We should remember that, if all the dubious refereeing decisions in Liverpool games so far this season were erased, we'd still be on four points; yes, we'd have beaten Chelsea, but Mike Riley wouldn't have blown up for Stiliyan Petrov's "foul" for Villa the previous week - Gerrard's goal from the free kick then was as undeserved as Lampard's penalty. As Stevie himself said after the Villa game, these things even themselves out; remember his penalties against Sheffield United, home AND away, last season? We get our share of the bad decisions. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and all that.
What I'd like to talk about instead is tactics. About eighty minutes into the game, Rafa hauled off John Arne Riise and replaced him with Peter Crouch. I was watching this with some surprise, as it seemed to leave the team lop-sided - Torres, Crouch and Kuyt up front, Gerrard and Alonso in the middle, and Babel the lone winger. I was debating with a friend of mine who would play where, and he thought it would be a 4-3-3. Remembering Rafa making similar substitutions in the past, I had my doubts, and feared that Kuyt would be sacrificed to a position out wide to accommodate Crouch in a 4-4-2.
As it turned out, I was right. Kuyt wandered out to the right, Babel moved to fill Riise's shoes on the left, and Crouch led the line with Torres. It had me wondering - on the face of it, bringing on a recognised striker for a fullback-cum-left midfielder is an attacking substitution; but does it really improve the team going forward?
After all, strikers played on the wing have a chequered history at several teams - Craig Bellamy's legendary tantrums when played out of position at Newcastle catalysed his departure from the club, although one suspects that the man's sheer gobby irksomeness was also a key factor - but Liverpool in particular have got it wrong in the past. I've mentioned Djibril "Glass-Shins" Cisse in these columns before; his pace, combined with a tragicomic inability to trap a football, meant one was reminded of Emile Heskey on fast-forward, like a Benny Hill sketch. It became painfully obvious that he was never going to make the grade at Liverpool once he was farmed out to the right wing and told to chase after whatever hopeful punts happened to drift off to that side, whether he cost fourteen million pounds or a penny. The sad fact was that he was pretty useless even out there, because he couldn't cross the ball for love nor money.
The aforementioned Heskey was also used out on the wing, more for England than Liverpool, but I think that was out of sheer desperation on Eriksson's part rather than anything else - I imagine it was obvious to everyone that Heskey was by no means an international left-winger. Bless him, the affable, doubt-plagued lump, he was barely a Premiership footballer.
A slightly sadder case of a striker being shunted out to the wing was that of El Hadji Diouf. A footballer of genuine, if unpredictable and undirected, talent, Diouf lit up the 2002 World Cup with his high-speed, quick-footed brand of headless chicken impersonation. It scared the bejesus out of the French, certainly, who limped miserably out of their title defence largely thanks to him. £10.5m sounded like a large sum for someone so inexorably drawn into blind alleys, but he had a raw quality in him that made us hope that, with a stern disciplinarian like Houllier running the rule over him, he'd get a bit of sense in his head.
Alas, he turned out to have the nose for goal of a cardboard bloodhound, and soon it was clear that he was never going to be up to scratch as a striker. He too was hurled into outer darkness - or the right touchline - to trudge forlornly up and down, half-heartedly crossing the ball once in a while and never tracking back (or closing his surly little mouth). Of course he then found a latent talent for ejecting great gobbets of phlegm at opponents, fans and - probably - innocent passers-by in the street, and was mercifully despatched to Big Sam's home for footballing malcontents.
The difference between the three discarded strikers I mentioned and Kuyt, though, is that those three failed up front and were pushed out to the wing as a way of saving the manager's blushes - he's not completely useless, they were saying, his eight-figure transfer fee was well worth it; look, watch him heave his weary carcass back and forth with an expression of infinite despair on his face, he's great, really. Kuyt on the other hand, though he may have his flaws, is a promising purchase. More than that, he seems singularly unsuited to life on the wing. He's not especially quick or tricksy; he can play a pass or a cross, but that's not his main strength. His main strength is, quite literally, his strength - he's a big, solid lad, able to hold his own against the flat-nosed bruisers he plays against at centre-half most weeks, while still being skilful enough to do something with the ball when it comes to him. None of Crouchigol's air of Bambi-like fragility with him. But that's no good out on the wing, where you're more likely to be up against a five-foot-nine fullback than some mouth-breathing Neanderthal, and your skill is being tested rather than your physique.
No, I was baffled by that substitution, and I think, although by that stage the game was petering out into a draw anyway, that we'd actually have had more of a chance of nicking another one with Riise and Babel on the flanks than with poor old Dirk becalmed out there. All I can say is I hope for his sake that it doesn't become a regular thing - because if history has taught us one thing, it's that it's a short step from moving a striker out to the wing, to moving him out of the club.