Steven Gerrard...ignoring the creepy tunnel of darkness behind him. (Getty)

Though they won the Carling Cup and reached the FA Cup final, Liverpool finished eighth in the Premier League last season -- a disappointment that cost Kenny Dalglish his job as manager. Now with Brendan Rodgers in charge and his desire to get rid of Andy Carroll inspiring confidence, Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard thinks they will finish near the top of the table instead of behind Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Spurs, Newcastle, Chelsea and Everton.

From the Telegraph:

"I do think we will get in the top four," said Gerrard. "I think we will get it. I am confident we will get it.

"I am not being unrealistic. If we can play like we did in a lot of games last season, be clinical and take our chances, I think we will be high up in the table. I do.

"It has got to come. We are Liverpool. We can't finish eighth. We have got to put that right. We have got to take the criticism for underperforming last year. We can't be doing post-match interviews saying 'we should have got the points or we were not clinical enough'. We have got to be clinical. We have got to get the points we should get.

"I don't think it's ever happened that a team has gone from eighth to first, but there are still other big targets for us to achieve short term. Getting in that top four again is certainly the priority."

When Gerrard says Liverpool need to "be clinical" it seems he means that they can't continue to hit the post with supernatural frequency, as they did last season. And when he says, "We are Liverpool, we can't finish eighth," he means "Being laughed at by Everton fans is the worst thing ever."

But while this may seem like a fantastical leap to you and I, it's not outside the realm of possibility to Steven Gerrard. This is, after all, a man who hangs out with James Bond.

Shinji Kagawa and Anderson have been practicing. (Getty)

While Manchester United are in China for their preseason tour, the team found time show off their modeling skills in a fashion show for watchmaker Hublot. This is the highly enjoyable result...

Joe Allen's entry in the official Team GB program. (via the BBC)

Following Wednesday's mix-up in which the South Korean flag was used to represent the North Korean women's soccer team, prompting the team to refuse to the start its match against Colombia on time and forcing Olympic organizers to apologize, Team Great Britain  has now gotten the nationality of one of its own athletes wrong. In the official Team GB program for its opening men's soccer match against Senegal on Thursday, highly touted Welsh midfielder Joe Allen is wrongly listed as being English.

The 22-year-old Allen, who also plays for Wales-based Premier League club Swansea City, has represented Wales at both the youth and senior levels prior to being included in Team GB, which is comprised of players from England and Wales representing the United Kingdom's usually separate national teams for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The other four Welsh players on the first GB soccer team to compete since 1972 had their nationality correctly listed (see Craig Bellamy in the

Seattle (and former Fulham) striker Eddie Johnson came off the bench to combine with David Luiz's boot to produce a stoppage-time winner for the MLS All Stars in their friendly against Chelsea. It was the second time the MLS All Stars have beaten Chelsea (the other being a 1-0 victory in 2006), but the first time the MLS side won the All-Star Game since 2008 against West Ham.

MLS leading scorer Chris Wondolowski opened the scoring in the 21st minute, but John Terry equalized for Chelsea with a header off a Frank Lampard corner in the 32nd minute (in front of the Philly fans' "Terry's a good guy, said no one ever" banner). Lampard added a goal of his own in the 58th minute to give Chelsea a 2-1 lead, but Chris Pontius made it 2-2 in the 73rd minute. Johnson then fired a low shot into David Luiz's boot, sending the ball looping past Chelsea keeper Ross Turnbull and into the net. Turnbull laughed, Johnson celebrated and MLS won.

David Beckham flew in to Philadelphia from London on a private jet (here he is with his plane) hours before the game and promptly flew right back after playing 74 minutes so he can take part in the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics on Friday.

Though the crowd appeared to be largely made up of Chelsea fans, the club proved that even as European champions they still can't beat an MLS conglomeration squad in midseason form while they're still working on their preseason fitness.

To mark the release of Man City's new kit, Umbro conducted brief interviews with several of the players and the one with Mario Balotelli was, of course, the best.

He starts by being thoroughly unenthusiastic about the new kit before going on to explain why he wears the No. 45. He then shares his admiration for Drake (who he had dinner with last season) and then with the intensity of a thousand suns (or one Mario Balotelli), he says that if he wasn't a footballer, he would want to be a UFC fighter.

"Probably I would want to do UFC...yeah. I really love it," he says with the utmost seriousness. But Mario as a mixed martial arts fighter? I can see it...

Alex Morgan (left) and Megan Rapinoe celebrate. (AP)

The United States' Olympic campaign got off to an inspirational start with the women's soccer team's 4-2 come from behind win against France on Wednesday. It was a rematch of the 2011 Women's World Cup semifinal, which the U.S. won 3-1 before losing to Japan on penalties in the final, and a difficult way to start off the group stage of the tournament for both sides.

France took advantage of some defensive lapses from the U.S. early on, with Gaetane Thiney scoring a great goal from distance in the 11th minute that Hope Solo couldn't keep out, despite getting a hand on it. France got another one past Solo just two minutes later after a bit of pinball in the box to take a 2-0 lead and shock the U.S. into getting over any early Olympic nervous excitement and focusing on the task at hand.

[ Related: Phelps' epic performance in Beijing ]

But as the U.S. showed time after time during last summer's Women's World Cup run, they are quite good at coming from behind. It didn't take them long to do it against France either, as Abby Wambach scored the Americans' first goal with a trademark header off a corner kick in the 18th minute and Alex Morgan displayed her excellent control and finishing touch with her 31st-minute equalizer.

In the second half, the U.S. continued where they left off, taking a 3-2 lead with a Carli Lloyd blast in the 55th minute and sealing the win in the 65th minute when Morgan scored her second goal of the game by putting away a loose ball by the post.

If Abby Wambach was the standout performer for the U.S. in the Women's World Cup (and she was), Alex Morgan seems poised to be the same for this Olympic tournament. Though this is her first appearance in the Olympics, scoring twice in the opening match serves as a continuation of the 23-year-old's prolific scoring rate for the national team and should only be the beginning of what she can do.

Robbie Keane forgets that it's just a friendly.

The LA Galaxy played a friendly against Spurs on Tuesday night, giving Robbie Keane a chance to play against his old club. And Keane decided to reintroduce himself by playing an odd game of "grab the contents of Jake Livermore's shorts."

Keane was apparently trying to distract Livermore from the ball (well, the other ball) or maybe he was just preparing for a post-football career as a proctologist. Whatever the case may be, he probably won't face the 74 lashes that two Iranian players were threatened with when they celebrated a goal in similar fashion last year.

Here's video of the Keane incident/assault...