Pic: Dave Rawcliffe-Propaganda
EVEN when we win ugly, it’s beautiful.
Yes, the 2-1 win against Sunderland was an undeniably nervous one, but in many respects that shouldn’t have come as any surprise. Liverpool have just come off the back of a run of five league games, four of them away from Anfield and the last three in succession on our travels.
More than a month had passed since we last kicked a ball at home. The symbiotic union of rampant, partisan, ‘We Are Liverpool’ backing-tracked support, coupled up to the carefree attack-driven football we’ve recently displayed on the pitches of West London, Hampshire, Salford and South Wales against Fulham, Southampton, Manchester United and Cardiff City has been irresistibly compelling. Four away wins on the spin, plundering 15 goals against, in the main at least, opposing sides that felt they could compete with us within the realms of the noble arts of the fluid passing variety of the game.
Last night, Sunderland were never going to be a side that set itself up in a manner that suits the way we play. They were never going to attempt what the last visitors to Anfield did. We were never going to see a repeat of the 4-3 against Swansea City. Not once do I remember Swansea forming a dense eight-man defensive line when they lost possession in the way that Sunderland did as they shaped up in a deep-lying 8-1-1 formation at times.
I’m by no means knocking Sunderland’s first-half defensive tactics here, as it was effective and restricted us to pot shots from distance for pretty much the entirety of the first half. For a team mired in the bottom three as we fast approach April, it was a totally understandable course of action. It was a new test for the title-chasing Tricky Reds. And, when push comes to shove, we passed it. Every title-winning side navigates their way through games like this, those matches on the fixture list that look like the need to break sweat will be minimal when in fact the opposite is true.
The beautiful way we did ugly came in the way we took our goals. Steven Gerrard’s free kick arrowing its way past Vito Mannone, and Daniel Sturridge curling the ball into the top corner, via a deflection, in front of the Kop.
When the second went in, I thought we’d be presented with one of those game of two halves scenarios – that we had a second half ahead where we’d ease through the gears and maybe score another couple of goals. Things instead became more and more ugly as Sunderland, instead of capitulating, opened themselves up in a more positive manner as we offered them increasing degrees of incentive to get into our half to press us high up the pitch.
Playing keep-ball 30 yards from our own goalline and the throwing on of both Ki Sung-Yueng and Adam Johnson did little for on-pitch nerves. Off the pitch, the nerves had been evident from early on, which was as unnecessary as it was unhelpful, although no-one could have been impervious to the nerves in the final minutes – the collar of my coat took a serious chewing from the moment Ki nodded in at the back post for 2-1, and I omitted a sort of concerned seal noise when that late free kick flashed across our six-yard line only for John O’Shea to fail to make any solid contact.
Without the benefit of running up a three or four-goal lead in the first 20 minutes, the early nerves on display last night seemingly could be the way things are going to be at Anfield. Everyone will need to chill out a bit before Sunday. Let’s not forget that this was still a handsome win, in an ugly sort of way. If last night was a country and western singer, it would have been Lyle Lovett.
Seven games then. The season continues to shrink. So has the points gap to Chelsea. A solitary point. Not much more than a week-and-a-half ago, some people wanted us to believe that we’d by now be 10 points away from the summit and the pipe-dream would be effectively over.
The balance of the fixtures we have left might just play into our hands. If nerves are to come into play at home then we have the ideal opponents to face at Anfield – sides that we can not afford to be shrinking violets in front of: Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City, Chelsea and then Newcastle United on the final day. Read that again. That’s Newcastle United on the final day – games against them tend to be by their nature the most bizarre anyway.
If we go into the final day with a sniff of the title still circulating the nostrils, that game will be freaky – nothing less. The final eight games started with a North Eastern test, and will end with a North Eastern test. Away from home might well be where we find it easier, with the blind faith of the away support being lead by the blindingly sublime occurrences on the pitch.
Upton Park, Carrow Road and Selhurst Park; West Ham United, Norwich City and Crystal Palace might be able to offer us safe havens away from the nervousness of an Anfield crowd. Last night seemed to be all about the enormity of the situation we’ve played ourselves into. We looked to the horizon, rather than focusing on the here and the now. It’s ok to take a quick look up to see the direction we head towards, but let’s just make it a quick glance and get our heads back down to deal with the here and now. We don’t have to worry about reaching the finishing line; we can let the finishing line come to us.
Embrace the insanity: Your head will hurt, your throat will be raw, your knuckles will whiten, your limbs will feel weak and your stomach will turn. But fill up your lungs, breath it all in. Consume it and enjoy it. Who’s to say when we’ll see the likes again? This is very, very different.
People keep saying we “won ugly” but some of our passing was just phenomenal, especially in tight spaces where they were closing us down and we had to play – or had the confidence and intelligence to play – our way out of the congestion and into space. It wasn’t sublime, it wasn’t six, but at times it *was* still beautiful.
If we’d had a friendlier (oof!) referee, I think the match would have been over much earlier.
