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LIVERPOOL 0 Stoke City 0 Report by Dave Usher at Anfield Scorer(s) – Half Time - 0-0 Venue - Anfield Date - Sat 20 September 2008 Star Man – Alvaro Arbeloa What a difference a week makes. From the euphoria and optimism of a stirring 2-1 win over the defending champions, to the depths of frustration following a sadly predictable 0-0 with one of the relegation favourites. That’s modern day Liverpool for you though, whenever we put ourselves in a position to challenge, we fuck it up. We’ve been doing it for years. It’s too early to say how costly this result will prove to be, but we can’t afford too many more like it. Taken in isolation, this isn’t a big deal. All the top sides will drop points to teams in the lower reaches, in fact they have already. Newcastle have been a joke this season, but they got a draw at Old Trafford. Spurs have been even worse, but drew with Chelsea, and Arsenal slipped up to Fulham. It happens, and even though it’s desperately disappointing I’d rather have dropped two points in this game than last week. Of course I’d prefer to have won both, and having done the ‘hard’ part last week I fully expected we’d be celebrating six points from these two fixtures. Four points from the two games isn’t the end of the world, but for the rest of the season it’s going to be difficult not to look back on these two points and say ‘if only we’d beaten Stoke at home’. It’s a terrible result, there’s no escaping that. But strangely I don’t feel too despondent about it. In fact, I felt a lot worse after the goalless draw we got at Villa Park. On paper a point away at Villa is much better than a point at home to Stoke. But we were really poor against Villa and didn’t even look as though we were trying to win the game. I thought we played quite well against Stoke and were a bit unlucky. We’ve played worse and won this season, four times in fact. We were poor away at Sunderland but won. We were poor at home to Boro and Liege but won, and we were poor for long periods of the Marseille game but won. In fact, the only time we have played well this season was last week against the mancs. So although we deserved to beat Stoke and produced some of our best football of the season, we can’t complain too much about fortune not being on our side given how much we had ridden our luck in previous games. Too often in the past we have seen games like this, where the opposition got everyone behind the ball and we couldn’t break them down. In fact, go back to this point last season and we were doing the very same thing against Birmingham. I even mentioned in the match preview how often we seem to drop points to newly promoted/about to be relegated sides. We shouldn’t be surprised by this result really, although I do think this game was a little different. Usually in this type of game, you can tell early on that it’s going to be a struggle. Too often we don’t move the ball around quickly enough and get bogged down trying to attack through the centre. Take that game against Birmingham last season as a classic example. We were very poor that day, and never looked like scoring. I never had that feeling against Stoke, I thought we generally did most things right but were let down by our finishing, long range shooting and our absolutely fucking awful set pieces. The rest of our play was top notch. Defensively we were untroubled, admittedly in part due to Stoke’s complete lack of ambition. In midfield we moved the ball around very well and switched the play from side to side looking for openings, and didn’t get too bogged down in the middle. The full backs got forward to give us extra options out wide, and on the whole I thought the performance was good. The main problem was that our strikers didn’t do their jobs, and Gerrard and Alonso didn’t have their shooting boots on. We created so many openings for shots from the edge of the box, but rarely managed to hit the target. Keane had two good chances from well worked moves, but each time he hit it straight at the keeper. Maybe he was trying to be too precise due to a lack of confidence? If he’d just gone for power he may have had more success, but then having swung and missed at two last week I can’t blame him for just ensuring he got good contact and directed it on target. Torres was just as guilty. He put a header wide, blasted one against the head of a defender and then put another high over the bar in the last minute. On another day, one of those would have gone in and we’d have notched up the three points. This is why I’m not too downhearted about the result, even if I am seriously frustrated about it. This time last year Rafa had left Torres out of that Birmingham game, and been roundly hammered for it. His argument was that even had Torres played there’s no guarantee we would have won. Whilst that is true up to a point – this game is proof of that – there is no question that Torres’ presence gives us a greater chance of victory, and on this occasion I don’t think there was much wrong with Rafa’s team selection. Personally I’d have started Babel instead of Kuyt, and given the way the game was going I’d probably have brought Yossi on sooner, but I think the team Rafa put on the field basically did everything he would have wanted from them – other than score. Actually, that’s not quite true. They did score, and I don’t think anyone inside Anfield knew why it had been ruled out. I certainly didn’t have a clue, and neither did anyone sat around me. There were only three possible reasons that I could see; 1) The free kick was indirect. 