Liverpool 0 Birmingham 0 - Prem (Sep 22 2007)

[TLW]

LIVERPOOL 0 Birmingham 0

Report by Dave Usher at Anfield

Scorer(s) - Half Time - 0 -0 Venue - Anfield Date - Sat 22 September 2007 Star Man - Javier Mascherano

 

 

 

 

Maybe we should have told the players this was a cup tie, as it’s the only way we seem to be able to beat Steve Bruce’s side. Just what is it about Birmingham at home? On paper it’s a game we should be winning easily, yet we always end up having problems with them. We’ve been unlucky in the past, Alonso’s last minute O.G. in a game we dominated was one example, but this wasn’t bad luck, it was just a rotten performance and Birmingham were good value for the draw as they were never in any trouble.

What happened to the side that trounced Derby County a few weeks ago? Ever since then, we’ve been woeful. Much of the blame for that is being heaped at the manager’s door for his resting of players. For me, there’s no doubt that Rafa needs to look at the decision to leave Torres out of this one and also the draw at Pompey last week. I can half understand why he was left out at Fratton Park, but I just don’t get his reasons for not picking him against Birmingham.

He said something about knowing that Birmingham would defend deep and there’d be no space in behind, so there was no point selecting him. So if every team we play sets up to defend deep, is there no point in picking Torres then? They were worried about Torres’ pace, so we decide not to pick him because they will set up to try and stop him? I don’t get it. We played right into their hands by going with Kuyt and Voronin. They’re too similar, offer no aerial threat and no threat in behind.

I bet if Steve Bruce could have picked any two of our strikers to face, that’s the combo he’d have gone for. To be fair to Birmingham, I thought their two centre backs played really, really well and dealt with everything that came into the box. I just think we gave them a helping hand by leaving out Torres. So for that, I blame Benitez.

However, it’s too easy to just put all our deficiencies down to rotation. It’s not Rafa’s fault that Gerrard is nursing a hangover from the international double header. It was the captain who chose to play two games in five days for England despite not having trained for three weeks. If he’d skipped those games then he’d have played at Fratton Park, and no doubt he’d have been in much better form than we’ve seen from him in the last two games, when he’s barely got out of second gear.

And is it Rafa’s fault that a team full of international players couldn’t manage to create a solitary chance of note against Birmingham? Of course Torres should have started, but what if he’d have been injured? You’d still expect the side that took the field to have more than enough to beat the brummies convincingly. The players deserve a lot of the blame for the three poor performances they’ve produced in the last seven days, but they seem to be escaping any blame as everyone jumps on the rotation bashing band wagon.

We knocked the ball about ok in front of Birmingham, but never looked like getting in behind. So what if there was no space for Torres to run into? He’s a player capable of beating a man in a tight space with his speed off the mark. Neither Kuyt nor Voronin can do that. We either tried to walk the ball through them, or slung in crosses that were swallowed up by their defenders.

By the time Torres took to the field, Birmingham were well and truly set in their defensive shape and growing in confidence by the minute. The most lively attacking player was Pennant, who did ok against his old club and managed to get some crosses in that didn’t really come to anything. Babel did very little, and Gerrard was largely ineffectual.

We didn’t ever really look like we would find a breakthrough, and as the game wore on the threat of losing something on the counter attack began to rear it’s ugly head. Reina’s goal was never seriously threatened, but they did have some promising situations that could have proved costly had they had more quality.

Our back four deserve credit, as they’ve kept yet another clean sheet and did it fairly comfortably. The distribution from the back wasn’t the best though, and we missed Agger’s ability to carry the ball forward. Riise had an ok first half, but was terrible after the break.

I thought Arbeloa did ok, and I would have probably given him the star man had it not been for Mascherano. I don’t actually think the Chief played that well, as he gave the ball away a few times with some unusually sloppy passing. But the chasing, harrying and general will to win he showed was admirable and made him stand out above the rest.

Let’s not sugarcoat it, we were fucking awful once again, and the feelgood factor we had after hammering Derby is well and truly gone now. There’s been far too many echoes of last season in the past week, and although we’re still unbeaten I see no reason to celebrate that fact as dropping two points at home to Birmingham feels like a defeat.

We can’t make up for this, as no matter what results we get from now on, we’ll always be looking back at these two points we threw away and wonder if they are going to prove costly. The mancs’ bad start had given us a good chance to build up a bit of a lead over them, but we’ve blown that now. Of course there’s a long way to go, but this result is just so, so, so depressing. It was the perfect opportunity to get back to winning ways after two poor displays, and we blew it.

It was just a horrible game, played out in a shit atmosphere. The singing section was introduced with games like this in mind, yet can anyone notice a difference between this and last season? The atmosphere was as dire as the performance, and the travelling fans made themselves heard way more than the Kop did.

A miserable day, capping a miserable week. The players need to pull their fingers out, and Rafa needs to stop fucking about and play his best players in the league. This year is a really good opportunity for us to do something, but already we’re seeing signs that lessons of the past have not been learnt, and that maybe we still don’t have the required quality in attacking positions.

Team: Reina; Arbeloa, Carragher, Hyypia, Riise; Pennant (Finnan), Gerrard, Mascherano, Babel (Torres); Kuyt, Voronin (Crouch):