Liverpool v Man Utd (25/10/09)

[dave u]

He's Ecuadorian. I knew I'd seen him in a yellow kit and assumed it was Colombia.

[Ted]

Racist.

[Anubis]

EDIT : Somebody will take that the wrong way.

[ratcatcher]

He's Ecuadorian. Cant believe some rate that cross come shot that hit the bar.

[RedKnight]

I thought he was Spanish.

[ratcatcher]

Ollie Kays' effort from TOL

 

Liverpool show signs of life with victory over Manchester United | Premier League - Times Online

 

 

Liverpool show signs of life with victory over Manchester United

Liverpool 2 Manchester United 0

 

(Bradley Ormesher)

Oliver Kay, Football Correspondent

55 Comments

Recommend? (34)

For the second time in five days, the strains of Rodgers and Hammerstein reverberated around this famous old ground, but this time the Liverpool supporters’ mournful tone gave way to one of euphoric celebration.

 

On days such as this, when it all comes together, nobody at Liverpool walks alone, least of all Rafael Benítez. The ones who walked alone were in Manchester United shirts: Nemanja Vidic, sent off for the third time in as many encounters against the Merseyside club; Gary Neville, raging against the home crowd from his seat on the bench; Michael Owen, for whom this was hardly the warmest of homecomings; all of them, in fact, as they made their way to the dressing room to face the wrath of Sir Alex Ferguson.

 

What a difference a goal makes — and what a difference it makes when Liverpool have, in Fernando Torres, a world-class forward who is capable of forcing that kind of breakthrough. Torres was absent through injury when his team suffered the defeats by Sunderland and Lyons that turned an earlier blip into a full-blown crisis, but, after taking a pain-killing injection to his groin before facing the old enemy, he more than made his presence felt yesterday, which was just as well, given that Steven Gerrard was missing through a groin injury of his own.

 

As Benítez put it afterwards: “Sometimes 80 per cent of Torres can make a difference.” That difference was made in the 65th minute. At that point the game was on a knife edge and Liverpool were still on the critical list. But when Yossi Benayoun stepped infield and threaded a perfect ball behind United’s two central defenders, Torres, leaving Rio Ferdinand in his wake, kept his feet and his head long enough to give Liverpool a lead that they did not dare to let go.

 

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What a player Torres is. Ferguson must rue the day that, after pursuing him for the previous three summers, he passed up the opportunity to sign him in 2007 on the basis that the forward, then at Atlético Madrid, was not composed enough in front of goal. United have won two league titles and reached two Champions League finals since then, but, every time Benítez’s record in the transfer market is cast in an unflattering light against Ferguson’s, that £20.2 million deal is worth considering.

 

After a week in which his regime has been questioned like never before — although not within the club, where his relationship with the board is infinitely healthier than two years ago — Benítez was entitled to enjoy this. If the nightmare scenario for him was of a winning goal for United from Michael Owen, the player he sold to Real Madrid in one of his first acts as Liverpool manager and then neglected to re-sign this summer, the reality was of a well-earned victory that was embellished in stoppage time by David Ngog, Torres’s inexperienced understudy. That Ngog’s goal was set up by Lucas Leiva, Anfield’s butt of derision, will only have heightened the manager’s satisfaction.

 

Lucas has personified Liverpool’s problems, struggling to fill the void left by Xabi Alonso’s departure to Real Madrid, but here he embodied their battle to overcome adversity.

 

He is nobody’s idea of a Brazilian footballer — and how novel a sight it was to see Lucas and Javier Mascherano, Brazil and Argentina internationals respectively, outclassed for a period in the first half by Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes, two Englishmen — but, significantly, he fought harder than anyone in that midfield.

 

It seemed as if Liverpool wanted victory more. Too many of United’s players failed to engage with the game — Carrick, Ryan Giggs, the infuriating Dimitar Berbatov, even Wayne Rooney to a far lesser extent — whereas Liverpool, with Jamie Carragher, Daniel Agger and Lucas scrapping for every ball, showed a desire to go the extra mile in search of the victory they craved. No, make that the victory they needed.

 

Ferguson complained afterwards about his team’s lack of penetration. He was brave to do so, since it gave rise to all manner of awkward questions. The dissenting grumbles had been kept to a minimum in the previous 11 matches — ten wins and one draw since that surprise defeat by Burnley in the opening week of the season — but they do not look the same side without Cristiano Ronaldo.

