Is This The Year That Liverpool Will Mount A Serious Title Challenge?

The start of the Premier League season is just around the corner and as usual I can’t wait. As I think of what every football fan has to look forward to, I begin to mull over certain questions and I am struck by a sense of deja vu.

Like every summer there has been a lengthy transfer saga which remains unresolved, media and fans alike have different points of view as to whether any team outside of the big four can break into a Champions League place and whether any team that comes up from the Championship will have any chance of staying in the division. But there is one more question, and it always catches my attention. Can Liverpool mount a serious title challenge?

We usually don’t have to wait that long for the answer.

My personal opinion is that Liverpool showed a huge improvement and a lot of potential last season. While they did finish fourth they did only finish 11 points behind the winners, Manchester United.

Now to use the word “only” makes it sound like they nearly did it, and of course we know that finishing 11 points off of the pace is too far behind to suggest that they did have a realistic shot at winning the title. But with regards to Liverpool, it was a massive improvement in comparison to the 21 points that they trailed at the end of the previous season.

There is no doubting that the reason for this improvement was the signing of Fernando Torres. One year on this striker, who was always considered as a promising player, has now blossomed into a world-class talent and it has been argued that he is the best striker in the world at the moment.

His record of 24 goals in 33 Premier League appearances was the goal record that Liverpool’s strikers have got nowhere near since the departure of Michael Owen, and it seemed that his arrival had managed to take some of the pressure off of the club's captain Steven Gerrard, who has carried the team in previous seasons.

Gerrard and Torres were a joy to watch, and their link up play in the second half of the season was the reason behind Liverpool’s strong end of season run where they lost just once in their last 15 games. They also made the semi finals of the Champions League. The form shown by the team has hinted that there may be things to come, but is this the season that they will do it?

It is appropriate to mention that the one defeat was against Manchester United, and it was a heavy one, a 3-0 defeat at Old Trafford that ended any slim hopes of the title finally finding its way to Anfield. This defeat sums up why the club ended up finishing fourth in a season that at times looked like it could offer so much more.

Their record against other members of the big four hasn’t been good for a number of seasons, and last year was no different. While they got creditable draws away at Arsenal and Chelsea, they failed to win against both of these teams at Anfield and slipped to defeat against Manchester United there as well.

So why is there record so bad in these games? The answer - they lack the world-class squads that their rivals possess. While Liverpool had a strong spine of a team with Reina in goal, Carragher in central defence, arguably the best choice of central midfielders with Gerrard, Mascherano and Xabi Alonso, with Fernando Torres up front, there are other members of the squad who would get nowhere near the first team of their fiercest rivals.

In terms of attacking ability, if Gerrard and Torres have an off day, Liverpool have an off day. This goes someway to explaining the disappointing and inconsistent form which saw them slip to disappointing defeats away to Reading and West Ham, and a series of poor home draws with Birmingham, Spurs, Aston Villa and Wigan. Simply, players like Kuyt, Benayoun, Pennant, Voronin amongst others were not good enough.

So can Liverpool do something this season? That is the question that has popped up again. So far the different views of the media seem to vary between the prediction of Manchester United or Chelsea to win the Premiership. You can’t really disagree with them.

Liverpool fans will have been watching Rafa Benitez’s business very closely this summer. For a while there was a sense of same old story, with the club bringing in a number of relative unknowns that will have worried fans. We do know that Liverpool have been chasing Gareth Barry, and he may still be wearing the famous red of the club by the start of the season, yet fans have questioned whether the position of central midfield needs to be filled urgently.

Personally, I’d agree and there are a number of other positions that I’d highlight as being weaker than the centre of Liverpool’s midfield.

For starters I thought that Liverpool needed full backs. The players that filled these positions last year were Riise, Finnan, Aurelio and Arbeloa. Would they get into the teams of Manchester United, Chelsea or even Arsenal? They’d struggle to even make it onto the bench.