2) It was offside or 3) There was a foul in the box I thought it must have been the third option, simply because it couldn’t have been an indirect free-kick because Stoke restarted the game with a free-kick inside the box. I didn’t think it could have been offside as it clearly went straight in without anyone touching it, so I thought there must have been a foul. It was only after the game that I learned it had been ruled out for offside. Rafa claimed the ref made the decision, not the linesman. I didn’t see a flag go up, so it does seem that way. If there was no flag, then the ref is fucking bang out of order disallowing it. If there was a flag, then the linesman was wrong but shit happens. I don’t want to dwell on it too much anyway, as we still had 87 minutes to find a way through. Still, an early goal in these games makes all the difference, and had that stood I reckon we could have been looking at a repeat of the Derby County game last season. Ironically, that started with a goal from Alonso that was more or less identical to the one Gerrard saw ruled out. I really don’t like this ref anyway, he’s fucking awful. He was in charge of the games with Reading last season when Torres was getting the shit kicked out of him with no protection at all. But then again, as I said in the United report last week, Howard Webb is the best ref we have and even he’s shite. You have to expect that the officials are going to be bad these days, if they’re not it’s a bonus. It wasn’t just that disallowed goal that wound me up. His attitude towards Stoke’s time wasting was ridiculous. I don’t blame them for time wasting, it’s the sensible thing to do in their position. What angered me was that the referee actually did a better job of wasting time than they did. In the last couple of minutes there were three ludicrous examples of this. First, they tried to take a free-kick two yards away from where the offence took place. Instead of letting it go (the incident was in their half so it hardly mattered if they nicked a couple of yards), he made a big deal of stopping the play, running over and moving the ball back. Next, they had a free-kick on the edge of our box. We’re just wanting them to get on with it, but as they’re about to take it, over comes the ref and stops them. Why? So he could move the ball back about six fucking inches. Jesus wept. Finally, Fuller lashed out at Carragher in the corner. We get the free-kick, Carra tries to take it quickly but oh no, over comes Marriner, slow as you like, and books the Stoke forward. It wasn’t the fact he yellow carded him that pissed me off, it was the casual, nonchalant manner he did it. You know when you arrive at the train station and the train is already there, and you go to the ticket office to buy your ticket only for the guy to take fucking ages counting out your change. You’re thinking, for fucks sake hurry up my train is here you stupid dozy cunt. That’s Andre Marriner that is. Having said all that, he could have added on ten minutes and we probably wouldn’t have scored, as it was just one of those days. On another day, we’d have won handsomely. Torres and Keane would have put their chances away, or Gerrard and Alonso would have banged one in from the edge of the box. That was one of the most frustrating things for me, as we worked so many good shooting situations from 25 yards but aside from one brilliant strike from Alonso in the first half, Sorensen wasn’t really tested. Even worse than our long range shooting though were our corners. We are definitely the worst team in the league when it comes to corners. Our delivery isn’t the best, but it isn’t just down to that. We don’t seem to attack the ball very well and we hardly ever look like scoring from them. If we sorted that out it would go a long way towards helping us make a title challenge. Being able to get ‘cheap’ goals from set-pieces is a fantastic weapon to have. When Chelsea won the league twice in succession under Mourinho, a phenomenal amount of their goals came from set-pieces. Most of the mancs’ goals against us in the last ten years or so have come from set-pieces, but we hardly ever seem to get goals from corners. It’s seriously irritating. We had about twenty corners against Stoke and never threatened even once (apart from one that was cut back to Alonso on the edge of the box for a shot). Not good enough, and there’s no excuse as it’s something we could work on in training. Picking a star man was difficult, because although I thought most of the side played well, no-one really stood out. I’m going for Arbeloa, as I thought he had another good game and got forward well. Alonso and Gerrard played well too, and Carragher had another good game. We need to get the forwards firing quickly though, as generally we seem to be defending quite well but we are not scoring enough goals. Torres doesn’t look fit, and Keane desperately needs a goal. On the plus side, I like Riera and when he gets himself to full fitness he could be a real asset. I think it’s time to get Babel in the starting line up for a run of games now, just to see what he can do. Next week it’s the derby, and a win there will wipe out the sense of disappointment we’re all feeling now. We can’t get these two points back though, regardless of how many other games we win. I just hope we don’t live to regret this game come May. Team: Reina; Arbeloa, Skrtel, Carragher, Dossena; Kuyt, Gerrard, Alonso, Riera (Babel); Torres, Keane (Benayoun):

and Paul was right Cant remember the full details paul perhaps you could PM how much I owe and where it goes. Really thought Agger and Sktrel would be the first choice start of this season but you were right.