Arsenal 1 Liverpool 1 - CL QF 1st Leg (Apr 2 2008)

[TLW]

Arsenal 1 LIVERPOOL 1

Report by Mark Ingram at the Emirates

Scorer(s) – Dirk Kuyt Half Time - 1-1 Venue - The Emirates Stadium Date - Wed 2 April 2008 Star Man – Dirk Kuyt

 

 

 

Yes ok we were lucky. Very lucky indeed in fact. 1-1 probably flatters us a bit but the advantage to be taken into the second leg could not be any more slim, if it had been eating celery and throwing up after every meal. The game was always going to be a very cagey affair. There was too much at stake for Arsenal in terms of the away goal, so they were never going to fly into the opposition side like they often do in the premier league. Rafa knows his Euro onions and he knows how much it pays to be cagey away from home.

Many people claim that the away goal rule dictates that teams will immediately play more conservatively throughout the tie, which makes the latter stages of the Champions League more tedious to watch for the neutral party. I’d challenge this view on two counts.

Firstly, it certainly starts things off in a cagey manner and in some cases this can manifest itself as an overly paranoid defence fest that really is dull to watch for all parties, let alone the neutral. However, when the first goal is scored, it opens things up immediately and it makes things that much more interesting when the next goal counts double for the away team.

Secondly, balls to the neutral, this is about fans of the clubs involved and it is incredibly tense exciting stuff that we love to watch, although no one can ever claim that it’s easy to do so.

The game was absorbing from start to finish without being full of fancy dan manoeuvres for Mr. Neutral to applaud. Rafa set the team up as he has done consistently for the last month or so with Mascherano re-claiming his place beside Alonso holding the midfield. Carragher was at right back which always worries me enormously, purely because he’s been the best centre half in Champions League football over the last few years and he’s the master at bums against the wall defending which is always going to be needed at times in Europe.

The opening goal came from a corner which is annoying in itself, but it was nodded in by a completely unchallenged Adebayor on the six yard line. Why was no one marking the tallest man on the field? and is that really the same bloke that lumbered around for Monaco at Anfield a few years back looking more awkward than Frank Lampard in an Anorexics Anonymous meeting?

The noise in the stadium rose considerably but within minutes it was back to the days of the Highbury Library when Gerrard skinned Flamini and Toure, avoiding the temptation to take an easy dive when he got a tap and slid a menacing ball across the six yard box for everyone’s favourite Dutchman to poke in to the net. The travelling fans went mental as the gooners looked on in utter disbelief.

It was a classy piece of work from the Liverpool skipper, showing yet again that he gets his balls out in the big games and makes decent opposition players look very ordinary indeed.

I love it when Dirk Kuyt scores. I love it on so many different levels, but most of all I love it for Dirk, himself. Yes, ok, if we’re being honest here, he’s not what you’d call a great footballer and no one would ever put him in to an all star eleven. But Rafa has identified the need for workhorses like Dirk to enable the superstars to do their thing.

I’ll openly admit to being just as frustrated with him at times this season but you simply can’t argue with his work rate and you also can’t argue with his goals against Inter and now Arsenal.

In the words of my brother in the form of a text half an hour after another text had called him all the names under the sun during the Inter Milan home leg: ‘Dirk, mate, I take it all back’ I wonder how many people have uttered these words in the last month.

The rest of the game was just pure torture. I hate to think how many times I checked the time and I’m in need of some severe fingernail replacement surgery today after they took over an hours worth of proper munching.

The remainder of the game focuses purely around two major incidents which will be the major talking points for the papers until next Tuesday’s game. So let us deal with these talking points shall we?

Firstly, the penalty claim. At the time I naturally thought he’d dived, but I was looking at their feet and there wasn’t any contact. TV replays clearly show he tugged him back and, as a modern day footballer does, he went down. It’s difficult to argue anything other than a penalty and you’d have to say that over 80% of the idiots that ref the domestic league would have given that penalty, straight away.

We were very lucky.

Secondly the ridiculous Bendtner incident on the goal line where by not jumping in the air he not only proceeded to actively interfere with play in an offside position but he actually stopped the ball from rolling into the net.

At the time, I didn’t know what the hell was going on and for a bizarre second I thought I was actually looking at their goal mouth and they were defending our attack. Then I snapped back into reality and realised that I’d just witnessed the most ridiculous display of malco-ordination I’d ever seen.

The replay actually made me laugh out loud. What the hell was he doing? No wonder Adebayor wanted to hit him not so long ago. What a donkey.

That was far more lucky than the penalty incident and the two together mean that yes, everyone, we should hold our hands up and freely admit that we are a lucky bunch of buggers.

Since the game, I’ve heard the usual crap from other fans of other clubs claiming that the ref was scouse and that Rafa’s tactical genius is actually just a massive amount of luck. Fools, the lot of them. Yes we were lucky, and yes we’ve been lucky before in this competition, but there are plenty of times that we’ve not been lucky. Inzaghi scoring with his arse wasn’t very lucky for us in the final last year.

I mean how far do we want to go with this ‘you’re just lucky’ rubbish? Yes we’re lucky the ref didn’t give a penner, we’re lucky we’re not Everton fans, we’re lucky we’re not Dale Winton (apologies if you’re reading, Dale), we’re all lucky that when our dad’s swimmers gave it their all a few years back, that ours was the one to sneak in first.

I can handle being a bit lucky. I just hope we can stay lucky for the next four Champions league games this season.

In some ways the score line makes it difficult for the second leg because there’s a temptation to defend for 90 minutes. If we do that against this Arsenal team then our luck is sure to run out. Rafa’s men will need to play extremely well on Tuesday to get through, this tie is very finely balanced and the Gunners will be all guns a blazing that’s for sure.

Star man was easily Dirk Kuyt, although it was a decent team performance with the possible exception of Ryan Babel who irritated me intensly with his nervous cluelessness. He has days when you think he’s going to be Thierry Henry but them he has days like this when he’s got these rabbit in the headlight eyes on and he just doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing.

Saturday’s game seems almost irrelevant now in comparison, but that’s far from the truth. Another draw would do the trick. Crossed fingers then will take another chewing on Tuesday as the game that will end either our season or theirs takes place.


Team: Reina; Carragher, Skrtel, Hyypia, Aurelio; Alonso (Lucas), Mascherano; Kuyt, Gerrard, Babel (Benayoun); Torres (Voronin):