A Hard Earned Draw: Liverpool Report

First off, I should apologise about the lack of updates over the past week. But I should also give full credit to the Emirates crowd yesterday. I can't remember ever hearing them be so vocal and show so much support from the team. Especially excellent was the booing of the referee and Liverpool players after the scandalous Adebayor decision. If we can show that kind of support for the team every week we may be on our way to something special this season. But now, onto the game.

And what a game it was.

By now you surely will have seen either the game or highlights, so I won't go over all the action, but it's worth pointing out that this game did have a number of extraordinary moments, including a wonderful goal by Van Persie which put us in the lead initially. It seems that this team have figured out that we need to not only play good football but also winning football, and the recent long balls over the top have been extremely effective, and so it was with the Van Perise goal.

It was a superb pass from Samir Nasri (finally fit again) and then our Dutch frontman took it down beautifully before rocketing in a shot at the near post which was simply too fast for Renia to even react to in time to save it. It is this kind of excellent finishing which we all know RVP is capable of and I hope we can see more of it in the coming weeks. It was very Henry-like in its quality.

Following the goal Liverpool got a lucky equaliser by lobbing a ball over the top and hoping someone would run onto it. And in the ex-Spurs player Keane they did, and he finished powerfully. We really didn't deserve to be even with Liverpool because at the time we were playing much better.

In the second half the game was there to be won until the referee entered the scene. Booking Adebayor twice for very minor offenses got him sent off and we spent the rest of the half defending the draw. It was disappointing we didn't have a real chance to go for the win, but all credit to the team for holding onto the draw. Fending off Liverpool attack after Liverpool attack is something I'm quite sure we couldn't have done a month ago, but now we're finally starting to show a bit more defensive resilience.

And there there was the really bad bit, and I mean the really bad bit. Because of a senseless Liverpool tackle, our skipper Fabregas was clobbered into and his leg was, let's say, severely damaged. He didn't play the rest of the game (and accordingly our attacks became less fierce) and it looks like he may be out for as long as Walcott or longer. We'll have to wait and see tomorrow morning, but I'm really worried about the team now.

Without Fabregas we are extremely one-dimensional. This season it has become apparent that without one or both of either Walcott or Fabregas, we become unable to effectively play. In fact I can't remember a time when we have played well at all this season without one of them, so this may well be the final straw in our Premier League challenge.

I've been saying reluctantly for weeks that our title bid was over, but with the way the other big four have been dropping points I was starting to believe we might just have a chance. But unless we can somehow recover from the loss of Fabregas and find that attacking inspiration from elsewhere, I can't see us even pretending to challenge for the title. It looks like we may have to fight it out with Aston Villa for fourth and hope for a good Champions League run.

So we came out of the Liverpool clash battered and bruised, missing two of our main players (Fabregas and Adebayor) and still 8 points behind the scousers. It wasn't a great evening, but if their are any positives to take from the night, they are that we didn't lose and we showed a great deal of defensive improvement. Let's hope we can use this to start grinding out results until Fabregas returns.

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