Football: Len Capeling Column.

Byline: Len Capeling

LIVERPOOL'S season in a word: Disastrous. World champion rating for lame-duck excuses, achievement rating at bad risk level.

Yet they began so well, vindicating the few pundits outside of Merseyside who'd backed them for the title after 13 years of being the matinee idol who'd taken to drink.

November, December and early January did for them. No wins for an eternity.

And no one to help Michael Owen climb the prison walls erected by every visiting defence.

When Michael didn't score,neither did anyone else. It was to be the harshest lesson of a season when a largely silent Anfield witnessed a paltry 30 goals in 19 Premiership matches.

Conversely,Liverpool won as many away games - nine - as champions Manchester United.

But then their counterattacking style has always prospered outside of Anfield since Gerard Houllier clapped his defensive shackles on the club.

Relying too much on opponents' errors, they never produced enough pure genius to dismantle those who wouldn't play the fall-guys.

In the end, they didn't do enough to justify a higher placing. And when you saw the flowing football from Manchester United and Arsenal,and occasionally Chelsea, you saw how far the club has gone backwards.

That mustn't happen again. Liverpool's new slogan must be: ``Fear and be slain. Believe and live.'' From Harry S Truman,in case you're wondering, the American president who gave us the more famous - and apposite: ``The buck stops here.''

VERTON'S season in two words: David Moyes. Voted manager of the year by his peers, the rock-solid Scot succeeded despite having hardly a bean to his name in transfer terms.

That's why he's become a hero to the fans. He may bang on a bit about referees and Sven,but he's barely raised a word of protest about the straitjacket the club have strapped him into.

How long Moyes' patience will last, with a board of directors whose ambitions clearly do not match his own, is anybody's guess.

The stadium plot rumbles on, which means that for the next six years the pawn shop will impose restrictions on the team that even Walter Smith would weep over. And he spent only pounds 700,000 nett.

Everton should heed the LMA voters. They have noted Moyes' rapid rise and so have a number of other clubs with money to spend.

By denying their young messiah reasonable funds - pounds 12million minimum - they are pushing him closer to the day when he says,I've done my best but I haven't had the backing.

Moyes wants to re-construct his present dilapidated squad. It's getting old and hit the skids towards the end of a tremendous season.

Over the whole campaign the players imbibed Moyes' philosophy of togetherness as if it were the elixir of life.

They became the hardest team in the Premiership to beat, possessed two of the league's most influential performers,in Tomasz Radzinski and folk hero Wayne Rooney,and tried to play with the ball on the ground.

They didn't score nearly enough goals, but always seemed to create chances. They also made better use of wide areas than the narrow-minded Liverpool.

The fans loved them while reserving the age-old Goodison tradition of wrapping a moan or two around their song of praise.

But after the years of waste,Moyes worked a miracle.

Pity the adventures on the field weren't matched off it, where the bungling over the Kings Dock bid and muddled messages made Everton look less than coherent.

CAPTION(S):

Michael Owen endures the agony of missing out on the Champions League in the last game of the season and (right) the ecstasy of winning the Worthington Cup