Saturday, February 23, 2008

Liverpool 3-2 Middlesbrough

Liverpool seem to have been conceding uncharacteristically many goals of late, with Boro just the latest in a line of sides to score twice at Anfield this year (H&W and Barnsley being others). I think it's definitely true to say that we've missed long-term injury victim Agger but, while Hyypia has won plaudits for the way he's played at 34, even Carragher has come in for criticism from some sections of the fans. Well, today with Carragher suspended and Skrtel - on the road back from injury - only fit enough for the bench, we were forced to partner Hyypia with Arbeloa and it showed when the defence went missing, allowing Tuncay to score an early opener.

Thankfully, if our defence has been more porous than usual, the addition of Torres has given us the kind of attacking threat we haven't had up front since the days of Michael Owen. First he capitalised on a poor backwards header by Arca to slot in an equalizer then, just a minute later, scored a fine second from 25 yards. Another gift, due to confusion between Wheater and Schwarzer, allowed Torres to wrap up his first PL hat-trick (following a league cup one against Reading) and seemingly make the points safe. In fact, some more shaky defending allowed Downing to make the last ten minutes or so potentially nervous, but the sending off of Aliadiere minutes later ensured that even we couldn't throw away our 3-2 lead. Here's hoping we have Agger and Skrtel back as soon as possible though.

2 comments:

  1. (Off-topic, there's an article on lotteries and why there are fair by P Stone in the J of Polit Phil of 2007; just wanted to make sure you spotted it, you probably have.)

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  2. Anonymous8:58 am

    Although I know Torres has had a bit of injury trouble this season, i do think Raffa's rotation policy is ill applied to players like Torres, firstly because he's a goal-scorring machine, and secondly because he looks like a player that hits his peak when he plays a lot back to back.

    But it doesn't matter because Raffa will be gone at the end of the season, what with Liverpool being out of both cups, out of the title race, unlikely to win the Champions league and therefore possibly not even qualifying next season.

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