Liverpool FC Forum

[tubby]

What song were they singing mate?

[Sabre]

You could tell that the media were absolutely gutted by the result. All I've heard in the last few weeks is how thois is tje greatest United team ever. What a joke. It may be the best squad but this team is so overrated. They've played well about three times all season.

The media aren't much better. We battered Real Madrid and they were "poor". United beat Inter and it was a "professional job" despite the fact that Inter were nothing better than a pub team. Unite should have bee 3-0 up in the first leg!

I've downloaded a high definition game of the Man United - Liverpool game, which included the whole preview of the pundits of SSN.

Well it was an eye opener to me. All of a sudden I understood everything. If you went to any country to say that Alonso or Mascherano wouldn't make it into Manchester United, and you rated their Carricks or their Andersons over these two players of ours, you'd generate laughter. Similarly if you rated VDS over Reina, you'd get the same response if you told such a thing in Paris, Rome or Madrid. It's ridiculous.

But these people sprout that shít naturally, as if it was obvious. I guess that's the reason too why the English Squad hasn't built the team around the best player of England of the whole decade, Steven Gerrard.

There's a clear anti Liverpool bias to me from where I sit.

When I met Andy G in Gijon I asked him whether he too saw this anti Liverpool bias. He told me (IIRC), that not that they're anti Liverpool, but that they praise whoever are succesful at the moment, meaning, that if Liverpool were winning the league, they'd be singing the same praises about Liverpool (or something like that, he'll correct me if I'm wrong).
I'm not sure about this theory, he may be right.

The truth is that when I joined this forum and I started reading the media they didn't even talk about the top four, but the top three, leaving us, with our record, out of that top. It seems to me that they are reluctant to give any credit to this team.

[Scottbot]

Been sleeping most of the day with an almighty hangover! Yesterday turned into an all-day/all nighter and to mae it better i was out with a manc for most of it!

[JC_81]

The fanzone thing was a classic, I was p!ssing meself watching that. The Manc fella was absolutely gutted .

As for Bams call on Aurelio, I lost faith in him meself a couple of months back. After really liking him I began to call him a "fairly average left back" in the Aurelio thread. He just seemed to me like he was going through the motions a bit, protecting himself during matches. The stuff I'd like about him he'dkind of stopped doing, and such was/is his injury record I begining to ask whether he was worth the bother. His performance Away at madrid though was the watershed. That was the one where if he does become a World Class left back, he'll look back at that one and say that was the one where it really clicked.

There, in the Home game and on Saturday he was absolutely faultless. He's always tucked in and pushed out almost perfectly, and had a sweet left foot. What I've really liked though as he's got more confident is that that not only does he nudge out and get tight to his opponent, he's happy now to stand him up and snap a tackle in. It's the tenacity with which he is doing this, almost like he attacks the ball carrier rather than waiting for his trick which has really stood out for me. Watching a really good full back play against a top winger is always a great contest, there's something of the mongoose and the snake in the way the defender has to put doubt into his attackers mind. Aurelio did this to both Robben abd Ronaldo, and there is no bigger compliment that their respective managers getting them to switch wings because they are getting no change out of the Brazillian.

Confidence being what it is, such a priceless commodity to a footballer I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that after seemingly numerous rubbish free-kicks he now decides to bend one over the wall and in against Man Utd. It really is just fingers crossed that he stays fit now, because the way he's playing I'll bet he can't wait for the next game. "Average leftback" my erse, I should have known better.

Aurelio has really impressed me of late.  He's gradually been winning me over this season after I had written him off completely as a waster.  It was obvious he always had some ability on the ball and was a tidy footballer.  But I thought his defending, his lack of grit, his poor set pieces (despite his previous reputation) and also his injuries meant he'd never do the business for us on a regular basis.

After a few solid displays at left back, his performance at centre mid away to Portsmouth I thought was excellent, topped off with a well taken goal.  He's been excellent since and his displays home and away to Madrid and against the Mancs were top class.  His free kick was great, the pundits put it down to a Van der Sar error, but no fu.cking way.  Aurelio put it over the wall and right in the corner, no keeper would have got it imo.

