So last season we got beat at Anfield 3-2 with a Torres hat trick but I’m sure Gareth had taken plenty of positives from that game and learnt a lot from that game and with what he learnt we nearly pulled it off.

Gareth named an unchanged side to the team that beat the Spudz, so hopefully we could imitate our display. Obviously there was one little change with Brad Jones getting injured in the warm up, Ross Turnbull stepped in to handle the pressure of the kop. He pulled off a great save from Kuyt early on, and it may have been a powerful shot and quite central it was encouraging as you kind of felt as if that would give young Turnbull a much needed boost in order for him to perform.

We had chances too; Andrew Taylor almost gave everyone a shock with a left-footed half volley, which was heading for the top left-handed corner only to be lightly tipped over the bar from Reina. Downing got himself into a goal-scoring position only to scuff a shot with his right foot, which went aimlessly wide. Once again Aliadiere doesn’t walk away from Liverpool unscathed, as a clash of heads with Dossena resulted in him having a bandage wrapped around his head, which is the 2nd consecutive game that one of our players has had to have a head bandage (better ask the Statto/S71 when the last time that happened), but as long as it didn’t affect his performance……

Boro were defending well as Torres was on the prowl hoping to make it 5 goals in 3 games against the Boro but Robbie Keane on the other hand was an unknown for Liverpool. The half time whistle blew and I’m sure Gareth was calling for more solidarity but seen as though we were solid enough we needed to break on the counter attack. The second half began and after a while I could see us controversially trying to sit on a 0-0 draw.

Fortunately that didn’t happen as Gareth played the Mio card in order to ruffle the Scousers feathers. Mido did that and more, Gareth made a wise substitution as a lay off from Aliadiere set up Mido with a great strike from 25 yards. That was all well and good, however the word ‘second’ immediately sprung into my mind (once I stopped celebrating of course) as I didn’t want a repeat of either games last year as we score first in both encounters.

When Liverpool put us on the back foot I was pleased with Mohammed Shawky who once again filled in a full shift as he was doing the clattering as well as being clattered. It took 86 bloody minutes for Liverpool to score, to which Boro were standing still, as an appeal for handball against Gary O’Neil seemed to leave Boro ripe with confusion and yet even I, playing on cold Sunday mornings, always get told to ‘play to the whistle’ and that left Talksport favourite Jamie Carragher time to have a shot, and for it to hit Pogatetz and wrong foot Turnbull.

Of course by that point I thought ‘oh dear’ and that seemed to be the case, our defence played brilliantly for 85 minutes and I didn’t want all that hard work to be undone. Unfortunately it unravelled, with 4 minutes added time (I’ll rant about that in a minute) but a poor header from Wheater resulted in Steven (not Stevie) Gerrard to smack the ball home in the 94th minute.

I’d like to ask you readers a question… ‘What happened in that game that warranted 4 minutes of injury time?’ I am just curious because overall that would have been 5 minutes of injury time throughout the whole game as there was 1 minute added in the 1st half, to which we saw Aliadiere and Dossena both have head injuries? Now I know that Torres booting Huth in the face might add about 2 minutes but I just found it crazy…Maybe because Gerrard scoring in the 94th minute made me beg the question but I’ve only half digested it.

Bring on Stoke! MarkA