LIVERPOOL FC 2 BIRMINGHAM CITY 2

All in all, Liverpool played quite well. Yet, we still end up taking a point from a mediocre side like Birmingham.
And, we needed a penalty that never was to get that draw.
There wasn't a great deal to find fault with on Monday. The team, particularly in the first half, played with some decent urgency, and yet we walked into the dressing room on 45 minutes losing 1-2.
Strangely, the introduction of Gerrard just before half-time, actually weakened us, and upset the balance of the side which had seemed nicely settled in the first half.
Riera was seeing a lot of the ball, and was mixing up some promising inventiveness with his trademark blunders.
The lad's a frustration.
Johnson was the clear Man of the Match who was virtually unstoppable on the right hand side.
Those shuffling feet, aligned with power and pace are unplayable at times and it was his burst that set up our first goal.
I've not bee na fan of playing Ngog in the past as I feel the lad is not ready to make the step up, but I saw genuine signs of promise for the first time from the young Frenchman.
His goal was expertly taken and could easily have been blazed over.
And the 'dive' aside for the penalty, his willingness to drive with pace into the box was encouraging.

Onto other positives, Yossi looked inventive until his injury, and Lucas and Mascherano pretty much bossed the central areas.
I was acutally surprised when Lucas was removed just before the end as I thought he was out-performing the Argentinian, but the little man was having one of his better games too.
Kuyt, sadly, had a stinker, and his chronic lack of pace was telling. His great workrate couldn't dig him out of a poor showing for him.
When we wanted our £9m man to be the star without Gerrard and Torres, he couldn't do it.

Where Liverpool seem to be suffering at the moment, is the inability to carve out real golden opportuniies.
Yes, we had a hell of a lot of the ball, and we got in a lot of promising positons wide outside the box, and on the edge of the 18 yard line centrally, but how many of them led to real chances?
Not many.
Other than Gerrard's header onto the outside of the post, there were no real gilt-edged opportunities and we didn't really work their keeper.
Riera being subbed was a shame, and Gerrard didn't quite look right as he feels his way back from injury.
Teams know how to defend against Liverpool now, plenty of men behind the ball, pack the midfield, throw bodies behind shots from distance, and if you get beat by some Torres or Gerrard brilliance, or a bad break of the ball, fair enough, but if that doesn't happen, you're luck might be in.
Add to that, the very real likelehood of bagging a goal from a set-piece against Liverpool's shaky rearguard and there is a decent recipe for taking points at Anfield.

Looking at our susceptibilty at set peices, when are we goin to get a grip of this?
Why do tall supposedly aggressive centre halves act like mice in the penalty box?
Carragher loves to attack the ball, so we think, Skrtel WAS a master in making an aerial bll his own last season, and Agger is a strapping muscular player who should win most balls he contests for.
Johnson is a big bloke, and Insua isn't a little'un, yet time and again, we get confounded by a chipped ball ino the box, and a little striker movement.
Three headers were lost for Birmingham's first. Not acceptable. You can talk about systems until the cows come home, but if we aren't attacking the ball with the same keeness that the attacking player is attacking it, then we'll always come off second best.

As for Jerome's second strike. It was a brilliant hit, and nothing Reina could do about that.
A word thought about Skrtel's chipped nothing ball to Gerrar which led to the goal, and the Slovak's passing which was abysmal all night.

I've made this point before, but it's worth making again.
The value of a centre half who can bring the ball out of defence, or nay, just pass the ball accurately forward to a Red shirt, is huge.
Because Skrtel, and more or more now Carragher, are so haphazard on the ball, it means midfielders are forced to trot back to collect it very, very deep, sacrifcing any creatvity they might have showed if they had received the ball from a decent centre back pass, picking up the ball halfway in the opposition's half.
That way, the strikers can loiter on the edge of the area, waitng for service from advanced midfielders, and the whole look of a side is instantly more attacking.
When a midfielder comes so deep for the ball, the strikers retreat to the halfway line and, hey presto, it's childsplay to defend against Liverpool.
Just a thought.

Anyhow, a performance which engenders some hope, but with hamstring knocks to the increasingly important Yossi and one of our few fit midfielders of craft, Riera (both possibly out for a month) it looks gloomy times ahead with Gerrad not quite right and Torres still with time on the sidelines.
Who knows, maybe Voronin with finally step up to the plate?
Yes, I know, now is not the time for jokes.