After some good performances of late, nothing went my way today from the moment I woke up. Firstly, I’d eaten all the bacon when drunk the night before, so we couldn’t have a cooked breakfast.

Secondly, on arrival in Liverpool, we had to deal with a disrupted back four as Mensah, naturally, picked up a niggle against Birmingham and needs all of the Kings horses and men to put him back together again, whilst Hutton was just ‘not fit’ in less dramatic manner. This pushed Ferdinand into the middle with Turner. In came Bardsley at right back, with Richardson dropped back to left back, along with Gordon between the sticks.

The midfield saw the return of Cattermole and Cana axis, with Henderson and Malbranque on the right and left wing respectively. Campbell and Bent made up the attack and with nothing to lose 4-4-2 was definitely the best set up.

Any hopes of a despondent Liverpool struggling to find form, were quickly quashed when in the first minute the Scousers nearly went ahead only for Gordon to come to the rescue. The respite was brief, however, as Torres scored a wonder goal on three minutes after turning Turner inside out to place the ball in the top left corner with aplomb.

This triggered no Sunderland response at all and playing with the freedom of an early lead, we simply couldn’t handle the game Liverpool were playing as shot after shot rained in on Gordon’s goal. The defence seemed lost without Mensah and the midfield was dragged into the defence as we went 4-5-1.

It was only a matter of time until the second goal came and half an hour later Johnson evaded Malbranque to hit an unstoppable deflected 25 yard shot past Gordon. He was given all the space in the world to get the shot away which must have left Bruce pretty worried as well as pissed off.

We never really challenged at all in the first half, so the only way was up after the first 45 minutes which saw us utterly outplayed.

The second period started just as the first ended, the only difference being that Da Silva replaced Cattermole, pushing Richardson into the midfield. This did nothing to halt Liverpool’s progress as they dominated proceedings from the off. Then Malbranque came off for Zenden and he created the only real decent shot and save we had.

Before that though Liverpool had hit the post, Maxi Rodriguez had forced a great fingertip save from Gordon and many other efforts had fizzed wide. Torres scored his second on the hour mark, Johnson passing the ball inside the area which cut straight through the defence, Torres turned and slickly slipped the ball past Gordon.

Liverpool may have put in one of their best – if not the best – performances of the season, but we were as poor as they were good, not even managing to conjure up any real possession and penetration. The lack of creativity in the midfield was exposed as well as the not-so-secret fragility of our shite defence without Mensah.

Hopefully we’ll pull away from any lingering fears of relegation by picking up points against West Ham, Hull, Burnley and Wolves, but if we repeat this type of performance it’s going to be a pretty crap end to the season.

Final Score: 0-3

ALS Man of the Match: Erm, answers on a postcard, as they used to say

Jonothan Scollen

ALS Books click here