[Dundalk]

Riera missed Dossenas goal yesterday, watch Nando explain in to him

[Thingy]

Haha thats brilliant Dundalk. I dont mean to put a downer on things, but on reading redcafe ( Dont worry, its the first time I have and simply down to buzzing of the reactions of the c.unts on there) , someone posted that our fans had a inflatable aeroplane at OT, anybody else heard this? I sincerely hope not, but just wanted to check as i dont take what manc fans with much credibility.

[liverforever]

What a result yesterday my head is still mad drinking all yesterday and today think it needs one more day tomorrow after that look on alex's face priceless was one great day the team are starting to fight for the cause respect and well done boy's.

[Emerald Red]

Seriously I was embarrassed yesterday, I was unfortunate/fortunate enough to be stuck in the stretford end for the match and by the time we had scored our forth goal myself and my mate were the only people in our row of 120 seats.
Added to that the poor showing from their supporters during the game, the only time the crowd sang was to give abuse to our players and staff, even that was half hearted, only once did I hear them sing the name of their own players.
I don't know if it has been mentioned here but Gerrards reaction after he scored the goal was down to the fact that the united crowd had just been singing their version of our chant, which the sing about him kissing the badge, his celebration shut them up for the rest of the match. i never thought a players actions on the pitch would be able to take as much passion out a crowd as that celebration did.

100% right.

After Aurelio put the 3rd past them, I noticed how many were getting up and leaving. By the time Dossena had scored, there was half the stadium left. This to me showed the true extent of their support. For a stadia that size to empty so fast tells its own story. Never have I seen an Anfield crowd depart the ground so early in so many numbers. We've had some tankings down the years, and I've yet to see half a stadium full before the final whistle. They are a joke.

[liverforever]

Sir face would have loved to be able to go like the fans because he had some face on him was enjoyable to see him in pain dick head i hate the man with a passion

[Greavesie]

just watchin the fanzone again....

'Dossena! I didn't even see it I was breakin my clock!'

absolutely class!!!!

[The Saint]

The TimesMarch 16, 2009

Humiliated Sir Alex Ferguson laments scheduling
United manager refuses to talk in television protest
Oliver Kay, Football Correspondent


Sir Alex Ferguson refused to speak to Sky Sports after Manchester United’s 4-1 defeat by Liverpool on Saturday in protest at the 12.45pm kick-off time, which he believes gave the Merseyside club an unfair advantage.

Liverpool’s victory was the biggest by an away team at Old Trafford since Queens Park Rangers won by the same scoreline on New Year’s Day 1992, but, as Rafael BenÍtez and his players were celebrating a result that gave them a glimmer of hope in the Barclays Premier League title race, Ferguson was making a silent protest at the scheduling of the game. His gripe was that United, having played the second leg of their Champions League tie against Inter Milan on Wednesday night, had only 2½ days to prepare for one of their biggest games of the Premier League campaign. Liverpool had an extra 24 hours, having beaten Real Madrid 4-0 on Tuesday evening.

BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster that is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, was quick to identify the United-Liverpool fixture as one of its live matches for the weekend, but kick-off times are not finalised without the agreement of both clubs, the Premier League and the local police. Greater Manchester Police recommended that, because of the clubs involved, the match should start at lunchtime rather than, for example, the 5.30pm slot on a Saturday or 4pm on a Sunday. Ferguson is thought to have wanted the game at Sunday lunchtime, particularly as neither team have a fixture midweek.

Oddly, Ferguson does not appear to have used this as an excuse for his team’s abject performance. In an interview with MUTV, the club’s television station, he said that his team “kept driving on and showed good energy, even though we only had 2½ days to prepare for the match”.


Similarly, Mike Phelan, the assistant manager, told the BBC – another organisation boycotted by Ferguson, the only Premier League manager who does not attend a postmatch press conference – that “we can’t have any excuses for the way we played. We can’t have any complaints about anything. It was just a bad day at the office.”

