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Kromkamp Departs For PSV

Jan Kromkamp’s Liverpool career is over almost as quickly as it begun. Arriving in January from Villareal in exchange for Josemi, Kromkamp has signed for Dutch league side PSV, as was rumoured in the past few weeks.

Kromkamp made 18 appearances in a Reds jersey since his arrival, and while his time at the club was quite short I’m sorry to see the chap leave as I had expected himself and Danny Agger to become core figures in the Liverpool side within the next year or two.

Kromkamp leaves Anfield with an FA Cup medal and marks the third departure for Liverpool this week with Florent Sinama-Pongolle signing for Recreativo Huelva yesterday, along with Neil Mellor who penned a three year contract with Preston North End. Whether or not this makes room for the arrival of Lucas Neill before midnight tonight remains to be seen.

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Destination Recreativo For Pongolle

Florent Sinama-Pongolle won’t be seen around Anfield or the Premier League this season and, possibly next season, having moved to recently promoted La Liga side Recreativo Huelva.

The loan deal is for the season, with an option for a second season, and while there is no official word yet from the club (Liverpool) it won’t be long until it is announced.

Pongolle spent part of last season on loan at Blackburn and is certainly down the pecking order in terms of attacking roles at Liverpool, up front or otherwise. His transfer today marks the second piece of business of the afternoon for Liverpool with Neil Mellor having left for good for pastures new at Preston North End.

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Mellor Signs For Preston North End

Statements on Preston North End’s official club site state that Neil Mellor has signed for the club with Paul Simpson signing Mellor to a 3 year contract, with Mellor to keep his number 33 jersey that he has looked after at Anfield.

All the very best of luck in to Neil Mellor from LiverpoolAccess.com as he starts his new career with PNE.

Certainly won’t be forgetting that glorius goal against Arsenal in the league. Dying seconds of the match in the Carling Cup… fantastic stuff.

Speaking to the clubs website, Simpson said

I am delighted to get him in I think he is tremendous signing for the club, he is a young player, I would say that even though he is in his early 20’s he’s young because he hasn’t played a lot of games and I think there is a lot football in him.

Mellor’s exit comes with the transfer deadline tomorrow and while he is the first of the week to leave the club, he may well not be the last with Harry Kewell, Sinama Pongolle and Salif Diao all rumoured to be winging their ways to pastures new before tomorrow night.

Teamtalk today also reported that Liverpool had a £2m bid for Blackburn’s Lucas Neill rejected this morning. More on this as it transpires.

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Golden Boot For Dirk Kuyt

Tip o’ the hat to newboy Dirk Kuyt for picking up the Dutch FA’s Player Of The Year award and taking home the golden boot with him.

Kuyt finished top of the charts ahead of Philip Cocu and Tim de Cler to take the top honour.

Hopefully this is something he can replicate in the Premier League and, if Saturday’s second half performance is anything to go by, we might well see it replicated this season.

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Dowie Full Of Praise For Scott Carson

Iain Dowie is full of praise for Scott Carson, and why shouldn’t he be. Following Charltons disaster of an opening day against West Ham with Carson in goal (and losing 3-1), they rallied to beat Bolton 2-0 at the weekend, Carson keeping a clean sheet and denying ex-Red Diouf from the penalty spot as well.

“He has calmness about him, he kicks the ball well, is fantastically agile and I have to thank Liverpool for letting me have him. He has done terrific. He is a quiet lad about the place but we have got some good characters.”

Carson himself was in top form at the weekend and hopefully this is one Red who we’ll see back in action with Liverpool next season - hopefully too he can build on this performance and continue to fight for a starting place at The Valley.

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Result: Liverpool 2 - 1 West Ham

It looked like a disaster start to the game when Bobby Zamora scored a freak goal (with some extra style thrown in) but Liverpool fought hard today to beat West Ham 2-1 at Anfield to secure their first win of the new league campaign and remain unbeaten at Anfield since last October.

Missing Jamie Carragher, John Arne Riise and Momo Sissoko to name but a few was going to make things difficult for Liverpool, something compounded by Bobby Zamora’s strike within the first twelve minutes. Zamora, set free on the right wing made it to the edge of the box, looking up for the cross to Marlon Harewood only to mis-cue his shot and rifle into the back of the net, Pepe Reina parrying the ball to Zamora’s advantage.

The goal was certainly enough to rattle Liverpool’s cage at the early stages of the game and it could have been 2-0 only moments later when Harewood’s shot just nicked past the outside of the post to save Liverpool’s blushes.

Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia worked tirelessly in midfield through the first half, along with Jermaine Pennant but it was Danny Agger who stole the golden moment of the first half, lifting a sublime shot into the top left corner of the goal from all of 30 yards to level the scores 1-1 on 42 minutes. From the moment the ball left his foot, even to see him in that space you could tell something special was about to happen and it certainly did.

Agger’s goal was enough to drive Liverpool towards a second before the break, a goal which they deservedly got through some excellent buildup work by Luis Garcia, skipping his way through the box to lay off a nice reverse pass for Peter Crouch, Crouch taking a deft touch to the right of Roy Carroll and firing low under Anton Ferdinand’s legs and into the back of the net.

The second half saw a much inspired Liverpool with some fierce pace to the opening 15 minutes of the half which also saw the introduction of Kuyt. Only 30 seconds on the pitch and he was already in firing mode, getting his first shot off wide right before coming close with a header across the goal mouth only moments later.

Kuyt too set up Craig Bellamy for a goal only to have the chance ruled offside, something which was quite frequent in the second half as West Ham pushed forward looking for more chances on goal.