“…I omitted a sort of concerned seal noise when that late free kick flashed across our six-yard line only for John O’Shea to fail to make any solid contact.”
I chuckle now, but at the time I was looking into the distance, shaking my head in sorrow and wondering what to do with the rest of my consequently worthless life when this goes in and we draw.
It’s like we’ve gone all-in since day one and teams around us keep on folding. Or indeed calling, only to find out we get dealt a pair of aces a very ridiculous number of times.
I agree with you on how our fixture list seems to be quite perfect with all different types of games arriving at just the right time. The consecutive losses to City and Chelsea actually set us up nicely, psychologically speaking, to go on the run that we did and are still on. Win those two and the horizon you mention becomes all the more blinding and nerve wrecking, at a far earlier stage. But instead, we got to play the likes of Everton and Arsenal with relatively little to worry about title-wise.
Then the block of five games with four away meant, again, that nobody got too (emphasis on the word too) carried away. It acted as a kind of separate mini league, during which each game could quite well smash the wheels of our title-carriage, and there was no point in getting too excited (again, the word too..) until we’re done with them all. Thing is, we did rather well. Those games only ended up greasing our bearings. All of a sudden we’ve appeared on the home stretch, and the natural reaction is to get absolutely carried away with a perfect view of the finishing line. It’s going to be sickening, and I hope I’m still smiling in agony come May.
As you say, the majority of his goals have come from cleevr runs and finding space for crosses/centers, especially in the last two and a half seasons.But make no mistake, Torres can power or more truthfully, sprint past defenders. A lot of his goals in 07-08 came this way, most of the ones that came around the corners of the six-yard box: his first against Chelsea, third against West Ham, against City, and against Spurs are just a few examples off the top of my head. And we can’t forget that winner against the Mancs last season, where he utterly embarrassed Rio Ferdinand, holding him off with strength and bursting past to beat Van der Sar.But those are the goals he scores when in top form, when all the tricks are coming off. That hasn’t happened this season until last Sunday. It’s also no coincidence that the majority scored in that fashion came in his first season, before defenders knew his preferred move was to feint, drop his shoulder, and sprint past the defender.I wish I wasn’t completely worthless with Flash, too stupid to learn the programming, so I could make this interactive, explaining each spot with a summary of the goal: who it was scored against, style of strike, who assisted and how, etc., so you’ll have to take my word for it or scour YouTube and Google. But Torres can score and has scored almost every type of goal.
It was another win and i have to say thought Phillipe was awesome balls last night.
Thought we came through well last night. But more noise would’ve been helpful, Spuds on Sunday needs to be at volume 11.
West Ham winning last night did us a favour. Time to start looking at the other results now, which is something we haven’t really had to do over the last few seasons. I’m loving this – we’ll hit 70+ points in March with a win. Nuts.
One. Game. At. A. Time. It’s the only way to go (and the only way to stay sane). I’ve stopped looking at fixtures beyond Sunday, ours or anyone else’s. Anything can happen.
Mettle tested. Test passed. Pass it on.
“Let’s not forget that this was still a handsome win, in an ugly sort of way. If last night was a country and western singer, it would have been Lyle Lovett.” is one of the greatest lines of a match report I’ve ever read. Genius.
And the general tone of this is something I hadn’t considered but is so – so true. Away games to relegation threatened teams are never going to be easy. The quintessential banana-skin. But they HAVE to come at us, given the circumstances. And that is far preferable to facing a bunch of teams who are simply out to prove (& gain) a point.
Put simply, imagine our last seven games where the other way around. Nightmare. I could easily see us slipping up at home to the most unexpected of teams like West Ham, and you’d never bank on three points at Stamford Bridge. So in that regard, all very interesting. As the end of the season will, undoubtedly, be.
The thing I love most about this season is that a dirty, scrapping, just-about-over-the-line win against less handsome opposition is now considered “The Reality Check We Needed”, the same as draws or losses were a few years ago.
Similarly, a draw is looked upon as we once viewed a loss, namely “A Wasted Chance”, whereas a regulation loss is regarded to be some weird abomination, similar in traditional terms to losing by 3+ goals, getting your captain and goalkeeper sent off and your manager fined for his reaction, or in non-football terms, things like giving birth to a werewolf or causing a train crash.
In short, Our expectations have gone up another very significant notch. This is great news for the leaders at the club who can use this expectation to demand high consistent performance from themselves and the whole team. Those falling short will be sold to a middling non-threat like Spurs, Toon or United (Just a bit of a lash there, of course we wouldn’t sell anything to United). Meanwhile we can demand and attract the creme de la creme of world football, both for the first team and the academy.
Things change so quickly in football, I’m determined to enjoy what we have while we have it, and hope that we can push on to the same degree next season. The pessimist in me scours the media daily for reports of the landmine that the club has trodden on which will turn our stagecoach back into a pumpkin, but there is another rare feeling, a murmur that things are different this time, and that the mixture of finally learning from our past mistakes and Brendan Rodgers – a man more stable than an oak table – will bring us sustained success and good times.