Well I think I said in the post about what the team would be against Blackburn I would be surprised if Ciise was in the starting eleven, when I took my seat it was evident from the players warming up that Cisse would indeed start. So once again Raffa had succeeded in confounding me as to his team selection. I think I would probably have more chance of naming the frist six finishers incorrect order in the Arc de Triomphe than correctly picking the starting line up for any of our games.
We kick off and Blackburn have won the toss and forced us to play towards the Kop for the first 45 this normally recieves a very large boo from the KOp but today the Kop give a very healthy round of applause to Brad Friedel the Rovers goalkeeper who had many a memorable moment between these posts when he was a red.
I am not convinced by Raffa' team selection as we have Josemi at right back who I have always considered a liability wating to happen with Finnan in front of him. No Sammi Hyppia so Jimi T drops into his slot. I guess Raffa is expecting a physical battle. We start off the first 15 very poorly with a number of long high balls pumped aimlessley forward which are not even targeted any where near Crouch and Cisse who have obviously been told to play closer to one another. Then we decide to get the ball down on the deck and start to play a bit this is much better. The result of Crouch and Cisse playing closer together soon becomes apparent, they are both playing the same position and have no understanding of playing with each other. This results in Cisse trying an over ambitious scissor kick when Crouch was far better positioned and would have a had a simple header without even needing to jump. Same thing happens again they both go for the same ball and Cisse heads well wide when if he had left it Crouch would have been far better placed. Still a good striker has to show some greed and hunger and it is Cisse who is showing the desire to score even if he continues to be wasteful. He does however succeed in winning a penalty after using his pace to get to ball on the edge of the area just in front of the defender. The linesman waves the Ref over who has just signalled for a penalty to tell him it was just outside the box. The ref after consulting with the linesman decides the defender has deprived Cisse of a goalscoring opportunity and sends off the Blackburn defender. Zenden hits the bar with the free kick, yes the dreaded woodwork again. From here on in the game is over as a spectacle and Blackburn drop deep hoping to last out the remaining 70 minutes. Liverpool have plenty of possesion with very little idea about what to dowith it. Half time is a welcome relief from the boredom.
We come back out for the second 45 with pretty much more of what we have seen in the first. raffa decides he has seen enough and gradually takes off our defense, deciding as we are not defending they are surplus to requirements Garcia, Morientes and Riise all join the battle this does have an immdiate effect with chance after chance being succesively created then squandered. Alonso takes a free kick after 70 minutes just outside the box and instead of having a go himself rolls it to his right where Cisse runs on to blast it past Friedel from 25 yards to open the scoring. Cisse then runs to shake Raffa's hand in celebration for starting him. Morientes who has been on for 20 minutes and I appreciated is coming back after an injury misses first a free header from 2 yards out that he somehow puts past the post then the Friedel drops the ball at his feet and he can only put this one past the other post and to top it off he then puts a free header over the bar! He will probably never have such an opportunity to score a hat trick in his life. The only positive you can take out of this is that if he keeps getting in these positions then the goals surely have to start flowing soon from him.
Conclusions, Zenden was very disspointing in this match and seemed to go missing for large spells which we cannot afford. Raffa has to sort our Cisse and Crouch on the training ground and stop them getting in each others way as we have gone from one extreme to the other i.e. from playing too far apart to playing both for the same ball!
Final conclusion 3 points in the bag a goal scored from open play and comfortably our worst performance of the season. I think this was probably best portrayed by the fact that when the Kop started to sing YNWA for the second time near the end of the match. And for those who are not familiar with the tradition we only sing YNWA a second time if we have won. The anthem was not taken up by the Kop and died away as quickly as it started.
We will have to do a lot better than this against Anderlecht
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