Ferguson seemed unsure that it was such a bad performance, even making the startling claim in his MUTV interview that United had been “the better team”. Even United’s official website seemed to balk at that, leaving the comment out of the manager’s postmatch comments.

United remain strong favourites to win a third successive Premier League title. They still have a game in hand over Chelsea and Liverpool, whose wins at the weekend mean that the gap is down to four points.

But Steven Gerrard, the captain of the Merseyside club, believes that Saturday’s result could change the complexion of the title race. “I hope this result gives other teams belief that they can beat United,” Gerrard said, adding that, in Fernando Torres, Liverpool have the best centre forward in the world.

Javier Mascherano, the Liverpool midfield player, believes that his team will have to win all nine of their remaining games to have a chance of winning the title and that, even then, United would have to drop points. “I don’t know if we can win the league,” Mascherano said. “We don’t need to think about the title race right now. We just need to keep this form going. It would be wrong of us to start talking about being in the title race again because, if United don’t lose, it will be really difficult to catch them. We need to win all our games.

“The problem is that we have dropped a lot of important points at home. We have spoken about this in the dressing-room. When you lose points at Anfield to Hull and Manchester City and other teams like that, you have to be disappointed, but even more so now we have gone to Old Trafford and won so well. All we can do now is keep going. There are still nine games to go. We need to win every game to have a chance.”[B]

[The Saint]

From The TimesMarch 16, 2009

Manchester United fall into Liverpool's trap
Manchester United 1 Liverpool 4

In the eyes of Rafael Benítez, it is war; not his rivalry with Sir Alex Ferguson, but sport in general. Long before the writings of Sun Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, became required reading for more enlightened managers, Benítez devoted his teenage years to finding common strands between his twin passions of football and Stratego, a military board game at which he was devilishly proficient.

Four days after Liverpool stunned Real Madrid, Benítez and his players achieved another remarkable four-goal success, this time storming the fortress of Old Trafford with a barrage of surface-to-surface missiles. Three of their four goals on Saturday stemmed from the kind of up-and-under clearances that seemed to belong firmly in the “hit and hope” category — at least until the Liverpool manager, more than a little eager afterwards to share his battle plan with anyone who was listening, suggested that he had successfully identified and exposed Manchester United’s Achilles’ heel.

Ferguson will snort at the idea, having lavished praise on a defence that recently kept clean sheets in 14 consecutive Barclays Premier League matches, but was this really, as the United manager suggested, “just one of those days”? The initial assessment suggested so, with Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic just happening to make more mistakes in a single afternoon than they have all season, but Benítez’s explanation of a simple approach to the game, one that involved cutting off United’s supply and then getting the ball forward quickly to try to turn around the central defenders, brought thoughts of cause and effect to mind.

Goal one: Martin Skrtel, in his own penalty area, clears the danger with a huge punt that goes so high that Vidic, waiting just beyond the halfway line, misjudges its flight in the sun. Now chasing back towards goal, Vidic panics under pressure from Fernando Torres, who marches through and clips a shot past Edwin van der Sar, equalising for Liverpool just five minutes after Cristiano Ronaldo, with a penalty, had given United the lead.


Goal two: Sami Hyypia elegantly brings down the ball and passes back to José Manuel Reina, who instantly kicks a clearance high into the United half. Steven Gerrard, left unattended in the no man’s land between the United midfield and back four, flicks it on to Torres, who turns and sends the ball forward into the path of Gerrard, by now in full flight down the inside-right channel.

As Gerrard bursts past Patrice Evra into the penalty area, he is brought down, to inevitable consequence. Gerrard keeps his nerve from the penalty spot to put Liverpool 2-1 up at half-time. Goal three: not an upand-under this time, but still a long pass as Lucas Leiva chips a diagonal ball from the left-hand touchline to Dirk Kuyt, whose clever header takes Evra out of position and leaves Vidic isolated in support of Gerrard. The Liverpool captain gets to the ball first and is wrestled to the floor. Vidic, having denied a clear goalscoring opportunity, ends his abysmal afternoon with a red card, his third of the season. United’s punishment is compounded when Fábio Aurélio beats Van der Sar with the free kick.

