Berbatov : £30m. Keane : £20m. Beating United : Priceless

Liverpool 2 – 1 Manchester United

Well. Well well well. They say a pessimist is never disappointed, and I’ve never been a fan of tempting fate – which is why my previous post was so negative. But it was also like that because, well, I honestly didn’t expect us to take anything from that game. Not a sausage. After three minutes, I expected a hammering. After the equaliser, I still expected them to nick it, but I was at least pleased that the inevitable defeat was at last going to come in the face of a pulsating match, a non-embarrassing performance, and not a whiff of controversy. It wasn’t until about ten or fifteen minutes into the second half that I even allowed myself to dream. And not until the final whistle that I believed we’d actually won it. That’s the ludicrous situation we’ve got ourselves in – a team that considers itself to be a title challenger treats a simple home win over one of its closest rivals as a fairytale result.

Now, let’s not get carried away. This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, make us suddenly look a title-winning team. In fact, Chelsea and Arsenal will have been watching this match with glee, having seen little to truly intimidate from either side. Nevertheless, it’s a simple fact that we picked up seven points from three games without ever actually playing well at all – and now we sit second in the table as one of only two teams with ten points, having beaten one of the other Big Four teams – and our most hated rivals – in the process. And having done so entirely on merit – true, this is largely because United were so awful, but we deserved that win. It wasn’t controversial, it wasn’t lucky. We were the better team.

And we did it without our own “Big Two”, as well. Yes, Gerrard was on the pitch when the winner was scored. But his only worthwhile contribution to the match – psychological boost aside – was giving Pepe Reina something to do (and what a something, our brightest performer so far this season managing to stay alert and tip over Giggs’ superb, dipping shot. Wouldn’t trade him for anyone.) This was tremendously important to the team. Obviously, when we have those two firing on all cylinders, we can look like world-beaters. But crucially, we haven’t fallen to pieces when missing the pair. Alonso stepped up to the plate to control central midfield in tandem with the brilliant Mascherano (Sky’s obsession with his going missing for the Tevez goal notwithstanding) – and while we lacked a final cutting edge in front of goal in Torres’ absence, you couldn’t fault Kuyt and Keane for effort, only for end product. And in the latter’s case, we know that will come. It’s Crouch all over again. Hell, it’s Torres in his first few games for us. The luck hasn’t gone his way, and it’s made him over-eager to impress – and that’s causing him to lose focus. At some point soon, he’ll get a flukey goal against someone crap – and after that, just watch him go.

Aside from the win itself, the most pleasing thing about the match was the vindication of all of us who said “Give it some bloody width, and then we’ll see”. Riera is not the sort of winger we’d have got had we had twenty million quid in the bank – but at the moment, he is a winger, and that just might do. He showed willingness to run with the ball, take people on (and had the skill to beat them) and got down to the byline on a number of occasions. His delivery wasn’t perfect, but he made up for that by his ability to bring the ball into the box from out wide. Though not spectacular, it was certainly an accomplished debut. The linkup with Aurelio was excellent too, although this did mean that the best of our play was a little heavily-focused on the left (which may also have something to do with Evra being a much better player than Brown, and Rooney not being a right winger). The fact that he was replaced by Babel means that we haven’t yet had the chance to see how having a pacey, proper winger on each side would shape up, but that vision can’t be far away.

And Babel. Before the game, I was disappointed that he wasn’t starting on that right flank. But credit to Rafa, he knew that against United we might just find ourselves in need of an impact sub, and that Torres might not quite be fit enough to be it. I want to see this kid start more games, because I’m genuinely excited by him – but I’ve also seen how much better he appears when taking on tired defenders late in the game, so maybe – especially now that Riera’s here – he might have to settle for being Stevie Heighway just a bit longer. He got lucky with the goal, essentially scuffing it into the net, but the point is – he was in the right place at the right time, finishing off one of the few genuine chances we’d carved out.

Like I say, this isn’t some kind of new dawn. We’re not suddenly the best team in the country – beating an off-form United doesn’t put us on their level yet, either. There’s a lot of work to do, areas in which we badly need to improve. But by god, that felt good. An absolutely huge psychological hurdle has been vaulted, and we’ve even managed to find a good performance in the process. Benitez seems to have realised that a change in attacking approach will pay dividends, and all of a sudden the upcoming trip to Marseilles – with our captain and our number nine, we would presume, fit to start – is something to be relished rather than dreaded. The season has well and truly started. Liverpool : P4, W3, D1, L0, Pts10. Man Utd : P3, W1, D1, L1, Pts4. Beautiful.

Seb