Lost to a better team. Well done Man Utd! That was a good finish by Ferdinand (dun ask me why we had just four defenders with four man utd player in the penalty box: the others went to gather daisies i guess). and the defending in the first goal...classic liverpool defence this season. Complete lack of situational awareness. Man Utd wasn't really at their vintage best and weren't really as penetrative as I feared. but they wanted to win more, they dared to take the risks and they knew how to hold on to and use the ball.
Liverpool? Same complaints I had all season. Dun know how to retain possesion, no understanding with one another and simply zero creativity. How many chances did we really craft out? None. I didn't count the few half chances because these were not crafted but simply grafted out by doing the same thing over and over again (ie; cross blindly into box) and hope that one time, we get lucky.
Does Liverpool remind you of England? Same lack of ideas, same reluctance to take risks, same monotonous pattern of play, complete lack of understanding and cohension? Dun talk about having better possession or more shots in many of our games. It's about how well we used the possession and how we got those shots. We had plenty of shots from half chances by just swinging balls towards the box from left,right or centre. Failing which, lets just blast it from outside!
And why do the players not know where each other is most of the time? Why is there seemingly no structure to our passing and movement? Do you notice that our players had to stop, look up before passing and still often miss? I would have thought that they would have worked out movements and passing patterns such that it should be quite instinctive and flowing........... ditto with the defence. And our attacking play was so predictable. And Rafa didn't take the risk and brought on crouch earlier. Instead he took off gonzalez and just reshuffled within the same framework. Sometimes you need to take risks.
Don't get me wrong. We weren't really bad. But we weren't good enough today. We lack that extra spark that should be in a team that dared to talk about being champions in anything. The lads worked hard. but they didn't believe hard enough nor did they want it hard enough.
Kudos Man Utd fans. Let's hope when we meet again next, Liverpool would have their act together. Then we would have a game worthy of the hype.
You'll Never Walk Alone.