Preview
I’m not the only one to have the feeling that we may well get a draw tonight. Liverpool have recently lost to Boro and drawn with Hull, Stoke and Fulham so we must surely be in with our best chance for years of getting a point at Anfield. We’ve hardly had a game recently while they’ve been very busy in Europe and on the domestic front so we’ll have an advantage there at least. Torres is out but more crucially Gerrard should be in, while for us Cisse should return. It’s academic really but anything less than a victory will put the final nail in the coffin of their title aspirations so they should be really going for it. I’m going for 1-1.

The Match
I got the line-up just before I set off down my local to watch the game on the telly and Cisse was on the bench with Kenwyne alone up front again. As usual there was very little interest in the football from the patrons of the Pavilion in Wood Lane so I got a Fosters and took a comfortable spot. What proved to be our best chance of the game came after three minutes or so when Kenwyne outwitted and outpaced two defenders near the half-way line and raced towards goal only for Reina to save his shot quite comfortably. Throughout the first half we absorbed a lot of Liverpool pressure, especially from Mascherano down the right, but we looked comfortable enough in defence and Fulop made a great save from a deflected Riera shot after half an hour or so. We were good value for 0-0 at the break and our passing and movement had been fine.

We hardly got a sniff in the second half and we started to look vulnerable down the left flank too with Riera looking very sharp. It was from his cross after he’d taken Ben Haim to the cleaners that Gerrard headed back across goal for Ngog to score his first goal seven minutes into the half. I then discovered that the young guy sitting on my left, who’d appeared to show little interest in the match until that point, was a Liverpool fan. I couldn’t see us coming back after that but at least Cisse with his bright red mini-Mohawk came on ten minutes later as we went 4-4-2 to try and get something back. A few minutes later Benayoun put it way beyond us as he capitalized on a rare error by Fulop to get their second. Murphy replaced Kenwyne with fifteen minutes to go but we were looking wobbly and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a third Liverpool goal. I’d finished my pint with ten minutes left and decided to hurry home in the pouring rain to catch the dying moments of the game on Century Radio. So, it ended 2-0 and we couldn’t argue with that – not until we’d drunk much more at any rate - as Liverpool had dominated the second half. So, we move on to Saturday and Spurs at home seem a much less daunting prospect than Liverpool away.

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