 

The exception to United’s malaise for much of the game was Vidic, who seemed determined to prove a point after a couple of chastening experiences against Liverpool last season. For the most part, he and Ferdinand handled Torres extremely well, while blocking and intercepting everything else that came their way, but, as the game drifted away from his team, Vidic was harshly booked for a foul on Torres — perhaps the least of several robust challenges to that point — and then sent off in the 89th minute for desperately grappling with Dirk Kuyt as the forward ran clear. Déjà vu.

 

Ferguson’s complaint was that Liverpool should already have been a man short. He was right. Two minutes earlier Owen, racing on to Rooney’s pass, had got the wrong side of Carragher and was brought down just outside the penalty area. It was, as the rules say, the denial of an obvious goalscoring opportunity — leaving aside any discussion of whether the Owen of 2009 would have taken it — but Andre Marriner, who was otherwise excellent, showed only a yellow card for the Liverpool defender.

 

Liverpool did have a man sent off in stoppage time, with Mascherano picking up a second booking for an absurdly overcommitted challenge on Edwin van der Sar, but, as the clock ticked down, with nails bitten down to the quick, Lucas strode clear and, as the United defence opened up in front of him, he put in Ngog.

 

The young forward is no Torres, but he, too, kept his nerve and, as he rolled the ball past Van der Sar, the storm over Anfield made way for a golden sky. Crisis over.

 

Liverpool (4-4-2): J M Reina 6, G Johnson 7, J Carragher 8, D Agger 8, E Insúa 5 - Y Benayoun 7 (sub: M Skrtel, 90min), J Mascherano 6, Lucas Leiva 7, F Aurélio 6 - D Kuyt 6, F Torres 7 (sub: D Ngog, 81). Substitutes not used: D Cavalieri, P Degen, J Spearing, R Babel, A Voronin. Booked: Carragher, Mascherano. Sent off: Mascherano.

 

Manchester United (4-4-2): E van der Sar 6 - J O’Shea 6, R Ferdinand 6, N Vidic 7, P Evra 6 - L A Valencia 6, M Carrick 5, P Scholes 7 (sub: Nani, 74), R Giggs 5 - W Rooney 6, D Berbatov 5 (sub: M Owen, 74). Substitutes not used: B Foster, G Neville, J Evans, Fábio Da Silva, Anderson. Booked: Vidic, Evra, Berbatov. Sent off: Berbatov.

 

Referee: A Marriner Attendance: 44,188

[sh#t waffle]

He's Ecuadorian. I knew I'd seen him in a yellow kit and assumed it was Colombia.

 

It's pronounced 'East Anglian', Dave.

[SpeedyG]

I liked this piece from Tony Barret.

 

Sami Hyypia leads the plaudits for refocused Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher

Tony Barrett

 

The scouting report delivered by Franco Baldini, Fabio Capello’s most trusted lieutenant, detailing his verdict on Liverpool’s victory over Manchester United must have made for interesting reading.

 

“English centre back of proven international quality back to his very best,” it could easily have read. “Won numerous tackles, dominated aerially, read the game well and led his team by example. Not unduly troubled by one of Europe’s finest forwards. Arguably the best player on the pitch on the day.”

 

Unfortunately for Capello and, equally regrettably for his England team, the central defender in question was not Rio Ferdinand, who endured the latest in a worryingly long line of substandard performances in the colours of club or country. It was Jamie Carragher, a player who has long since eschewed the international scene to prolong his ability to excel for Liverpool. On Sunday’s form, England’s loss is undoubtedly Liverpool’s gain.

An uncharacteristic blip had affected the introspective and self-critical Carragher to such an extent that the 31-year-old underwent a very public dark night of the soul, regularly admitting to the media that his performances needed to improve vastly, a brutal honesty that unwittingly fuelled the view that Liverpool’s defensive rock was crumbling.

 

If the vultures had been circling, though, hoping to prey on the carcass of a brilliant career, his outstanding display against the champions left their lust for blood unquenched.

 

Such an emphatic vindication of his talent had not been unexpected by those who know the defender best — Carragher’s father popped his head into the Anfield press room after the match to inquire politely about what the assembled journalists were “going to write about now” — but the man himself slipped away quietly, content in the knowledge that his reputation had been restored.

