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

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.  

For a start there was a clear difference in the standard of the opposition.  We made a poor Sunderland side look more dangerous than they are.  Here we face a Middlesborough that on it’s day can take it to anyone, and that’s just what they did.   Downing, Tuncay and the new slimline Mido GTI showed the sort of class that would be welcome in shirts the right shade of Red and to a man we were made to work hard and this we did. Middlesborough created in quality, we returned fire in quantity creating far more chances.  Sure mostly half chances, but still chances.

Throughout there was a battling passion it would be great to see present at every Anfield fixture this season.  Robbie Keane had his best game yet in a Liverpool shirt.  He might still be waiting for his first goal, but he’s off the mark with perfect a assist for Gerrard’showitzer.

Middlesborough can rightly feel gutted to come away empty handed, they thoroughly deserved Mido’s opener.  Yet I’m reminded of Robbie Fowler’s injury time winner against Crystal Palace in the 1st Leg of the 1995 League Cup Semi-Final.  It won the game at the death, just as Gerrard did here.  My point being that goals in injury time are no less deserved that those scored before the 90 minute mark, they’re just often more valuable!

I’ve mostly glossed over the negatives.  The lack of direction in the passing, a lacklustre showing from Xabi and the very nearly massive howler from Pepe.  Why? Because overall we showed just enough promise to be optimistic.  Which is more than can be said about the Villa game…

Karl

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)

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)

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.