Fergie, but who cares, right.

Well, I missed the first ten minutes of the match, but from what I've seen we're dangerous to score, well, at least Torres is. If he doesn't score in the second half or at least set up a goal, I'll be surprised.
As a team we seem to play well in brief stretches, but for the most part look like a bunch of unfocused eight-year-olds waiting for ice cream.

Here's Yossi phenomenal goal earlier today. The Israeli saved us from another embarassing draw. If this doesn't work, I'll post another later, because I'm having trouble with this site. Cheers.

Here it is:
Reina
Riise
Hyypia
Carragher
Finnan
Babel
Mascherano
Gerrard
Pennant
Kuyt
Voronin
Subs:
Itandje
Hobbs
Alonso
Sissoko
Lucas
Benayoun
Crouch
No big surprises except maybe Crouch not starting. I could care less, after his Marseilles performance he can rot on the bench until January and then sold.

For the first ten minutes of this match, it appeared we didn't learn anything for the Besitkas match. Immediately we started lobbing the ball forward looking for a cheap goal instead of being patient, working hard, and trying to open up the Fulham defense. Thankfully we appeared to realize this and slowly worked our way back to playing intelligent football.

- Marseille's Samir Nasri is set to miss his side's Champions League match next week with us due to meningitis-type flu. The 20-year-old attacking midfielder was hospitalized last weekend and has yet to be released. He is expected to require at least a two week convalescence period.
- Jamie Carragher is set to make his 476th appearance for Liverpool tonight against Reading.