Three-sy does it for Rafa's reds

Despite the big success story today being Fulham's whomping (mixture of whollop and thumping) of Juventus, Liverpool cruised to a 3-0 victory over a very poor Lille team.
After the last encounte between the two which saw Lille scrape through with a 1-0, a lot more was expected from Liverpool and they did not dissapoint.
Steven Gerrard leveled the tie early on from the penalty spot after Lucas was brought down in the area. Enquiries are being made into why Lucas was anywhere near the penalty area, but thankfuly he was he was brought down before he could tamely put the ball straight and snug into the the Lille keeper's grasp. Apart from the bright start the remainder of the first half was extremely cagey. Fernando Torres and Dan Agger provided most of the chances but failed to convert. Lverpool fans then had their hearts in their mouths in the thirtieth minute as last week's goal scorer Eden Hazard stormed the goal but was denied by the wonderfuly large head of Pepe Reina. The teams remained deadlocked at 1-1 on aggragate at half time, leaving the Liverpool fans looking nervy and confused as to how Lucas had gotten that far up the pitch.

Every week Steven Gerrard's form is mentioned here on 'What can be salvaged?' he seems to knock his game up a notch so considering the next opponent is Manchester United it would be crazy of me not to do so! (come on stevie, bury won next week and we'll know its thanks to this blog...) But the captain and his team made a strong start to the second half and took the lead quite soon into the half. Fernando Torres slipped a world class finish past Lille keeper Landreau to put Liverool in the lead after the defenders gifted him a great oppertunity. After that the Lille team seemed to flop like an old piece of neck skin on a windy and earthquakey day. They seemed frustrated because their link up play and final ball were Portsmouth (my new word for poor) and at times you could describe their finishng as Dirk Kuyt-esc, although Dirk quickly corrected that by smashing the ball clean over the bar on the volley from about 7 yards out without knowing that he was offside. ''You call that a miss? This is a miss!'', came to mind when Dirk hoofed the ball up into the air.

Liverpool seemed comfortable however and kept pressure on their opponents until around teh 70th minute when the players seemd to take up surrendering possesion at every oppertunity as a hobby! (In fairness I see how it can be enjoyable.) This sloppiness allowed Lille substitute Aubemayang a golden chance in front of goal which he missed causing Lille manager Rudi Garcia to whip out his old HULK impression, it was pretty scary for those who missed it. The remainder of the game was quite Portsmouth (yeah I'm really trying to make it a thing) but Torres put the game beyond doubt in the 90th minute to the relief of the fans and the manager. (Although had they have lost I would have enjoyed seeing Rafa's HULK impression). The goal was followed by a bellowing ''YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE'' from the home crowd who were clearly delighted to be back to winning ways and still in contention for a trophy of some kind.

As the week's go by at Liverpool more and more issues seem to arise. This week, just 24 hours before the clash with Lille, winger Albert Riera criticized manager Rafa Benitez on Spanish Radio and claimed Liverpool were a ''sinking ship''. So as a tribute to Mr. Riera a new feature called 'The Sinking Ship' has been added to the blog, scroll down to see. It will be an update of all controversy, mayhem and general malarky happening at the club and seeing as Liverpool's script is about as obscene as Harchester United's of Dream Team (I'm pretty sur there was murder and everything in that show), believe you me there will be plenty more added to the new feature.

So Liverpool set out to be a nuisance(or Owen Hargreaves knee's as I like to say) to Man Utd's title hopes and nothing would make the fans happier than to stop Utd from winning the league.
Thanks for reading this week's post. I will be back next week, that is if we beat Utd. I think it would be too heart breaking to write a post about a loss like that. You might find that next week the blog (just like Albert Riera's Liverpool career) may no longer exist. No but really, there will be more posts, just none about Riera playing.

Dec