Sunday, August 14, 2005

Middlesbrough 0 - 0 Liverpool

Middlesbrough v Liverpool
Utter Frustration for Captain Gerrard

Saturdays meant something more now, the Barclays Premiership started this weekend. Liverpool kicked off their campaign away at Riverside Stadium against Boro.

The starting formation of 4-5-1 was a little strange. Lone striker Nando was lacking the much needed support of another striking partner. Our defence needs much improvement indeed, the likes of Carragher, Hyppia, Finnan & Warnock were adequate for this match, but there were moments of shock when Boro found loopholes in the defence. Stephen Warnock was impressive & somewhat surprised me.

Sissoko showed the aggressiveness the English game entails & was too impressive in midfield, alongside Gerrard, Alonso, Garcia & Zenden. As expected, Zenden was booed by the home crowd whenever he got the ball. He had an early chance to put Liverpool in front, but was let down by finishing. Reina was a little shaky, came off the line too often for half chances & my heart was certainly in my mouth.

We played a better game when disappointing Garcia was replaced by Cisse, we made more chances from the flanks & was certainly rewarded; but for the unlucky Gerrard missing the goals. Baros then came on for Nando, this must have been his first competitive match for Pool since last season as he was not played during the CL qualifiers. We created more chances & was almost certainly going to score with Gerrard. But he was brought down just at the edge of the box by Ugo Ehiogu in the 74th min. A clever flick from Baros earlier set Gerrard free to go for goal, before Gerrard was brought down.

Although we didn't win the match, we did well to contain Boro & created many chances. It was plain unlucky of Gerrard to not even put one in the net. We must certainly win the next home game against Sunderland at Anfield.

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