Goal four: with the game in stoppage time, Reina hits another long kick, which, with the help of a strong wind, is misjudged by Ferdinand and John O’Shea and carries almost as far as the United penalty area. Andrea Dossena, the substitute, races through to lob Van der Sar in front of what is now a half-empty Stretford End and crown Liverpool’s biggest win at Old Trafford since November 1936, when the Merseyside club had Matt Busby at right half.

It was a hugely impressive result, but Benítez, always looking beyond the battle just won, pondered whether it may prove even more significant in the war — in terms of its impact on United’s mindset and, importantly, that of their forthcoming opponents.

When Liverpool ended Chelsea’s 4½ unbeaten home sequence in the Premier League in October, Ferguson predicted — correctly as it turned out — that the West London club, stripped of their aura of impregnability, would run into problems.

Benítez will hope that this result has a similar effect on a United team, who, despite remaining strong favourites to retain the title, may have a few doubts where previously there was the confidence accumulated from 11 consecutive wins in the league.

United were made to look awful on Saturday, with Vidic, a leading contender for the PFA Player of the Year award, the worst of a bad lot. Opponents — Fulham, Aston Villa and Sunderland in the Premier League and Everton in the FA Cup semi-final — may also examine how Aurélio stood up to the threat of Ronaldo, who, his penalty aside, offered nothing; how Michael Carrick was knocked from his stride by Javier Mascherano; how ordinary Carlos Tévez and Wayne Rooney can look when starved of service and space in which to run.

Tévez, like the disappointing Anderson, seems better as an impact substitute in games such as these. As it was, the simultaneous introduction of Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Dimitar Berbatov in the second half seemed to calm Liverpool’s nerves, such was the loss of energy that it brought about.

“I think they have weaknesses,” Benítez said matter-of-factly. “They have a lot of quality in attack, which is the main thing. They are strong in defence because they have plenty of possession, but when they don’t have the ball and you move the ball quickly and play behind the defenders, you know you can beat them.

“We knew that they are really good at playing between the lines with penetrating passes, so we needed to stop these passes and put the midfielders under pressure every time they were going to receive the ball and, after, try to play simple and go forward quickly because it’s an offensive team and they always [defend] high.”

There you go, then. Further details are available, free of charge, on application to Señor Benítez at Anfield, Liverpool, L4 0TH. Mercifully for United, though, no other club have players of the calibre of Gerrard and Torres to expose the chinks in their armour.

Manchester United (4-4-2): E van der Sar 4 - J O’Shea 4, R Ferdinand 4, N Vidic 3, P Evra 4 - C Ronaldo 4, M Carrick 5, Anderson 4, Park Ji Sung 6 - C Tévez 4, W Rooney 6. Substitutes: P Scholes (for Anderson, 74min), R Giggs (for Carrick, 74), D Berbatov (for Park, 74). Not used: B Foster, J Evans, D Fletcher, Nani. Next: Fulham (a)

Liverpool (4-2-3-1): J M Reina 4 - J Carragher 7, S Hyypia 8, M Skrtel 7, F Aurélio 8 - J Mascherano 7, Lucas Leiva 6 - D Kuyt 6, S Gerrard 8, A Riera 4 - F Torres 8. Substitutes: A Dossena 6 (for Riera, 68), R Babel (for Torres, 82), N El-Zhar (for Gerrard, 90). Not used: D Cavalieri, E Insua, D Ngog. Next: Aston Villa (h)

Referee: A Wiley Attendance: 75,569[B]

[irishcoach]

It was a first rate perfomance from everyone.What happened to (the so called best player on the planet.... most hyped up player ever apart from beckham)ronaldo?
He went awol as usual in the big matches.

[Madmax]

what i loved was at the end when dossena scored and when they showed gerrard and co smiling..

[RobinHood6969]

The best Liverpool game ever, i have watched.. i would rate this game way above the epic Champions League final against AC Milan.. The satisfaction it gave was amazing. Felt like i was on Cloud number nine