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A little known fact about the classic Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is that the run out groove on the second side included a few seconds of gibberish that, when played on a turntable without an auto shut off, would play on a loop indefinitely until the listener got up to change the record. This gibberish can still be heard on CD-reissues of the album, but the obnoxious looping of the sound has long since been lost for non-vinyl fans.
This is relevant insofar as we're midway through the January transfer window and things are starting to get repetitive. Same rumours, same player quotes, same need to fade out and put on Revolver only to get forever trapped in an infinite loop of THERE'S NO NEWS. So we get more talk of Top Four and Champions League, this time from Luis Suarez, who has probably talked about it before and will probably talk about it again, but this is the here and now.
"It's very important because we know that in the last two years we haven't demonstrated that Liverpool can play in the Champions League. Now we are playing very well and we have the level to play in the Champions League. We have really good players and if we continue at this level, we can do it. In the last two or three years we have not played very well and not demonstrated our level. Now we are back to that."
Liverpool may not have the depth to cope with a full season of Champions League just yet but certainly there have been a handful of matches where they've demonstrated they could go toe-to-toe with some of the best in Europe in general. That Suarez takes no credit for the club's current good standing nor distances himself from the team's poor showing in previous seasons is emblematic of the striker's generally unselfish approach to his game this year.
If Liverpool can get by with a little help from their friends at FSG, so to speak, a few signings in the next two weeks could really solidify their push for fourth place by the end of the season. Beneath the gibberish at the end of Sgt. Pepper is a high-frequency note only audible to dogs. I'll let you find a metaphor for the January transfer window in that one.