In fairness Benitez has gone out and bought two, but does anyone know anything about Phillip Degen and Andrea Dossena? They both have experience, a positive factor, and it is unfair to write a player off when a ball hasn’t been kicked this season, but surely a club like Liverpool can attract players of a higher pedigree? Benitez has said that the two full backs he has signed will add an attacking dimension to the team, so it sounds like he knows why he has signed them. Liverpool fans had better hope that they can defend as well.

Another area where I felt Liverpool had to strengthen was up front and they’ve done this with the signing of Robbie Keane, an impressive one at that. My opinion is that this is an excellent piece of business for the club and while he cost a lot, they did make good money by the sell of Peter Crouch. I’m a fan of Crouch and I think Liverpool would’ve kept him if he was happy to warm the bench, but when he left I worried that Torres, who can play up front on his own, would be partnered with Kuyt or Voronin for long parts of the season.

But now they have Keane, and he could well be the ideal strike partner for the Spaniard. The decision to sign him could be as inspired as the one that brought Torres to Anfield one year ago. Maybe Robbie Keane is the missing link?

While Keane doesn’t have the goal record that suggests that he will become a thirty goal a season striker, as a second striker to Torres, Liverpool fans will be confident that the pair can score a large haul of goals between them.

Robbie Keane is an intelligent striker and has the ability to create space for himself and others with his clever movement. He can also drop deep if needed and he is a grafter who will work hard for the team. He is a great finisher and shows incredible composure in front of goal, and he also has the ability to make the right decision under pressure, something that Dirk Kuyt in particular fails to do time and time again.

Most importantly he is another player that Liverpool can rely on. If Torres is out injured you no longer think that the team will struggle to find a goal because Keane is always a threat. This may take the pressure off of Liverpool’s star players as he will shoulder some of the responsibility that other members of the team haven’t done in the past and with his ability to produce something out of nothing, a moment of brilliance that can win you a match, I have no doubt that Keane will be an excellent signing for Liverpool.

What Benitez has done well is reinforcing his squad. They signed a much-needed second goalkeeper in Diego Cavalieri and a number of young players who look to have potential for the future. The squad is there in numbers, whether it is in ability is another question.

My surprise is that he hasn’t attempted to sign a winger. In fairness, I think that Ryan Babel showed lots of potential last season, he scored goals from the bench and his pace and trickery caused problems. I think he will find himself starting more and more this season and as he is young he looks to have a good future ahead of him. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t play more last season and I can only speculate that maybe Benitez felt that he wasn’t as good as he needed to be defensively. That should come with experience.

Maybe Benitez was relying on another young winger in the form of Argentine Sebastian Leto, however, he has been dealt a blow as the midfielder has been denied a work permit for the new season.

Whether Benitez will look into the market to make any more signings is unknown. We will find out in the next few weeks. Gareth Barry still looks like a possibility but the spending may end with him. There are other positives for Liverpool, they had problems in the centre of defence but Daniel Agger should return after missing the entirety of last season with injury. That will be a huge boost to their title hopes. Martin Skrtel, who arrived in January, settled and played well towards the end of last season just at the time when Sami Hyppia was starting to look like his best days were behind him. Maybe a new defensive partnership is on the horizon for Liverpool because the excellent Jamie Carragher can't go on forever.

No doubt Liverpool fans will also hope that the manager’s famous squad rotation system doesn’t affect their chances to mount a serious challenge. At times gambles didn’t pay off last season. His reasoning was that if he rotated players at the start of the season, they would be fresher at the end of the season. As I highlighted, their form towards the end of the season did get better, but some of his early season decisions, especially regarding Torres were strange. The most notable was the decision to leave the striker out of the team for a Premier League match against Birmingham that they ended up drawing 0-0, but then field him in a less important League Cup game away at Reading. Decisions like this frustrated Liverpool fans at the start of the season.

I think that Benitez has learned from his mistakes and I also think that Liverpool will be a lot closer again this season. Whether they actually have enough to win the league is another question. Their fans will have to hope that the new signings settle quickly and that they have good luck with injuries, especially with regards to their key men. If so then maybe Steven Gerrard will be lifting the Premiership trophy come May.