 

Sami Hyypia, who shared central defensive duties with Carragher for several years before moving to Bayer Leverkusen in the summer, was in the crowd at Anfield on Sunday and he was in no way surprised to see his former team-mate excel alongside Daniel Agger.

 

“Carra had a cracking game, especially in the final stages of the match when United were pressing,” Hyypia said. “He was very solid and it was great to see him play this way, but I have always known that he is a strong character. Hopefully, now he can keep playing like this in the games to come because the matches do not exactly get any easier from here.

 

“Arsenal and Fulham are important games also and Liverpool will want to build on their performance against United because their victory will not be quite so important if they don’t.

 

“There are times when you are bound to get criticism as a player and it can be tough. Sometimes it can happen far too quickly, if you play just one bad game, and if you play a cracking game, then you are the best in the world.

 

“Players have to remember this and Carra is mentally strong. No one is expecting him to run the length of the field and smash the ball into the back of the net, but he is a very solid defender and an important part of the Liverpool team.”

 

It was all a far cry from a month ago when a narrow victory over West Ham United at Upton Park, during which Carragher conceded a penalty, had prompted suggestions that the days of the Merseyside club’s longest-serving player might have been numbered.

 

The recall of the calm and assured Agger in place of Martin Skrtel, who has been struggling for form and confidence undoubtedly assisted Carragher, as did a tactically disciplined display from Glen Johnson at right back.

 

“Jamie played well,” Rafael Benítez, the Liverpool manager, said. “He had been having a difficult time, but the only thing to do in such a situation is to try again and try again. He proved that he is a good centre back and not at the end of his career just yet.”

[Guest simon]

[A_S]

That was quite simply ace! Had to stay up until 1am for kick-off (not taking the chance to record it and watch in the morning, too big a game!), then given the way the end panned out, by 3am I was fucking buzzing but also shattered at the same time. Had to be at work at 6am but ended up being 7am.....with my reds scarf on of course. Oh well!

 

What a fucking result, though. Takes all the pressure off to win on Wednesday night now, which is good, considering it won't be a first XI playing. Another good chance to get some time into the 2nd stringers to stretch the little 'depth' we seem to have in the squad at the moment.

 

And Torres is just simply unbelievable. (Yes folks, you heard it here first!)

[Paul]

A clip you might not have seen. Nando Post Match. Mentions he had to shoot near post because the pain in his groin meant he couldn't shoot for the far post. LEGEND.

 

PartOfTheGame.Tv

 

Ha, ha, ha!!! Alan Kennedy and his "near post goal" - leg.

[acks]

Ha, ha, ha!!! Alan Kennedy and his "near post goal" - leg.

 

It's funny when Alan talks about his goal in the Cup Final and everybody groans like they've just heard it for the 1,195th time!

[RedinSweden]

That interview is ace. Torres smile is just the best. That's it, I'm leaving my missus.

 

Dave, easy mistake to make, they all look the same these south americans.

[Paul]

That interview is ace. Torres smile is just the best. That's it, I'm leaving my missus.

 

Dave, easy mistake to make, they all look the same these south americans.

 

Indeed it is. His English is noticeably more fluent this season, too. He looks very settled in England with us, which is nice for such a coveted player. It would explain why there haven't been too many stories linking him with a move away - no rumblings from either him or his agent to fuel them.

[acks]

Good compilation of the match

 

YouTube - Liverpool Highlights vs Manchester United - Compilation

[The Special One]

I think if his agent did that he'd get fired.

[The Special One]

Good compilation of the match

 

YouTube - Liverpool Highlights vs Manchester United - Compilation

 

Compilations should not be more than a minute and a half long.

Match compilations should be about 30 secs. It's so tedious watching these kind of videos regardless of the effort the person put in to make them. I lose interest by the 15th second when the second stanza of dramatic music starts and I spot that the whole thing is about 1946 minutes long.

[RedinSweden]

Compilations should not be more than a minute and a half long.

Match compilations should be about 30 secs. It's so tedious watching these kind of videos regardless of the effort the person put in to make them. I lose interest by the 15th second when the second stanza of dramatic music starts and I spot that the whole thing is about 1946 minutes long.

 

Kids of today eh?

 

Tsk.