West Ham too came close in the final ten minutes with Lee Bowyer missing a golden opportunity to level the scores while Pepe Reina saw much more positive action in the final minutes of the game pulling off some good stops.

Great to see the win and the goals, solid performance by Kuyt for his Premier League debut and I must saw I was quite impressed by Jermaine Pennant and Luis Garcia alike. No big injury worries thank God and a healthy three points in the bag. Roll on the next game.

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Live: Kuyt Not Starting For Liverpool

Looks like Dirk Kuyt will be making his Premier League and Liverpool debut from the bench as Rafa Benitez has gone for the Premier League tested pair of Bellamy and Crouch to lead from the front, hopefully in an attempt to drive a first half lead before bringing Kuyt into the game.

Fabio Aurélio steps in to left back to replace the injured Riise while the team in full looks as follows….

Pepe Reina, Steve Finnan, Fabio Aurélio, Sami Hyypia, Danny Agger, Steven Gerrard, Xabi Alonso, Luis Garcia, Jermaine Pennant, Peter Crouch, Craig Bellamy. Dudek, Kuyt, Kromkamp, Gonzalez and Bolo Zenden make up the bench.

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Preview: Liverpool vs West Ham

Alan Pardew’s men travel to Anfield today in a replay of what was one of the best FA Cup Final’s of recent times as Liverpool take on West Ham at home with a 12:45 kickoff.

The memories of Cardiff will certainly be fresh and it should be a high-energy contest this lunch time. Rafa looks set to hand a debut to Dirk Kuyt though whether he starts or not is another thing.

Bobby Zamora is on form for West Ham, already with three goals to his name this season bringing some good firepower to West Ham’s front line, while Dean Ashton is out with a broken ankle. Liverpool too are looking at their casulty list containing Gabriel Paletta, Stephen Warnock, John Arne Riise, Jamie Carragher and Momo Sissoko. That said, we should see Gerrard, Alonso, Gonzalez and Garcia start across the middle with Finnan, Hyypia, Kromkamp and Danny Agger holding up the back line.

Liverpool need to focus today, need to concentrate. The 1-1 start to the season was a little disappointing and with West Ham already having two good games under their belt, including beating Charlton 3-1 on the opening day, they will certainly be fired up for this league battle.

Liverpool, for their part, are looking to stretch a good defensive record at Anfield since finishing last season with 16 games unbeaten at home (14 wins and 2 draws) - a run stretching back to last October when we were hammered 4-1 by Chelsea. With Champions League qualification now out of the way now is the time to be concentrating on the league performance and getting this season off to a good start.

Theres coverage of the game on TV and on LiverpoolFC.tv, updates here on LiverpoolAccess.com where possible.

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Group C Isn’t The Worst In The World

A little break for myself yesterday but now I get to sit down again and take a look at this year’s Champions League setup and I’ve got to say, I’m pretty happy with the way the group turned out. Tough on Chelsea, drawing Barcelona yet again, but as far as Liverpool go I think we’ll be in a comfortable position.

We’ve landed ourselves with PSV who I reckon will be the toughest on a footballing side; Bordeaux who we’ve never played against in competition; and Galatasary who would be our toughest opposition at least on a mental factor.

We avoided the bigger guns of the second seeds and I’m pretty sure that we’ve enough firepower to win the group outright. Not that we should be that cocky and confident in going forward but we’ve got experience against Galatasaray, we’ve got a new Dutch striker who knows the ins and outs of playing against PSV in the Dutch league and we’ve got French opposition in Bordeaux who will be the least of our worries for the Group Stage. Nice to see Vladimir Smicer making a return to Anfield all the same provided he’s injury free by the time the game comes around.

Overall I think the English sides that have gone into the competition haven’t got it too bad at all. Should be great to see Celtic and Man Utd in action, while Arsenal will be landed with a trip back east to Moscow to face CSKA. Chelsea certainly have one of the stronger groups with Barcelona and Werder Bremen thrown in alongside Levski Sofia.

Rick Parry came out during the week saying that he had already budgeted for our qualification, banking on us being in the Group Stage in order to fund what has been quite a promising summer transfer spree. Now that we’re finally here I hope that the lads can make it count. We’re positioned well to make it to the last sixteen, pick up some extra cash along the way and hopefully mount a good challenge for the trophy as well. A second win in such close succession would be quite unprecedented but not impossible by any means.

So Group C isn’t the worst group in the world to be in - we could have had worse and now that we know where we stand, hopefully we’ll be walking out through the Group Stage with our heads held high and into the next stage. I just hope that we can also keep the injuries at bay, at the rate the players seem to be picking them up we may well need some extra investment in the squad before too long.

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Champions League Group Stage Draw

Here’s the results of the Champions League Group Stage draw in full….

Group A

1. Barcelona
2. Chelsea
3. Werder Bremen
4. Levski Sofia

Group B

1. Internazionale
2. Bayern Munich
3. Sporting Lisbon
4. Spartak Moscow

Group C

1. Liverpool
2. PSV Eindhoven
3. Bordeaux
4. Galatasaray

Group D

1. Valencia
2. Roma
3. Olympiakos
4. Shakhtar Donetsk

Group E

1. Real Madrid
2. Lyon
3. Steaua Bucharest
4. Dinamo Kiev

Group F

1. Manchester United
2. Celtic
3. Benfica
4. Copenhagen

Group G

1. Arsenal
2. Porto
3. CSKA Moscow
4. Hamburg

Group H

1. Milan
2. Lille
3. AEK Athens
4. Anderlecht

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