Just out of curiosity and negativity; Were do you see this improvements in our teams performances? I also think we aremiles better than the Hodgson area, but I can't really see much progress on the Dalglish II area. And yes I agree wholeheartedly that we were very poor last spring. But bear in mind that the Suarez saga could (!) have cost more energy than we saw from the outside.
I was unhappy with so many of the signing we've made in recent seasons under various managers; some totally shite/pointless ones like Konchesky, Degen, Jovanovic, Zenden, R.Keane, Poulsen, J. Cole etc, and some half-decent (and with potential to improve) that we paid WAY over the odds for Carroll, Downing, Henderson etc.
I also hated the way we were slow to ship out deadwood cf El Zahr, N'Gog, and a host of young talentless goalies.
Nonsense like the Aquilani and J. Cole deals made us look like idiots.
Under Rodgers we've weeded out a lot of the deadwood quite quickly, we've added IMO some very promising players like Allen, Sturridge and Coutinho - I realise the Allen hasn't impressed most fans BUT he is a top young player and he will blossom into a world class player (hopefully at Anfield). Sturridge IMO will never be a top international forward (like Shearer, Henry, Rooney etc) but has enough about him to become a very useful addition. Coutinho - I dunno, but he has ability to beat players so fingers crossed he can develop into a top player for us.
I love our kids; Suso, McLaughlin, Sinclair, Teixera, Wisdom, Sterling, Yesil.....and many others, the list of our young talent seems endless for the first time in decades.
There is something missing at the moment and, like Rodgers, I can't quite put my finger on it. We have some excellent players like Johnson, Agger (he's still great but having a bad time at present), Gerrard, Suarez, Skrtel (see Agger), Kelly (when fit) and with all the new players and kids coming through it's hard for me not to be excited.
I won money betting against us beating Villa and WBA recently so I'm obviously aware that we are not anything special at the moment but we have a lot of the building blocks in place to become a really good team.
If we can keep our current manager and squad together; bring the likes of McLaughlin, Teixera, Sinclair and Yesil through into the first team squad next season, add a DM like Wanyama and buy another top striker then I see us challenging the top teams for the trophies next season.
Caveat: As I mentioned earlier I find it difficult to be objective about LFC and much of this might be seen as rose-tinted optimism BUT these are my genuine feeling about our current position.
