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.

Thieving Scousers

Liverpool 2 – 1 Middlesborough

“Below-par Liverpool steal win against North-East rivals… Mark II” seemed to be the press consensus after this game.   I’m not going to get into accusations of bias, but simply state that I disagree.  

Sub-Standard

Liverpool 1 – 0 Standard Liege
(aet. agg. 1-0)

Well, I can see why Gareth Barry’s decided to stay at Villa. He’s got far more chance of winning on Sunday playing in claret and blue than he would in silver.

I can’t really say much about last night, except to applaud the adroitness of the 606 hosts who pointed out how frustrating it is for Liverpool fans to have all of their complaints ready only to then have them blunted by the little detail of actually winning the game. Particularly when such complaints revolve around Dirk Kuyt. But listen – him scoring an instinctive striker’s goal after having been switched up front doesn’t excuse the eighty-three bloody minutes he spent giving the ball away on the right of midfield. If it wasn’t galling enough that he was deployed there while Ryan Babel sat on the bench and Jermaine Pennant wasn’t even in the squad, it was made even moreso by the promise shown by Nabil El Zhar when occupying that position.

Look, we’re through now. It was a horrible, horrible performance by a completely disjointed team bereft of ideas, confidence and passion. But let’s not dwell on it. The only positives were the aforementioned El Zhar (who should have had a penalty – but let’s be honest, losing to a pen would have been even harsher on Standard, though I’d feel more sympathy had they not been such niggling, bullying gits, especially in their treatment of Our Boy Torres) and Reina, by far our best (although “best” is a relative term here) performer with a solid and reliable performance in addition to a couple of top-drawer saves.

I’m not at all confident heading into games with Villa and United (the latter in particular), but still. Three wins and a draw is, on paper, a good start to the season no matter what the performances have been like. If those performances improve, we’ll have no need to complain. But if things don’t start to come together sharpish… well, we’re going to get hammered when we come up against opposition better than the three teams we’ve played so far…

(Seb)

Beautiful!

Sunderland 0 – 1 Liverpool

The Performance? No.  The result? Hmm… no.  Torres’s finish?  Well okay yes, but no.  I’m talking about that goalie kit!  Infact, the entire away kit.  Seeing a Liverpool team run out in silver & red, with a keeper in a proper keeper’s green top just for a few moments jumped me back twenty years.  Then the game kicked off and we were far from championship material.

So what can we take from that game?  It was a better performance than against Liege, although it’s hard to see how it could have been worse.  We were somewhat fortunate to come away with three points.  If the Sunderland starting XI had possessed a decent striker things could have been very different.

Still we rode our luck a bit, and ultimately we did that thing all league winning sides are meant to do – Play badly and win One-Nil.  How often we can do that this season will depend on how often the big names do the business and those pundits thinking Torres will struggle to repeat his form last season might want to think again.

Ultimately I’m still feeling quite positive despite our slow start.  We’ve 3pts in the bag. We have Masch, Lucas and Babel all to come back and if we’re lucky maybe one more new signing to come in.

Right now if I have any concerns it’s over starting selections.  Alonso was brilliant for us today, grabbed the assist for Nando’s goal and almost won goal of the season on the opening day with a trademark 60-yard screamer.  Yet Rafa chose to start with the inexperienced Plessis.  Similarly defence? A lot of the talk this summer has been about the future defensive pairing off Skrtel and Agger, so it was a surprise to see Carra and Sami get the starts.  Surely it’s too early to start rotating already!?

As for the new signings.  Dossena definitely stepped up a gear today.  Meanwhile Keane frustrates, mostly himself with another ordinary showing.  Surely it would make more sense to stick with our winning formula from last season with Gerrard in behind Torres and then bring in Keane gradually?  At the moment it’s all starting to resemble Crouchy’s early Liverpool career and we all know how long it took him to break his duck.

(Karl Eisenhauer)

Oh dear

Standard Liege 0 – 0 Liverpool

Well, if there’s a positive to be drawn from that little shambles, it’s that it will be physically impossible to play worse than that for the rest of the season.

Just quickly, then, because I don’t want to dwell on it any longer than I have to : Is it some kind of massive elaborate practical joke that Dirk Kuyt is somehow considered to be a right midfielder? Xabi Alonso seemed to be doing his best to ensure he stays at Anfield by making his market value plummet as far as possible with each free kick drilled into the wall and each fumbled bit of possession. Arbeloa had perhaps his worst game for the club, and Dossena was only rescued from “worst debut ever” territory by Robbie Keane, on whom we’ve spent twenty million for someone who doesn’t seem to know how to weight a pass. It took until the last ten minutes of the game for Carra – who also seemed to have forgotten he was wearing the captain’s armband, so lacking were any attempts at inspiration - to successfully make a tackle rather than being flat-footedly beaten. Agger might have had a good game, showing a willingness to get forward creatively, but was busy having the crap kicked out of him by an aggressive (but spirited) Liege side, as was Torres, for whom I genuinely feared an injury was on the cards (not because Liege were any worse than your average Championship cloggers, but because that’s just how the night seemed to be going). Plessis showed willing, but was clumsy. Benayoun was pretty anonymous. The only one to emerge with anything like any credit was Reina, simply because – despite a couple of late flaps – he saved a penalty (piss poor as it was) and actually had other saves to make as well. Unlike the Liege goalkeeper.

Dear me. Our early-season optimism isn’t usually in tatters this early, is it? Oh well, roll on Sunderland. You never know, we might just scrape a point.