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Benitez men due to maintain winning standard

YOU’D rather emerge from the first two games of the season saying ‘we didn’t play well but we won’ rather then ‘we played well but didn’t get anything out of it’. Read

BRITAIN’S top Olympians have urged the Government to get behind British sport and maintain the record-breaking success of UK athletes for 2012.

Triple gold medal winner Chris Hoy called for continued backing for elite athletes, but also facilities for the nation as a whole. Read

Rafael Benitez

COMMENT: Benitez should put the accent on local lads

WHEN Liverpool launched their new home kit over the summer, advertisement boards across the city proclaimed that the Liver Bird emblem across the heart was not a badge but a ‘family crest.’ Read

Three-point ‘banker’ is now anything but

EVEN when blinded by the sorry sight of Mitch Ward, Farrelly, Thomsen, Angell et al, my Everton FC souvenir glass has always been half full. The glass is now so evaporated, however, one’s throat is like Gandhi’s flip-flop. Read

Time to move after pedestrian start

IT’S the first home game of the campaign, and one in which the Reds should record a victory. Read

Liverpool v Middlesbrough: Speaking with the enemy

What are the expectations of the Boro fans this season? Read

Sean McGuire

Sean McGuire: Clubs must follow United example or be left behind

LIVERPOOL’S failure to do a multi-million pound deal with Aston Villa or Saudi Telecom this summer is an indication of how much catching up the club has to do on the commercial front. Read

Sean McGuire: Don’t let Olympic sports’ raised profile be lost in the coming weeks

THE Olympics has provided its usual four-yearly insight into sports that for the other 206 weeks of the four-year cycle are largely forgotten about. Read

Time running out to salvage the summer

Time running out to salvage the summer

ONE cliché has always rung true throughout the many frustrations David Moyes has suffered in the transfer market during his Everton reign – It’ll Be Alright On The Night. Read

Scolari, not Benitez, will win the big one

Daily Post columnist Mark Lawrenson gives his views on the new season, which starts tomorrow Read

Martin McFadden of independent Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme (www.a-love-supreme.com)

What are your expectations for the season? Read

TITLE WINNERS: Chelsea. They have strengthened in the most important area – the manager. If they had a decent one last season they could have won the quadruple but now they have appointed a genuine winner. As for Manchester United, it’s physically impossible for Cristiano Ronaldo to be that prolific again and that will cost them.

GOING DOWN: Stoke – obviously. Hull seem to have a good fan base but they also seem to have Ian Ashbee as their captain so that hardly bodes well for making the step up. To avoid the predictability of plumping for the promoted trio to go straight back down, let’s say Bolton instead of West Brom. The Baggies should win enough home games to send their uninspiring former manager Gary Megson back where he belongs. Read

Daily Post writers give their predictions

TITLE WINNERS: Last season I said Chelsea would win the league, and even though they lost Jose Mourinho in the first month, they still managed to take the championship battle down to the last game while finishing runners-up in the Champions League and Carling Cup. The only way is down for Manchester United now, and with the canny Big Phil at the helm – and probably decking a journalist or two along the way – the Londoners will prevail. That’s Chelsea, by the way. Read

Just how long will respect last?

LET’S buck the trend for a moment at least and talk about something other than Everton’s emaciated looking squad. Read

CHRIS WRIGHT'S NAP: Tufton (3.15pm Beverley)

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Liverpool FC in Belgium ahead of Champions League Qualifier against Standard Liege

Red watch: Winning smile may help get back old flame

WHEN Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote that ‘In spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love’, he clearly wasn’t living in Liverpool. Read

From small village in Shropshire to millions watching in Beijing, Olympics still matter and its ethos of fair play and goodwill is alive and well

DAVE BOOTH, Daily Post Olympics correspondent at Athens 2004, responds to DP columnist Sean McGuire’s assertion that the Olympic ideal should be made a thing of the past. Read

Same old Olympic hype rings so hollow

THE long seven-year wait will end tomorrow as the Olympic Games will open in Beijing. The city has been the most controversial host city for a generation, since Moscow in 1980, and it has been dogged by criticism from the moment it was awarded the honour in 2001. Read

Prudence, not panic, is name of buying game

EVERTONIANS should not despair just yet at the lack of signings for the new season. Read

CHRIS WRIGHT'S NAP: Del Mar Sunset (4pm Brighton)

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