Liverpool vs Stoke City

Final Score : 0-0
Man of the Match : Xabi Alonso

What a farce! I bet this was what Stoke’s manager said to his players. “No one is allowed to cross the halfway line. Liverpool don’t have anyone in their squad who can dribble and beat players, so get everyone behind the ball and we will be fine.” And it worked for them!

Liverpool limitations were badly exposed in this game. We don’t have enough creativity in the squad and we don’t have anyone with the skill who can run with the ball. Coupled that with lack of movements, we will always struggle when teams are set out to solely defend. We will be reduced to hoping for somebody to do something spectacular to win the game and unfortunately this time no one managed to do it, and we dropped two precious points at home against a team we should really hammered. A good chance to build a lead at the top went to waste.

Benitez actually got it right in this game by leaving The Chief from the starting line up and sent out a very attacking team by Liverpool standard. The players however let him down with the strikers seemed to have left their scoring boot at home. Not even one clear-cut chance was created and with the half chances that we got, they simply snatched at it. Torres, Keane and Kuyt were all guilty of those. The movements were very disappointing, the one-twos and the third man running were non-existent. So we were left with hopeful long-range shots that often went off target as our midfielders had an off day as well.

I went for Xabi Alonso as man of the match but in truth no one deserved it. No one did anything notable. Alonso had the most shot on goal so just because of that I picked him, even though most of his shots went way off target. We had the lion share of the possession but we didn’t do anything with it. Stoke’s keeper barely had anything to do.

I really hope the game between Chelsea and Man Utd will end up in a draw so Chelsea will stay level on points with us.

A really disappointing game. Hopefully the players can pick themselves up and play better next time. We are better than this.