Sick of Wimps
I have a major problem with two wimps this week, and not surprisingly, both of them are at Chelsea football club. Let’s start with Arjen Robben. As a player, I’d love this guy in our team, with his dazzling, max running and close-control dribbling down the wing; he’s a typical Dutch winger with lightning speed. But looking at him as a man, a human being, I detest the kind of professional that he is: a coward. I could never, ever, even against Chelsea, roll around as if I was seriously injured just in order to get a fellow professional, even one who I’d just argued with, sent off the pitch and suspended for 3 games. It is wholly a matter of principle and I think that any person with principles of a decent standard would resist any such temptations – in fact, the best of them wouldn’t even have the temptation in the first place.
The truth is now that we must play three matches with a ‘cold’ keeper who hasn’t played for 6 months, and those matches are some of the most important of our season, including a clash with faltering Arsenal. I despise Robben’s behaviour and would despise it similarly if a Liverpool player used tactics such as he did to get a player sent off. What I find more deplorable is the reaction of Jose Mourinho following the game though. In a world of diving cheats (Robben and Joe Cole do that too), we should surely be looking to condemn cheats altogether, but when the supposed ‘breath of fresh air’ coach is asked about the incident on Sunday, he says he never saw it. Says he’s just seen a ‘beautiful’ performance. This man is the manager of the Champions and he’s totally irresponsible and deplorable in everything he does – if the game involves voices such as his at the very top, then no wonder wave after wave of players come through with an instinct to manipulate referees.
The Match – vs. Chelsea (a)
Having listened to Mourinho, you’d have thought that his team had dominated the Reds from start to finish, with flowing, gorgeous football, all played within the rules. Realistically, though, Liverpool went down to Stamford Bridge and controlled a game for long periods on a pitch which looked like it had been maintained by the local primary school children, passing well and creating some chances which we would have made more of with a goal-poacher on the pitch. Having said that, I do understand the decision of Rafa not to include Fowler at Chelsea as he clearly isn’t fit, but I’d put forward this match as a piece of solid, hard proof that we desperately need somebody who knows how to score.
The Sky commentators, as usual, had a good laugh with their friend Mourinho and praised Chelsea non-stop whilst attempting sparingly to pretend to admire Liverpool; but the truth is, everything, including the broadcasters, went against us down in London. We slaughtered them in the first half and had as much if not more possession, with problems emerging from the tireless work of Kewell and Crouch up front with Gerrard coming in behind from the right. The problem was the lack of real penetration and possibly the best chance of the half was a missed header by Jamie Carragher, which, with a proper amount of contact, would surely have flown into the back of the opponents’ net. Liverpool caused real panic at times by winning aerial battles in the Chelsea box, but John Terry was too good time and time again for Peter Crouch, who had plenty of headers which just jumped limply over the bar.
Liverpool really didn’t have the killer punch, and whilst Riise did well on the left and Sissoko did okay in the middle, big players such as Alonso and Gerrard really didn’t have the ball often enough in order for them to make good things happen. Crouch was ‘sorted out’ by Carvalho and Terry, and the defence always looked a little bit prone to confusion, especially when the two Chelsea wingers started attempting to feed the intelligent runs of Crespo in behind. The offside trap held firm, but on 35 minutes, another aspect of defence was sourly breached by Chelsea. As the ball flew in from an unnecessarily conceded corner, inexplicably almost every Liverpool player went for the ball, leaving the entire 6 yard box empty apart from the two men on the posts and, of course, Pepe Reina. When we failed to win the first lofted cross, the ball fell to an unmarked Gallas who couldn’t believe his luck, or Liverpool’s idiocy, and poked it home easily.
Giving up a goal to Chelsea is never a good idea, as we found out at Anfield earlier this season. They just pound away on the break so quickly that when you attack, you always look vulnerable to a counter from a mass of blue shirts. As Gerrard pounded an effort into Cech’s gloves and Harry Kewell whistled a shot wide of the post, Hernan Crespo was ready to pounce on any through balls and that he did on 68 minutes. Liverpool still dominated but failed to endanger the Chelsea goal sufficiently, and Warnock switched off completely at left back to allow the Argentinean star to break free of the offside trap and lash the ball in neatly past Reina.
The game was over as a contest from there on in, and the lack of incident shows blatantly that Liverpool just did not do their job well enough on Sunday. There was no defining moment for us, as there usually is in these games – there was no clear-cut chance for us to miss, no opportunity which I can look back on now as the turning point in the match. Generally, we needed Gerrard to be in the middle and battle with Lampard and here was a certain proof that the lack of a right winger, still, seriously damages our hopes of taking on the very best teams in the country. For me, as of yet, Sissoko lacks the intelligence to feature in games such as this one, and at times he can get lost against Lampard and Makalele and Essien. I stated before the game that this would be a measure of how far we’d actually come in the last year. What this match and the encounter at Old Trafford last week have shown me is that Liverpool still need at least 3 players of top quality if we are ever to truly challenge a team of stars like Chelsea, and that, cheating opponents or not, is the cold, hard truth of day. And Rafa knows it.
Team Ratings – Reina 6, Finnan 6, Carragher 7, Hyypia 6, Warnock 5, Alonso 6, Gerrard 7, Sissoko 6, Riise 7, Kewell 7, Crouch 6. Subs – Cisse 5, Garcia 5, Dudek 5. A good effort, but not good enough.
All Things Red in short…
Good luck to Bolo Zenden on the road to recovery. He will make a good squad player when he returns and has just started to walk again properly following his dire injury problems.
Every credit to Rafa Benitez for speaking up and making millions of people laugh around England by asking whether or not Robben had ‘broken his neck.’ The boss has a wicked sense of humour, but he rarely uses it in public. When he does, he out-performs the Portuguese pretender any day of the week.
And WELCOME HOME to Robbie Fowler. Get your T-shirts because this lad is back for a reason, and I don’t think it’s to just warm the bench. His overhead kick against Birmingham in midweek is reason enough to be excited about his return. God is well and truly back in heaven.
