After a string of poor results stemming from even poorer performances, yesterday Liverpool finally managed to find themselves again. It wasn’t exactly a vintage display, but it was unrecognisable to the utter tripe we were forced to endure against Hull and, to a lesser extent, West Brom. This improvement was reflected in the final score – despite missing a penalty with the scores tied in the 80th minute, Liverpool kept fighting and managed to come away as 2-1 victors.
The team sheet had a rather end-of-season look about it: Rodgers opted to return to the double-pivot of Henderson and Gerrard that was such a disappointment in the first half of the campaign, and Lambert was also given a start. As it happened, this worked rather well – Gerrard’s defensive weaknesses weren’t exploited at all by an underwhelming QPR, and Henderson was able to force the issue at times with some wonderful long balls that his central midfield partner would be proud of. Lambert, too, did very well. He put in what was surely his best performance in a Liverpool shirt, making some decent runs and linking up fairly well with the rest of the attack. It was he who created the opening goal: a lovely pull-back across the box was controlled exquisitely by Coutinho, who proceeded to use his second touch to curl the ball unerringly into the top corner.
From then on in it was total control for the hosts, and in truth they should have added more goals. Lallana got through on goal, but smashed it wide at the near post rather than aiming for the far post or squaring it to Sterling. At the time this seemed like the wrong choice, but having seen what happened a little later on maybe it was sensible not to trust Sterling with an open goal! Early in the second half the youngster was picked out by a glorious Henderson ball, but despite being just six yards from goal he was unable to keep his effort down. This summed up his post-Christmas form: ever since the contract saga begun, he’s contributed little more than Victor Moses managed in a Liverpool shirt. Obviously we all know that Sterling possesses immense quality, but if he cannot produce that consistently then he is in no position to hold the club to ransom. For me, if he doesn’t soften on wage demands and doesn’t round off the season with three absolutely world class performances, he can leave.
His miss became even more depressing when Liverpool were punished for their wastefulness by Leroy Fer. The visitors had barely created anything all game, but then Fer steered the ball home from a Joey Barton corner to level the game up. It looked like, despite the vastly improved performance, Liverpool’s severe problems in attack would come back to haunt them once more to continue what has been a torrid end to the season. However, just when all seemed lost, the man who has always been there for us when we need him stepped up.
And missed his spot kick…
Steven Gerrard will undoubtedly be gutted that he’s missed what could well be his last ever LFC penalty, particularly as it was in front of the Kop, but the captain did not waste time dwelling on his poor effort. After Onouha got sent off for a second bookable offence the reds began to totally dominate once more, and Gerrard grabbed the reward for this dominance with just minutes to go. Coutinho’s corner found the skipper, who towered above Barton and emphatically headed the ball beyond Green.
Source: liverpoolfc.com
With United having lost their game against West Brom, there is an outside chance that this win could earn Liverpool more than pride. I’m not getting my hopes up – LFC’s run-in includes a trip to Chelsea, and even if they do win all of their games it is unlikely that the Red Devils will drop 4 points (realistically five due to goal difference) in three games. However, it does at least mean that we’ve kept the pressure on: if United do slip up horrendously, we need to be in a position to capitalise. That said, the best thing about this game was the performance – in all likelihood the season is over, but it is vital for confidence that we go out with a bang rather than a whimper.
James Martin
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