Liverpool 0 Everton 0 - Prem (Feb 3 2007)

[TLW]

LIVERPOOL 0 Everton 0

Report by Dave Usher at Anfield

Scorer(s) - Half Time - 0-0 Venue - Anfield Date - Sat 3 Feb 2007 Star Man - Jamie Carragher

 

 

 

 

We’ve got a terrific home record this season, but this is now six points we’ve dropped to the smaller teams. Breaking down a ten man defence is never easy, but if you have genuine aspirations of being title contenders you have to cope with it. We didn’t do that against the blues, and they were full value for the point that they cherished so dearly. We huffed and puffed, but never looked like finding the breakthrough, and this result capped a shitty few days for the reds.

I’m not getting into the takeover business here, and I’m also staying clear of ‘littleclubgate’ too. I’ve said my piece on that on the TLW blog. I’m also going to hold my tongue (or keyboard) concerning the Gerrard/Shields/Heysel chants, as no doubt I’ll have my say on that in the next issue of the fanzine. This is meant to be a match report, so that’s what it will be.

I’d been looking forward to this game for ages. The players were looking to make up for what happened at the Pit earlier in the season, and I had a really good feeling we were going to tear them a new one. Then we had the takeover fiasco, and I began to get a bad feeling about the game. It had been a bad week, and I could see it getting worse. The confidence I had prior to the DIC breakdown disappeared quicker than Neville Southall at bathtime.

I wasn’t convinced by our starting line up, largely due to assuming that Bellamy would be used on the left. As it turned out, he wasn’t. We played a weird formation with Kuyt drifting out to the left to give us shape, but it never really worked. Dirk was crap, as were Crouch and Bellamy. None of the strikers hit any kind of form in this game, and when you throw in poor performances from Riise and Alonso, coupled with Gerrard having a quiet game, it’s no wonder we couldn’t break them down.

The only attacking player who played to a standard you would expect was Pennant, and given that the standards we expect from him are not exactly sky high, that’s not saying much. I thought Jermaine did ok, and contributed more than any of our other attacking players. He got plenty of decent crosses in, but those in the middle did nothing with them.

The best chance we had fell to Crouch early on. His well struck volley striking the foot of the fortunate Tim Howard and bouncing to safety. I got a very bad feeling when that happened, and I was convinced it would be one of those days. Seeing Bellamy have a well worked goal disallowed shortly after only heightened that sense of foreboding. It was the correct decision, he was offside and I’ve got no complaints about it, but it did add to the feeling I had that this was not going to be a good afternoon for us.

Much has been made of how negative the blues were, but I didn’t really notice it to be honest. Certainly not in the first half anyway. Yes, they only had one up front, but they play that way virtually all the time, so there was nothing unusual about it. I didn’t think they were overly defensive, and I’d say that when they had a chance to come forward they did. It’s just that they aren’t very good, that’s all. They were always going to rely on a Johnson breakaway or a set piece, and you can’t blame them for that as it almost paid off for them.

I don’t see how we can criticise them for their tactics, as a team has to play to it’s strengths and their strength is being solid in defence and dangerous from set pieces. They were never going to come to Anfield and beat us by playing pretty little triangles in between our defenders. They got their tactics spot on, because they never looked like conceding.

They had played more or less the same way at Goodison, and won 3-0. In many ways we played better that day than we did this time. At the Pit we created numerous chances, hit the woodwork twice and were denied at least two excellent penalty shouts. We were undone by poor refereeing and poor defending that day. This time we defended well, one 2nd half aberration apart, but we stank going forward.

So what if they defended in numbers? Plenty of other sides have too, but we’ve seen them off. Chelsea, the mancs and Arsenal also have to deal with this every week, it’s the price you pay for being at the top. It’s not up to other teams to make it easy for us, it’s down to us to find the answers. Against the blues we never even looked like we knew what the question was let alone the answer.

A succession of crosses and high balls into the box yielded little reward, and played into the hands of Stubbs, who had an excellent game for them. As he gleefully pointed out afterwards, everything was in front of him and we only got in behind a couple of times all game. Bellamy should be destroying Stubbs, but he never got into the game. Crouch looked jaded and was often slow to react when loose balls were bouncing around the box, and Dirk produced the kind of performance that is now becoming something of an alarming norm. This time though he couldn’t salvage it with a goal or an assist, although he does have the excuse of having to play in an unaccustomed role on the left.

The longer the game went on, the deeper the blues sat and the harder we found it to get behind them. The only concern we had at the back was keeping an eye on Johnson. He’d miraculously been passed fit before the game, but whereas last time he benefited from an unfit Carra’s worst performance in years and some terrible goalkeeping from Reina, this time the two Liverpool men ensured Johnson draw a blank.

He had one sight of goal, after a terrible mistake from the strangely off colour Alonso, but first he was denied by a fantastic block from Carra, and Reina then kept out his second effort. Some demons left over from Goodison were excorised in the reds backline with that incident.

Carra made his intentions clear right from the off in this game, with a crunching challenge on Johnson early on, and I thought he was easily our best player on the day. Agger did ok as well, although I felt he was a little bit uncomfortable early on and didn’t quite look his assured self. He settled down midway through the first half, and along with Carra and Reina he was one of the only players to do themselves justice.

We’ve been on a great run of late, and this result isn’t the end of the world. It’s two points dropped, but at least it’s ended the unrealistic hopes some of us had at maybe catching the mancs. Their emphatic win at Spurs, coupled with our inability to break down a side we should beat easily, proves that we still have a long way to go.

I admit I was looking at the fixtures we had left, and comparing them with what United have, and I was thinking ‘maybe, just maybe’. This result was a big reality check. We need to be looking at holding off Arsenal, because catching the top two is going to be beyond us for this season. We still have to improve in certain areas, mainly out wide and up front.

My view on our strikers has changed slightly after this game. I still think they’re all very good players, and choosing between them is really difficult as they’ve all got different attributes. The problem is I don’t think any of them are really top class. We need a top class striker, who will strike fear into sides and win games like this one. The other top four sides all have one. Rooney, Drogba and Henry would all drastically improve our side, so therefore we need a player of that calibre too.

I’d be happy with any of Kuyt, Crouch or Bellamy partnering him, but we definitely need a really top forward this summer, along with one or two top, top widemen. Ronaldo and Rooney in our side would win us the title, so we need to find players of that standard. The problem is players like that are rare, and cost a lot of money. That’s where the new investors will have to step up to the plate I suppose.


Team: Reina; Finnan, Carragher, Agger, Riise; Pennant, Gerrard, Alonso; Kuyt, Bellamy (Fowler), Crouch: