I'm not expecting to win the league this season, i never am. But I can't face another year of being out of it by January (regardless of our progress in Europe) and i'd be delighted just to be in touch come March. Just to be in with a shout would count as good progress for me.
So what needs to happen for us to be challengers this season? Let's take 'Rafa playing a more settled side AS A GIVEN shall we coz everyone knows everybody else's thoughts on rotation and to be frank, it bores the absolute s..h..i..t out of me!!!
Suggest you stick with what we've got coz Barry will be the last big transfer of this summer so no good wishing for this player or that!
The three for me are:
1/ Gerrard and Torres have to match (or come close) their performances of last year. they need to stay fit and fot and we will need another 40 goals goals from our two best players.
2/ Set-pieces - A big problem last season. Smaller sides struggled to score past us in open play but often got a lead they didn't deserve through a soft free-kick or corner. You could see they really fancied there chances every time the ref blew his whistle. i don't what the stats say (Owz??) but i'm sure we'd be a LOT better off in terms of points if we'd improved this by 50-60%
3/ RYAN BABEL - Massive year ahead for the player. A lot on here like him and a good few are still not sure. I'm one of the latter. He's shown it in patches. He's strong, quick, skillful, direct and he gets a goal or two but is also very inconsistent, dissappears from matches, makes poor decisions and at times he looks like he cost 2 million instead of 12. If he can REALLY step-up this season I like our chances. Torres is the only player on the books who can truely make something out of absolutely nothing (you could argue a case for Gerrard here as well) but Babel has it in him to do the same. We need a confident Ryan Babel running at players, playing it simple when it's needed, scoring/providing goals and getting involved in the game from start to finish. I'm not sure he'll do it mind but that's what we need.