Just sat and watched the game. Before I get to our performance, I just want to have a word (as i'm sure others have before me in the thread) about the reffing.
1) Tiote - Straight red for that fucking elbow which was deliberate and lucky not to injure our lad (I think it was henderson)
2) Cabaye - Straight red for the shitehouse challenge less than 1 second later that was studs up, off the ground, no where near the fucking ball and lucky not to break spearings ankle
3) Straight red for Collocini for an even more terrible and fucking nasty elbow which was deliberate on Bellamy causing him to have to go off
4) Guitierrez (or however you spell it) second yellow for his challenge on Johnson.
What a fucking shock. Another utterly inept reffing display. I know, I know, after a 3-1 win at home where the ball actually went in I should be gushing with red bias, but how much longer do we have to sit and see this pathetic lack of consistency before something is done about it? Drives me fucking barmy.
Anyhow, down to the game. How fucking lucky are opponents that we keep letting them have 1-0 head starts. Second time in a week that a team has basically had 1 actual attack all game and got an own goal off us. Annoying, but gave us a bit of a kick in the backside.
Craig Bellamy was superb today I thought, full of running, brilliantly taken goals. I thought we were greatly improved with Spearing in the middle and the defense as always was cracking (bar the own goal)
Now onto a few other points.
1) Gerrard and the sheer impact he has. It's no surprise to me that yet again we were 100% better when he came on. Charlie actually didn't have a bad game today, but the sheer drive and speed of thought from Gerrard shows all of us what we're missing when he's not playing. He was fantastic and the goal was simply Gerrard. Brilliantly taken, great run, you know how the praise goes. It's so good to have him back, but worrying as to how much he improves us from midfield these days.
2) Carroll. I see there's arguments aplenty about the lad again today. I thought he had a poor first half and a good second, so unlucky to hit the bar with the header. You can tell his confidence is shot, but and this is a big but, the difference in him from when Gerrard came on and he suddenly had someone who could be bothered to look up and try and supply him early is catastrophic for our other players, it really is. 2 crosses from Gerrard, one carroll mis controlled and should have done a lot better, the other one he rattled the crossbar. Funnily enough, both crossed from deep, just like his towering header against man city last season in that game that everyone goes on about. It's not fucking rocket science. He can be a player for us, but the rest of the team have to get their heads around how to supply early ball, quick, precise crossing for him to be a danger.
Now that i've said all that, feel free to correct me if it wasn't gerrard who put the cross in for the header off the bar, i was hungover to fuck when i watched the game this morning
Overall, i thought that until gerrard came on it wasn't the most convincing of performances against yet another side that looked inept and bereft of ideas at anfield. It's not coincidence that a lot of these teams looking toothless going forward against us, we do that to them. Don't forget that the geordies had been playing well away from home this season.
I think that maybe i do hold our performance up to too high a standard at times. Pepe never had a save to make, despite lacking the zip in midfield until adam went off, we did control it and at times we did break well. I thought downing was a bit better today, a lot more available, but still lacking in end product which is annoying.
But fuck all that, it was the perfect way for us to go into the new year. We've broken our self imposed goal scoring hoodoo and the captain is fucking back.
Let's fuck twat all and sundry in the second half of the season. Fucking bring it on!
(that's an utter rambling mess isn't it....
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